Dear Birth, Didn’t You Know I Had A Plan?

Our birth story…

If a pimple even thinks about making its way onto my face, I’m using all humanly-possible resources to terrify it out of existence and it’s usually gone the next day.

If I feel even the hint of a sniffle, I’m mind-over-mattering that bugger out of my life and it never hangs around for long.

I used to give my poor mum two pages of hand-written instructions when she looked after my dog (despite her having had dogs of her own her entire life).

I’ve never failed a test.

I’ve never been late for anything (like not even my own wedding).

I don’t get drunk or take drugs because I don’t like not having full control over my body and mind.

I find solutions for everything. Don’t do anything by halves. Determined, strong-willed, capable. Type A personality is an understatement. Control freak might be getting warmer. In its best form, it’s highly productive and efficient. At its worst, it’s impatient, with unrelentingly high standards for myself and everyone around me. Just do it should’ve been my own personal catch phrase.

So when I got pregnant, you can bet your bottom dollar I was going to be the most prepared pregnant person that’s ever strolled into a birthing suite.

I went into my birth prep like I go into everything: educated, organised, researched, emotionally/spiritually/mentally “ready”. I was excited, confident, glass half-full. I’d been in training for this day as if I’d been training for a marathon. And when I say I researched, I truly mean – like fully nerded out on everything and anything birth-related I could get my hands on. I listened to about a thousand birth story podcast episodes, read all the books, did all the classes, quizzed my friends hard. I kept hearing “it’s a birth preference, not a plan. You never know what might happen on the day.” I’d smile and nod and do my best “of course, totally understand” face, but deep down I was cocky. Overly confident that I’d be the exception and that my exceptional preparation would 100% result in the birth I wanted.

You can see where this is going, right?

I’d had an extremely cruisy pregnancy. I adored watching my belly grow. I felt fit and strong and healthy all the way through, and I was grateful for that every day. I’d been eating all the right things and taking my vitamins and it was going exactly to plan. I’d go to bed every night visualising my ideal birth. This is how it would go: in the early hours of the morning, sometime between 40 and 41 weeks, I’d wake to my body telling me I was in the early stages of labour. I’d creep out of bed, leaving Darcy fast asleep, and go into the nursery. I had everything ready in there – affirmations on the wall, exercise ball, yoga mat, heat pack, headphones, candles, diffuser with oils, birth comb, snacks and water. I’d put on some music and ride out the first few hours as the sun slowly rose, just me and baby girl, working together in perfect harmony to move her slowly down into my pelvis.

Darcy would eventually wake and I’d tell him we were on – we’d have a cute little moment together, full of excited anticipation before he’d call work to say he wouldn’t be in. I’d spend the rest of the day labouring as long as I could and we’d only make our way into the hospital when I was sure she wasn’t too far away. When we eventually got to the birthing suite, we’d meet our midwife and an hour or two later I’d push baby girl out in the calm, dark room with fairy lights glistening and gentle music playing. Blissful, peaceful, intervention-free and exactly how I wanted it to go.

Did I mention I was an idealist?

Cut to – 41 weeks and 5 days and I was still pregnant. Despite all the meditating, acupuncture, curb walking, relaxing, journaling, date-eating, bouncing on the fit ball, raspberry leaf tea, sex, sleep, spicy curries and constantly talking to her, telling her it was safe to come, I was still very, very much pregnant. Still feeling fine. Great, in fact. Still walking the dog, gently exercising, eating and sleeping like normal. My belly wasn’t even looking that low. Where was she? This baby who was constantly moving around inside me, happily kicking away day after day? Apparently she was quite comfortable in there and hadn’t seemed to cotton on to the fact that I had a plan.

From 40 weeks on, our hospital had us coming in every second day for scans and checks of her heartbeat (which was always totally fine). Even so, the obstetricians wanted her out. They were nervous about letting me go to 42 weeks, but I was still clinging to hope that she’d show signs of beginning to come on her own. Our midwives (seriously the most incredible beings on the planet) were diplomatically dancing the precarious dance between trusting my intuition and keeping the doctors happy. We all eventually came to a compromise and at 41 weeks and 6 days, we were going to begin the process of… cue the scary “I” word I’d been dreading for months… induction.

Now when you hear the term “balloon catheter”, what images come to mind? Of course I’d heard of it in my previously-mentioned-deep-and-thorough (and incredibly cerebral) research, but I’d never visualised what it actually was. A literal rubber balloon on the end of a long tube, inserted up there and inflated – one of the strangest sensations I’d ever experienced. The plan was to go home again and hope the pressure of the balloon on my cervix would get this show on the road. So home we went, full of faith and confidence that something would happen overnight.

Are you sensing a theme yet?

Nothing happened.

Just a lot of childish giggling between Darcy and I at the incredibly long dangling cord coming out of me, taped to my inner thigh. My little dongle, I was fondly calling it (if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right?)

So back we went the following morning for the next step – The Breaking Of The Waters. If I thought the balloon was a strange feeling, that was just the beginning. Nothing quite prepares you for the gush of warm liquid – that is not pee – uncontrollably trickling out of you. It’s at this point I’d like to nominate myself for a gold medal in “World’s Most Optimistic (or Stubborn, take your pick) Pregnant Person”. Because even after having my waters broken, there I was still insisting I give bub time to come by herself. Just to placate me, the midwives (bless them) agreed to Darcy and I going for a walk for the next hour or so. “My body can do this. It’s done everything else it’s supposed to for the entire ten months”, I kept saying. Ah, bless her cotton socks, that girl so completely committed to getting her natural birth. Like everything else I’d done in life up until this point, I was persisting, determined, full of confidence. BUT. I was forgetting one tiny detail – it wasn’t just me here, was it? I wasn’t doing this alone. It wasn’t just my body making or not making this happen. There was a whole other human in there with her own thoughts and feelings and agenda. Did I think I was giving birth to a robot?

You don’t need me to tell you that the walk did a big fat nothing.

And so the process of a full-blown induction began, the synthetic oxytocin pumping through me like a menacing intruder, introducing me to the toughest period of time I’ve ever lived through. Back-to-back contractions pounding through me like unrelenting waves, 100% in my back, 100% intensity. On all fours, roaring like an animal, kicking Darcy in his thighs while he squeezed my hips for hour upon hour upon gruelling hour. How is my body handling this? How is my baby handling this? Isn’t she terrified in there, hearing her mum roar like this? Time was irrelevant. I truly felt like I was on the precipice of life and death. I’m pretty good with pain, and this was hands down a thousand times worse than anything I could have imagined. But with every fresh, horrifying wave, I told myself I was getting closer. Just one step further to meeting her. I refused any meds because I honestly thought I was almost there. This was transition, right? But why was transition lasting so long? Where was she? She had to be close.

She wasn’t close. She was posterior (hence the back labour). A stargazer, one of the doctors called it. She was never coming out the “normal” way, even though we’d actively laboured for eight hours, got to fully dilated, pushed for another two. She didn’t want to turn. Her heartbeat was cool, calm and collected. She was just fine where she was, thank you very much.

At 5.05am the next morning, 21 hours after arriving at the hospital, our baby was born under the bright lights of an operating theatre. No, the birth was not how I’d visualised it. Having a C-section was not how I wanted it to happen. But here’s the thing – it was still, in its own way, beautiful. Darcy and I still had that magical moment when she was lifted up out of me, screaming and pink and perfect. There she was. Ivy. Our little stargazer. They handed her to us and in an instant, the fluorescent room full of doctors evaporated. The harrowing ordeal faded away. It was just the three of us. Our little family. All safe and healthy and together at last.

My journey into motherhood was clearly not how I expected it to be. My baby had other plans for how she was going to be entering the world. It was her birth after all, not mine. My first lesson in what now seems so blatantly obvious – my child is not me. She’s an entirely separate human who’s going to have her own way of doing things and most of the time, no amount of preparation or planning I do is going to change that.

It’s been five months with Ivy in the world now. This joyful, sweet, clever little girl who shows me every single day that I don’t need to control everything. That I can have the world’s greatest expectations, but she’s going to sleep, drink, spew, poo, roll and giggle up at us all on her own timeframe. That the most joyful experiences with her happen in the unexpected moments. She’s showing me how to be in the present. To breathe out. To let go.

A tiny human who may be no more than 6kg, but who’s turning out to be my biggest teacher yet.

(P.S. I’m pleased to report when my beautiful mum comes over to look after her, I haven’t left a single instruction. How’s that for personal growth?!)

Thank you for reading this essay.
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