My newborn is now ten weeks old. I haven’t posted the birth story yet because I wanted to get a little distance from it so I could write objectively about it. So I can say completely objectively, it. was. awful.

I’m probably breaking some mothers’ code about not saying how awful childbirth can be but, really, it. was. awful. At fourteen days overdue I went in for monitoring because I wasn’t sure if I had felt the baby move as much as I was used to. I felt a bit stupid going in but my fears were justified: the midwife wasn’t overly happy about the monitoring and booked me in for induction the following day. Because I wanted a VBAC and particularly wanted to avoid induction because of the risk of increased medical intervention that can result from being induced, I wasn’t overly happy but I wasn’t about to risk the baby’s life, so at fifteen days overdue I went in.

I was dilated enough to have my waters broken and then I donned my robe and walked. And walked. And walked. I saw every floor and corridor of the hospital but nothing happened. And then nothing happened some more. So against all my better instincts I let them put me on a drip to start contractions. After a couple of hours I was thinking, hey this is great, I’m having good, regular contractions and they hurt but I can handle it, the gas and air is good, I don’t feel sick, hey I’m going to have a baby. Hooray!

About ten minutes after thinking this, I was on the bed feeling like my insides were being ripped out by a red hot poker. I have never felt pain like it. I was having five contractions every ten minutes, each one lasting two minutes. You do the math. Searing pain followed by searing pain and me yelling “THIS DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT, IT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO FEEL LIKE THIS.”

Note to self: next time get epidural before induction.

I’m not prone to dramatizing things so when I say I felt barely conscious you can assume things were bad. The epidural went in after what seemed like hours and even then it was more than ten minutes before I resumed any semblance of normality and by then the anaesthetist was long gone. But oh! how I kiss him in my dreams every night.

After that pain it seems churlish to complain about the shaking and the sickness but the throwing up was pretty nasty. When it got to pushing I had to throw up before I could contemplate concentrating on pushing. So I vomited before every push. I was also concentrating on not pooping which is not really the way to have a baby. Anyway nothing was happening and the midwives were getting quite cross with me. ‘Cos, you know, shouting at the woman in labour is really helpful. I was feeling pretty poorly and completely detached. At one point I was begging for a c-section. Wimpering. Like a small puppy with sad eyes.

Eventually they called someone more senior who reported that the baby’s face was the wrong way round and she tried turning him. (No apology for being cross with me for not trying hard enough.) When they couldn’t turn the baby’s head they called the consultant. She could hardly contain her excitement; she might as well have said out loud “I’ve never done one of these before.” So they wheeled me up to theatre, topped up the epidural and she twisted and turned that baby so his face was the right way round. “I’ve never managed to do that before”, she said, jubilantly. She knew how much I wanted a VBAC and she did everything to help me. I would kiss her in my dreams every night if I weren’t already kissing that anaesthetist.

Then out came the forceps and I pushed with all my might. That’s when I pooped. I couldn’t bring myself to poop earlier in front of two (very nice) midwives and my husband but put me in a bright room with fifteen odd people standing around waiting to give me an emergency c-section and I can poop like a trooper. As I pushed again I heard the consultant say “there’s meconium, let’s get this baby out”. The surgeon moved closer with his scalpel. I pushed twice more, she pulled harder than I care to think about and out he came. They laid him on my tummy. “Is it a boy?” I kept asking, “is it a boy?”

And there was my boy, my beautiful third son, born barely alive. And not breathing.