Movies tell us everything we need to know about giving birth.
The minute you feel a twinge in your belly, you will rush to the hospital. This will occur in a very high-stress and comedic way: you will scream very loudly (because screaming = funny), you will sweat a lot (not enough to ruin your make-up, though), your partner will mop your brow and pat your shoulder but he won’t see anything going on down below, and after a few minutes a nurse will place a very clean, neatly wrapped four-month-old child on your chest.
You will instantly lose your sweaty sheen, your hair will look perfect, you will forget all the pain, and you will immediately fall in love with your flawless-looking child as all the medical staff disappear off-screen.
Yeah-nah. It doesn’t work like that.
You won’t go to the hospital for what feels like four days because the midwives will keep telling you not to come in even though you’re pretty sure It’s Bad Now. You’ll drive to the hospital at the legal speed limit and make your way, slowly, on foot, to the delivery suite. When you hear the feral bellowing from an adjoining room, you’ll quietly ask a nurse if perhaps it’d be best if you just went home now.
Yes, there will be screaming, but you probably won’t find it funny. You might sweat but it’s more likely you’ll poo yourself and then turn beetroot-red from all the straining and pushing and it’s possible your partner will mention at some point in the future that your pushing face isn’t your prettiest. It will probably take more than a few minutes. It might even take days, and you’ll probably end up in tears because it won’t bloody END. The books told you that all you needed to do was walk around, rub your legs together and breathe and you’d be fine but surely something must be very wrong here because YOU’RE NOT FINE.
Your partner may be holding your hand and rubbing your shoulders but he won’t miss out on the action below. When you’re curled in a ball with your knees up around your ears, you’d be surprised by just how front-and-centre your vagina is. How long do you think your torso is? It’s not four metres away from your face, babe. It’s RIGHT THERE. One quick glance in that direction and he’ll see it all.
Eventually, that baby will come out. And whether it has to be cut from your guts or yanked from your yoni, the process will most likely be savage. There’s really no low-impact way for it to happen. The child they throw at you will be mucky, much tinier and a whole lot more squashed-looking than the heifers they use in the movies.
Hot tip: you aren’t actually finished once the baby is out. There’s still one more thing you need to deliver, and that’s the placenta. There’s a reason the afterbirth has never made an appearance on the silver screen. It is a sack of gore the size of your child. Don’t forget to snap a happy pic with it. #afterbirth #eatitup #rawcarnage #fromyourbody #nobigdeal
I should point out, so as not to terrify the more nervous readers, that some women find the experience of childbirth spiritual, calm and empowering. Some women say it didn’t hurt as much as they thought it would. Some women say they practically bounced out of the delivery suite, feeling on top of the world.
Good for them.