The Dr had massive hands with pudgy fingers. I had never noticed this before. Only now as he strapped on a latex glove and stood back in order to take a running leap at my poor cervix did I see it. The next thing I knew, it felt like he had plunged into me all the way up to the elbow.
Why had no-one ever described this feeling as really, really painful? Why did women describe such things as “uncomfortable” or “not so nice”?
Read my lips bitches; that manoeuvre hurt like seven shits.
“You’re not dilating, we’ll have to apply some gel that will help speed up the process” he says matter-of-factly.
*whimper*
He takes a few more steps back to apply the gel at a run.
But it turns out the gel thingy is much thinner and more vagina-friendly than Dr Franz Liszt here.
*Side-note; Franz Liszt was a classical pianist and composer and had extraordinarily large hands. Allegedly he would have a prop piano that would disintegrate at the end of his concerts as a little joke about his meaty paws. He is also my favourite composer. If you like piano concertos, listen to Hungarian Rhapsody #2, it’s hauntingly beautiful.
End of nerdy side-note.
When the Dr left, the little nurse on duty sniffed and said: “I don’t know why they apply the gel when a woman’s water has already broken, it just doesn’t make sense. I mean it will just wash away now wouldn’t it?”
She turned to leave and I sat there dumbfounded at my sudden lack of trust in the medical professionals looking after me in this hospital.
This, however, was really only the beginning.
By the end of this day I would be bawling my eyes out and begging three different doctors for mercy.
But I digress…
After a few hours and a few less painful but still quite sore vag-explorations by my very sweet and pro-natural birth nurse, the dilation was still not there and the Dr was once again called.
In this time I was also starting to worry about my poor paralysed dog at home. I had been away from him for twelve hours now and concerned that the cleaner might have put him on the patio where he would lay in the hot sun unable to move himself when it got too much.
A quick message to her confirmed my fear but she assured me that they would move him immediately. I don’t know it they did but I simply had to trust the process.
Husband had by now of course re-joined me at the hospital and was surveying the manhandling of my privates with narrowed, gimlet eyes.
“Excuse me, Melanie…” I began as the little nurse returned to my room.
“Yes?”
“I…*ahem*, I heard that when a person gives birth *cough* certain bodily functions happens too and I am slightly worried about it as I wouldn’t want anyone to be uncomfortable…do you think I could ask for an enema?”
Please note that when I asked for an enema I thought it would be that little bulb thingy and that only a polite amount of water would be inserted discreetly into my backside but when she returned, muttering about the previous night’s nurse being responsible for this, she was carrying something that looked like a garden hose and something that resembled a tea-kettle.
She warned me beforehand that “this will be extremely uncomfortable” and I steeled myself for the agony that awaited which turned out to be nothing compared to Dr Death-to-Vaginas’s exploration of a few hours ago.
What followed the procedure, however, could be described as verging on extremely uncomfortable.
She advised me to try as long as possible to not go to the bathroom, just to let the water do its job. I swear it wasn’t a full minute before I simply had to relieve myself.
The thing is I have always had very sensitive intestines, landing in the emergency room often with a spastic colon and such but wow nothing could quite prepare me for the cramps I started getting as I hobbled, crossed-legged to the loo.
When the nurse came back I told her about the debilitating stomach cramps I was having and she informed me that those were contractions, my dear, not cramps.
As if they weren’t bad enough, she told me about the drip I was about to get and how it contained Pitocin that would speed up my labour quite a bit.
“Okay, is that really necessary? Aren’t I in labour now? It sure feels like it”
“Doctor’s orders”
Okee dokee. The drip hurt more than the enema. She pushed it into my hand with what felt like slow deliberateness. I think I remember her starting the Pitocin at 50 somethings, which sounded high as she explained they usually start at 15 or something like that but they are really trying to get this baby out now.
“Doesn’t Pitocin usually end up making it worse and then the woman has to have an emergency c-section?” I asked uncertainly.
It seemed that way whenever I watched shows like The Midwives, One Born Every Minute and 16 and Pregnant (my girl is getting a Mirena at 13, already decided).
“I actually think it helps to avoid that outcome”
Well alright then.
In went the Pitocin and if I thought the contractions were bad before, they were now quite intense. I have read the description “the pain was exquisite” in books before and only now I saw a rare opportunity to describe my own as such.
“I want the epidural, yes please, when can I have one of those babies” I gasped between contractions which were now coming in strong and at twenty second apart. I didn’t know it was legal for them to follow each other so closely.
Okay, the anaesthesiologist is on his way, he’ll be here in about 30 minutes.
This was around 18:00 on the 7’th of November.
Of course, everyone felt the need to keep sticking their hands into me at random intervals as if the contractions weren’t bad enough already.
“3 cm”
“What?! I should be 30 cm with this pain!”
“Sorry”
*moaning loudly*
Husband was there and did everything I asked him to do in fevered whispers.
“Press my hips together quick! Okay, hold my arm! Now go jump in a lake!”
Okay that last one he didn’t do but I’m pretty sure he thought I was kidding (I wasn’t).
Finally, after what seemed like gallons of more amniotic fluid came streaming out of me with every contraction, the guy with the epidural showed up and tried explaining things to me.
It was very hard to concentrate but I tried my level best and sat in the akward, bent-over position on the bed he requested of me.
The fact that I was contracting painfully every twenty second made everything so much worse. He kept stopping whenever I had one because he said I moved, even though I thought I stayed perfectly still.
He asked me to bend even more forward which was impossible but I tried.
After twenty minutes of me moaning loudly and him expressing the fact that he “keeps hitting bone” so frequently I felt like throwing up, I was ordered to lie down on my side and as I did my legs started going numb and the pain miraculously disappeared.
Sweet, sweet relief flooded over me and I almost immediately started drifting off to sleep.
Everything was going to be okay now. Eighteen hours of painful procedures and contractions and I was finally on the home-stretch.
Uh, no.
In barged a nurse I hadn’t met and slammed the door at her back.
“I am Melody and I’ll be taking over from Melanie here, let’s see how far along you are”
Luckily, I couldn’t feel these horrible VP’s as the medical personnel referred to them, anymore because she also took a running shove at me.
When she retracted her hand, her latex glove was completely covered in blood.
“Between three and four centimeters”
She looked beadily at the monitor and barged back out, once again slamming the door loudly on her way out.
Upon re-entry she proclaimed that we are to do a C-section immediately.
“What?! Why?! I’m going to be able to do this!”
“The doctor said so. The baby’s heartbeat has dropped”
*Burst into noisy, snotty tears*
“It’s okay! It’s only a small cut, a bikini cut, you won’t even be able to see it!”
“I’m not worried about the look of the cut! I just went through hell and now I’m going to be cut anyway I mean what’s the bleeding point of it all? I knew this would happen but no one would listen to me! Can’t we wait just five more minutes?” I cried bitterly.
“The baby is tired and if we wait she will only get more tired and then when you have to start pushing she will be exhausted”
“It’s not like she has to do anything, though is it?”
But it was too late, I was already being wheeled into a cold surgical room where a new anaesthesiologist came up to me.
“Okay, so you’ve had an epidural but that is not ideal for a c-section as it numbs only partly. We could offer you a spinal, how would you feel about that?”
“That would be fine, then I can still experience the birth of my child”
“Exactly, so it’s settled then”
In storms the gynaecologist who I haven’t seen since the morning.
“Right, let’s get this baby out, can you feel this?” he asked pinching my abdomen.
“Yes”
“You’re supposed to feel pressure”
“I don’t feel pressure, I feel everything. I feel your nails on my skin”
Away he storms.
Back comes the anaesthesiologist.
“Okay, we’re doing general anaesthesia now”
“What? Why?”
“Because your doctor said so”
“Why can’t I have the spinal? You said I could have a spinal and be awake?!”
“I’m kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place now…” he trailed off and I saw that this fight was already lost.
I started getting worried that the general anaesthesia was only the back up if I really did feel when he cut me. In my mind’s eye the gynae was sharpening his scalpel on a strip of leather like an old-fashioned barber getting ready for a shave.
“Please don’t let him cut me while I am awake” I pleaded with the anaesthesiologist.
The gynae stormed back up to my bed.
“You won’t feel it, you only think you have feeling in your lower body but you don’t. Don’t worry”
“What? No! I feel everything, I FEEL EVERYTHING!” but he had already turned his back on me.
I started crying in earnest indeed because now I really did understand that I was going to be cut into live like something out of a horror movie.
Luckily the anaesthesiologist recognised my mounting hysteria and started pushing needles into my stomach to check if I could tell and I whimpered in response every time he did so.
Finally, he beckoned the gynae over and the gynae begrudgingly told him to put me under.
I mean fuck, right?!
I did the counting backward thing and when I woke up;
“You have a beautiful little girl, Mrs Grove”
I opened my eyes slowly, crusty from the tears I cried before the birth.
“Where is she?”
“She is in the maternity ward with your husband”
“Oh”
The nurse who I didn’t know from Eve was scribbling into a file and didn’t look at me once.
There wasn’t anyone else around and I decided to lay there as patient as possible.
The Patient Patient.
That’ll be the title of my novel. A story about a woman killing everyone in a hospital after giving birth to her first child via C-section.
After a while another lady was wheeled next to me. She had her baby on her chest and was lazily smirking at it as I watched.
Lucky bitch and bitchlet.
I had yet to meet my child and about half an hour had passed since I woke up.
As I scanned the room I realised there were three other nurses in the far corner of the large recovery room. They seemed to be arguing. In storms another, obviously senior nurse.
“If none of you are willing to take her up then I guess I will just have to do it!” she said loudly and picked up a nearby phone.
“I have phoned twice for someone to take Mrs Grove to the maternity ward but nobody seems willing so now I am bringing her, what room is she in?”
She listened for a while and then put down the phone.
A slow-burning rage was building deep inside my chest as I realised these bitches were arguing about whose job it is to wheel me up two floors to meet my precious child who I have carried inside me for eight and a half months and was just dying to see.
The senior sister came to get me.
“Oh, they cut your baby when they took her out by mistake”
And just like that I was off.
The words that came out of my mouth were those of a drunken sailor.
I told the nurse exactly where she could get off and that she and everyone else at Femina and their families should thank their lucky stars that I was still paralysed from the epidural because they would have not known what hit them. Only that the thing that had hit them was wearing a green hospital gown with her ass hanging out.
At long last, I was in my own room and still swearing at anybody who came near me. A tiny pink bundle was dumped unceremoniously into my arms. I was shocked to at last look into the cloudy blue eyes of my new-born daughter.
She was a beautiful little stranger.
“Pleased to meet you, little Dita” I said formally.
She gurgled in response and I decided that meant “likewise” in new-born language.
The poor nurse who was still hovering nervously just out of punching distance suggested timidly that I might like to try putting her to the breast if I am ready.
Scowling darkly at her I exposed my breast and pressed the baby to it where she suctioned onto it exactly the way a squid might stick to a slippery rock. A peculiar feeling of extreme thirst washed over me, mixed with a feeling akin to anticipation and a tinge of angst.
I frowned at the cut on the side of her head just in time to ruin the first photograph ever taken of the two of us together. Please see picture attached.
“So, what do you think?” husband asked me.
“She’s growing on me” I answered with the first smile in hours.
Unfortunately, I was also in quite a bit of pain. Nobody ever told me how sore a c-section is, although it might be because I had feeling in my abdomen and woke up with the pain, not mercifully numb and getting back feeling systematically and being able to cope with it in sections.
“Wait a minute, I read that I would be given a pain-pump? Where is my pain pump?”
A new nurse had entered the room and gave me a sour look.
“No, you should have asked for one if you wanted one, before the procedure”
“I still have the epidural thing in my back, I can feel it there”
She stopped short and stared at me.
“They were supposed to remove that under the anaesthesia”
“Oh. Well what now?”
“The doctor will remove it tomorrow. Sir, it’s time for you to go”
And so, it was at about half past ten on the night of the seventh of November 2017 that I was left alone with my sweet little child and in extreme pain.
After about half an hour of just staring at her and drooling on myself a little, yet another nurse came in and told me she was taking her to the nursery.
“Can’t she stay here with me?”
“No, not the first night. The first night we take her and you rest”.
I didn’t like the way she said it and didn’t like the way she looked at me as she did. It was like everyone on staff that night was angry with me for causing them all to fight about whose job it is to wheel patients from recovery to maternity.
“If you don’t mind me asking, why did you opt for general anaesthesia with her birth?”
“I didn’t! I had no choice whatsoever!”
She looked appropriately chastised and went away before I could formulate any further responses.
Were they all talking about the selfish bitch who just had to choose general anaesthesia just to mess with them? Again, I wished that my legs worked so I could fuck them up but they were not budging.
Another nurse came in with some pethidine and gave me a shot in the ass. She did it rather forcefully but the jokes on her because I didn’t feel a thing. Thank you Mr epidural, thank you very much.
As she left she flipped off the light-switch and I was left in the semi-dark room with only my thoughts to keep me company.
What if I died suddenly?
Didn’t my mom say something about blood-clots after abdominal surgery?
They hadn’t given me any special compression stockings or the Clexane shots I was told I would get and I was starting to worry big time.
The pain was still just barely bearable even after the pethidine and I hardly slept that night.
Morning came and my sweetie was brought back to my side. I was so happy to see her, my heart soared.
“Aw, thank you for bringing her back. I was so sad when the other nurse told me I wasn’t allowed to keep her here last night”
“Who told you that? She wasn’t allowed to say you are not allowed”
“Oh. I don’t know who it was” I stopped short of saying all nurses look the same to me.
After breakfast things really took off. A million different medical professionals came to my room where I would have to hastily cover up my exposed boob where my little girl was latched so they can examine her/me/us.
When the gynae finally showed up I was too in love with my baby to scream at him but I did ask him rather pointedly if perhaps maybe he could remove my epidural catheter now, thank you very much and why haven’t I received Clexane?
“Do you have pain in either of your legs?”
“No”
“Do you have a history of thrombosis?”
“No, but-”
“Then we don’t have to worry”.
He removed the epidural catheter, prodded at my extremely sensitive stomach and left quickly, obviously aware of the fact that he has treated me with substandard professionalism.
After about fifteen minutes a nurse came in with a Clexane shot and said he had changed his mind.
What an asshole.
Okay, what have I forgotten?
It all seems quite blurry, all of a sudden.
Oh yes, oooh weee, the first night I was left alone with my screaming child!
What a night.
The first day in the hospital after the crazy birth of my little girl passed in a blur. Husband came to visit all day, more tired than I was from working on the baby room right through the night.
My family came, doctors, audiologists, paediatricians and dietitians came. Dita sucked my nipples raw and still it seemed to me like nothing came out even though I kept reading on the La Leche League Facebook Page that I can rest assured colostrum is there and feeding my baby.
Night fell, everyone left and seemingly so did the nurses.
Dita was unceremoniously dumped in my room and I didn’t see one single nurse from sun-down until sun-up even though it felt like my baby was screaming the whole time.
I had to change five (5) diapers. Not ordinary diapers, no, no. MECONIUM diapers. Meconium is the stuff that gathers in a baby’s intestines during pregnancy. It is tar-like in consistency and very difficult to remove from a tiny little bum that you’ve only just met and are desperately afraid of injuring.
I suspect this stuff burned my little girl’s butt because she roared at me like a tiny train until I removed the offending diaper and basically washed her miniscule buttocks with a warm face-cloth before she stopped.
All this sounds easy, no doubt, but I found it extremely difficult to move around the room and get in and out of bed with my wound. It hurt like mad, stretching and stinging every time I tried anything. Functioning with a baby swearing at you in baby-language is also a mighty challenge.
Eventually she settled down after I figured out she basically constantly wants to be at the (ever-increasingly raw and sore) breast.
When the sun came out and I was brought breakfast I was happy to see the nurse, oh so happy. Amazing how lonely one can feel during a long- oh-so-long night. I was even happier when I saw the delicious Pethidine syringe she was carrying alongside my meal. Ah sweet, sweet drugs. How I long for thee.
Even though the shots had started to sting a bit because obviously the epidural had long gone, I welcomed that pinprick with open, trembling arms…and legs.
Even more people visited that day and I was so tired and zonked out from the pain-meds I think I looked severely drugged and cross-eyed to all of them, but what can you do.
Husband came again and complained bitterly about his fatigue which momentarily made me want to hit him over the head with a newborn.
The second night was better because I was moved to a bigger room with an en suite shower. Just another thing I had to fight with a bunch of nurses about. How the hell am I supposed to lower myself into a bathtub if I can barely walk? Also, the doctor said no soaking the wound, so how now brown cow?
As I gingerly stepped out of the shower I noticed with growing alarm how my feet were swelling up right in front of my unbelieving eyes. My ankles looked like they had had their wisdom teeth out.
Apart from being disgusting, at least this new condition wasn’t painful and I managed to cope with the baby relatively well.
Unexpectedly where the previous night’s nurses didn’t give a flying hoot about me and my crying baby, this night’s nurse was overly involved, I felt. Whenever Dita cried for more than a minute she was there asking me why my baby was crying and I felt like yelling at her BECAUSE SHE IS A BABY YOU DUMB COW NOW GET OUT OF MY ROOM!
At some point in the wee hours of the morning she asked if she could take the child and let me sleep for a bit and I conceded reluctantly because I was very tired indeed.
Unfortunately, this resulted in Dita’s blood-sugar testing low the next morning and everyone trying desperately to give her formula to help stabilise it.
Now, I don’t know about you but I was led to believe that formula is basically poison and should never be given to a baby and if you do everyone you love will die and your milk will dry up immediately and Armageddon will happen, so I refused and became quite hysterical the more they tried.
“Your baby could get brain damage from low blood sugar!”
“Then bring her to me so I can feed her for Pete’s sake!”
They brought her, all sleepy and floppy and I pressed her to my breast where it felt like the cutest tiny piranha fish was chomping away at my nipple.
The next time they tested she was fine (and according to the new nurse was fine all along, anyway) and I felt like flinging my empty breakfast plate at someone’s head for creating so much drama for what turned out to be nothing.
Either way, my hospital stay came to an end and we were sent on our way, clumsily strapping our miniature person into her miniature car-seat and driving home at five kilometres an hour.
We were now parents, hear us roar.
