A friend solved the wee issue and it was so easy. Lean forward. Of course. It makes such sense when you know it, but wish someone in the hospital had let me know as it was like pouring acid over an open wound for a week.
While we’re on the subject of going to the loo, doing a wee is nothing compared to the fear of having a poo. Your body goes into default mode, scared half to death that if you push, your entire innards are going to come out and you’ll spend the rest of your life with a womb strategically strapped to your inner thigh as they can’t get it back in. The fear became so overwhelming that I was getting a massive sweat on just walking passed the bathroom.
Nancy seemed to be suffering as well, but the other extreme, as the hospital had given me mild laxatives which were having absolutely no effect on me but working a treat on poor Nancy, who must have been getting it through my breast milk. Poor thing seems to be doing such explosive poos that you can hear it in the other room, and you feel the impact if holding her. The midwives at the hospital were lovely and had said that if I had any problems at all to give them a ring or pop in. But I thought I’d wait it out as I didn’t think there was anything they could really do. On top of this we had Nancy in the hospital an hour away as there was a rush on babies and our local hospital was completely fully booked, so it’s not just round the corner.
It’s strange to think that there was a ‘rush’ on babies. Was there a power cut 9 months ago? Or the announcement of Prince William and Kate’s wedding caused all the anti-royalists to throw their clothes off in some kind of dirty protest? If we had another baby (can’t believe I’m considering that when I’m still passing bits of womb from this labour), but if we did, I would like to have it closer to home, even though we were so well looked after, Ben had to drive home and return both days and it would have been much simpler if he was round the corner. And the hour drive to the hospital was interesting to say the least, as it turned out I was fully dilated once we arrived. I feel I know every bump and dip in that road.
One of the reasons we took such a long time to get ourselves together to get there was because we had no idea what levels of pain to expect. If women on telly were anything to go by, I should be on all fours wailing like a banshee while sweating cobs. As it was I’d recently bought the Best of Prisoner Cell Block H DVD, and Ben and I were whiling away the early stages of labour with a couple of shows. We did miss quite a chunk of the infamous hostage episode as the contractions were coming on quite strong by that point, but even then it felt we took it in our stride. I’m not making light of it, it hurt like hell, but the other thing that got me through it was Ben remembering the yogic breathing techniques from the course we did in Thailand. Breath in for four, hold for four, breath out for eight. So - simple. Prisoner and breathing.
I know life at the moment isn’t how it will always be but it has been totally ace with Ben on paternity leave. It’s given us a chance to find out what it’s like to work as a family. A family. Our family. Ben’s had to do most things as my stitches are murder, but every time I look at Nancy it’s all worth it. A friend had said of her first child ‘I wake up in the morning and remember he’s here and it’s like that feeling you get when it’s Christmas when you’re little’ and I now know exactly what she means.
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