Читать книгу Unravelled: Life as a Mother - Maria Housden - Страница 10

My body was not my own; every pore was yawning open. Even the air particles felt charged with anticipation, poised for what was about to happen. The nurse, standing on one side of the bed, was anchoring my foot in the stirrup. Claude, his eyes wild with excitement, was holding one of my outstretched hands in his.

The whole of my life, 25 years, I had known this moment was coming with the same sense of certainty in which we draw our next breath. What I did not know was whether this baby, my first child, was going to be a boy or a girl. Claude and I had chosen to be surprised at the moment of our baby’s birth. I felt grateful, in this breath between contractions, for the sense of excitement I felt, already loving this little person so wholly and completely without knowing for certain whether this baby was a Hannah or a Will.

The next contraction gripped my body, and all my attention was sucked into the sensation as I felt the weight in my pelvis bear down. I imagined the muscles around my cervix expanding and lengthening, the head of the baby, our baby, being pushed through. Dr Menon, a petite Indian woman, smiled encouragingly from between my legs at the foot of the bed.

‘You’re doing great,’ she murmured softly. ‘Once this contraction subsides, I’ll hold the mirror up so you can see the baby’s head.’

I nodded briefly, consumed by the intensity of the crescendo running through my body as I tried to remember to breathe. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the grip of the contraction released and my attention returned to what was happening in the room. Everyone got busy in the pause. The nurse helped the doctor position the mirror between my legs.

Claude asked, ‘Do you want some more ice chips? Is there anything you need?’

‘No, just keep holding my hand. I’m doing fine as long as I know you’re there.’

I had barely exhaled the last word when the next contraction began. It rose like a tsunami from the centre of my body. Relentlessly, it rolled outward into the whole of my awareness, swallowing any separate sense of myself. I gave myself to it – opening, offering and surrendering. Leaning forward, aware of nothing but sensation, I saw in the mirror my swollen, bulging vagina, impossibly stretched around a protruding, dark orb. Dr Menon took my left hand and placed it gently on the wetness between my legs.

‘That,’she whispered, ‘is your baby’s head.’

Some part of me, silently watching, suddenly woke up. As my fingers lightly caressed the slippery softness, the being whom until now had been an inherent part of my self and my body became in this moment its own separate person, touching me with its own, slippery head!

I took a deep breath and bore down again, feeling the burn of my perineum tearing. ‘Breathe,’ the nurse reminded me in a loud voice.

I pulled myself away from the centre of my body just long enough to expand my lungs and inhale another breath. I screwed up my face and bore down again. ‘Relax your face!’ the nurse spoke more loudly. I had never experienced such fullness in any moment; so many things were happening in my body and my awareness that it took everything I had to bring my attention to any single thing.

Then it happened. The intensely concentrated pressure pushing out from the centre of my body shifted slightly and began to slide. As the outer lips of my vagina became an expanding ring of fire around the baby’s head, Dr Menon leaned in, closer to my body, and the nurse lifted the mirror out of the way.

‘One more push, Maria. Make it a strong, good one,’ she said.

Claude gripped my hand more tightly and turned his gaze from my face towards what was happening between my legs. I opened my mouth, inhaled a huge breath, closed my lips around it and bore down. I felt as if my body was being forced through my legs, outside of itself. For months, whenever I had tried to imagine the moment of my baby’s birth, I always imagined my eyes closed as I concentrated on the last push. Now, instead, they remained fully open, allowing everything: the ring of fire, Claude’s anxious face, the sweeping second hand of the clock behind Dr Menon’s head, the relentless pushing, sliding, straining pressure inside me, between my legs.

Suddenly, the intensity popped, and I felt the baby’s body, distinctly, easing through me.

‘The head is out. Pant without pushing just for a moment.’ Dr Menon and the nurse busied themselves with a blue-bulbed syringe, clearing the baby’s mouth and throat. Claude started to cry, ‘I can see our baby’s face,’ he said.

I could no longer contain the pressure building inside me. In a single rush, the rest of our baby’s body slid into the world.

‘It’s a boy! It’s a boy!’ Claude exclaimed, tears rolling down his cheeks. The two of us couldn’t take our eyes off our son’s slippery form. Everyone, even the busiest nurse, was smiling. Although Will’s umbilical cord was still attached to the unborn placenta inside my body, Dr Menon laid him, cheek to breast, against my chest. As I held our son in my arms, he gazed at me quietly, not crying, awake. Claude leaned over and kissed the top of Will’s head, then turned to me. The two of us looked into each other, transparent and trembling as if we were seeing each other for the first time.

Dr Menon quietly interrupted our reverie by handing Claude a pair of scissors, instructing him where to make the cut in the umbilical cord. I stroked the top of Will’s head and brushed my lips across his cheek. Instinctively, his head turned towards my breast. I slipped my nipple between his lips and he began to suck. I felt the goodness being pulled from inside me. As he nursed, Will’s blue, deep-seeing eyes never left mine. For a single, timeless moment, the rest of the world vanished, and everything was my son and me.