As we drove to the doctor to have the circumcision done, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for bub in the back seat, blissfully unaware of what was to come.

We were the first appointment for the day. The first thing they did was apply a numbing cream on bub’s penis. We then had to wait an hour while this worked. We were both surprised at how many babies were arriving to have the snip also. The hospital had made out like it was an old barbaric thing to do and that no one does it any more. But I could see for myself that plenty of people were doing it. I made a joke to hubby as I watched more babies come in. “I dare you to ask someone if their baby is a boy or a girl.” All I got was a token smile from hubby. Come on, that was funny!

When the hour had passed they were ready for bub. They told us that we could either be present or not for the procedure, it was our choice. We both chose to stay. How could I leave poor bub to go through this alone? I’d feel way too mean. The doctor started doing his thing with his assistant on his right. From where I was I couldn’t see what was happening. I could just see bubs face. It wasn’t long before he started to cry. The crying got worse. And worse. And worse. I started hearing cries that I had not yet heard. It was horrible watching him scream like that. At this point, the stupid assistant lady turned around and said to me “This is hurting him you know.” No, really? Idiot. I felt like punching her in the face. I looked to my left where hubby was standing. He had his sunnies on. I knew what this meant. He was crying. And it was confirmed when I saw him wipe a tear away that slipped out from under his sunnies. I wondered what our kids would think of our differences when they’re old enough to understand. You know, when they are sad and need comfort, will they go to dad? And when they’re in need of practical help in their life will they come to me? Will they think it’s weird that they don’t have stereotypical parents? Although does that really exist anymore? My thoughts were then interrupted.

“Almost done,” the doctor said as bub continued to scream. I may not be crying like hubby, but I still found this quite heart wrenching and torturous to watch. Long term gain, long term gain, I kept telling myself.

I could see the doctor was wrapping up and knew that before either of us could pick him up in an attempt to comfort him, he would need a nappy. I grabbed one from my bag as hubby pushed his way to bub. No one was going to stop him from picking bub up the second he could. “You’ll need this,” I said as I handed him the nappy. He was in a bit of a fluster and I think would have just picked him up without a nappy if I hadn’t handed him one.

Meanwhile, I left the room so I could go out to the waiting room to get ready to breastfeed, as they wanted to bring the next baby in. Just as I was ready, hubby arrived and put him straight on my boob. Bub settled right down. He fed for about 20 minutes and then fell asleep, at which point I think we both breathed a sigh of relief.

We had to wait around for another hour as the doctor needed to check to see if there was excessive bleeding. Bub woke up when this check was happening. It was all good though, so we went home. The ride home was not pleasant as bub cried most of the way. This was unusual because you could almost guarantee he would sleep when you put him in the car. He cried a lot when we got home too. Hubby had to go back to work so I was left alone with a very unhappy baby. I did all that I could to comfort him. Feed him, cuddle him, bounce him, all the while being careful how I handled him so as not to add more pain to the ‘area’. Surprisingly it was only about half an hour of this and he fell asleep.

He was a bit grizzly when he woke up but he wasn’t screaming or crying or anything like that. We showered him and got him ready for bed. It was a long night, because he woke up every hour. Oh that was painful – for us both I guess. Poor little guy was obviously out of sorts and needed some comfort. Each night after that got better though and within 48 hours he appeared to be back to normal.

I took him back one week later to have the final check and all was good. With the next kid, I think I’d have it done as close to birth as possible. Otherwise, I wouldn’t change a thing. Except maybe I would take out the assistant lady for real. :)

I realise this is a hot topic. The below is simply an account of how my husband and I arrived at a decision. We certainly do not feel that we are an authority on circumcision let alone have the right to tell others what they should or shouldn’t do. At the end of the day, we’re all making decisions for our kids that we believe are in their best interest. So we all have the same motivation even if we make different decisions.

From early on we knew we were having a boy. The decision to circumcise or not didn’t really come up as I had assumed that we would because hubby was. At some point someone asked us and I look at hubby and he said “Oh yeah, for sure.” There was someone in ear shot at the time who was obviously not in favour of this and got a bit worked up asking why we would do such a thing. To be honest, it wasn’t until this point that I realised how hot this topic was. Better keep our decision to ourselves I think. So without really discussing it, we were agreed. Until our child was born that is…

“He’s just so perfect,” my husband said. “Who am I to change anything?” What? WHAT?! Why does he always do this? He can be so indecisive and it drives me nuts! Haven’t we already made this decision? “Ok,” I said calmly. “Maybe we need to think about this some more and maybe do some research.” “Yeah, I’m just not convinced that we should have him circumcised.” So began the process of researching this all a little more.

We asked a nurse about circumcision while we were in the hospital. She had obviously been trained not to tell us what to do yet it was clear to us that she was against it. Giving us such one sided and biased info, we were not satisfied, so she suggested we chat with the pediatrician the next time he came by. We had a very similar conversation with him though. He was giving us all the reasons against and not really any in favour of circumcision. I didn’t appreciate the one sided view we were getting. I thought it was really unprofessional. I’m also suspicious when someone can only see one side of something. It kinda shoots their credibility in the foot.

We left the hospital having not made a decision. My husband spoke with his parents and I spoke with mine. Both our parents were in favour of circumcision and couldn’t understand why we were questioning it. I decided to play a little devil’s advocate. “If we’re Christians and believe that God created us perfectly, then why would we change our bodies in such a permanent way?” I asked my mum. Her response consisted of things such as we have diseases these days that weren’t around back then, hygiene issues etc. All things I had heard before. I was still in favour of circumcision, but I did have some questions as it didn’t make perfect sense to me. My husband asked his mum, “Well what reason did you have for circumcising me?” “Your father wanted you to look like him, but I wanted to do it because as a nurse, I’ve seen what happens to men when they’re older if they don’t take care of it, ” she responded. “Also, cervical cancer and other sexually transmitted diseases are very low in Jewish communities due to circumcision.”

Despite how I felt about it, I told hubby it was his decision. He knew where I stood but as he is the one with the equipment in question, it was his decision.

He felt very strongly that whatever decision he made, it had to be for the right reasons. I guess he would have to answer for it one day and wanted a good solid reason that was in the best interest of our child. “Women have no business having an opinion on circumcision. What do they know?” He asked me all worked up. “It’s like me thinking I can give advice on breast augmentation.” “I agree honey. That’s why I’m leaving this up to you,” I responded. He continued to question, “How can anyone say for or against unless they’ve experienced both? Everyone is biased and can really only talk about the one experience they’ve had. I don’t even know what it’s like to have a foreskin so I don’t know what to do. I need more time.”

Hubby said nothing more about this for a few weeks while I did my best to keep my mouth shut and not bug him about it. I was getting more and more anxious as circumcision is best done when the baby is under three weeks old. It’s really difficult to find someone that will do it after six weeks. The cost is also at its lowest prior to six weeks. Not that the cost is low in any way ($500!) but if we were going to do it, we really didn’t have time to fluff around.

Finally I got the call. Hubby was on a break at work when he called me. “Ok, I’ve made a decision,” he said. By this point, bub was four weeks old so our window of opportunity was getting smaller. “I stumbled across this blog,” he began. He then proceeded to tell me about this guy that grew up uncircumcised and then ended up getting circumcised in his 30s. Having experienced both, I knew hubby would see this guy as a credible source. What stuck out to me from this conversation was that this guy could actually smell uncircumcised men as apparently they have a different smell, no matter how clean they are. Hubby quite liked this blog as a lot of the information he came across prior to this was mostly unsubstantiated facts or highly opinionated (emotional) people whose agenda was to convince and condemn. This guy though, was simply sharing his experience – no fluff, no agenda, no judgment, straight to the point. Based on this information, hubby decided that we would circumcise our son. With confidence we made an appointment to have bub circumcised.

For those interested, this is the above mentioned blog:  http://www.circinfo.net/men_circumcised_as_adults_tell_it_as_it_is.html.

The drive home from the hospital was so strange. We had a baby. We had a baby! All the cars around us seemed to be flying by as though they didn’t care that we had a baby in the car. Wait a minute, they didn’t care! Ha ha.

When we got home, I decided the first order of business was a tour of the house. So I took bub for a walk and told him what everything was. That was fruitless. He couldn’t care less. At this point I felt a little lost. What am I supposed to do now? Do we hold him? Do we put him down? What do we do? Our life in hospital had been confined to one room and there was only one spot to put him. Now we had a whole house to work with. I was pretty keen to unpack and get sorted with all of our luggage so I left bub with hubby and set to work with that.

The first few days were pretty easy as he slept a lot. I still had hubby at home for another week before he had to go back to work. It would usually get to 10pm when we were ready for bed and I realised we had to put bub to bed. So I’d do a feed, he’d fall asleep and I’d put him down. This took about one to two hours so it was usually 11pm by the time bub was actually down for the night. But he slept for six-ish hours so I was pretty happy with that. It seemed that he was born with the knowledge of night and day. I am so grateful for this as I have heard they come out not knowing. For the first few weeks it didn’t crossed my mind to start the process of getting him to bed earlier. We had many habits that were yet to change. Prior to having a baby, 6pm until 9pm was usually prime time for getting tea ready, watching telly and just generally relaxing. But for the moment, I kept going with this non-routine-put-him-to-bed-whenever because, as I have mentioned before, I know nothing about babies. We had a few bad nights with him being so gassy, but some more experienced mums on Facebook got us onto Infants Friend, which was a big help.

The next big step for me as a mother was the day hubby went back to work. This would be the first time I was left alone with a baby. I hoped he’d have a short day and be home early, or at least have time to stop in for lunch.

Bub was awake when hubby left for work at around 8.30am and I was too scared to put him down anywhere as he seemed to cry when this happened. So I carried him around with me as I took rubbish out to the bin, put a load of washing on and made myself some breaky. It was only about 9.30am when I heard hubby pulling into the driveway. Yes! Hubby walked in the door and said “I have half an hour to kill so I came home. You want me to take him?” “Yes!” I said with excitement. This was awesome! But it wasn’t long before he left again. This time I thought I’d attempt putting him down somewhere. So I put him in his bouncer on the kitchen bench. He seemed pretty happy there so I decided I’d clean out some shelves in the pantry. Maybe he knew I was nervous being home alone with him so he was being a very good boy. Before I knew it he had fallen asleep in his bouncer, so I carried him to his cot where he slept for a few hours. Wow, this is easy. If only it stayed that easy! When he woke up, I fed him and then he had some awake time. I felt so stuck as to what to do with him during his awake time though. He didn’t want to chat and didn’t know how to play. How does one entertain a two-week old baby?!

For the most part bub was pretty good and over time I learned how to handle being with him when he was awake. Mostly I’d put him in his bouncer, bounce him and have a one sided conversation with him. It was still too early to get him into a routine I felt. I had read a little on establishing routines with your baby from birth but there was no way this kid would do that. I’m the routine queen. I love them. Actually, I need routine for my own sanity. But this kid was all over the place and just wouldn’t bow to a routine – not yet anyway. I still had hope for the future though!

He was feeding every one to two hours unless he was sleeping, which was super annoying. I found this really hard as I had very little time from the moment I finished feeding before he was hungry again. I came to inwardly groan every time I heard hubby say “I think he’s hungry.” No! No he’s not. Leave me alone. Go away. I had such little time to simply eat, go to the toilet, catch my breath and so on. Hubby had hours to himself because bub was always feeding! I would feed bub just before having a shower and by the time I got out, hubby was standing there with him saying, “I think he’s hungry.” It seemed like that was an easy out for hubby. He wasn’t able to feed bub so he would just say he’s hungry and then I’d have to deal with him. I learned very quickly to take my sweet time in the shower because it was the only few minutes of alone time AKA sanity I would get in a day. Plus I had missed having long hot showers during pregnancy so I thought I deserved to enjoy a shower again.

After seeking some advice from family and friends who suggested I don’t let bub feed less than two hours apart, I decided to implement that. This made a huge difference to my sanity and didn’t seem to upset bub at all. Was probably good for him to stretch out his feeds. It was also good for hubby who couldn’t palm bub off to me any time he got fussy saying “I think he’s hungry.” Win win win!

The worst time we had with bub was when my caesarian cut got infected and I had to go on antibiotics at around week three. Oh my goodness! This went through my milk and really upset bub. My doctor had said it could cause diarrhea and to watch for that, but that was all he said. Bub would just scream and scream and nothing would settle him. His poos went from yellow to green to almost black. I had to take the antibiotics for five days, which doesn’t sound like long, but when you have an inconsolable baby, it feels like forever. It was so bad at one stage that hubby suggested I stop taking the antibiotics. “No way!” I said. “If I stop taking them now, I’m just going to have to start all over again when we realise that my wound is still infected. We’ve come too far to do that.” In chatting with my family, someone suggested we switch to formula. “Oh no, don’t do that,” said my mum, “you’ll lose your supply.” “No, she can just express,” replied my dad. They argued about this for a bit and how expressing wouldn’t keep my supply up enough bla bla bla. But I couldn’t bear doing this to bub anymore so we bought some formula and tried that out for a few days. It was extremely difficult preparing a bottle and pumping at the same time. I have to give credit to all the mums who do formula. That was hard work and I only had to do it for a few days. Switching to formula was a great idea though as bub settled more, but not completely, and his poos returned to a normal colour. Once I had finished taking the antibiotics, it took a week or so for bub to settle completely. I suppose it took that long for the drugs to work their way out of his system. What a nightmare.

Wound care became top priority as my cut was still open and bleeding at one end, so I needed to clean and dress it every day. It continued to bleed and puss until about week seven. Crazy! I had been on blood thinners though for a blood condition I have and I believe this contributed to it not healing as quickly. I was supposed to stay on thinners for six weeks post birth but I made an executive decision and stopped at three weeks (unbeknown to my doctor) as I could see my wound was not going to close up and this put me at risk of getting it infected again. If it got infected, I’d have to go through the antibiotic nightmare again. No thank you! It didn’t help that every time I changed bub he would kick me right where my cut was. Thanks pal!

These first few weeks at home were such a learning experience, not just in regards to how to be a mother, but also learning my son and what he was like. It’s hard work and just so constant and tiring, but I have to say my first impression of motherhood was pretty positive. I think I’m going to love being a mum… now who could have seen that coming?!

I have never been so tired in my entire life. I had been awake for well over 24 hours. We had spent much of the day with midwives coming into our room to milk me. Well, that’s how it felt. They did not hesitate to grab my boobs and squeeze away or shove my nipple in bubs mouth in an attempt to show him how to feed. There was a lot of squeezing, which was quite painful, and it produced very little return.

At some point on that first morning someone had told me I wasn’t able to get out of bed until the next day. “What?!” I had no idea this was the case. When the anesthetist told me I’d have feeling back by 10am, in my bleary state I had foolishly thought that meant I’d be up and about by 10am. “Oh no,” exclaimed the nurse, “you’re not going anywhere today.” A caesar was the only thing I had barely researched because it was my absolute last option. I was surprised and annoyed at first, but then I came to see being bed bound as a great thing. First of all, I was pretty comfortable and had a remote control to move my bed up and down. I’m pretty sure this was the same bed from the night before, only now it felt like a bed of clouds. It’s amazing what lack of sleep, dropping some kilos and lying on your back can do. I think I got the best sleep I’ve ever gotten. Secondly, I realised around mid afternoon that I had a catheter in. This was the best news ever! Having to go to the loo is one of life’s annoyances if you ask me. And it’s way worse during pregnancy so I thought this was great! With this new bit of information, I started to drink like there was no tomorrow. I went through so much water. The poor nurse was surprised that all of a sudden my pee bucket was filling up so quickly. But honestly, when would I get this chance again? And lastly, the good thing about being stuck in bed was that anytime bub was upset or needed feeding, hubby had to get up and bring him to me. Or if he needed a nappy change, hubby had to do it. Or if I needed my food brought to me, hubby had to do it. Hey, I carried his child for over nine months, he can bring me stuff for 24 hours. I was also yet to change my first nappy. I mean my first nappy ever. So delaying this was not bad either.

Poor bub was so keen to feed but was struggling to get it right. The midwives were great at teaching him though. It was quite frustrating, but by the end of the first day he pretty well had it. I still had to help him each time, but together we would get it right and he would just suck away for hours and then fall asleep. While he slept I loved watching his facial expressions. He’d smile, then raise his eyebrows, then frown and so on. I found it very amusing. I was surprised to learn that he was a noisy sleeper though. Apparently all babies make noises while they sleep. This made it hard during the night to know if he was awake or not as I couldn’t get up to check.

Day two arrived, the day I was allowed to get up. It was midday before the nurse had a chance to help me. I had been bed ridden for over 32 hours. When I got up, I noticed the weight of my belly was still quite heavy and I certainly was not able to stand up straight. I was on a lot of pain killers so I didn’t feel pain, I just had no strength. I was keen to see my scar, but my belly was blocking my view from all angles. I so enjoyed my shower though and also inspected my body post birth. Belly was still huge. Although I had been particularly big in my pregnancy so it shouldn’t have surprised me that I was still quite big. My ankles were a lot smaller, but otherwise not much had changed. How disappointing.

I was pretty slow to do anything at first but as the days went on I got a little quicker. It was such a treat when hubby suggested we go for a walk outside of our room. I hadn’t been out of our room since we arrived and it was day three. We just did a loop on our floor but it was good to get out and walk, even though I looked like an old lady hobbled over. 

Right off the bat, we learned we had a windy baby. We spent the wee hours of the morning trying to soothe him. Nothing was working. Of course we didn’t know wind was the problem at the time. We had a fantastic midwife come into our room and show us all the different burping techniques, which seemed to really settle bub. Hubby learned quickly how to do this, which helped bub a lot. But one night, perhaps I should say one morning as it was about 2am, bub’s gas was so bad and nothing we did was working. We pressed that magic yellow button that makes a midwife appear. She offered to take our baby away. What? Do they really do this? Am I a bad mother if I let them take him because I can’t keep my eyes open? Hubby was super keen to take this offer up. “Yes, thank you, please take him.” Oh, I wasn’t sure how I felt about this but bub was being wheeled out of the room before I had time to process. They brought him back a few hours later when he needed a feed and I realised that the world hadn’t caved in. I still wasn’t sure if I felt ok about palming him off though.

The next night they came in around midnight and took him again. I decided I needed to make the most of it and get some sleep. I think this is what people mean when they tell you to make the most of being in hospital. I woke up at 6am and bub wasn’t back. I thought that was weird as he was such a hungry baby. I felt quite anxious so I got up and went to the reception desk. I tried to act casual as I asked where my baby was. “He’s still sleeping in the nursery. Would you like us to get him?” I couldn’t believe he was still sleeping. Who was I to disturb him just to ease my anxiety? “No, that’s ok, let him sleep.” I said. But I hung around the area thinking he’d wake up at any moment. Then I went back to our room, then reception, then our room and reception again. I kept doing this until hubby woke up. Clearly he wasn’t worried. By now it was about 7am so we went together to get bub, who was still sleeping. By the time we had wheeled him back to our room, he was stirring and just about ready for a feed.

We had decided we weren’t going to have visitors in hospital. It was a decision we wrestled with for quite some time in the lead up to the birth. Once we were at the hospital though, we felt confident that this was the right decision. For us, having visitors would have added way too much pressure and stress to a situation that was already super overwhelming. The funny thing was that the midwives almost cheered us when we told them this. They were very quick to say that this is not the time for visitors and that visitors would be better taken at home. Clearly visitors got in their way, which hadn’t crossed my mind when making this decision. We may have offended some people in doing this (I hope not) but it turned out to be the best decision for us. If there is a time in your life not to oblige others, this is it. Plus, if there is a time in your life that others will understand, this is it. I have no idea how we filled our days but every day was busy and any spare moments or down time we had were used to rest, sleep and catch our breath.

Because I had a caesar the expected stay in hospital was five nights. Including the night I was induced, that makes six. So when it came time to go home, I had become so reliant on the midwives, not to mention the food service, that I felt quite uneasy about leaving. It was like taking away my training wheels before I was ready (which my dad actually did to me when I was four by the way). We had only known our baby in this environment, which happened to have medical staff on hand 24 hours a day. Hubby was totally fine though and keen to get out of there. I don’t know anyone who knows less about babies than me, but here I was walking out of the hospital with a newborn. All I could do now was hold on for the ride.

When we had settled in at the hospital, a nurse came in to start off the induction process. Once we started this process, there was no turning back. First came the induction gel. We had a six hour wait to see if it was doing its job. That would take us to 1am. Lucky we had a TV and The Voice was on that night!

We tried to sleep but we were on horribly uncomfortable beds. I tossed and turned for hours. The hospital bed I was on felt like it was made of concrete. By midnight I still hadn’t fallen asleep and realised that I probably wouldn’t. At around 1.15am a nurse came into the room and hooked me up to a machine so she could monitor the baby and see what effect the gel was having. “This will need to stay on for half an hour. I’ll be back to check on you then,” she said. If I couldn’t sleep before I certainly wasn’t going to sleep while hooked up to a noisy machine. It was about 2am when she came back to check on me. “I don’t really like the look of the baby’s heartbeat. Nothing to worry about. I would just like to watch it for a bit longer,” she said. The way she spoke didn’t give me a reason to worry just yet. I was really just annoyed that this was being dragged out and that I was so incredibly tired. I was clock watching and going over in my mind how much longer this would be if I had to wait another six hours for a second lot of gel. Come on people, let’s keep it moving.

At least my boredom was broken up by the sound of women screaming down the hall as if they were being tortured. Perhaps it was just women giving birth. I had never heard anything like this in my life. I could not fathom the extreme pain one must be in to make those noises. I lay there in absolute fear of what was yet to come – there’s no way I was getting any sleep that night.

Meanwhile hubby sounded like he was getting some good sleep! It was about 2.30am when the nurse came back in. She still didn’t like the look of the heartbeat. “I’ve tried to contact your doctor but can’t get a hold of him.” Well of course you can’t, it’s the middle of the night! “But don’t worry, if it was an emergency I’d contact the on-call doctor. I’ll keep trying your doctor – I think he may be at another hospital. In the meantime we’ll keep monitoring you.” “So I still need to keep all these on?” I asked gesturing to all the equipment attached to me.

At around 3am I had the brilliant idea of using my body pillow to sleep on instead of hugging it. It was just enough to create some padding between me and the concrete, err, um, I mean the bed. I actually fell asleep after doing this but only for about half an hour. I was awoken by the sound of voices entering our room. I rolled over and saw my doctor standing by the bed. It was so strange to see him in jeans and a t-shirt when he’s normally in a suit and tie. “What’s going on?” He asked. The nurse proceeded to show him the print out from the machine. He obviously didn’t like the look of it either because he decided he was going to break my water. This was taking us off course. I guess we weren’t going to do the next lot of gel hey? At this point, the lights went on and blinded my poor tired eyes. Hubby got up and walked awkwardly around the room while we were waiting for the doctor to get set up. “So why are we breaking my water?” I asked. “I want to see what colour it is,” replied my doctor.

At this point I thought back to the antenatal classes we had attended. In the very last class they tested us and asked us this very question. “Your water is supposed to be clear. But what if it’s green?” To which I yelled out “It’s bad!” The nurse taking the classes smiled and said “Well, it’s not bad, it just means you should get to the hospital straight away.” Translation in my head was: it’s bad.

Well, having your water broken is a rather unpleasant experience. Lying there on the bed, legs spread apart, and my doctor reaching up and up and up. It was extremely uncomfortable. I put my hands on my forehead and took some deep breaths as a way of coping with the discomfort. Seemed to take a few minutes for him to get it – although I’m sure it was quicker than that. When it broke, this gush of warm water came out everywhere and didn’t’ appear to be stopping. Gross! I felt it fill up my bed as it spread around my butt and up toward my back. This was so gross. “Is it green?” I asked. “Yes” he said very plainly. Well, at this point I started to stress. Wish I could remember what green meant apart from ‘bad’. Hubby was stroking my head and slight panic crept into my mind as I started to think the worst. “Is my baby ok?” I asked my doctor. “Yes” was all he said as he proceeded to ignore me and start making plans for the next course of action.

Nurse: Theatre will be ready in one hour.
Doctor: One hour? Tell them 15 minutes. We go now. Tell them category one. (Have I mentioned he has an accent?)

Well, I don’t know what category one is but it all sounded a bit serious. I watched as they both made calls, grabbed paper work and generally looked quite serious and busy.

Me: So… what’s happening? (Should I have known? No one had told me what was going on!)
Doctor: We do caesarian, now.
Me: Oh. Ok.
Doctor: Here, sign this. (As if I had any clue what I was signing at that stage.) When is the last time you ate and what did you eat?
Me: It was about 1am and I ate Tiny Teddies.

Here I was about to become a mum and I felt like a little girl. What’s worse is that several other medical staff asked the same question as I was getting prepped for surgery. They were all very professional and kept a straight face but I felt like an idiot every time I said ‘Tiny Teddies.’ Surely I’m not the only grown woman who eats Tiny Teddies. They’re such a great snack!

While being wheeled down to theatre I felt what I assume was contractions. They were bad but I could see how they could get much much worse. It was in this moment that I realised I never would have been tough enough to give birth without drugs even though I had wanted to. There’s no way. Every time a contraction came, more liquid came out of me and trickled down my legs and up my back. On the way down to theatre I asked the nurse about the green water. “It just means bub has passed a stool, so we need to get him out to reduce the risk of infection.” That’s right! It all came flooding back to me. No pun intended. This is actually what had happened to my husband when he was born. Maybe it’s genetic.

As I arrived at theatre I was thoroughly disgusted by the pool of filth I was lying in. Have I mentioned ‘gross’ yet? Everything happened quite quickly although it felt slow at the time. The anesthetist needled me and I slowly felt the feeling going out of the lower half of my body. I had really wanted to avoid a c-section for many reasons and one was that I didn’t want the epidural. I had heard that it could make you permanently paralysed and my fear of that was greater than my fear of pain. But I had no choice so had to go with it.

They threw the sheet up in front of me so I couldn’t see what was happening. “Where’s my husband?” I asked as they were clearly about to get started. “Someone has just gone to get him,” replied one of the medical staff. The anesthetist stayed close to me the whole time, which made me a little nervous. It reminded me how serious and dangerous this is. “Can you feel anything cutting you right now?” he asked. “Nope.” This obviously meant they were cutting into me, which I would prefer not to know about.

Foolishly prior to birth I had YouTubed all the types of births. I was fine watching all of them except the caesarian. I can usually watch some of the most gory stuff but I couldn’t finish watching the c-section because it was so awful. They’re so rough when they cut into you and dig around! Now that it was happening to me, flash backs to the YouTube clip was all I could think about. Hubby arrived next to me and I asked him to talk to me about anything that had nothing to do with what was happening right now. I needed to be distracted. Poor hubby, he was struggling to deal with the situation himself, so coming up with a distraction was a bit too much for him in that moment. I looked up at the ceiling to try and escape my reality. Unfortunately the big bright light above me was a giant shiny silver light so I could actually see a mirror image of what they were doing to me. Awesome. I quickly threw my hand over my eyes. The anesthetist asked me what I was doing. “I can see what they’re doing in the light.” He looked up to see what I was talking about but didn’t seem to care. Meanwhile I’m thinking that they should really do something about that. Now wasn’t the time to give feedback though was it.

The next thing I remember was feeling my whole body move as they were tugging on me and were obviously not being very gentle. I felt quite a bit of movement up around my ribs. It was hard to breath because I weighed a tonne and didn’t have much feeling from below my boobs. I’m sure at some point I heard my baby cry, I just don’t remember it. What I do remember is seeing him. The first thing I said was, “He’s so big!” I was shocked that he could fit in me. He looked so foreign too. I felt like I had gotten to know him while he was growing in me and I had been trying to guess for so long what he might look like. Now that I had a face to put to this little person, he just looked so foreign.

Hubby went over and had a hold and then cut the cord. At this stage I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing or what anyone was doing with the baby. I was just so relieved that this was all over and he was out of my body. I really had not enjoyed pregnancy and had been longing so long for it to be over. I couldn’t remember what life was like NOT being pregnant.

When I was all stitched up, they moved me onto another bed, put the baby next to me and we started making our way back upstairs. I remember looking down towards my feet and excitedly exclaimed, “Hey I can see past my belly!” What a moment. It had been a while.

We got back into our birthing suite and started skin to skin time. As I lay there with bub on me, I felt like I was having an out of body experience. This was so surreal. Probably didn’t help that I had not slept all night. I lay there thinking about the epidural and hoping that I would get the feeling back in my legs. I concentrated really hard and tried to wiggle my toes. Nothing. I had asked the anesthetist when I should expect feeling back in my legs and he had said 10am. So basically I was going to worry until then.

Meanwhile, bub had pooed all over me! It was like black tar. Normally I would be grossed out but I think I was just too tired to care. I was probably also distracted as I kept trying to wiggle my toes. Eventually I could move my left toes just a little. Success! “Hey I’m getting some feeling back!” I told the nurse excitedly. But with feeling came pain. Despite telling the nurse that I was starting to feel quite a bit of pain, she still decided she would fluff around for an hour before getting me something for it. It got so bad I had to ask hubby to take bub as I was lying there groaning and feeling worse every second. Because the pain had gotten so bad, the pain relief drugs took almost two hours to kick in. I was not impressed with that nurse. But eventually it did and then it was time to move us to a room so we could attempt to find our way as parents of this very dependent little baby.