Labour of Love

A number of my friends have buns in their ovens at the moment, and it's caused me to reflect back upon my own pregnancies. Snooze once said I should post something about my first pregnancy in particular. Apparently, she finds this little anecdote quite amusing for some reason -- no dobut because it was about me and not her.

I think I am not in the minority when I state that first pregnancies are special. The novelty is, at first, completely exciting; the excitement then gives way to nerve-wracking insecurities, a fear of the unknown and the anticipation of an irrevocable change in one's life.

Now, most sensible people think things through before they decide to conceive. Although typically a planner, I somehow naively and unthinkingly went along with the general idea that we would start trying to get pregnant. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my husband and I are a walking ad for the saying that "it only takes one time". We literally got pregnant the very first time we had sex after deciding to try.

In the ensuing excitement of pre-natal vitamins, leafing through What to Expect When You're Expecting, and eating healthily, my husband decided that it would be a nice idea to put together a photographic triptych paying homage to the dramatic changes happening to my body. The idea was that he would take a picture of me wearing the same outfit and posing the same way each trimester. Since I was self-conscious and shy back then, I refused to do nudies and the shots were of me clad in bra and panties, as well as in a black dress. It became almost a pregnancy flipbook because other than the emerging bump, the photos were identical.

We eagerly awaited the arrival of the first two trimesters so we could immortalise my tummy in our photo shoot. Time being relative, those early months just crept along while the last two flew by. During the final trimester, I would fall into bed exhausted at the end of each day and as I would be turning out the light, my husband would remind me that we hadn't taken the final preggo shots yet.

One week before I was due to give birth, I was at my office helping out a colleague prepare for an offer presentation. After counselling her, I returned home at midnight and felt compelled to start cleaning the house like a fanatic because I deemed it to be in a complete state of shambles. That should have been my first clue that something was up. The second clue that should have tipped us off was my subsequent freak out over my discovery of hubby's dirty socks on the floor. After kicking toys and clothes around and nonsensically screaming four letter words, I flopped into bed, frothing at the mouth and silently resolved to never again speak to my husband.

My mortatorium on silence lasted but a short while for several moments later, I felt something weird -- a sort of scratching from the inside of my stomach. I held my breath and lay in the dark with my eyes wide open. After a few minutes, I whispered my husband's name. He was instantly awake and off the bed like a shot.

"Whaaaaaa??!! I'm up ... I'm up," he exclaimed, running around the room as if his rear end was on fire.

I quietly explained that I felt weird but wasn't sure why. He immediately reached for the multitude of pregnancy reference books which he'd purchased for his own sanity during the early hormone infused days of my condition. He quickly flipped through each of the dog eared tomes to the "Signs that you are in labour" sections and started reading off symptoms. At this point, I was sitting up with my back against the headboard and was beginning to feel silly because that scratching feeling had completely disappeared.

Suddenly, a small river wound its way down the bed. I jumped up in horror and disgust.

"What in the bloody HELL is THAT?" I shrieked, pointing a shaking finger at the mess on the bed.

Hubby looked up from his books and then nervously flipped to the index, all the while muttering "Membranes rupturing or water breaking". At this point, I started protesting that it wasn't that; I wasn't entirely unsure if maybe I'd just lost control of my bladder.

My husband recited a passage out loud that described the smell of amniotic fluid in great detail. This is where we reached the point of no return. We looked up from our respective positions on either side of the bed and without hesitation, my beloved husband then bent down, put his face close to the pool of liquid, took a deep whiff and then announced that yes indeed, my water had broken.

I knew right then and there that if one's relationship is at the point where one is sniffing the significant other's bodily fluids, it's a pretty good indication that one is going to be with the other for life.

While I frantically rushed about the house simultaneously trying to get dressed, throw random things into a bag to take to the hospital and communicate with the triage nurse on one phone line while calling my doula on another, my husband suddenly came to a screeching halt.

"The pictures! The damn pictures! We haven't taken the last set of pictures!", he exclaimed.

He coaxed and cajoled me into first stripping down to my unmentionables for the first shot, then donning the black dress for the second shot. In the meantime, that scratching feeling had suddenly transformed into full-blown contractions. I started snarling at my husband to hurry up and capture the moment already. (Much later, a close friend of the family saw the triptych pictures and asked why in the last framed shot, I'd looked so upset).

As if that wasn't enough ... as we drove away to the hospital, my husband realised that I didn't have any suitable nursing bras. Obviously we weren't thinking very clearly because in my leaky condition, who really gave a fig what kind of a post-partum over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder I had stashed away in my bag? So, while I sat in the car panting and puffing, he stopped off at several 24 hour drugstores and purchased a couple at each location. This while my uterus continued to expel amniotic fluid all over the car seat -- who knew a woman's body could hold so much liquid!!

Twenty-four hours later, our beautiful son came into the world and the whole importance of a prenatal photo triptych simply vanished. It was unimaginable that we'd once spent so much time discussing it and planning it, to the point where we'd taken the last shots at the nth hour. The only images we cared to capture on film were those of our scrumptious baby. It was ludicrous that I'd sat with my legs tightly crossed in the car while my husband shopped for some stupid undergarments. Suddenly none of that mattered any longer.

So for all you moms and expectant moms, I wish you a Happy Mother's Day.