Memories From The Birth Room

Three exclusive stories, shared by three brilliant women ♡

Welcome to Baby Brain, a space where I – Charlotte, hi! – write about family life with three small children – Poppet (m, 5 years), Pickle (m, 3 years) and Peach (f, 1 year.) Those are not their real names. These are real stories from our days.

I realised, recently, that I am yet to share Poppet’s birth story on Baby Brain. This is not an oversight, nor is it a case of having forgotten the detail. I know every detail, I documented every detail weeks after he was born and yet, despite having the notes all laid out before me, it's a story I have a hard time editing. A story I have a hard time reliving, truth be told, despite feeling quite positively about the whole thing overall. Why? Well, it wasn't quite as idyllic as Pickle’s birth, not quite as straightforward as Peach’s.

I asked three brilliant writers to share with me stories from the birth room, and I considered talking about Poppet’s birth alongside their stories of their own children entering this world. But I won't. I will, but not here, not today. Instead, I'll simply tell you that the very sugarey tea and very buttery toast eaten postpartum, all three times, were amongst the best meals of my life, I'll share with you a rubbish haiku I wrote about that fact:

The tea and toast is
Made from stardust, and it tastes
Like love (and sugar.)

I’ll share this picture, in which you can see said toast behind that pesky baby in front (Poppet, wasn’t he scrumptious?)

Worth every stitch (I’ll tell you later)

And I’ll turn you over to the brilliant Jo, and Lindsey, and Eva, as they share stories of their own.

Let’s go ♡

Giving birth in another country when you don’t speak the language (and when you also have cancer), with Jo Usmar of Just One More Thing (link to Substack)

“We hebben een infuus paraat voor het geval u te veel bloed verliest,” a doctor or nurse says. I’m not sure who they are or what they’re on about. I’m a British expat about to give birth in an Amsterdam hospital and I don’t speak Dutch. The person speaking seems legit though, poking me with various tools as if they know what they’re doing. So I smile and nod goofily, hoping they’re not the janitor.

“They have an IV with blood bags ready in case you bleed out,” my Dutch partner translates, gripping my hand hard as I lie on the bed, legs akimbo, fanny bared. “Thanks, babe,” I say. “Can you only translate the good stuff from now on, though, yeah?”

It is February 2024 and there are at least five professional sorts buzzing around the birthing room. When they address me they speak in near-perfect English. When they address each other, they speak in quick-fire Dutch. I have come to expect this, accept it and even embrace it. Firstly, because I am in their country and don’t speak their language – that is on me, not them. And, secondly, because this is not my first rodeo with medical emergencies here. I have been wheelchaired in and out of hospital the entire duration of my pregnancy, looking as pale as a marshmallow in moonlight, for regular blood and iron transfusions. No one knows what is wrong with me.

Four weeks after I give birth, we’ll discover that I have Stage 3 colon cancer – that there is a tumour the size of a grapefruit nestled against my baby’s feet that’s been festering there since 2022. For now though, all we know is that I’m ‘high-risk’ and also, thankfully, high as a kite on whatever drugs they can pump into me.

My pregnancy shitshow has fostered a heartfelt relief that I don’t always understand what is being said by medical folk around me. The fact that there are limited tests they can do while I’m pregnant and so we’re simply in this, come what may, has forced me to relinquish control. And I am all too happy to do so. Exhaustion permeates my very bones. My body has been trying to feed my baby and starve my tumour for nine months and it is a fucking miracle that we have reached this point at all.

I am grateful that I often don't understand the real danger that we are in. That I am forced to trust in my body, in the people, in the process, and in the drugs – forced to capitulate to the chaos. There is a peace in that.

Billy is born, small but perfect. Our boy. Our little hero who kept kicking that tumour to reassure us that he was still there and that he was still okay.

Dutch is a difficult language. Cancer is harder. Giving birth might be harder still. It can feel impossible to verbalise something so primal, visceral, vital. Something that strips you back to the very essence of who you are and what you know. Sometimes it’s better to communicate through body language – through sharp eye contact, an arched back, guttural wails, gripped hands, gentle fingers, relieved smiles, elated laughter and shared tears. That’s a language we all understand.

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A story of last minute cravings, with Lindsey of Not Normal (link to Substack)

As someone with a PhD in nutrition, my daughter's birth began the way I always dreamed: with a room-temp Egg McMuffin.

See, because I was scheduled for an induction, I had the high-stakes opportunity to choose my "last meal" before signing into the hospital.

I was terrified.

Terrified not about the prospect of squeezing an 8-pound howler out of my hoo-ha or about becoming a parent, but about the prospect of not being able to eat for hours or possibly days. I'd had friends who'd been induced who told horror stories of 3 days without so much as a crumb. I, on the other hand, am someone so concerned with having a snack on hand that I never leave home without a bag of nuts (aka my "Security Nutsack.") The prospect of pushing out a baby sans snackies filled me with fear.

The pressure was high. I could have chosen anything! Being in the American South, the obvious choice was a biscuit: buttery, salty, topped with a fried green tomato and pimento cheese? I knew just the place. But I panicked. As we packed up the car, I was overcome with an urgent need for comfort food. The food that I used to scarf down before basketball games in my teens. The food that had sustained me through hungover, heartbroken mornings in my 20s. The food made of an elixir of chemicals so potent it’d make RJK Jr instantly faint.

An Egg McMuffin.

So we went to McDonald’s. After only one bite, I was filled with remorse: the Egg McMuffin was not only cold, it tasted like melted candlewax sandwiched between two broken dreams. Apparently, food tastes differently when you haven’t ruined your taste buds with cheap vodka, Crysal Light Lemonade, and Marlboro Lights. However, despite the McMuffin’s rubber-like texture and surprising cardboard-y smell, I made the first of many great sacrifices for my baby:

I scarfed that sucker down.

We proceeded to the delivery room, where I got some meds to start the induction and a private room for waiting. It was glorious. For 8 hours, my husband and I watched Tiny House Hunters, an edge-of-your-seat reality show in which people search for a very small house. We got into it, and within a few hours, we were competing over which one of us would correctly select the winning house.

Turns out, those were some of the most surreal and memorable moments of the birthing experience: the juxtaposition of vigorously debating under-the-stairs storage strategies while waiting for our lives to change forever. It was like time stood still.

About 10 minutes after the Tiny House Hunter marathon ended, the nurses were just about to call it quits for the night when I started feeling poorly. Not long after, every ghastly speck of Egg McMuffin quickly and violently exited through both the top and bottom escape hatches. Montezuma’s McDonald’s revenge.

The nurses checked me and to their and my surprise, I was at 10 centimeters— go time! As it turns out, Shakira was right: hips DON’T lie. After spending decades desperately trying to force mine into skinny jeans, I was pleased to discover they were made for nothing if not childbearing. I pushed exactly three times, and my daughter came flying out of me faster than the Egg McMuffin.

And that’s the story of how I became a mother—and of the last time I binged television that wasn’t Bluey or Paw Patrol.

As for the McMuffin, I still regret it. The good news? I learned my lesson, and with my induction for baby #2 three years later, I got my priorities straight: I went for the green tomato biscuit.

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(Truly) unforgettable first moments, with Eva of Great Little Insights (link to Substack)

After nearly 24 hours of established labour, our first child was finally delivered safely, with the help of a Ventouse (suction cup thingy). I will never forget those first moments following the birth, but not for the reasons you might think.

After many, many hours spent enduring a difficult and painful labour, waddling up and down the hallway of the hospital, whilst my useless (now ex) husband lay on MY bed in MY birthing room watching 3am repeats of fucking HOLLYOAKS on MY TV! Twat! Followed by an abandoned water birth (after the midwives finally realised that baby was stuck, due to being back-to-back) I was suddenly being rushed BACKWARDS (WHY BACKWARDS?!) in one of those hospital wheelchair thingies and prepped for an epidural. Amongst the chaos and panic there was a swift (and really rather lacking in detail) conversation, which mentioned something about a potential emergency c-section, if the ventouse or forceps fail to yank baby out. I'm off my tits on gas and air by this point and vaguely remember signing something and (still to this day) have no clue what it was!

So here I was, desperate to not have a c-section and determined to get this baby out ASAP… I got to work. I pushed when they told me to, enjoyed those sweet moments between contractions - where you forget who you are, what’s happening and drift into a short-yet-blissful sleep for a few seconds – and humbly accepted the extremely justified telling off from the midwife, when I screamed at an unnecessary volume during one particularly tricky bout of pushing.

Hmmm, not really progressing… There were whispers of… “clogged up… perhaps if we could loosen… there’s friction between the… maybe you could…” Sorry, you want me to do WHAT???!!! The midwife stands by my side holding one of those cardboard “bowl” things they use when someone needs to puke… or wee… or… wait, what??! I don’t feel sick, I’ve got a catheter fitted… “If I just step outside the room for a minute and leave you alone with hubby, do you think you could just try and “go” in here for me please?” WTF??!!!

On seeing the look of horror on mine and my husband’s faces, she continues: “It’s just that you can’t walk to the loo, due to the epidural and we think that your bowels being so ‘full’ could be restricting baby’s ability to ‘wriggle’ into position, you see?” “So, I’ll just leave you two to it for a min…” Nooooooooo! Wait!

My brain kicks in– I can’t lie on the bed and take a great big dump into a bowl in front of my husband – Can I??!! No, no I can’t – On my instruction, he swiftly leaves the room (with the biggest look of relief I’ve ever seen on his face) and I then proceed to curl out a stinky fresh one right there in the presence of the dear, dear saint of a midwife!

And Those Unforgettable First Moments?

Having cleared the “blockage” and with a few more pushes and a few tugs of the Ventouse, our squished not-so-little baby finally arrived… “It’s a BOY!” I shouted in haste as they carried baby off head-end first. “No, no… it’s a girl… you have a baby girl, congratulations!” “Oh, I thought I saw a pair of balls!” “No, no… not balls… it’s definitely a girl… your baby has been through quite a difficult time, so she’s a little… swollen.” “ARE THOSE HER FLAPS??!!!!”

I want to say a huge thank you to all three contributors for making this post possible - it’s such an honour to house these stories, and I hope everyone reading this post goes over to their ‘stacks to give some love.

Until next time 👶🏻

P.S. If you enjoyed this post, you might like this one – featuring

Shelly Mazzanoble

,

Andy Carter

and

Sara

– too:

Memories of Pregnancy