Birth, whether you witness it once or a hundred times, is miraculous. It’s not like cronuts or culottes where the novelty, inevitably, wears off. It is always uniquely marvellous. The thing is, there’s nothing like a well-timed pandemic, raging through hospitals and homes in every single country in the world, to take the shine off it.
Before the 23rd of March, back in the heady days of naïve optimism and sweet ignorance, I was preparing for my second baby by, well, not really preparing. All of the feverish reading, swotting up, planning and classes we’d attended before our first baby were crutches that gave us an imagined sense of control in a situation that is so far beyond it; each action a little comfort blanket that made every passing day less tremulous and alien. Second time around, there was something intensely refreshing about not reading the books, not comparing the baby to a different fruit every week, not downloading the apps - it was a conscious act of unlearning which gave me the control my control freakishness craved. I was surrendering to instincts I know now that I have, whilst last time I could only pray that people (ahem, my mother) would be right and that those mystery instincts would speak up or kick in at some point. There’s also nothing quite like a demanding job and a busy toddler to force you to breeze through your next pregnancy. Absurdly, I frequently had days where people would ask me how I was feeling, and I’d realise I’d completely forgotten I was pregnant. (Until the last trimester, obviously, where women are destined to feel like whales, and you can only imagine what your fanny and toes look like, since it’s been weeks and weeks since you last clocked them. Those days, you are considerably less forgetful that you’re really fucking pregnant.) I knew that labour would be hard, but I also knew that it would not be my Everest – that, actually, the slow knitting back together of muscle and skin, the fractured sleep and almost hallucinated daily state as you quietly bleed for weeks and your organs gradually shuffle back to their original positions, is similarly tough. And the labour bit, the painful pushing bit; if I’m honest I could affect a degree of poise about it all as my memories of giving birth to Edie are so hazy, like someone knocked a glass of water over that day and the words have gone all wobbly and fuzzy. If you told me I was in labour for twenty hours or forty-five minutes I’d believe both, as time felt elastic and different in there, when minutes dragged, and hours flew. It’s probably because of the lovely drugs they gave me, but I can only access small snatches of that day – the texture of the brick wall outside the birthing suite, that I pushed against to ride out those searing contractions; the colour of the towels and the layout of the bathroom that I threw up in (to the sheer delight of the midwives: “oh, the baby’s close!”); shouting “fuck!” inappropriately and loudly as the midwife put my hand between my legs to feel Edie’s warm, hairy head; and then holding Edie in my arms as my cheeks burned from smiling so hard – the rest however is a muddled blur, as if it simply happened to someone else. So, there may have been some small jitters, but mainly I was just excited to let my body do something amazing and bring our second daughter into the world.
After the 23rd of March? Then, I started feeling a little differently. Lockdown initially made me mournful for the maternity leave I wasn’t going to get anymore – not least the pre-baby, undivided me-time where I could colour my hair, have a massage, get my nails done; be gloriously, wholly selfish and spend an entire day gobbling a book in bed or absent-mindedly wandering through a park. But as the pandemic got worse and the atmosphere shifted, tension fizzing through the 2-metre gaps between bodies and suspicious eyes peering over face masks, the loss of my maternity leave began to feel flimsy and foolish. (You shouldn’t bang on about your roots or a toddler (and sometimes a husband) getting under your feet when every media outlet is shouting about the end times.) Suddenly the idea of going to hospital to give birth – a place which heaved with death and sadness and fear – terrified me. Rules changed daily as ministers stumbled over words and forecasts at briefings, and the non-birth-plan birth that I’d assumed I’d have felt impossibly out of reach. Carlo could be there with me but would have to leave two hours after the baby arrived. If any family members had symptoms you had to go in alone. Home births were a no-no and some birthing suites were being turned into Covid-19 wards for pregnant women, so a quiet, slightly more woo-woo, midwife-led birth would be out too. I then found out at 36 weeks that I had gestational diabetes. This not only meant a longer hospital stay on the other side, but that I’d need an induction, which in the current climate meant being dropped off, alone, at hospital in the morning, induced on the labour ward and then riding it out solo until I was in established labour - at which point they’d call Carlo to join us and hope he made it in time. This last little bit of news after a string of other, small pregnancy hiccups was the last straw for me, and all of the relaxed unlearning I’d been happily doing morphed into mounting panic that this birth was going to be difficult, lonely and a million miles away from anything I’d ever imagined. Far from embracing it, I was beginning to dread it. But the thing is, when thousands of people are dying, you feel like a bit of a dick for complaining. So, every morning I’d plaster a little smile onto my face and “I’m fine” my way through it. The last weeks of labour are naturally full of uncertainty, but they’re laced with a night-before-Christmas joy of knowing you’ll soon meet your baby. This was uncertainty on top of unsureness on top of nofuckingclueness – the kind that sapped my confidence and made me lie in bed at night running nightmarish scenarios through my head.
In the end, like a well written parable, I got a birth that looked nothing like the grim maybes I’d been trying to come to terms with. My induction was scheduled for Monday, the day after my due date, and on Friday I woke up knowing something was happening. Pressure, like a small storm cloud hanging low in my stomach, began to feel more rhythmic and constant, and it took me a few hours to realise it was actually early contractions. I went into full nesting mode and proceeded to vigorously clean the bathroom (maybe I can hoover the baby out?) before washing my hair (memories of early days, wet-wipes-washing instead of proper showers coming rushing back). I had my 40-week midwife appointment already booked over lunch, so I walked to the clinic as the contractions quietly washed over me, the midwife chortling as we counted the beats of each one. I walked home, 2cm dilated, feeling like a warrior. Sitting in the garden with an ice cream, the sun beating down on Carlo and I as our toddler played happily around us, felt almost perfect. Those few hours while we patiently timed my contractions were wholly ours – turning our garden into a little island far, far away from the grim realities of Coronavirus. As things ramped up considerably, we walked Edie over to our friends down the road at 4 ish, her little hand clutching mine as she talked about meeting her baby sister. As my friend opened her front door, her smile wide and eyes glittering, my Converse suddenly got very wet. I gave Edie a damp cuddle goodbye and, buoyant from the general ease of labour so far, casually wobbled home and tucked into another ice cream while I phoned the birthing centre. (Yes! The birthing centre! I was going to get my woo-woo birth after all!) When I told the midwife on the phone it was my second baby, she squawked at me to come in immediately. So we ditched the ice cream (a tragedy, since I wouldn’t eat again until that meal to end all meals, tea and buttery toast, much later that evening) and got into the car (4:40 ish pm) to drive to the hospital, at which point my cervix decided it was GO TIME BABY and I promptly began mooing very loudly. Despite rush hour, the lockdown roads were blissfully quiet and we got to the birthing centre at 5 to 5. Carlo stayed in the car so triage could confirm I was in established labour, which involved them taking one look at me – mooing with renewed force and bursting into noisy, apologetic tears – before walking me straight into a room in the birth centre. Four women, blissfully normal with not a single, scary, hazmat suit in sight, rushed towards me and undressed me like a child, gently manoeuvring me onto all fours on the bed while one of them ran off to get Carlo. And before I knew it, she was coming – this was it. The fuzziness of Edie’s birth is so stark against the sharp, crystalline focus of Ava’s. I can remember the iron smell of the blood streaking down my legs, the vibration deep in my chest from the unearthly noises coming out of my mouth, Carlo’s hands which I gripped fiercely as the contractions surged through my body, the midwives passing me water and stroking me tenderly, cheering me on as they guided me through it all, and the moment she skidded out of me, just 25 minutes after parking the car, and was passed through my legs so I could clutch her, hot and wet, to my chest. And in contrast to the frantic speed of the birth, the hours we were given after were slow and sweet. I had to go into surgery (because my perineum is stubborn and unyielding) but the midwives waited patiently for us, quietly working around us while we sat in our newborn bubble – no one timing or rushing us. The outside world was irrelevant. Even after surgery they told us we could have as long as we liked together, just us three, which felt like the most perfect, unbelievable gift. The ecstatic agony of that afternoon and Ava’s hasty entrance into the world is something I revisit again and again, marvelling at every moment.
And that marvelling is so reassuring. It’s showed me that the beauty of birth and the miracle of life is constant and unchanging – even in a pandemic. Coronavirus is hellish and cruel, but it cannot touch or spoil new life, and that is something I am profoundly grateful for and forever humbled by.