Alexander Hugh: Birth Story
Oh where to begin. I’ve thought to write this story so many times in the last half a year, but I’ve never found the time it deserves, or the state of mind necessary to re-live it to every inch of the moment. I’m not sure that time is now but here I am, typing. It is quite fitting that it started with disrupted sleep and here I am on one hour’s worth, trying to conjure the way I felt almost eleven months ago.
July 2012 was wet. It’s funny how I didn’t really remember it until I looked back through the photographs. I’m glad Stuart names the folders by date now. The dampness came flooding back to my mind, the hot stickiness of summer with almost perpetual drizzle and occasional monsoon downpours. Sitting on the couch on hot evenings melting due to the hot water bottle on my ribs, but unable to be anywhere near comfortable without it. Sandy dug his long legs into them and my short frame – unsuited to be carrying a long baby – ached with tautness.
Those hot nights were hard. I remember being, as so many women are, very uncomfortable at the end of the pregnancy. The only time I would feel in any way at ease was at the swimming pool and I dragged my turgid, swollen body to the Gorbals baths each Friday night. Stuart would pull up outside the flat and I’d be there in the close waiting, bag with a warped tankini in it and little shampoos. Usually by 5pm I’d be done for the day, the rigours of carting round what I now know to be an almost 7lb baby and, oh yes, two stone of retained water, having taken its toll before dinner was consumed. Even then, there was little chance of me consuming that much dinner, what with my stomach being forced into a space the size of which should never be able to fit one in the first place.
But we swam. We did some lengths and I felt lighter than I had for a week and it was cool and my ribs only ached considerably, rather than agonisingly for an hour or so. We went round the rapids and sat on the benches and Stuart would hold my bump and we’d hypothesise of who just exactly it was that was in there. And then we’d leave with that warm, flushed feeling as you feel the air hit your body as you walk out of the baths and we got in the car and had suppers from the chip shop. If I remember correctly we were watching Dexter at the time, though such details don’t seem strong in my memory of the end of the pregnancy. No, it’s more the feelings that remain. There’s something so primal about pregnancy and birth and when I look back it all seems hazy and the air is close. So very close.
I was big. Probably not by comparison to some, but for me it was mammoth that bump. Looking at these pictures I couldn’t conceive that this was actually me for a while. Then I saw my sorry stretched belly button and the dark line which only just now has finally left and it all came rushing back. The tautness of that skin which itched and tingled. The rise under my chest… I can feel those feet, and I can feel the lumpy churnings of a baby moving underneath. It makes me shiver now.
It was funny how the linea negra didn’t cut my belly button in half, like I was lopsided. I think Sandy preferred lying to the side.
And it was never totally round either, there was a flatness that remained over the centre. How odd I always thought it was.
And look how swollen I was, my fat face. I blew up in those final weeks, water stored all over me. I remember walking around Tesco with Mum, my toes like sausages, finding flip flops two sizes up, and later walking in said flip flops uncomfortably with no option but to do so; they were the only shoes which fit.
Such an odd feeling to revisit the memories of those last days. It seems so distant and so lush and everything was so near to beginning.
Merchant City Festival – the weekend before Sandy’s birth
On the Sunday before Sandy was born I felt crampy and had aches in my lower back. I told Stuart, my Mum, my pregnant friends online, and I was hopeful to them but dismissive too. I was still only 38 weeks and a day. The magical 40 was still an eternity. I was so desperate to be done with it that I was ashamed, imagine I had gone two weeks over? I was at my wits end with four weeks potentially still to go. With hindsight it made sense, due dates from scans aren’t exactly accurate.
So it was the 31st of July and I went to complete my final volunteering session at Kelvingrove museum and art gallery. I’d signed up to a row of them, one a week, a month or two prior and had considered putting the week after as my last date, but then decided against it, just in case. I told the women who were working with me as I left that afternoon “Ah well, that’s me done, I can have the baby now”. We laughed.
I walked to the subway on pads of swelling and felt quite at ease. Stuart got home and his face was drawn and work was doing its usual and he suggested we go to Ad Lib and we did. I told him not to stress and we held hands across the table in the cool dark restaurant. I dropped lettuce from my burger onto the face of my watch twice, how utterly clumsy I was then.
As we waited on the bill I told Stuart to take a day off the next day knowing it was completely pointless, this man a pillar of honesty and commitment, even to the detriment of his own wellbeing. But in the end he was off all the same.
We said afterwards that the baby had decided his Daddy was too stressed and needed to be at home. My show came at 4am and I excitedly stepped back to the bedroom to rouse a sleep drugged Stuart to say the much anticipated words, “it’s time”. We worked in a scurry, the idiots we were, gathering things up and getting ready as if I was fully dilated already. I remember calling Maternity Assessment and being told to wait an hour and call back and during this hour I decided to get a shower in, so I was fresh. I suppose I had ideas that he would be born that day, the 1st. It seems silly now, like children playing at having a family.
Maternity Assessment called me in to see and the dubious midwife told me I was almost certainly nowhere, but found to the contrary that I was 3cm and sent me on my way to labour at home. This was it, all that I’d been waiting for. At home I called my parents and we made plans and the tightenings at the base of my back came and went, little twinges, and I relished their coming and spoke excitedly to Stuart “oh there’s another!” as I bounced on the birth ball, imagining myself contracting away quite the thing. So the morning wore on and it got stronger and stronger and all in my back and not on the front and at midday we went back up to see how I was getting along, it getting rather painful and all. And they shamed me, telling me I was 3cms still and the last 8 hours had been for no progress and I was stumped. “You can stay in but your husband will have to go home at 9pm” the midwife said “or you can continue to labour at home”. The thought of me alone put the fear of God into me so we made a quick exit, being warned “next time you come back you will be staying in”. I suppose it’s their way of stopping over eager first timers cluttering up the wards, but it turns out it’s also part of seemingly subconscious plan on their part to encourage second babies to be born at home.
At home we stayed from midday on the 1st until about 3am on the 2nd of August and it is awash with darkness and streetlight and pain and all the memories swirl in front of my eyes just imagining it, just bringing any tiny part of the journey back to the front of my mind. It is a mixture of staggering expectations and body-wrenching pain. Like a repetitive dream which isn’t terrifying, more full of foreboding and hurt from the inability to alter the path you are being led down. In the living room I swayed and I moaned and I leant against walls. I couldn’t stay still in contractions so I paced and I stretched and I demanded the scalding hot water bottle be pressed into my back where it felt like knives were being thrusted in and out and in and out. And the evening drew in and suddenly it was night and we were tired, all of us so tired and the streetlights blurred reality. All the while in the background were the Olympics. Those skinny teenage boys seemed to have been swirling around those poles and spinning on the pummel horse for an eternity. And the scores were read and medals awarded and crowds roared for anyone British and all the while I struggled on through a pain which was ground breaking in its immensity yet not frightening. I tried to eat and drink, and knew I would be stopped in hospital but the food sat like stone in my mouth and when I swallowed it I felt as though I was letting some foreign body enter my system. I contracted in the dark to the white light of the television and my family took turns to rub my back and measure the lifetime which was each contraction and all the while still nothing over my bump, still all in my back.
We looked at the notes and saw the inconsistencies but didn’t know what it meant. I called them and they told me the contractions needed to be long and close together which I knew and nothing I could say could convince the midwife that I was close, that my baby was coming out so I could be rid of this pain. My Mum and Dad slept fitfully on the couch, curled at either end, and Stuart was forced into bed beside me, where I lay exhaustedly, head spinning, just falling asleep when the dreaded needles began to press in again and I lolled up out the bed and made the pilgrimage to that spot in the living room where I chose to sway. This went on and on until I had the six minute long contraction. Six minutes of pain so close that I couldn’t see through it and I felt nauseous and afterwards I lay down and told them I couldn’t cope anymore. So we looked to eachother and noted, yes, that’s what they said, you go in when you can no longer cope. We said we’d wait until the next contraction and I dreaded it but it didn’t come for half an hour and when it did it was small and I was confused and we googled “Transistion” and convinced ourselves this was it, yes here I was, probably 8cms. So close now! We drove up and I sat in the seat writhing from the inability to move and up to Maternity Assessment we trailed again.
Inside they put me on the infernal monitor as I twisted and contorted my body now, waiting for the examination to tell them that it was over soon. But it didn’t and it wasn’t and I was 4-5cm and I was heartbroken and so confused. Then the midwife introduced me to the concept of a back to back labour and it became clearer that little Sandy’s head wasn’t pushing in the right place and thus I wasn’t dilating as I would be if he was. And his spine was rubbing against mine causing the knives in the back I felt. And it was then that she told me I could go to the labour ward where they would break my waters and help me dilate and I said Yes! Yes! Please yes! The end! I want the end! And so we went and that is the moment where I lost any control over the birth of my child whatsoever.
The midwife was brusque and hen-pecky. She looked at me disdainfully and told me to lie down and be monitored, AGAIN. I told her it hurt so much to lie down but she didn’t care. As I lay in the bed the agony made it so much harder to think and she wouldn’t ask me what I wanted to do she would say things like “We are going to break your waters now, ok?” and “We’ll put you on the drip as well, right?” and “Your baby will have a Vitamin K injection when born, agree?” and I couldn’t understand and everything was foggy and I remember saying “Does this mean I can’t move around?” and she immediately went on the defensive. “Women come in here every day with big ideas about what their labour will be and they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t do any thinking, the birth plan is never the plan, baby dictates!”. At the time she was hard to stand up to. It’s something that makes me incredibly angry when I think about it now, that I was a doormat and I said ok to all her demands. I know now I could have said “no, break my waters but don’t put me on the drip”. Or I could have asked for time to think about it, or not to have that horrible screw monitor put in Sandy’s head. But at the time, all I knew was that the room was misty round the edges and I was half off the bed as those knives thrusted in and out my back. And thus I was put on the induction drip and I lost all control, all dignity, all respect, thanks to this one woman. And I succumbed to the thing I wanted least, an epidural. I sat scared and overwhelmed on the bed holding Stuart’s hands as needles went into my back. It seemed as though all hope was lost.
At 7am two blonde midwives appeared and the other one told me she would come check on my with my baby once born (she didn’t), as she was going off shift. Then the blonde women, Tracy and Esther, looked like angels, as though light shone behind their halo-ed heads. Oh the joy of having them and not her, midwives who cared, and chatted and asked me what I wanted, and told me I was doing well, not that I was putting myself ahead of my baby. So things were more calm and I became fully dilated and it seems such an anti-climax that there I was, ready to push and I couldn’t feel it. I had to ask when the contractions were so I could push. I pushed for an hour but all I had feared was upon me, unable to feel, unable to push, too exhausted and facing the dread of completely unwanted intervention. Around this time though the epidural was wearing off and I felt the old knives stab, stab, stabbing away again and soon the pain was there and I was trapped in the mist and they told me I had to push harder and I did and it didn’t work and Sandy’s head was right there but I just couldn’t get him out. I wanted the epidural topped up and there was confusion, I can’t quite remember now, but I clearly remember saying “just get the baby out now I don’t care how just do it” and then the Registrar appeared. A tall man named Marcus who joked and wielded forceps and was strangely commanding. My epidural had been topped up, the knives were retreating, Tracey turned to me. “He’s preparing forceps but there’s no reason that we can’t keep trying until he’s ready”. So we did. I did. I pushed and I tried harder, and the stirrups came out, and Tracey lamented each time how close it was. “This looks like the easiest forceps delivery ever” said Marcus and I just knew I had to retrieve something from this god awful state of affairs. I had to fight back the way I had been treated and do what was right for my baby. Those forceps stuck in my mind as I pushed and pushed and was given “one more try” over and over. And I don’t remember looking at much then, it’s as though I was all inside my own head and everything was dark at the edges and I was imagining the room in my mind instead of seeing it as it was happening. And a white sheet was laid on my stomach and I heard Tracey say “she wants him straight onto her”; someone had finally listened to something. I don’t know who brought it up but they said that if I got him out on the next one I got a gold medal. And I wanted my baby to have a medal, my baby who all this time just stayed in place, cool as a cucumber, heart rate spot on, allowing me to take back control for his benefit. So I pushed the last time and felt the pop as his head came out and then the rest shortly after and my eyes were still closed and as I opened them up he came, I saw the cord I saw his leg and then he was on me, lying on my chest, he was here. “What is he?” I cried, meaning was it a boy or a girl. I guess I already knew.
He lay there quite calm, eyes open looking to his Daddy, whose cheeks showed the much expected tears of joy and anticipation fulfilled, and relief. Here he was, just looking, those big black eyes looking out, surveying the land as though it was all his already. I am here, he seemed to say. He hadn’t cried and Tracey said “we’ll have to take him over now, he hasn’t cried yet” and he let out one steady wail and then stopped and relaxed, as though he knew what was expected of him all along, as we were the children, not him.
He was taken to the table briefly to be weighed – bang on 7lbs – and score his test and soon he was back under my hospital gown and everything was finally okay.
Phone calls were made and tears came, and I can’t remember it all too well now.
The hat we brought for him was put on.
I kissed him. Met him. My Sandy.
His Daddy held him while I was sorted out and then they brought tea and toast. The orderly put him in the cot and as soon as he was there he cried and Stuart walked over and picked him up. Now the idiocy of the hospital seemed eye-roll worthy, rather than world-shattering.
I revelled in the facts which brought me back control. He was unmarked by metal, a natural birth. Awake and alert having come at the right time. 12:25pm on Thursday the Second of August 2012, exactly the due date first calculated by my cycle when I found out I was pregnant. He knew all. It was his show.
They rushed to get us sorted so we would be on the postnatal ward for visiting time at 2. And when we were ready they changed beds and Sandy was placed on my chest and I was pushed by Esther and Stuart through the halls. Oh that memory is so close, so vivid. My proudest moment. It was as though the sun shone only on us. My baby on my chest, quiet. He wanted me, he needed me, and I was his. I realised then that that is all I’ve ever wanted in life.
The proud moments continued as I watched my boys together in those special moments just the three of us, safe in the knowledge that for now, he was our Sandy, ours alone, untainted by anything, fresh and pure.
And so he met his family.
The most precious thing in the world.
He lay on me like that for most of that day. I was told off by the midwives for jumping up to check on him every time he moved or made a noise, but how could they have expected me to do anything different?
And so there was a brief lapse in the joy as we geared up for leaving on the Saturday. The business of the ward and the lack of time meaning on Friday they weren’t convinced our breastfeeding relationship was fully formed. So I fed and I fed and I called them each time, look! Look! He’s feeding! Let me take my baby home.
But it wasn’t enough and Saturday came and I showered and I packed and the car seat came with Stuart’s arrival.
Sandy was dressed in his going home vest and we were ready.
We played, we smiled, we couldn’t wait.
And I was patient because I knew it was but hours away. The midwife came and she did the tests and everything was completed, each box ticked. She told me she would just get the discharge papers and we were free. And as she stepped away she then paused and looked back at Sandy. She looked at his little face and I looked at her and knew that freedom had just slipped away. “He’s quite yellow, actually”. The jaundice tests revealed we had to stay.
Such sadness. I’m not going to go into too many details. It was sunny that morning and we stood at the window. Then I was told I was patient and brave and we moved rooms and Sandy was in his cot and I grabbed lunch and spoke to Stuart on the phone and when I went back to the room he was in a box. A big blue box with nothing in it and he had glasses taped on his face. I couldn’t stand the image. Then visitors walked by and they looked through the window into our room and awwed over the poor baby in the hot box and I pulled the curtains shut, the pain of knowing that people were pitying my perfect son too much to bear. And the rain outside poured and poured and everything seemed grey.
The next three days were horrible. A mess of neon light and blood tests and crying.
My baby, spiked by pricks and needles and forced to sleep alone in a box without the comfort he so needed. Crying after feeds, waiting alone.
This view now makes me so cold inside.
We were alone all night, 9pm-10am. There was little help. It was so isolating. A lot of issues that surfaced for me in the second six months of Sandy’s life lead back to this time. It hurts to think of the damage that could have been avoided. It’s a time I blacked out, the only salient features being Sandy feeding and the BBC news feed of the Olympics played over and over through the night. But we made it, and on Monday the 6th of August, almost a week after I started the journey, we brought our angel home.
In the dark we carried him and he moaned in the car and we took him upstairs, 11pm in the city. It was surreal. He spooked the cats who seemed so big to me and we rushed him in to feed in our living room. Home felt so familiar yet completely changed. And as we put Sandy down to sleep in his basket next to the bed I suddenly broke down in tears, what if I was to wake in the morning and he wasn’t alive anymore. This new world so dear to me though only just made. I slept hanging over his basket.
I awoke the next morning to the sun splitting through the gap between the blinds and the window frames and heard bagpipes playing in the distance. I looked at my boys sleeping and knew I was the luckiest being ever to step on this earth.
And so there it is, the story of Sandy’s grand entrance to the world, it all its bare truth and starkness, filled with colour and emotions so raw it causes a sharp intake of breath upon returning to them. The following days were filled with sun and the feeling of those early moments will be with me forever. They are so hard to describe yet so tangible in my mind. Sun and breeze and flowers. Balloons dancing against the window frame. Microwaved frozen meals and sticks of cheese. Bagpipes and the Olympics. Warmth and hope and life. I can’t tell you how much it means. Baby Sandy; the boy gets my heart and always has.
Sandy's Castle 