I was really relaxed pre-birth, but at what cost?

Beverley is a first-time mum and founder of Motherhood Uncensored, a charity tackling myths, misogyny and nonsense about motherhood by sharing unheard stories. She shares about how she thinks her preparation pre-birth set her up to fail.

Giving birth, I was told, would be like an intense workout. 

This was reassuring. I’ve always loved a workout, it’s my favourite way to relax. I figured that if it’s just like an intense workout for the average person, then for me, still happily jogging in month 8 of pregnancy, it should be No Big Deal.

My antenatal education strongly reinforced this message. We were told that instead of choosing between fight and flight, we could choose calm acceptance. We were told that during labour we should imagine a little boat bobbing along on the water, and that with each contraction our baby drifted closer. 

Supremely confident
We were also told that birth is dramatised on TV. There’s truth in that, for sure. Most labours on TV start with waters breaking somewhere public and inconvenient. Most labours in life don’t. I took to heart this idea of dramatisation as well as the ‘it’s like a workout’ line and felt supremely confident that people had blown the whole thing wildly out of proportion. With hindsight I can’t believe my hubris but I honestly thought that I wouldn’t cry out or scream or be loud in any way during labour. Just like I’m not during my workouts. 

You won't be surprised to learn that this is not how things turned out. There aren’t enough expletives in the land to express the intensity of the pain that I felt. But in the occasional moments where I could half form a thought, what floored me even more than the pain was the sense that the situation was out of control. That it wasn't going the way that it should. It was supposed to be calm! There was supposed to be a bobbing boat! I was supposed to be able to manage this by breathing deeply. 

I was already getting motherhood wrong and I hadn’t even started yet.

“I didn’t need meditations, I needed hostile environment training”

Weak and vulnerable
After hours of exhausting struggle I eventually had an epidural. It felt like an admission of defeat. I wasn’t as strong as I thought. I knew the pros and cons of epidurals but I didn’t know that it would send me into shock so when my totally numb body started shaking uncontrollably I didn’t know what was happening. I felt small and weak and vulnerable and I am not someone who ever really feels those things. It’s not me. 

When I was taken into the operating theatre surrounded by wires and medical staff my head was full of TV images. I know it will have been routine for all the professionals but for me it felt like the dramatic season climax where something goes terribly wrong. I was asked and re-asked and re-asked some more about whether I would accept a blood transfusion. Like so many parts of my birth story, this is a perfect example of the harm that great intentions and sensible policies can cause.

A different approach
I am all in favour of being asked for consent in a medical setting. Or any setting! I am all in favour of re-confirmation as a simple way to minimise human error. But nothing could be less calming than being asked repeatedly if you’ll take a blood transfusion. Of course it makes you think you’re going to need one. 

The deliberate messaging in antenatal education about birth being calm and empowering and wonderful no doubt springs from the very best of intentions. We don’t want to foster fear in others. We don’t want to burst people’s bubbles and rob them of excitement. 

I totally get that and I’ve also spoken to some people who had way better experiences than me. They really did stay quite calm and marvelled at the power of their body. I think for people who are very anxious pre-labour, then calming messages can be really helpful. But shouldn’t we also consider the possibility that someone might be dangerously calm? So calm, that their experience couldn’t possibly come close to their expectations. For those people, like me, a different approach would be better. I didn’t need meditations, I needed hostile environment training. I needed to be told: this will be brutal, shocking, seemingly interminable, but you will get through it. Then, when it was all of those things I might have thought ‘this is within the realm of normal, I’ve got this’.

“I wondered if maybe I just couldn’t do motherhood”

Far from the truth
Instead I felt totally battered by the experience of giving birth. It was awful. I was bad at it. It was supposed to come naturally to me and nothing could have been further from the truth. I started the huge uphill battle of early motherhood with a major handicap - this sense that I had failed and that my body had failed. It was a huge extra burden to carry. It was all too easy to see confirmation of my failure everywhere: in my breastfeeding struggles, in my stubborn inability to treasure every moment, each time that I couldn’t settle my daughter. 

I wondered if maybe I just couldn’t do motherhood.

Too high a cost
Of course, a couple of years on, I can see that that wasn’t true. I can do motherhood. I don’t think I do it in quite the picture perfect way that I was sold, but who does?

So is it all water under the bridge? Not for me. I think that my pregnancy calmness was bought at the cost of my birth trauma and for me, that’s too high a cost. It wasn’t just one difficult day that faded into insignificance. It knocked me sideways for months, stunted my relationship with my daughter and filled me with self-doubt and self-loathing. I can’t get those months back. 

What I can do, and we can all do, is to make space for others. That’s why I think it’s important to say ‘this is how it was for me’. Each person who honestly tells their story, no filter, no gloss, makes a small contribution to changing the narrative and they might unknowingly provide invaluable help to someone silently struggling, thinking that they are the problem. 

That’s a huge win.