Lauren
I breastfeed Woody to sleep in the pitch black of Nicki’s parents’ bedroom. True to Charlotte’s promise, the blackout curtains work absolute wonders, and he drops off easier than usual. His breathing deepens, signalling that it’s hopefully safe enough to replace my nipple with my little finger and progress to Stage Two. To be honest, it’s nice to have a break from the party and the fairytale lie of what motherhood involves. It’s basically deranged how baby products are all in such light pastel colours when they’ll soon be covered in shit stains and piss stains and vomit stains and food stains once they start weaning. Why is baby stuff all cutesy animals and soft light fabrics when motherhood is blood and gore and chaos? I look at Woody’s face, sleeping in the gloom, and remember receiving a pale, yellow duck towel from Charlotte at my baby shower spa day and simpering at how cute it was. I couldn’t wait for the moment I’d wrap up Woody after his bubble bath, hair wet, pudgy skin slippery. How I’d cradle him on my shoulder and say ‘quack quack’ and we’d laugh together at our reflection in the bathroom mirror. Instead, I was still bleeding giant lemon clots into my knickers when we gave Woody his first bath. He shat in it, pissed in it, screamed every moment he was in there, frantically wiping the stinky green poo further into his body. I hadn’t had a chance to change my giant postpartum sanitary towel for two hours because he’d been cluster feeding, so, as I scrambled to put him in the towel, my own bodily outputs overspilled with his, and the duck looked like it had been hit by a car and shat itself with fear as it was dying. The stains might’ve come out if we’d had the strength and time to try Vanish on it, which we didn’t. We just threw the baby duck towel right into the bin, alongside our hopes and expectations of what we thought this life might be like.
I wait another two minutes with Woody’s mouth clamped around my finger, before lowering him into the travel cot like a bomb disposal expert. Miraculously, he survives the transfer and I switch on the baby monitor and get ready to creep out. The king-sized bed calls to me and I fantasise about flopping down and sleeping while Woody sleeps. Being blissfully unconscious while I miss the presents and games, celebrating the horror that awaits poor Nicki.
Or maybe Nicki will find motherhood easy? Easy and fulfilling and life-enhancing.
Maybe I’m the only one who finds it boring, and lonely, and stressful, and hardly survivable?
Cool Mum can ’ t believe how much love she ’ s capable of feeling since her baby was born. It ’ s like being upgraded, she says. Yes, sometimes it ’ s tough, but just one cuddle and it ’ s all worth it, isn ’ t it?
Cope better. Cope better, I remind myself, leaving the sanctuary of the bedroom.
The hubbub greets me as I push through the door. I check the monitor four times but Woody’s still out. Can I relax? Will this nap last more than twenty-seven minutes exactly? Dare I hope? Might I be able to have a good time today rather than merely endure it?
A frenzied Charlotte greets me without blinking when I arrive back.
‘Oh, hi . Has Woody gone down? Is the travel cot OK? Good. Perfect. It’s all going well, don’t you think? Who won the celebrity baby game? I had to go to the bathroom. Everything’s fine though, isn’t it? Shall we do the presents now, what do you think?’
She gives me no time to answer and swerves back into the guests like a malfunctioning robot. The plates of food have been cleared away and Nicki’s mum is bringing over the mountain of presents and arranging them around her daughter like they’re part of a ritual sacrifice. Nicki’s trying very hard to pretend the big pile isn’t generating behind her and is chatting to the other two mothers here. One of them that terrible Cara again. She waves me over and I join them with tense muscles.
‘, hi! Did Woody go down OK? Come join us.’ She pats the sofa next to her and asks the mums to move down for me. ‘We’re talking about childbirth,’ she adds when I hesitate. I want to turn and run, but Nicki gives me frantic eyebrows, and I realise she’s hoping I’ll rescue her from the conversation when it really needs to be the other way around. Cara’s baby is asleep on her chest despite the hubbub around. The other mum – Jeanie – who has brought her wayward toddler girl, is in the midst of a full-on monologue, not even acknowledging me as I sit down.
‘Seventy-two hours,’ she’s saying, leaning over to ensure Nicki can’t ignore her. The toddler’s shaking all the presents behind her, delighted to be unmonitored. ‘You’ll want an epidural. I promise you. Just so you can sleep. I was so sure I’d never have one, but you’ll change your mind.’
Nicki glances down at her stomach in horror. I remember that late-stage pregnancy fear I had, when you can’t quite conceive how huge your baby is and how it somehow has to leave your body in due course. ‘I have to admit,’ Nicki says. ‘I really don’t like the idea of an epi. A needle in your spine and, if they get it the slightest bit wrong, you’re paralysed for life.’ She joke-shudders.
Cara pipes up to the side of me, stroking her baby’s back. ‘Are you doing hypnobirthing?’ she asks.
My blood turns to lead in my veins. The veil drops down and the celebrations around me turn to muted grey. Nicki’s voice sounds underwater.
‘Just started it this week. Did you do it? I love it.’
‘Yes, yes. It’s amazing, isn’t it? I loved it too.’ Cara’s baby is smiling in its sleep. ‘People love to tell you their birth horror stories,’ she looks pointedly at Jeanie ‘. . . But I think it’s so important to tell the positive birth stories too. Like mine. Honestly, I had three hours of labour, and I breathed all the way through it. No stitches. It was the most beautiful experience. I felt so strong. So empowered. I just trusted the hypnobirthing, I trusted my own body. And out she came!’
Nicki’s jaw softens. ‘You had a water birth, didn’t you? I remember the pictures you put up.’
‘Yes. We lit candles. I was sloshing about in the tub. I even bought myself a new bikini as a treat. Everything to keep that oxytocin going. It was so spiritual. Like going to a spa.’
I crane around the room, looking for an ally to anchor myself out of this conversation. But Charlotte’s ferrying presents into a pyramid and Steffi’s sat in the corner, her legs curled up, not even trying to engage anymore.
‘. . . It’s so important not to let the fear win. To keep those happy hormones flowing. Have you made a birthing playlist?’ Cara asks. ‘I’ve got an oil diffuser I can lend you? Make up a special birthing blend and have it burning throughout to centre you when you’re playing your favourite song.’
Cool Mum does hypnobirthing. Of course, she fucking does. Birth is such a breeze for Cool Mum. She just blew out that golden thread and got into her pool. Maybe she had a tiny bit of gas and air, but that just made her dizzy. To be honest, her birth was too quick for any painkillers. She sneezed delicately and the baby fell out. No prolapse, no stitches. She was just so full of fucking oxytocin that she accidentally donated ￡100 to charity while the baby was in the canal.
Cara’s waving a finger at Nicki now. ‘And, whatever you do, don’t let them induce you,’ she warns. ‘It mucks up all the hormones. Trust your body. Trust your baby will arrive in the right time for them.’
Jeanie finally finds agreement with her. ‘Oh, yes, inductions are terrible . They’re pushing women into them deliberately these days, due to maternity cuts. It means they can stagger the amount of women coming into maternity wards so they’re not overwhelmed.’
Nicki nods while her palm still caresses her stomach. ‘Yes, I definitely don’t want to get induced. I’d rather go right to a caesarean. ?’
Her voice calls to me through the fog. The rage is spreading up my arms, making me want to slap these stupid fucking women and their stupid fucking opinions.
‘Yeah?’ I hear my voice say, staring at the pile of presents next to Nicki.
I had a baby shower spa day. I was given presents. I was so excited that day. So happy.
I did hypnobirthing . . .
‘. . . You got induced, didn’t you?’ Nicki asks. ‘I remember you sending me a message just before they did it.’
All their eyes are on me and I don’t have the shield of Woody to use as an excuse to flee. This monster who got induced. No doubt I deserved everything that happened next. I should’ve just done what the BreatheItOut Instagram account told me to do, and let my baby die inside me, and then bleed out on the hospital bed, while refusing all medical intervention.
‘I’m trusting my dying body,’ I should’ve told the medical professionals. ‘Don’t induce me. My dead baby will come out in its own natural time.’
‘Umm. Yes, I had an induction.’
‘Oh . . .’ Cara looks mildly panicked at my admission. ‘Well, every birth story is as unique as a fingerprint.’
‘Woody had stopped growing. They said there was a risk he might die if I wasn’t induced. But, you know, I probably should’ve refused.’
Cara’s eyes widen. ‘Oh, wow, that’s totally different then, isn’t it? You poor thing.’
But Jeanie is having no such sympathy. ‘They say anything though, don’t they?’ she says, her pointy finger carving a trail through the air. ‘To pressure you into induction. It’s impossible to tell how well a baby is growing in a womb, isn’t it? You could’ve probably left it and Woody would’ve come out just fine, at a perfectly normal size.’
I nod slowly, glancing at him in the monitor. I try not to associate Woody with the process of getting him out of my body otherwise I worry I’ll hate him irrevocably. ‘Or he could’ve come out dead,’ I reply.
I didn’t want an induction either. Of course I didn’t. I was going to have a water birth. I was going to do my breathing. I had done the classes and educated and empowered myself about birth. I was going to be calm and confident with the doctors. I followed the BreatheItOut hypnobirthing account and read all her posts religiously. I knew my birthing rights. I’d use the brAIN acronym before making any major decision and not be bullied into distrusting my body.
But – when faced with a baby that hasn’t grown in two weeks, your absolute terror of still-birth kind of makes the acronym go out the window when consenting to an induction.
B – Benefits. My baby won ’ t be fucking dead.
R – Risks. If I ’ m not induced, my baby might fucking die.
A – Alternatives. Refuse the medical advice and maybe my baby will fucking die.
I – Intuition. It ’ s weird how being told your baby might die activates this intuition to agree to fucking anything that will help it not fucking die.
N – Nothing. I could just do nothing and hope my baby doesn ’ t fucking die.
‘Was Woody OK?’ Cara asks. ‘His weight and stuff, when he was born?’
It’s strange how she can jump from the induction, to Woody being outside my body in one sentence. Whereas the reality took five days and ripped me apart in every way possible.
‘His birth weight was fine,’ I admit.
‘See!’ Jeanie points her finger right into my face and I imagine snapping it off and the screams she’d let out. ‘You didn’t even need an induction. I told you!’ She shakes her head. ‘How was your birth after having one? Awful, I bet?’ she asks it almost gleefully.
‘Yes, how was the birth?’ Nicki asks, softening it, making it sound more caring. ‘You were OK, weren’t you, ?’
It’s far too hot in here. Nicki’s stomach is so swollen. There’s no going back for her. She doesn’t really want to know the truth of it. We can’t handle the brutal truth about how most of us came into this world. What unimaginable trauma a woman so often puts herself through. I’ll never think of the word ‘birthday’ the same ever again. I’m still hardly able to think about my birth without sweat erupting all over my body. The memory is an incoherent mess of a narrative, with just snatches of vivid trauma blasting through my brain like a Hollywood trailer whenever I walk past a pregnant woman on the street.
The shaky drive home from the hospital triage after I went in five days overdue. We were in the new car we’d bought because we were having a baby. The stink of pine from the dangling tree thingy on the rearview mirror. The doctor’s words whirling around my head like poisoned vapour.
Baby hasn ’ t grown for two weeks . . . Recommend we induce first thing tomorrow . . . You ’ re five days overdue anyway . . . If we don ’ t, something could go wrong . . . placenta . . . growth chart . . . risk assessment.
That night, the decision to induce made, Tristan and I triple- packed our hospital bags, ensuring ludicrous things were in there that we’d never use. A USB fan. A collection of puzzle books and magazines, like labour was a long-haul flight. A comb, hilariously, because the BreatheItOut account told me gripping it through contractions would help with the pain. Sorry, not pain, surges. BreatheItOut said we should call the pain of contractions ‘surges’ to trick our brain into feeling them less.
I refolded our selection of babygrows and pushed them into the suitcase. I said to Tristan . ‘ Just think. This time tomorrow, we could be holding our baby. ’
Of course, we knew induction labours usually took longer. Of course, we knew they came with a higher chance of further interventions. Of course, we knew first births are often worse. But maybe we’ll be one of those lucky ones you don’t hear about much because so many women want to freak you out with their horror stories – these selfish, failed mothers who can’t help but try and bring you down, it’s not fair to share these things with new mums and scare the shit out of them, until it happens to them and they gasp ‘why did nobody fucking tell me’ . . .
‘I’m scared,’ I told Tristan. He hugged me as hard as he could with our baby between us. Back when we were still us, when Tristan still had the time and inclination to hug his wife. ‘What if I die?’
‘Shh. Shh,’ he’d said, stroking my hair. ‘Just remember your hypnobirthing.’
My hypnobirthing.
It wasn’t just like bringing a knife to a gun fight, but a handful of fucking rose petals. Breathing out a golden thread was like bringing a dustpan and brush to clean up a natural disaster.
The pain. Nothing like it. I thought my body would rip in two. Screaming. Agony. Make it stop. How was this possible? I must be dying. Nothing can hurt this much and not be dying.
A stern midwife, pushing me back into the bed. ‘Please, you’re upsetting others on the ward. You’re only one centimetre anyway. Your labour hasn’t even really started.’
How can it not have even started when I was nearly dead and had been screaming in agony, on and off, for over two days? Pain I couldn’t sleep through.
I watch Cara stroking the back of her sleeping baby. Cara with her three-hour labour and breathing techniques. Cara could trust her body, and so her body rewarded her. Unlike me and my body . . .
What day was it? So much pain. Tristan’s face white, his eyes wide. What is happening to his wife?
Established labour.
I was wrong about the other pain being too much. Please give me back that pain. This is . . . can’t remember. I remember thinking, who let a cow in the hospital? Oh, it ’ s me. That noise is me. The comb was snapped in half a long time ago. They couldn’t give me any gas and air because they had run out. They had run out of birthing pools too.
‘Sorry, it’s always busy in September.’
I knew I was dying. I was sure I was dying. I also knew that this fear was making my childbirth worse. It ’ s my fault it hurts this much because I ’ m letting the fear win. The adrenaline from my stupid, weak fear at the fact I’m clearly dying was pushing away all the oxytocin. All of this was my fault. Just breathe out some golden breath.
Ask myself, ‘Would I be able to do a poo like this?’ That’s what BreatheItOut told me to ask myself on her Instagram captions.
I don’t think I’m going to die whenever I do a poo.
I don’t sound like I’ve escaped from a barn yard whenever I do a poo.
I couldn’t breathe through this agony.
Never. Known.
Anything like it.
Swearing at Tristan. Telling him I fucking hate him. Fuck him, for getting me pregnant. Fuck him, for not having this pain. Fuck him, for trying to comfort me.
Almost broke his hand squeezing it. Don ’ t you dare go to the toilet, you can ’ t leave me.
Blacked out from pain. Not literally, but no memories. Only of it hurting so much that ‘pain’ wasn’t an adequate word.
Something was wrong.
Worried doctors. More monitors. People rushing in.
Woody was stuck in the canal.
Woody’s cord was around his neck too.
Woody’s vitals were crashing.
Rush rush rush, pushed through double doors, someone running alongside me, telling me the risks of an emergency caesarean section I had to agree to. I groaned in agony. My body felt ripped apart. My baby was dying and I was dying. I was going to be one of those women who dies in childbirth, or who loses a child. I am the statistic. I was sobbing. Tristan was still holding my hand, telling me it’s OK, it’s all going to be OK, Woody is going to be OK, it will all be fine in just a few moments.
‘ The position the baby is stuck in means the caesarean is more complicated. Lower down. Higher risk. ’
Was I supposed to use my brAIN before I agreed to complicated surgery, fucking BreatheItOut Bitch? Ask about the benefits as my baby strangled himself?
‘You need to stay very still as we put the needle in . . . very delicate . . . risk of paralysis . . . do you understand? ? Are you with us?
A nod. I think I nodded.
Just as they injected me, a contraction hit. Piercing, searing, agony, but I couldn’t move otherwise I’d never walk again.
Cara didn’t have a C-section. Cara had a water birth. Cara doesn’t know what it’s like to be fully conscious while your body is sliced open like you’re on a butcher’s bench. Lucky Cara. I stare at her with narrowed eyes, jealousy littering my blood with hot, toxic bubbles.
So many people were in the operating theatre. Tristan was in scrubs. When did that happen? I hadn’t slept in so long. They were urgently shouting their names for some recording of the operation, one they’d use to defend themselves legally if me or the baby died.
I was no longer in my body. I watched my body as it was vigorously sliced into like a slab of dead pig. They’d used my surgical gown to create the screen between my head and the violence of what was happening to my body. I remember thinking, ‘ huh ’ and ‘ what a useless bit of information to learn just before you die. ’
‘Stay with me,’ a woman’s voice said. An anaesthetist. ‘Stay with me, .’ She started shouting about my heart rate. It was dropping . . .
Here it was. The crash. The attack. The dying.
Instead, there was the sound of crying. A baby crying. My baby crying.
I was back in my body and Woody’s body was being lifted out of me, spread-eagled like he was Jesus on the cross. Covered in blood and gunk and screaming.
I wanted him. I wanted my baby. But they took him away. He ’ s slightly blue, someone said. Need to check he can breathe.
The BreatheItOut account told me how essential skin to skin contact was the second a baby was born. It’s called magical hour. It needs to happen immediately otherwise the baby is so fucked up it’s likely to become the next Hitler. ‘ You are legally entitled to get skin to skin straight away. Know your right. Use your brAIN. ’
But it’s hard to advocate for yourself when the baby is blue, your insides are still exposed to a hospital ceiling, and you hear the surgeon say they’re worried about how much blood you’ve already lost.
Tristan was right with me. He was weeping. He wouldn’t look at the baby. He refused to cut the cord.
I remember that. The stern wobbling of my husband’s bottom lip, his arms crossed like a child, as they tried to beckon him over to Woody, wielding a pair of surgical scissors.
‘No,’ he told the midwife. ‘I don’t want to. You do it.’
We’ve not once talked about that moment, about why he didn’t want to cut the cord.
Not once.
I can’t remember much more. I try to pick up a glass of punch from the side table, but my hands wobble too much to grasp it so I give up, and lean further back in the sticky sofa, praying the flashbacks will end soon.
Tristan was taken aside to hold the baby while they worked on me. Sew me up before I bleed out.
‘Am I going to die?’ I asked the lady holding my hand. Who was she? What was her name? I’ll never see her again. I’m not even sure what her job was.
‘You’re fine,’ she told me. ‘The baby is fine. Congratulations .’
Congratulations.
Then the baby was plopped on my chest, wrapped in a blanket and hat. It was an ugly disgusting alien and it stared up at me with big black eyes and we were told to all smile for a picture. The nameless lady had Tristan’s phone and we both grinned obligingly. In days to come, we would send this photo to our friends and family, and they would send back heart-eye emojis and congratulations like this photo was taken of a good thing, rather than the worst moment of my life. The first few seconds of this New Me that was forged that day – in blood and sweat and agony and fear.
I remember Nicki sent back ten rows of heart-eyed emojis. I remember laughing as it was such a Charlotte thing to do. She followed it up by ‘ OMG, this is perfect. It ’ s making me so brOODY. ’ And here she is, not very much later, body bulging with impending horror, thinking she has a chance in hell of an easy water birth, tilting her head at me, waiting for me to reassure her that it’s all going to be OK.
‘My birth . . .’ What words to share. How can any of it fit into any words? ‘. . . it . . . it .. . it wasn’t the easiest few days of my life,’ I manage. It’s the most I can sugarcoat it. The most I can lie.
‘Of course not,’ she says, rubbing her stomach. Nicki looks visibly relieved that I’ve not said worse. ‘I have to remember birth is only a day or two, tops.’ Her attention is then directed towards the pile of gifts behind her. Someone comes over and offers her a drink, and, without the glare of her and Cara and Jeanie, I’m able to pick up my punch with shaking hands without them noticing. I gulp it down, trying to steady my breath.
It may only be a day or two. Or five, in my case. But you’re never the same, I think. Never. And it’s not like I got a chance to recover from the horror. I went straight from that horror into the horror of having a newborn baby.
Maybe it could’ve been different. I think, often, at 2am, when I’m sending private messages to BreatheItOut with my burner account. Maybe if my birth had been different, my experience of motherhood would be different? Maybe if I’d trusted my body more. Maybe if I’d breathed harder . . . ?
Except it’s bullshit and lies, bullshit and lies.
Because I’ve since learned that women have four different types of pelvises and some are basically incapable of giving birth naturally.
‘Can ’ t breathe my way through that, can I? ’ I type, sending them the link to the research before they block me again. ‘ How am I supposed to trust my body if my pelvis is literally not able to give birth and I would’ve died in the medieval times? ’
‘IT WASN ’ T JUST A SURGE, IT WAS FUCKING AGONY YOU LYING CUNT ,’ I type out again. ‘ A CONTRACTION ISN ’ T A SURGE, IT’S A CONTRACTION. HOW ARE YOU ALLOWED? ’
She blocks me so I start new accounts. I post publicly, to try and warn other women, and then I send DMs too, to make sure they really read them.
And, you know what? She has never replied until today. And she deletes my comments as quick as she can so others can’t read my warnings. I once typed out my whole horrific birth story in fourteen long messages. I sobbed as I tip tapped out the entire mess on the toilet at 3am, during the two hours Woody would sleep. I felt this huge release as I hit send. Surely, she’d read and respond to this? At least say sorry I had such an unlucky experience. But she just deleted it and blocked.
Fuckers.
Lying fuckers.
Nicki gives her drink order and her eyes find mine again. She smiles. I try to return it. Her hand is massaging her bump without realising. I used to do that all the time too. Back before. Like Nicki, when I was so blissfully unaware of everything heading my way – imagining me pushing it out beautifully in a birthing pool, letting my body unfurl like petals on a flower in the morning sun.
Now Woody is clasped in my hand. A collection of pixels that shoot me with adrenaline whenever the screen grunts or squeals or turns over.
Nicki looks at the screen and beckons out for it. ‘Can I?’
I hand him over. ‘Oh look at him sleep. He’s perfect, . Truly.’
‘Thank you.’
I must be grateful. I must cope better and be grateful. I am so lucky to have gone through such a horrendous experience because look at this cute miniature person in my arms.
‘Whatever happens, it’s all worth it, isn’t it?’ she asks us.
All three of us nod. Though I take the longest to make my head do it.
Fuckers.
Lying fuckers.
Transcript: Inspector Simmons interviewing Steffani Fox
Simmons: You’ve claimed throughout this interview that you and the other suspects are the best of friends?
Steffani: That’s correct. Yes.
Simmons: You say you didn’t have ‘beef with anyone’ there?
Steffani: Not enough beef to set anything on fire.
Simmons: Is sleeping with Nicole’s husband not beef then? Seems odd.
Steffani: That . . . How do you know about that?
Simmons: We had an anonymous tip-off, someone who told us the truth about your friendships with these women.
Steffani: What the hell?
Simmons: We have a different word for ‘beef’ in the police force, Steffani Fox. In here, we like to call it ‘motive’.
Steffani: It’s not what it sounds like . . .
Simmons: Really? Because it sounds like you have very good reason to cause Nicki harm.
Steffani: OK, so occasionally I want her to break a nail, but torching a house is quite different.
Simmons: So you keep saying. But let’s go through your exact movements on the day in question, shall we? Did you know that Matt was coming?