This being the third I knew immediately that the transition from first to second stage wasn’t usually accompanied by pain of such screaming quality. The surrounding babble of voices made it impossible to concentrate on identifying what had gone wrong, their exhortations to “push, mother, keep pushing, you’re doing fine” annoyingly intrusive. “Here’s a foot Mother, sit up and you can feel it” – they pulled my hand down to touch, but I was unappreciative ... eventually it was born: “What is it?” “A boy, you’ve got a lovely boy.”
... washing my thighs with warm water ... no, it’s blood, my blood ... “It’s the afterbirth breaking up” and someone tried pumping up and down on my stomach to expel it – my screams must have stopped her although I thought I’d simply said “don’t, please don’t”... “What’s her name? ... Sandra! Sandra! ... there’s no blood pressure and the pulse is fading fast.”
... opened my eyes “He looks Egyptian ... silly man sounds as if he thinks I’m dying ... that’d be a tidy solution – a motherless child and a childless mother ... no – I don’t want her to have my baby ...”
... someone groaning ... pink room instead of green, clock above my head telling an incomprehensible time ... Steve’s laugh outside (that was what had roused me) ... dark blue dress bustles in “I don’t know why you’re making that noise – we’ve just given you some painkiller” ... just like in the books, the groaning was ME “Then it doesn’t bloody work” ... “and you’ve had eleven pints of blood so you’ve no cause to complain” - “eleven???????????? something wrong there.”
[Comment: on the way to the hospital we had passed my sister-in-law coming the other way, she having just given birth to a still-born son]
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