Sarah Vaughan
February 27th 05, 06:34 PM
After DH had taken the photos, I decided I'd better get the birth plan
written out for the midwives as well (I know, I know. Look, I never
claimed to be a paragon of forward planning and organisation, all
right?) so I went to do that. I asked DH whether he wanted me to write
one for him as well or whether he could remember the stuff I'd told him,
and he said "Back rubs, pain relief rejected,
floaty-floaty-boing-boing-boing over the top of contractions", which
seemed to sum it up adequately. So I concentrated on doing the one for
the midwives, which was quite short, since I figured they already knew
how to deal with women in labour and basically all I wanted to do was to
avoid the need to say that I wanted/didn't want this or that at crucial
moments when I suspected I might not feel that much like talking.
By the time dinner was ready, I didn't feel much like eating it.
However, DH pointed out to me (having taken my instructions to heart,
bless him) that I should be having something to give me energy, so I
picked out the pasta with cheese sauce and left the meat. Then I went
back to the computer to finish the birth plan and print it off. After
this, I cast around to see what else I ought to be doing while I still
had the chance, which led me to the Journal Backlog Pile.
The Journal Backlog Pile, I should explain, has been the bane of my life
for years. One of the things about being a GP is that you get sent an
amazing array of journals about what's going on in the medical world and
what we're supposed to be doing for patients. Since these have useful
revision articles in them, I didn't like to throw them away unread, but
when they first started coming I got into the habit of stacking them up
'to read later'. It took over a year of this before a combination of
upcoming postgraduate exams and a drastic shortage of shelf space made
me realise that I'd well and truly reached 'later'. Unfortunately, by
then it was like painting the Forth Bridge. Because more journals were
arriving every week, trying to read the ones I had faster than the new
ones arrived was a job and a half. I managed it - the pile was,
overall, shrinking - but it was a very slow job indeed. However, by
that day, after several years of working on it, it was nearly done. I
only had a few stray sheets of paper left on the pile yet to be read.
And, when I went through them, I found that most of them were actually
adverts that had been sent to me with the journals but that could go
straight in the bin. There was one article - about scalp disorders -
still in the Journal Backlog Pile waiting to be read, and that was it.
That was all that stood between me and completion of what had been my
ongoing project for the past several years.
Not only were there very few things I felt less like doing at that point
in time than reading an article on scalp disorders, but it was also, as
even I had to admit, rather pointless even to try. Even if I did
achieve total clearance of the pile, it was a state of affairs that
would last, well, probably until the next post arrived. However, for
the past four years of journal reading I'd been dreaming of that dim and
distant day when - even if it was a fleeting and temporary glory - I
would get that Journal Backlog Pile down to zero, and have *nothing at
all* waiting to be read. It was a dream that I wasn't ready to give up
on. And I figured one thing was for sure - if this was really labour
(and the odds were looking better and better - it had been nearly three
hours of increasingly strong contractions now), I wasn't going to get
another chance. The next time I was on top of things enough to clear
the pile was probably going to be either after I retired or after all my
children left home.
Which was why I spent the next part of my labour reading about scalp
disorders. You may never have seen this recommended, in any book or
course on childbirth, as a good method of coping with labour, and I can
assure you that that isn't simply an oversight on the part of childbirth
educators. I couldn't even sit in my chair at my desk to read it - I
ended up kneeling on the floor in front of the chair with the article
spread out on the chair seat. Every time a contraction hit, I went down
on all fours and made myself relax and breathe through it, which was
really taking a conscious effort now - I could hear myself muttering
"Don't fight it, don't fight it" aloud to myself - and thought longingly
of the bathtub upstairs and wondered why I was doing this. But every
time the contraction faded my bloody-minded stubbornness took over again
and I read another snatch of the article in the few brief minutes before
the next contraction hit.
The "this has got to be labour" clincher for me, however, was when, just
before midnight, I was overcome by a wave of nausea and rushed into the
toilet ready to throw up. (Granted, I know that this is probably the
way normal people respond to reading about scalp psoriasis and ringworm,
but I'm a doctor, not a normal person, and I routinely read worse stuff
than that without batting an eyelid.) The feeling passed after a few
minutes without me actually bringing anything up, but even being that
close to being sick is so vanishingly rare for me that I figured that
this had to be the real thing.
I kept reading. I kept breathing my way through the contractions. And
I made it through the article and to the end of the Journal Backlog
Pile. I would just like that officially on record. OK? In fact, I
would like it in my obituary. I managed, over the course of the next
couple of contractions, to get the file down from the bookshelf to file
the article away in case I needed to revise my knowledge of scalp
disorders at any time in the future. Then I headed full tilt for
upstairs and the main bathroom. I'd originally planned to spend as much
of my labour as possible walking around, but that went out of the window
- I was getting into a hot bath, and I was getting into one as soon as
humanly possible.
DH, when I explained what I wanted, ran the bath for me. While he was
doing this, I had my other "this has got to be labour" clincher - I used
the toilet before getting into the bath, and I realised I really didn't
care about doing this in front of DH. This is unheard of for me -
normally I'm very private about using the bathroom, and won't even do it
in front of DH - and I knew this had to be an indication that I was into
hitherto unknown territory.
The bath was ready by around half past midnight. Getting into the water
was blissful. However, I then remembered reading that pregnant women
aren't supposed to have hot baths for fear of boiling the baby, and
realised I didn't actually know how hot was too hot. (I always have
showers normally, so it had never come up before.) I dispatched DH to
ring the birth centre to ask for advice. The midwife reassured him that
if it wasn't too hot for me it wouldn't be too hot for the baby, and
also suggested that I could take two paracetamol if I wanted to. While
this didn't sound to me as if it was likely to make a blind bit of
difference, I was quite willing to try anything that wasn't going to
have the side-effects of Pethidine or epidurals, so DH brought me the
paracetamol and water and I took them. After that, he went into the
bedroom to pump up the camping mattress for me. (One of the many things
we hadn't got round to preparing in advance was the plastic sheet
everyone had told us we should put on the bed in case my waters broke,
so we'd decided that I'd better spend the night on something that would
be easier to clean than our king-size mattress.)
When DH came back into the bathroom, he noticed that there was quite a
bit of blood floating in the tub. ( I hadn't noticed - I had other
things on my mind right then.) The blood was in lots of little stringy
bits that looked as though they might be mixed with mucus (yeuccchhh,
sorry, TMI), so we wondered whether it might be a show, although
everything I could remember reading about shows had left me with the
impression that they were blood-tinged mucus rather than mucus-tinged
blood. DH went off to ring the birthing centre again - they suggested
it might be bleeding from blood vessels over the cervix. Since I wasn't
having any pain apart from the contractions, I wasn't too bothered by
it, but I was a bit concerned about the amount, which was more than I'd
expected.
DH drained and refilled the bath for me so that the water would be
clean. The contractions got noticeably closer together and harder to
deal with while I was out of the bath waiting for him to do this. I lay
down on the floor to see whether I could manage the relaxation that way,
(well, 'flung myself down' would be a better description), but lying on
a cold stone floor while dripping wet isn't quite how Bradley recommend
practicing their relaxation techniques, and, not surprisingly, it didn't
help much. The few minutes it took for the bath to be ready again
seemed like a long time.
By now it was probably around 2 a.m. or later (I'm hazy on precise times
by this stage) and the contractions were still only 40 - 45 seconds.
There didn't seem to be much more to be done at this stage other than
gear up for a long and gruelling night of this ahead of us. Since DH
was exhausted and had a headache, we decided it would be best for him to
lie down and get some rest while he could, since I wanted him refreshed
for the long haul later. He fetched me the pineapple juice from the
kitchen to make sure I kept my own energy up, and then went into the
main bedroom next door, while I got on with my labour.
(continued...)
--
"I once requested an urgent admission for a homeopath who had become depressed
and taken a massive underdose" - Phil Peverley
written out for the midwives as well (I know, I know. Look, I never
claimed to be a paragon of forward planning and organisation, all
right?) so I went to do that. I asked DH whether he wanted me to write
one for him as well or whether he could remember the stuff I'd told him,
and he said "Back rubs, pain relief rejected,
floaty-floaty-boing-boing-boing over the top of contractions", which
seemed to sum it up adequately. So I concentrated on doing the one for
the midwives, which was quite short, since I figured they already knew
how to deal with women in labour and basically all I wanted to do was to
avoid the need to say that I wanted/didn't want this or that at crucial
moments when I suspected I might not feel that much like talking.
By the time dinner was ready, I didn't feel much like eating it.
However, DH pointed out to me (having taken my instructions to heart,
bless him) that I should be having something to give me energy, so I
picked out the pasta with cheese sauce and left the meat. Then I went
back to the computer to finish the birth plan and print it off. After
this, I cast around to see what else I ought to be doing while I still
had the chance, which led me to the Journal Backlog Pile.
The Journal Backlog Pile, I should explain, has been the bane of my life
for years. One of the things about being a GP is that you get sent an
amazing array of journals about what's going on in the medical world and
what we're supposed to be doing for patients. Since these have useful
revision articles in them, I didn't like to throw them away unread, but
when they first started coming I got into the habit of stacking them up
'to read later'. It took over a year of this before a combination of
upcoming postgraduate exams and a drastic shortage of shelf space made
me realise that I'd well and truly reached 'later'. Unfortunately, by
then it was like painting the Forth Bridge. Because more journals were
arriving every week, trying to read the ones I had faster than the new
ones arrived was a job and a half. I managed it - the pile was,
overall, shrinking - but it was a very slow job indeed. However, by
that day, after several years of working on it, it was nearly done. I
only had a few stray sheets of paper left on the pile yet to be read.
And, when I went through them, I found that most of them were actually
adverts that had been sent to me with the journals but that could go
straight in the bin. There was one article - about scalp disorders -
still in the Journal Backlog Pile waiting to be read, and that was it.
That was all that stood between me and completion of what had been my
ongoing project for the past several years.
Not only were there very few things I felt less like doing at that point
in time than reading an article on scalp disorders, but it was also, as
even I had to admit, rather pointless even to try. Even if I did
achieve total clearance of the pile, it was a state of affairs that
would last, well, probably until the next post arrived. However, for
the past four years of journal reading I'd been dreaming of that dim and
distant day when - even if it was a fleeting and temporary glory - I
would get that Journal Backlog Pile down to zero, and have *nothing at
all* waiting to be read. It was a dream that I wasn't ready to give up
on. And I figured one thing was for sure - if this was really labour
(and the odds were looking better and better - it had been nearly three
hours of increasingly strong contractions now), I wasn't going to get
another chance. The next time I was on top of things enough to clear
the pile was probably going to be either after I retired or after all my
children left home.
Which was why I spent the next part of my labour reading about scalp
disorders. You may never have seen this recommended, in any book or
course on childbirth, as a good method of coping with labour, and I can
assure you that that isn't simply an oversight on the part of childbirth
educators. I couldn't even sit in my chair at my desk to read it - I
ended up kneeling on the floor in front of the chair with the article
spread out on the chair seat. Every time a contraction hit, I went down
on all fours and made myself relax and breathe through it, which was
really taking a conscious effort now - I could hear myself muttering
"Don't fight it, don't fight it" aloud to myself - and thought longingly
of the bathtub upstairs and wondered why I was doing this. But every
time the contraction faded my bloody-minded stubbornness took over again
and I read another snatch of the article in the few brief minutes before
the next contraction hit.
The "this has got to be labour" clincher for me, however, was when, just
before midnight, I was overcome by a wave of nausea and rushed into the
toilet ready to throw up. (Granted, I know that this is probably the
way normal people respond to reading about scalp psoriasis and ringworm,
but I'm a doctor, not a normal person, and I routinely read worse stuff
than that without batting an eyelid.) The feeling passed after a few
minutes without me actually bringing anything up, but even being that
close to being sick is so vanishingly rare for me that I figured that
this had to be the real thing.
I kept reading. I kept breathing my way through the contractions. And
I made it through the article and to the end of the Journal Backlog
Pile. I would just like that officially on record. OK? In fact, I
would like it in my obituary. I managed, over the course of the next
couple of contractions, to get the file down from the bookshelf to file
the article away in case I needed to revise my knowledge of scalp
disorders at any time in the future. Then I headed full tilt for
upstairs and the main bathroom. I'd originally planned to spend as much
of my labour as possible walking around, but that went out of the window
- I was getting into a hot bath, and I was getting into one as soon as
humanly possible.
DH, when I explained what I wanted, ran the bath for me. While he was
doing this, I had my other "this has got to be labour" clincher - I used
the toilet before getting into the bath, and I realised I really didn't
care about doing this in front of DH. This is unheard of for me -
normally I'm very private about using the bathroom, and won't even do it
in front of DH - and I knew this had to be an indication that I was into
hitherto unknown territory.
The bath was ready by around half past midnight. Getting into the water
was blissful. However, I then remembered reading that pregnant women
aren't supposed to have hot baths for fear of boiling the baby, and
realised I didn't actually know how hot was too hot. (I always have
showers normally, so it had never come up before.) I dispatched DH to
ring the birth centre to ask for advice. The midwife reassured him that
if it wasn't too hot for me it wouldn't be too hot for the baby, and
also suggested that I could take two paracetamol if I wanted to. While
this didn't sound to me as if it was likely to make a blind bit of
difference, I was quite willing to try anything that wasn't going to
have the side-effects of Pethidine or epidurals, so DH brought me the
paracetamol and water and I took them. After that, he went into the
bedroom to pump up the camping mattress for me. (One of the many things
we hadn't got round to preparing in advance was the plastic sheet
everyone had told us we should put on the bed in case my waters broke,
so we'd decided that I'd better spend the night on something that would
be easier to clean than our king-size mattress.)
When DH came back into the bathroom, he noticed that there was quite a
bit of blood floating in the tub. ( I hadn't noticed - I had other
things on my mind right then.) The blood was in lots of little stringy
bits that looked as though they might be mixed with mucus (yeuccchhh,
sorry, TMI), so we wondered whether it might be a show, although
everything I could remember reading about shows had left me with the
impression that they were blood-tinged mucus rather than mucus-tinged
blood. DH went off to ring the birthing centre again - they suggested
it might be bleeding from blood vessels over the cervix. Since I wasn't
having any pain apart from the contractions, I wasn't too bothered by
it, but I was a bit concerned about the amount, which was more than I'd
expected.
DH drained and refilled the bath for me so that the water would be
clean. The contractions got noticeably closer together and harder to
deal with while I was out of the bath waiting for him to do this. I lay
down on the floor to see whether I could manage the relaxation that way,
(well, 'flung myself down' would be a better description), but lying on
a cold stone floor while dripping wet isn't quite how Bradley recommend
practicing their relaxation techniques, and, not surprisingly, it didn't
help much. The few minutes it took for the bath to be ready again
seemed like a long time.
By now it was probably around 2 a.m. or later (I'm hazy on precise times
by this stage) and the contractions were still only 40 - 45 seconds.
There didn't seem to be much more to be done at this stage other than
gear up for a long and gruelling night of this ahead of us. Since DH
was exhausted and had a headache, we decided it would be best for him to
lie down and get some rest while he could, since I wanted him refreshed
for the long haul later. He fetched me the pineapple juice from the
kitchen to make sure I kept my own energy up, and then went into the
main bedroom next door, while I got on with my labour.
(continued...)
--
"I once requested an urgent admission for a homeopath who had become depressed
and taken a massive underdose" - Phil Peverley