The Birth of Erlend Kenneth Varslot

Erlend's birth story from the point of view of his mum.

I reached over and shook him a little more violently than usual and upon his opening his eyes in weary bewilderment said, "Trond, my waters have broken and I have to lie down because the head hasn't engaged yet and you need to call the hospital and speak to someone at the birth section and ask if we need to come in immediately or wait until the contractions start and you'll find the telephone number in the plastic folder on the desk in the study."

Upon receipt of this information - the delivery of which was perfectly clear and succinct in my own mind - Trond frowned, blinked and said something along the lines of, "urrggh, ehhh? what?". I rattled off the whole story one more time and was gratified to see Trond re-enter the bedroom with telephone in hand. Still frowning and not quite awake, he punches in seven of the eight digits, pauses, frowns even harder and says, "Ah, what am I meant to say again?" Sigh. "You say, 'My wife's waters have broken and the baby's head hasn't engaged...'" You get the idea.

A little later my mother calls on an unrelated matter and we started to have a nice conversation while Trond did his best to pack an overnight bag for me. Of course, the woman isn't stupid and became somewhat suspicious when I kept on interrupting the conversation with phrases like, "Don't forget my bath robe" or "..not those socks, the other ones that don't have holes in them..." Upon hearing the reason for the instructions, mother emits a squeel that Trond insists he could hear from the other side of the room.

Anyway, by the time I got off the phone with Mum, Trond had left to hire a car to get us to the hospital, thus I was alone with my thoughts and a large pile of towells. How much fun is it to wait for your husband to organise car rental while you lie flat on your back in a deathly quiet flat, oozing? About as much fun as it sounds. Not unlike being the principal protagonist in an Emily Dickensen poem, in fact.

Eventually we made it out of the flat, armed with a suitcase and a bundle of towells and plastic bags, since most car rental firms frown on receiving one of their vehicles back with a saturated passenger seat (and we already have a black mark against our names at Europcar - another story...).

By the time we got to the hospital, it's about midday and contractions still haven't started. Thus no-one was panicking particularly and since none of the birthing rooms were free I was placed in a normal room with another woman, the assumption being that as a 'primagravida' it would be ages before the baby finally showed itself. Similarly, I had no problem sending Trond out of the room to do a few tasks like look for long-term parking, find a place that sold Newsweek etc. Even when the contractions started to come at what seemed to me to be a fairly regular pace, and not exactly painless, I figured, "It's my first kid, it'll be ages yet so I can't start screaming because I'll leave myself nowhere to go later in the labour." Later, when Trond came back with my much desired copy of Newsweek, I figured I'd have plenty of time to read it from cover to cover and thus started off with what promised to be a jolly interesting article about the Middle-east summit at Camp David. Unfortunately, my attempt at keeping abreast of current affairs was not terribly successful, taking the following pattern:

FOR ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER EHUD BARAK AND PALESTINIAN LEADER YASSER ARAFAT, IT WILL BE THE VENUE FOR A FINAL, PERSONAL CONTEST WITH EVERYTHING AT STAKE -

"AAaAaaaaggghhhh! (huff huff huff huff)...."

TUESDAY MAY WELL REDRAW THE MIDDLE EAST LANDSCAPE FOR DECADES TO COME. IF CAMP DAVID SUCCEEDS, IT WILL LIKELY MEAN A SETTLEMENT -

"UUUrrrrrgggghhhh! (huff huff huff huff)..."

BUT IF THE SUMMIT BREAKS UP WITHOUT ACCORD, NEWSWEEK HAS LEARNED, BOTH SIDES ARE ALREADY PREPARING FOR A TERRIBLE BLOODLETTING BY FALL -

"EEEeeeekkkkkk! (huff huff huff huff)..."

At this point, the woman in the bed next to mine - who'd been through the whole thing before and had obviously noticed my urgent huffing and puffing - says to me, "Ah, if they're coming that regularly, you might want to call the midwife."

Right. Enough said.

So the midwife comes in and I'm hooked up to the foetal heart monitor which, as an extra bonus, also indicates when you have contractions (as if you needed any help determining THAT). The creepy thing about this machine is that since the baby starts feeling the contractions before you do, and this raises its heart rate (which you are hearing) you effectively get a 5 second warning as to when you're about to have a contraction. I'm not 100% sure that this is a good thing. It's not unlike watching a horror movie and you jsut KNOW something horrible is about to happen because the spooky cello music starts up...

Eventually we make it to the birth room, which is not so very different from the prep. area except that you have the luxury of screaming "THE PAIN!!!!" without fear of further embarrasment or loss of face. By this time I'm thinking, "this has gone WAY beyond period cramps", thus decided it was time to check out the pain killer situation. Even at 5cm dilated I still had the deluded notion that drug-free childbirth would be the way to go. (I should have just listened to the numerous people who informed me that I should just avoid stuffing around and order the epidural upon entering the hospital.) I decided to give acupuncture a go (thousands of Chinese women couldn't be wrong, surely???) ending up with 4 large pins in my left ear.

What can I say except, this was SUCH a non-event. Apparently it works really well with some women, but has absolutely no effect on others; naturally I found myself in the second category. Suffice to say, the hot water bottle on my belly was only having the effect of making me hot and sweaty, so I asked Trond to take off the cover around it, soak it in cold water and whack it on my face. Unfortunately, my hair had by this time obscured the acupuncture needles so Trond wasn't really aware of them as he throws the heavy wet compress over my head, pressing them further in and twisting them at all sorts of uncomfortable angles.

At this point it seemed sensible to change my mantra from "Oh God, take me now", to "EAR EAR EAR!!!!" I remember Trond pausing momentarily, no doubt thinking, "Is this soem pre-arranged code word I have subsequently erased from my memory?....Fionna's going to be really pissed at me for forgetting it...Oh SHIT the needles!"

Not long after this, my body decided on a change of pace; instead of just pain, I now moved on to pain and nausea. I vaguely recall re-defining the term 'projectile vomiting', while Trond was smart enough to determine from the look on my face that those pissy little kidney dishes were simply not gonna cut it this time 'round, and dextrous enough to reach for the large, metal wastepaper basket in the corner just in the nick of time.

I briefly contemplated rolling my pupils back, putting on my best impersonation of Satan and growling, "..the sow is dead", but decided that I wasn't really up to it (more's the pity). (While I think of it; word of advice to the soon to give birth: if the nurse offers you meatballs in tomato sauce just at the onset of labour, say NO.)

By now I'm at the point where I want to pack up and go home; it seemed appropriate, therefore, to utilise a recently acquired Norwegian expression:

"Jeg vil ha epidural."

Unfortunately, like Jamie in the baby episode of 'Mad about you', I'd lost my window of opportunity for an epidural. Like her, there was no point asking the midwife to BREAK IT! I tried the laughing gas by way of (small) compensation. That felt weird. The midwife asked how it was; I replied that I couldn't feel my arms or legs. She then lowers her voice and says to Trond - who had control of the gas - "Perhaps you should take the mask away a little earlier next time..."

(Incidentally, to this day I wonder as to the point of an analgesic used during childbirth that affects the LIMBS FIRST?????)

By now not only am I really jack of the whole labour thing, but I am informed that I have what is commonly referred to as 'a tired uterus'. Poor thing, I could sympathise. Actually, I imagine that if my uterus could talk it would have said something like,

-Ah, listen chaps. I have to admit that I'm a bit tuckered out at this point, so if it's OK with you, why don't we have a bit of a break for tea and scones and start up again where we left off a little later on?-

As it is, my uterus is mute, thus the nurse gave me an oxytocin injection in order to "..strengthen the contractions".

Oh. Bliss.

Still, this wasn't such a bad thing really since the rest of the labour went mercifully quickly. In fact, Erlend Kenneth's entry to the world was so fast that it even took the midwife by surprise; she didn't even have time to say, "Keep pushing Fionna, don't stop, you can do it..." before the little guy came shooting out like a rogue skud missile. Everyone in the room was so stunned (and no doubt pre-occupied with trying to stop the baby from hitting the floor - as Dad so eloquently put it, "sounded like a low ball caught at slips..." - that no-one had time to say, "Well done, it's a boy", thus it took quite a few seconds before I realised that I had, in fact, dropped the kid.

Well, that's pretty much the end of the birth story. I could write any number of pages on what happens immediately after the birth, but this may well gross-out the uninitiated. Amusingly enough, the midwife asked me a few days later if I'd found the birth 'a positive experience'. I couldn't help but gafaw. Trond says, "Well, we got a healthy, beautiful little boy out of it; that's positive..." Yeah, well, World War I gave the world penicillen, but you wouldn't go so far as to describe it as a 'positive experience' for those on the front line.

Still, all jokes aside, we do now have a gorgeous little boy who we love very much, despite his propensity for saving up miscellaneous bodily waste products for just that moment when mummy and daddy decide to change his nappy. I'm also vaguely concerned as to what the future holds with regard to his taste in music; the other day I walked into the room to find him flaked out to the gentle, sonorous strains of 'The Clash', while he as also been known to nod off to AC/DC's 'Hells Bells' and ZZ Top. Scary thought. Still, it should be at least a couple of years before he works out how to use the stereo...