Oh my god, I thought, it’s so hot. Why does it have to be so god damn hot.
Another heave; my stomach like a boat on an open ocean, punched from underneath by an untimely swell. The slight, ingrained panic of desperately wanting to catch a breath in between waves of it; unable to force open my airways as the hot, hot remnants of my home-made carbonara forced itself out my throat and into the impractically shallow pulp bowl. A little spatter of the acidic, creamy, curdled mess exited my wincing nostrils. In front of my bottom left incisor, stuck between my gum and my lip, a piece of something not completely digested, grainy and sour. I spat what I could into the bowl. My body reeled on the back of the wave, spinning, lurching, and right in the middle of that imbalanced spin, I could feel the hot tear of fragile skin.
Rip, I was thinking. It’s a ripping more than a tearing. No point being delicate about it now.
I reached for the midwife, reaching before looking, whilst I found my centre of gravity again. The nausea was giving way, if only to the pain. Natural birth, my ass. I don’t know what I was trying to prove, to whom, doing it naturally. There was some hope, I guess, that my maternal instincts would kick in, and I was going to push out this pink, clean, mucus-free little human and I was going to glow pleasantly, a little pink in the cheeks, ready for my applause for achieving premium, top-tier womanhood. I had clung onto it as a possibility for most of my 40 weeks; eager to not to make a mess, to definitely not be one of those women whose faeces were discreetly wiped away by one of the medical staff mid-push, god forbid.
I turned to face the midwife. “When are we stopping?”
She smiled, with a very firm squeeze of my hand, which had locked itself onto her forearm. “You’re doing great, it’s all going great. Keep taking those deep breaths-”
“That’s not what I asked,” I panted, “I need to stop.”
I faded as she responded, all out of focus until my eyes fell upon the door. He was stood with his back to us, having finished that phone call he must have needed to take- a phone call that must have been of great import. The way he pulled it out of his pocket as I heaved up the first serving of half-digested dinner, not long after that discussion about the necessary episiotomy-
“And that’s absolutely necessary?”
-and the mean words I couldn’t keep in my stomach any more than I could our dinner, heaving their way up alongside a contraction-
“If you’re uncomfortable you don’t have to watch, you know”
-and my god, he may as well have been running to make that phone call on time. Now, now though, there was no phone pressed to his head. It was just him, with a back to the door, dealing with things in his own time. Processing. Riding out his own pain, I’m sure.
Like nausea to pain, my bitterness gave way to soreness. Shame. I felt her, sitting in the great bowl of my pelvis, pushing as hard as I was. I felt her wanting to get free, and I was willing to take a hammer and chisel to those bones if they were too narrow, be that the case. I was willing to give blood and bodily fluids just to get her free, if I could. Even if it was ugly.
And it was, it was really ugly. His co-workers wives had popped out their babies pink and clean, and they beamed up at their husbands, pink and clean themselves, if a little out of breath- as if they had taken the stairs instead of the lift on the way to the office for a quickie on his desk after hours. I chuckled, and it sputtered in my chest a bit, arrhythmical. There’ll be no quickies on a desk with a big old episiotomy, that’s for sure. Sorry babe.
“Do you want me to call him back in for you?”
I turned my head slowly back to the midwife, with all the intention of spinning it round, and none of the energy. I looked back at those square shoulders, head facing directly away from all the sweat and vomit, blood and faeces, all the heaving and all the screaming.
Suddenly, I’m back a year, two years maybe, dropping home on my lunch break to change the skirt I failed to adequately protect with a sufficient tampon. He’s sitting at his computer, on his day off, when I walk in with my jacket wrapped around my waist.
“How did you let that happen?”
And I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, thumbing the browning stain as I sat there in my clean pants, like a small child who should really pack a change of clothes now and then, just in case. What my colleagues must be thinking of me, letting myself bleed everywhere like that. Did I get it on the office chair? Did a client see it? How could I let this happen?
God forbid, a client saw it. God forbid, I bled on something again after doing it to our bedsheets only a few months prior- and he showered a good 10 minutes longer, that morning.
I stared at his head, framed by the hospital door window. A pane of glass and a big slab of steel between him, and that big mess. Bloody genitals on bloody sheets. I wanted to reach for his hand, I wanted to hold it. I wanted to tell him I was scared. I wanted him to wipe my face when I regurgitated his favourite meal against my own control.
But I was clammy to the touch.
