‘Stop your noise,’ the nurse said. ‘Remember your dignity.’
She felt like laughing at the reprimand. Dignity? How could this ever be dignified. Lying here with her legs apart and everything leaking and she’d even dirtied the bed. She had been mortified, the smell alerting her to what she’d done. She felt nothing beyond the fist of pain that kept squeezing at her, pulling at her insides, sticking its nails like knives into her spine and bruising her bowels. Making her scream to her God, to her mother. Why have you abandoned me?
The baby inched a little further down the birth canal with the next contraction. One fist was pressed between shoulder and ear, the other tucked under the chin. The ripples of muscle shifted the baby, twisting it a little, squeezing the head, which was cone-shaped from the pressure and from the last couple of weeks spent lodged tight in the cup of bones. As it moved forward the plates of the baby’s skull slid together, reducing the circumference. The baby could still hear the familiar drumbeat that had marked its time in the womb and feel the vibrations that rocked its world. Though the sloshing and roaring of the placenta was more distant now and there were new sounds, fast and high-pitched, that quickened the baby’s heartbeat.
‘Give a good push,’ the nurse said. ‘Push from your bottom.’
She didn’t want to push. She wanted to die instead. To be anywhere or nowhere. Not to be here. If she pushed she would split wide open, bleed to death. She’d rather die before the push than after it. Spare herself more agony. The ring of pain sickened her and she tried to swallow.
‘No,’ she managed.
The nurse tutted at her loudly, cast a look of contempt.
‘It hurts,’ she whimpered. Wanting her mother, wanting a cuddle, someone to gather her close and make it all better.
‘You should have thought of that, shouldn’t you?’ The nurse snapped. ‘I’ve other girls to see to. I can’t spend all night with you. The baby won’t be born by itself you’ll have to push.’
She lay back as the contraction faded, weak, her limbs trembling, eyes closed.
‘I’ll be back in a few minutes. You’re not the only one having a baby, you know. All that fuss.’
She heard the door close. Gave in to sudden hot tears.
Please God, she prayed, help me – please, please help me. She was cold now. Shivering and too weak to reach the blanket folded just so at the bottom of the bed. She felt a roll of nausea, a sour wash in her mouth and throat but nothing came.
I hate you, she cursed the nurse. She was too young for this, barely a woman. She wanted her childhood back. To run home to her mother and show her the pain. Help me.
A fierce contraction tore through her thoughts, catapulting her upright. She tried to press her fingers deep into the flat bones at the base of her back, trying to match the pain with more of her own, but it didn’t help, she couldn’t push deep enough. She would move when the pain stopped. She moaned, her mouth apart, her lips cracked, a long, slow, deep sound. The pain ebbed away. Shakily she pitched forward, shuffling to get where she wanted. Simple movements demanded such concentration, as though nothing was working right anymore. She managed to get on to her hands and knees, facing the end of the bed.
The baby hiccuped twice, its head only a couple of centimeters from the opening. The roaring sound was fading, the drumbeat went on. The baby’s heartbeat speeded up.
Then it came. Relentless, like a log rolling through her, an overwhelming compulsion to push. She was amazed at the power of it. She hadn’t wanted to before, didn’t even know what she was supposed to do, though some of the girls had said you just pretended you were bunged up and going to the toilet, but now it was all happening. Her body knew exactly what to do. She closed her eyes, aware how her breathing had changed; she was panting now like a dog in the sun. Appalled and energised by the sensation, she began to make a curious growling sound deep in her throat. Like a wolf, for heaven’s sake. She felt herself stretching, opening, the unstoppable force bearing down through her and on and on. Then it receded and she hung, quiet, hearing only the harsh stuttering of her breath.
It came again, before she was ready – faster, wilder. She made the noise in her throat, shifted her knees a little further apart, gripped the sheet and wound it tight in her hands. Stretching wider, feeling her mouth stretching too to let the howling out. Feeling the hard, round, solid lump forced through her vagina, gristle against gristle, bone on bone. A stabbing, stinging pain in the midst of it all.
