---

The contractions started on Thursday evening. Jenny was naively expectant.

‘This must be it!’

It wasn’t too bad: just a niggle, really. Where was her notebook? She needed to be ready to note down anything funny or interesting that was bloggable.

Dan made himself useful, bringing her a hot water bottle and writing down the times of the contractions as they got closer together.

It was starting to get uncomfortable. She was expecting pain, of course. Even Antenatal Sally had admitted that much. Time to crack out the TENS machine and hook herself up.

Now it was really beginning to hurt. Maybe she would be one of those women who had a really fast birth?

‘How far apart are they?’

Dan checked his notes. ‘Ten minutes. When you get to five minutes, I’ll call the hospital.’ Thank God. It wouldn’t be long now.

But then the contractions got further apart again. Then closer. Then further apart.

This wasn’t right. There was no pattern to them at all. And why was it going on for so bloody long?

Dan created an Excel spreadsheet of her contraction times. He even had time to make a graph.

The pain was unbearable. Jenny tore off the useless TENS machine. ‘Call the hospital,’ she growled.

But the midwife on the end of the telephone wasn’t even interested in talking to them until the contractions were regular and only a few minutes apart. ‘Take some paracetamol,’ she advised.

‘What does she tell people with a broken leg?’ Jenny spat. ‘Kiss it bloody better?’

When she couldn’t bear it any longer, they decided to drive to the hospital. ‘Bring the novelty handcuffs from my hen night,’ she told Dan, ‘and I’ll chain myself to the reception desk if I have to.’

On the drive there, Dan tried to make Jenny laugh by suggesting they make a detour to buy a Dictaphone, as she wasn’t making notes any more. He wouldn’t be making that joke a second time.

The corridor which led to the maternity wing was eerily quiet. Jenny was only halfway along it before she had to lean against the wall as another contraction seared her body. Dan looked worried. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Just. Need. To. Breathe.’

A capable-looking woman appeared at the end of the corridor and came to take her arm. Jenny let out a long sigh of relief: everything was going to be all right now. They would take her to the Acorn birthing suite, let her splash around in one of the birthing pools she’d heard about, plug in her music and everything would continue as planned.

Except, it didn’t.

The small room on the maternity assessment ward contained a bed and a rather scary-looking trolley full of electronics. The midwife asked Jenny a few questions, took her temperature and frowned. ‘We’re just going to run a few routine tests: urine sample, bloods. Nothing to worry about.’

Dan had to help her to the toilet and wait outside for her. Her wee hitting the cardboard bowl made the noise of a torrential storm. So romantic.

Then they had to wait for an interminably long time back in the assessment room. The pain was getting worse and it had spread to her back. Jenny nudged Dan in the direction of the door. ‘Ask them when I can go to the water birth room. We might not get in otherwise.’ She knew she would feel better if she could just get into a nice warm pool.

The midwife came back in. ‘Sorry, no water birth for you. Your white cell count is up. Might be an infection. We need to get you up to the consultant-led ward.’

---

Every contraction was more painful than the last. Jenny begged for an epidural. They had promised pain relief: why weren’t they giving it to her? They could take a leg. A kidney. Anything. Just make it stop. Make it stop now.

A midwife leaned in towards her. ‘We need to give you something to speed things up.’

Anything to get it over with. But then she heard the midwife warn Dan: ‘The pain is going to get a lot worse.’

This couldn’t be happening. She’d read the leaflets, done the pelvic floor exercises, even written a beautiful birth plan. Why was it going wrong? Dan looked terrified. There was a steady stream of people coming to look at her nether regions, but she didn’t care. Why was no one listening? Couldn’t they see the agony she was in? As if in a nightmare, she opened her mouth to tell them how she felt, but nothing came out. Bodies moved around, but no one was looking at her. Look at me. Listen to me. Where was Dan? He was there. Then he wasn’t. Then there was nothing but pain. Tearing pain.

There were voices. Loud voices. ‘Heart rate is dropping. We need to move.’ Everything sped up. There was movement, a lot of movement. They were wheeling her down for surgery.

---

When she woke, Jenny was in a very quiet room with a faint beeping in the background. The walls were white and she was covered in a pale blue sheet. Her head felt weird. Foggy. Like it was filled with cotton wool. Dan was standing in front of her holding a baby. A sleeping baby dressed in a yellow babygro. She was sure she had seen that babygro before. Dan was smiling. ‘Hey,’ he whispered. ‘This is Henry.’

Henry? That was the boy’s name they had chosen: Elizabeth for a girl; Henry for a boy. Was this their baby? Dan brought him a little closer to her. It was their baby. They had an actual, real-life baby.

The relief on Dan’s face was almost tangible. ‘Are you feeling okay? We’re still in the recovery room, so take your time.’

Was she feeling okay? Physically, she didn’t feel anything but exhausted. But something wasn’t right. Wasn’t she supposed to be the one holding the baby? Wasn’t this the moment when Dan should tell her how amazing she was? Where she should sit up drinking tea and eating toast whilst everyone cooed around her?

‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

Expertly, a nurse slipped a bowl under her chin and held her hair out of the way. ‘It’s the anaesthetic. It can affect you like that.’

---

The ward was quiet. There were four beds in this section, and the other three were unoccupied. The nurse had placed Henry next to her on the bed and then wheeled them both to the ward, while Dan followed behind, looking like he’d just escaped a train wreck. Maybe the jubilation would come later.

Dan kissed her and stroked Henry’s cheek with his finger. ‘You did it, Jen.’

She didn’t feel like she’d done anything. She felt like it had been done to her. Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this.’

Dan nodded and bit his lip. ‘I know. I know.’ He took her hand and kissed her palm. ‘I know.’

The nurse had told her to get up and move around as soon as she could. Easy for her to say: she hadn’t just been cut across the middle and had a small human being removed. Jenny had managed to prop herself up in bed and had tried to breastfeed Henry, but nothing seemed to be happening. The nurse wasn’t concerned. ‘It’s fine, don’t rush it. Sometimes that happens after a C-section – it takes a while for the milk to come in.’

Dan left her to go to the toilet and she lay and looked at her new son. Her son. He was very pink and wrinkled. She marvelled at the length of his fingers, his tiny fingernails, the soft curve of his top lip. Who knew this perfection had been inside her all this time? She breathed in his warm scent. Then, for a reason she couldn’t explain, she licked him. A tiny lick on his cheek.

Dan reappeared beside her. ‘I never knew he’d be this beautiful.’

She started to cry again.

---

Jenny and Dan’s parents came to see their new grandchild and were all suitably gaga about how tiny and beautiful he was. Dan just kept staring at him, holding his fingers and then kissing Jenny again.

Jenny could now tentatively walk around the ward, even whilst holding Henry, if someone else lifted him from his cot first. Everything was going well. Just don’t think about the birth. It’s all fine now.

Then her sister arrived for a visit.

It started off all right. Claire cradled Henry in her arms and Jenny felt something surge in her chest. That was her baby. She’d made that.

‘He’s gorgeous,’ Claire said. ‘It seems so long ago that mine were this small. You blink your eyes and they’re teenagers. You’ve done well. How are you feeling?’

‘A bit shaky.’

It didn’t feel like she’d ‘done well’. She was supposed to have given birth effortlessly in the morning and been back home that same afternoon. Maybe she should call Antenatal Sally and ask for her money back.

‘Hmmm. As you’ve found out, babies don’t often follow the plan. Are you also beginning to see how unlikely it is that you’ll manage to write this blog you’re so intent on?’

Jenny shot Dan a death stare. What was he thinking, telling her sister about that? He made a ‘Cup of tea?’ sign and disappeared in the direction of the ward kitchen. Coward.

Claire was still looking at Jenny, expecting an answer.

‘What do you mean?’ Oh God, she was already sounding like a stroppy teenager.

‘Ah.’ Her sister smiled that smile. The ‘face of experience’ smile she had been doing ever since she’d started proper school and Jenny had still been in nursery. ‘You’ve already seen how the birth hasn’t gone according to plan. You’re not going to be able to drive for six weeks now, you know. Just wait and see how much time you actually have when you get this little man home.’

Claire stopped short of wagging her finger, which was lucky for her as, still high on morphine, Jenny would have bitten it off.

She wanted to mimic her sister’s ‘Just wait and see’ back at her in a stupid voice, but thought, as she was a mother now, she should find a slightly more grown-up way to convey her displeasure. Not trusting herself to say anything which wouldn’t result in a full-scale family row in the first hours following her son’s birth, she contented herself with another death stare.

Claire rocked Henry back and forth. ‘I’m trying to decide who he looks like.’

‘Oh, that is so ridiculous. They all just look like babies,’ Jenny lied. Henry looked exactly like Dan. She wasn’t going to give her sister the satisfaction of saying that, though. She also wouldn’t admit that she had scanned his face for some small part that looked like her.

‘Well, Mum said he was gorgeous and she was right. You need to take it easy once you get home, you know. Obviously, I managed a natural birth both times with mine, so I have no idea what a C-section is like. But I know you mustn’t lift anything heavier than your baby.’

What did Claire think she was going to do when she got home: start weight training? ‘I know, I know.’ Jenny crossed her arms. ‘They’ve given me a leaflet.’ A leaflet she hadn’t bothered to read when she saw it had diagrams of body parts in it.

But Claire was now talking directly to the baby. ‘Oh, Henry. Your mummy has no idea how you’re going to change things, does she? Silly Mummy thinks she can keep everything just as it was. Isn’t that funny?’

Dan arrived with the drinks just in time to save Claire’s life, and then the bell rang for the end of visiting time.

---

Once Dan had gone home, Jenny shuffled out of bed and over to Henry’s cot. How was it possible that she was so in love with this tiny creature? Of course, she’d assumed that she’d love him, but this was completely different to what she’d expected. It was like falling in love for the first time. Her heart surged when she looked at him.

Perhaps it was because he was such a good baby. Look at him, just lying there asleep. Everyone said how difficult newborn babies were, but he was an absolute angel. The recovery from the C-section was something she hadn’t factored in, and breastfeeding was proving rather more difficult – and more painful – than Antenatal Sally had led her to believe, but she was sure that would fall into place soon, too.

She turned on her mobile. Messages of congratulations started to ping through. Good news obviously travelled fast. There were messages from Naomi and Antonia, and even Gail had sent a brief, ‘Congratulations’. What about Ruth?

Ruth’s due date had been over a week before – maybe she was currently in labour. Or maybe she was so fed up with being overdue that she couldn’t bear to think of someone beating her to it. That was understandable. What could be more irritating than the advice of ingesting raspberry leaf tea, pineapple, curry or taking long walks? Or the inevitable nudge-nudge suggestions of what could be done in the bedroom to help get things moving, when you felt as interested in that idea as swimming the Channel? Jenny hoped Ruth was okay. After the struggle she’d had to get pregnant, she was the one of the five of them who really deserved to have a wonderful birth experience.

So. Jenny’s sister thought she wouldn’t manage to write the blog, did she? The first thing she was going to write about were the lies and propaganda of the antenatal class. Antenatal Sally had seemed so nice, so knowledgeable, so trustworthy. But it had all been lies. ‘Just breathe.’ Bullshit. ‘You can have the birth you want.’ Bollocks. ‘Just keep walking around and the baby will be in the right position.’ Buggering, bollocking bullshit.

Jenny was going to stick a big, fat pin into the antenatal class lies. Why hadn’t anyone told her how excruciating the pain was? Why hadn’t anyone warned her about all the possible outcomes that would be completely beyond her control? How come no one had floated the idea that she might end up kneeling on a hospital bed, flashing her backside to the world out of the back of her hospital gown and begging someone to give her pain relief, a general anaesthetic, smack her round the head with a plank of wood? If she had known these things, maybe she wouldn’t have this massive sense of failure now. She felt a fool. A huge fool for believing the hype. For believing that this experience was going to be anything in the realms of beautiful.

But then she looked at Henry again. Dan was right: the birth might have been ugly, but Henry was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She held her hand to his chest and felt him breathe. The hard part was over. Now she just needed to get home, and life could get back to normal. She would prove to Claire, Eva and the rest of the ‘your life will change’ brigade that she could continue to live her life in exactly the same way and just take Henry along with her. Look at her now, merely hours after the birth, sitting with her newborn child and about to read something on her Kindle. She could just as easily whip out her laptop right then and start the first article.

This was going to be a breeze.