Labour of love

Molly Whitehead-Jones - 10 Oct 15

Like most mums, my labour didn’t go as planned.

Every last one of the carefully spelled out requests in my birth plan – to have a water birth, for the cord to remain uncut until it stopped pulsing, for me to have skin-to-skin with the baby right away – went unfulfilled. I will spare you the full gritty details: all you really need to know is that I ended up having a caesarean and that, as I lost a lot of blood during the procedure, I was in the operating theatre for quite a while after.

As a result, in the end the only contact I was able to have with my son for his first two hours on this planet was a quick glimpse as he was lifted out of me then a hazy two-minute, side-on view of his feet wriggling out from under my husband’s scrubs (he was doing the skin-to-skin contact in my place), before they were rushed away so I could be sewn back together.

In the days that followed, I felt a strange disconnection between what had been my bump and the baby in my arms which I assume was largely the result of the fact that I didn’t actually see him emerge from me. I felt knocked sideways by my birthing experience, but obviously, with a newborn on my hands, didn’t have time to give it much detailed thought.

As time went on, the initial few weeks of intense baby-related mayhem passed and my brain became halfway engaged again, my feelings and thoughts about Elliot’s birth became ever darker and more damaging. I dwelled on how unsatisfactory the whole experience had been, I felt cheated, I felt my son had been cheated – and I found I was laying the blame for this squarely on myself.

Had I really done my best during labour? Had accepting pain relief slowed everything down? Did I ‘give in’ by taking up the doctors’ suggestion that I have a C-section? Had I jeopardised the bond between me and my baby? And would he be forever marked by the traumatic way he was forced to enter the world?

I kept trying to tell myself that the only important thing was that I’d ultimately delivered a healthy baby, but I just couldn’t let the nagging feeling of failure go. When my health visitor asked how I was doing, I explained that I felt let down by my labour, and the fact that I only half-remembered what actually happened wasn’t helping. She suggested I book a debrief appointment at the hospital, where I could get a blow-by-blow account of the birth and as a result hopefully sign-off on my unease.

Returning to the scene of my undoing felt hugely unnerving, and as I sat in the Maternity Assessment Unit waiting room – ladies on the cusp of labour waddling past the open door just as I had a few months before – I wondered if this had been such a good idea after all.

The midwife who led my debrief was business-like but kind. She asked why I’d come, and I soon found tears prickling in my eyes as I told her that I felt like I’d let my baby down. Forty minutes later, after a run through my labour notes, a chat and a hug, it was over. I walked out of the hospital feeling lighter and more empowered, and very much looking forward to getting back to my precious son.

So why did this simple meeting have such a miraculous effect on me? The process of course didn’t give me that unknowable answer to that big, looming question (‘Did I do the right thing?’), but having some facts, figures and timings to attach to my vague memories helped immensely. The midwife didn’t say anything revelatory, but hearing someone who’s seen hundreds of women give birth tell me the same things I’d been trying to tell myself finally made them sink in.

She helped me accept that I can’t change what’s passed and I can never know what would have happened if I’d made different decisions during my labour; all I can do is try and be grateful that we both survived it, forgive myself, and hold my son close.

Molly Whitehead-Jones

Molly Whitehead-Jones is a first-time mum living in Manchester and founder of Mamas Collective, a mums group that offers meetups, workshops & events for savvy, super-cool mamas who love their kids but won’t let motherhood hold them back.

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