by cucumber martini
This is part two of a two-part series on my pre and post-natal experience. If you had the pleasure of reading the first part and were deeply disturbed by the ramshackle National Health “Service” (NHS), then this introduction serves as your trigger warning for what lies ahead. Continue if you are psychologically prepared. If you have not read part one, stop now and read. Otherwise, please accompany me on this rough recounting of my post-natal journey.
Stop 1: Water breaking
Splooooosh. I lifted my duvet and saw a sprawling puddle of what I assumed was amniotic fluid. My daughter was coming! I had scheduled a planned C-section for the next day, 20 April (or, as they say, 4/20 in the US), better known in Europe as Hitler’s birthday. I guess my daughter didn’t want to share a birthday with the führer. I yipped at my partner to wake up to avoid the ever-growing wet spot and get ready to go.
Stop 2: Will we be able to see a doctor (I don’t know how this is still a question even after my water breaks…)?
We arrived at the hospital around 8 am. We headed to the delivery waiting room. We were informed we were in the wrong place as the baby was coming early. We were instructed to go down the hall. Wrong again. Litres of water cascaded from my vagina.
When I was sufficiently soaked, we finally made it to the correct room. It looked like a Soviet prison. No windows, fluorescent lights, and peeling paint. There was a grimy check-in window with an NHS prisoner who told us we would need to wait for a doctor and had no idea when one would be available, if ever. They said we may need to go home and wait for the baby until I’m further along to see a doctor. We decided to wait, praying the NHS would have the capacity to deliver my baby and me from my soiled diaper hell.
Stop 3: Pad sniffing
We waited about an hour, and a woman came from the room behind the check-in window. She told me to come in and explain what was going on. I told her my water broke. She asked if I had proof. I looked down at my drenched pants. “That might not be amniotic fluid,” she said “People mistake it all the time.”
She asked to smell the diaper I was wearing. I explained I had recently changed it as I had soaked the previous one, so I did not currently have anything for her to smell. “You need to save your wet pads so we can smell them to ensure it is amniotic fluid.” I wish they had taught us this important detail in my baby class – Step 1. How to know you are going into labour. Step 2. No one will believe you are in labor so keep your pads so people can smell them.
I luckily kept pounding out oodles of fluid. A few minutes later, I proudly handed the skeptical woman a newly soaked pad. After taking a good sniff, she confirmed I was not wetting myself. I could now go back to the waiting room and wait for the elusive doctor. A half-hour later, a doctor arrived and asked if I had a pad he could smell. He also didn’t trust me or my previous pad sniffer. Fortunately, I am a fast learner. I had been compiling used pads for the past 30 minutes. I pulled a fat one out of my bag so he could get smelling. Two minutes later, he confirmed it was indeed amniotic fluid. I was escorted to a private room where I met my midwife and prepared for surgery.
Stop 3: Operating room
I thought having my abdomen cut open would be the scariest thing about getting a C-section. In this NHS hospital, it was the possessed operating door that kept opening and closing on its own. People in the hallway could not stop gawking as I sat naked in a backless hospital gown on the operating table, gushing fluids. I did not mind much as I was focused on the poor operating assistant whose shoes I kept covering in my vaginal deluge. My relaxed state could have also been in part due to my precinct decision to have the anaesthetist give me a sedative so I could better enjoy the process.
The operating door continued its Poltergeistian behaviour, and the anaesthetist refused to begin her work until the door was exorcised. I was splayed out on the table while the staff swore and complained that maintenance could not come. Finally, someone had the bright and immensely shabby idea to put up a cloth divider as a temporary solution. With the operating room now raring to go, we could proceed with the baby extraction.
Stop 4: Recovery room
Ten minutes later, I was numb af, and another 10 minutes later, my angel was out. My daughter, who will be referred to as Peanut, was having trouble breathing, and she was taken to the side as I sewed up. Then, before I knew it, my partner was being directed to stay behind with Peanut as I was wheeled away to a recovery room.
I was still a little drugged up, but I had the wherewithal to know I had been solo for at least 15 minutes, and no one could tell me where Peanut and partner were. It felt like an eternity as I waited, lying helpless, drugged, and near-naked in a recovery room with 50 other post-op patients in view. Finally, my partner and Peanut appeared. I was at ease. For the moment…
Stop 5: The first bay
They rolled me and Peanut to a ward for new mothers to recover. It smelled of sweat and fatigue. There were six bays, each consisting of a small single bed and curtains on either side. I tried to close the curtain in front of my bed so I could breastfeed in private/avoid staring at the women across from me struggling to get their spawn to latch to their teets. After having the curtain closed for a couple of minutes, a nurse whipped it open, saying I needed to be visible from the hallway so staff could keep an eye on me. Great.
Flat tire: A bloody blanket and diaper
The bay was so hot and I was covered in sweat. Luckily it was mid-April and not summer. The NHS of course has no air conditioning. I asked for some water and a cold compress. I got neither. I asked again. I got neither, again, but I did get a warm, full-sized towel.
Peanut chilled in her crib on wheels while I withered in the heat. When Peanut began making feeding cues, I lurched into new mom mode. As I attempted this new persona, I ripped my cannula, and blood started spurting from my hand. As I held Peanut in one arm, I started waving wildly for help with the other. No one came, so I have no idea why they insisted on having the curtain open.
My bloody hand soaked the blanket covering Peanut. A woman finally walked by and said she was not equipped to re-do the cannula, but she would find someone who could help. She disappeared, and ten minutes later, she returned, failing to find someone. She could try and fix it. I took her up on her uneasy offer as Peanut was starting to look like a horrifying Carrie doll. She successfully fixed the cannula. We did not have an extra blanket so Peanut remained in her blood-stained blanket for the remainder of our stay in the hospital.
Thirty minutes later, two women came by and said it is time to change my diaper. They deemed this a moment to close the curtain. They help me up and facilitate my wounded body into a new mammoth diaper.
Stop 6: The second bay
After getting my diaper changed a woman came by to wheel me to a new, longer-stay bay (as I got a C-section I needed to stay in the hospital for at least a night). The woman informed me she selected a bay near a window. She said I looked really hot…I used my giant towel to dab the sweat from my face.
The second bay was significantly smaller. The chair that my partner had to sleep on looked like it was donated to the hospital from the Shameless set. It was shiny, ripped, rickety, and it did not recline. My bed and partner’s chair barely fit between the two curtains that made up my “private bay”.
On my right was a window which I cracked open to let in a life-saving breeze. To my left was a woman who had taken to soothing her baby by shouting “SORRY!” at it repeatedly. Her partner wasn’t there so she consistently called him, putting him on speaker so they could shout at each other. Across from me was a couple who watched cartoons without headphones and listened to their voicemail on speaker. The man in this couple had a cold and kept coughing and sucking in his snot-ridden nose.
During the night, the woman on my left was told her baby had jaundice and they needed to set up phototherapy lights. From my side of the curtain, the phototherapy looked like a mini rave, flashing blue lights all night. I don’t like raves when I am high and rolling, so this additional disturbance brought me ever closer to my already fragile mental state imploding.
Thank god I can take painkillers to soothe my abdomen pain and dull my growing misanthrope. Right???
Car crash: Hospital claims to be out of painkillers
The midwives came by, and I asked for painkillers.
I had discussed with a midwife in the appointment leading up to delivery if there would be drugs. She assured me there would be plenty. What she meant was they would have medication suitable for sore knees after a night of drinking. There would be no meds appropriate for having a specimen surgically removed from your abdomen.
How could I forget that the world still regards giving birth as a sacred rite in which women must eschew all modern interventions and comforts that are present at all other surgeries? Women must have natural births, and if they abandon their womanly duty and choose what their male counterparts would invariably choose as their quick and painless delivery method, these women must suffer the consequences. I.e., the most painful aftercare possible.
The midwives said they could only give me ibuprofen or paracetamol. I insisted I needed codeine as I could feel where I had been sliced open. It’s funny that you can get codeine over the counter in the UK and take it at will, but get major surgery and you can’t be trusted. My constant asking must have annoyed them and the midwives started to claim the hospital was now out.
Stranded and hopeless: Psych evaluations
My free will being taken away, the lack of sleep, people screaming in all directions all hours and being in extreme pain caused me to completely break down. Writing this now, I am surprised I didn’t try to slaughter everyone with my plastic hospital utensils.
I tell the midwives I am prescribed anti-anxiety meds by both the NHS and a private GP and need some now. As I write this, I am kicking myself for naively thinking I’d be ok with only my crystals.
The midwives said I could not have these meds, as that would mean I could not breastfeed. I confirmed I could not breastfeed in my current state anyway and asserted I could be there for my baby even if my breasts could not be. The midwives remained firm. They ignored my previous statement and said the NHS didn’t give anti-anxiety meds anyway. I informed them again that I had NHS-prescribed diazepam at home. I told them my husband could home and get my pills. The midwives said he could not leave the hospital.
As I am further mentally deteriorating and everyone is looking at me like I’m satan because I cannot breastfeed, they tell me they have called a psych doctor to come see me. Like everything in this hospital, it takes ages for the doctor to come.
The psych doctor came around 3 am. I explained the situation. She said the feelings were normal and that she was sorry I did not have my medication and left.
The second doctor was a severe woman and asked me if I resented my baby. I affirmed that I did not, but I did resent the NHS. She jotted some notes down, apologised for my situation, and said the UK did not prescribe Benzos. I again confirmed I got some from the NHS and Xanax from a private GP here. She jotted down more notes and left.
It was finally hospital opening hours and my husband went home to pick up my pills.
Rent a car and continue: Finally moved to a private room
After seeing two psych doctors and continually asking for a private room, I was deemed mentally in need of one.
Approaching destination: Waiting for the doctor
After a day of rotting in the private room, the midwives told us we could leave after a doctor came for the final evaluation. We wait all day. The one doctor on rotation for the entire ward did not have time to see us so we had to stay another night.
So the rotting continued…
Flat-tire in rental: No doctor and no wheelchair
The next day Peanut was scheduled for a scan to see an ovarian cyst they discovered after the doctor sniffed my diaper. I tried walking to the X-ray and was in so much pain I had to stop in the hall. My partner continued with Peanut to the X-ray.
I was left in the hall in pain as the woman escorting us to the appointment went to find a wheelchair. I waited 25 minutes in the hall, bracing a windowsill so as not to faint from pain. The woman finally returned and said she could not find any wheelchairs so she had to take the permanent one that cannot leave the post-natal department and we needed to get back quickly. At this point, I am not surprised that the NHS does not have wheelchairs readily available for post-op patients. That would be too essential.
A slow approach to my destination:
The doctor finally came the next day and proclaimed our Peanut was ready to exit this hell hole. My partner “found” (stole) a wheelchair and I am rolled to the hospital exit where they told me I must get out of the wheelchair as they needed it back. I hobbled to the car.
When we finally got home, it was bliss. I opened the door and I smelled the stinky notes of camembert and stilton (thank you in-laws), delicacies that I had to abstain from during pregnancy.
Conclusion:
It was hard to write this and gave me anxiety flashbacks and reawakened my anger towards the NHS. I think if I had to go back and do it again I would bring my own meds, and not breastfeed. The emotional turmoil of dealing with the midwives, not having control over my body, and having several people coming through my bay curtains to grasp and roll my breasts around to make them more suckable to the baby, made me want to die. It was not good for the baby or me. It’s funny how confining people to a strict belief system and taking away their options seems oddly like oppression and makes people want to rebel against these strictures…Fuck oppressive birthing traditions. Fuck people not believing women and their pain. And as always fuck the patriarchy.