Lies We Tell Mothers: A True Story

by Suzy K Quinn

  I tried to sleep as agonised, labouring screams cut the air, but couldn’t. It was like trying to rest in a war zone.

  Demi suggested we take a tour of the hospital while we waited for things to ‘kick off’.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Let’s see what kind of food they do. I’ve heard there’s a Subway sandwich concession. And a Starbucks.’

  Ah, the simple joys of child-free people.

  Demi and I walked around the grounds, noticed and approved of the Starbucks, assessed possible lunch options and tried to forget the awful scenes we’d seen and heard upstairs. That wouldn’t be me. I’d handle things. It was all about deep breathing and staying calm.

  One jumbo hot chocolate with cream and a toffee nut latte later, I experienced strong waves across my stomach that made me need to sit down. They lasted a minute or so and were warm and in no way unpleasant.

  I naively assumed these were contractions, which (following advice from the hypnobirthing book) I’d decided to call ‘interesting sensations’.

  Thank goodness.

  I knew things wouldn’t be that bad.

  Then the waves started to build. And build.

  It’s hard to remember what happened next because time stopped being a nice, familiar line that moves forward and became snatches of mismatched moments.

  I remember pacing around a bed, orange flashes before my eyes, being sick into cardboard cowboy hats and thinking it was a shame to waste that £2.70 toffee nut latte and £2.90 hot chocolate with cream.

  (Demi: ‘I held those cardboard cowboy hats of sick on my lap for an hour. Eventually, I chanced putting them on the windowsill. A midwife materialised out of thin air and shouted at me about incorrect procedures with clinical waste.’)

  Suddenly it was night-time – a foreboding backdrop.

  ‘I must only be an hour away from the pushing bit,’ I remember telling Demi. ‘The average labour time is twelve hours. Has it been twelve hours? I always do things quickly.’

  Then a midwife came.

  ‘How long until the baby comes?’ I asked. ‘Can you give me a time? I know everyone says they can’t be exact, but can you be approximate? What percentage of labour have I done already?’

  ‘You’re not in labour yet,’ said the midwife.

  ‘Not in labour?’ I was confused. ‘How can I not be in labour? I’ve been having contractions all day.’

  ‘Those aren’t contractions,’ said the midwife. ‘They’re sensations brought on by the induction pessary. Nothing is happening. You’re not dilating at all.’

  ‘When will I start dilating?’ I asked.

  ‘It could be days.’

  ‘Days?’ I gibbered. ‘I can’t be in pain like this for days. How will I sleep?’

  ‘You probably won’t sleep,’ said the midwife matter-of-factly. ‘And definitely not when the contractions start. That’s real pain.’ She pinged off her rubber gloves and handed me three more cardboard cowboy hats. ‘You’ll probably vomit more when things get really bad. Mind the sheets – we’ve got a laundry issue. Our usual company isn’t collecting.’

  ‘Can I have an epidural now?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  You know that bit on a roller coaster where the train cranks up, up, up, then hesitates on the crest of the track so you can fully absorb the eye-watering terror of the sheer drop? That’s how I felt at that moment – trapped under a big metal bar that I had no power to release.

  It wasn’t the pain that was so scary. It was the lack of escape routes. I was strapped in and couldn’t get off.

  The induction was exactly that – an induction to motherhood. Training for things to come, i.e. inescapable fear and responsibility.

  Birth was transforming me. I was leaving my party days behind and becoming a grown-up. But I didn’t know it yet.

  #8 LIE – CHILDBIRTH ISN’T THAT BAD . . .

  My long night of ‘labour that wasn’t really labour’ went on. And on. And on.

  As dawn broke, a midwife came for the usual rummage around and checked the baby’s heartbeat.

  I waited for the inevitable bad news that I still wasn’t in labour. But the midwife didn’t say anything. Instead, she looked worried.

  Suddenly, all the lights came on.

  A doctor appeared.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Quinn,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s nothing to worry about, but the baby’s heartbeat is dropping and we’re concerned it might die.’

  Whoa.

  Who’d have thought I could feel even worse than I did already?

  Given the seriousness of this situation, I decided to forgo my usual annoyance at being called ‘Mrs’ when I prefer ‘Ms’.

  The doctor suggested I have a C-section (well, told me really, but dressed it up as a suggestion).

  ‘A C-section?’ I said. ‘As in, you’d cut me open and take the baby out immediately?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Let’s roll.’

  They took this instruction literally and wheeled me into a surgical theatre, where I was given a full-spinal anaesthetic. Then they sprayed me with cold water to make sure it had taken effect, got a big, human-spatula-type thing and shovelled me on to an operating table.

  (Demi: ‘I was ushered into a room and given scrubs. Minutes later, I emerged as Doctor Demi, a bit like Stars In Their Eyes without the smoke.’)

  Demi appeared, wearing a silly green surgical mask and making bad jokes about George Clooney.

  Then the surgeon said I’d feel some ‘sensations’ in my stomach, ‘like someone doing the washing-up’.

  Ho, ho, ho.

  A little mini stomach screen was erected to spare me the horror of watching my own major abdominal surgery.

  There was a lot of tugging and pulling, and then a blood-streaked giant baked potato was placed on my chest.

  A baby! A wrinkly, angry, red-lipped baby!

  I observed this miracle of nature. How did this work, then?

  Lexi soon gave me a demonstration. She started to cry.

  The surgeon gave the nurse a knowing nod, and we were swiftly turfed out into the hallway. We were left out there for a long time – probably too long by hospital standards – but I didn’t mind.

  Lexi was just fascinating.

  The hormonal, singing Judy Garland figure resurfaced – probably due to the morphine I’d been given.

  It was all a bit full-on having major surgery and then being responsible for a baby as a totally amateur parent, but in that moment I was OK. As I say, morphine really is very good.

  Demi was there sometimes, gone at others. I was never sure why, and it didn’t matter.

  (Demi: ‘You told me to go home and sleep on a proper bed and ring all our family and put photos on Facebook, then come back with Doritos and hot chocolate.’)

  Everything was just lovely.

  Then the painkillers started to wear off.

  Me, having just given birth to Lexi. I’m a cross between ‘adoring mother looking at new baby’ and ‘just about to yawn’. Lexi clearly doesn’t quite trust me just yet.

  #9 LIE – BREAST IS BEST

  Before I gave birth, I thought I had a decision to make: should I breastfeed or not?

  Here is the truth – I did not make a decision. I was put under HUGE societal and medical pressure to breastfeed.

  I was not one of the lucky ones who had some guilt-free medical reason not to breastfeed (the baby wouldn’t latch on, milk wouldn’t come through properly, etc.). Sorry if you couldn’t breastfeed and wanted to, by the way, but ultimately you may have dodged a bullet.

  The moment Lexi was born, I tried to encourage her to ‘latch on’. And I mean literally the moment she was born. They put her on my chest, having just cut my stomach open, and I whacked out a boob and encouraged her to have a go.

  I didn’t even consider bottle-feeding. After all, it had been drummed into me for years – breast is best.

  After being wheeled into the corridor outside the operating theatre, I
tried over and over again to get Lexi feeding. Eventually, she did it. I was delighted.

  The midwives came past and said encouraging things like, ‘Oh, he’s really getting the hang of that, isn’t he?’

  ‘It’s a girl!’ I’d tell them gaily as they hurried away down the corridor.

  Eventually, someone came to push me up to the postnatal ward. When we got there, my spinal epidural began to wear off and I felt quite keenly that my whole stomach had been cut open a few hours ago. Not only that, I was now in charge of a tiny baby.

  This was worrying.

  I’d never had hospital treatment before, let alone a major operation. And obviously I’d never cared for anything as vulnerable and needy as a newborn.

  Anxiety began to build.

  I asked the midwives question after question: ‘How will I know if the baby has got any milk out of my boobs? Is there a way to measure? Can we X-ray her stomach or something? Is she sleeping for too long? Should I start timing her sleep? Should I use one boob or two or what?’

  You know – necessary questions.

  The midwives gave vague, non-committal answers like ‘follow baby’s lead’. Or, worse, they answered questions I hadn’t actually asked with universal truisms like, ‘Baby will be OK. They’re designed to survive!’

  The only viable piece of advice was an ominous: ‘Don’t feed for too long or you’ll get very sore.’

  They were right about that. After a day of breastfeeding, my boobs were in agony.

  Have you ever had a blister but kept walking in the same shoes? My boobs felt like that, but I couldn’t take those wretched shoes off.

  Once upon a time, when we lived naked in caves, boobs endured all the elements and were tough as old bootstraps. They could handle a baby’s gums, no problem. But modern living, clothes, bras and so forth had softened me. My boobs were spoiled little princesses, overly cosseted by clothing and an indoor lifestyle. They’d been wrapped in cotton wool and turned into weaklings. They weren’t fit for purpose.

  By day two, my boobs were so sore that even the most hardened midwife (the one with bad breath) took pity on me. She wheeled out the old Ford Fiesta-sized milk-pumping machine so I could get milk out of my boobs without (as much) pain.

  Thirty minutes of (only slightly less painful) boob pumping extracted enough milk to cover the bottom of a teaspoon.

  It was all so undignified, sitting around like a big docile cow, listening to the whirring motor pump making its weird donkey noises.

  ‘I don’t think I want to breastfeed, actually,’ I told the midwife as blood began appearing in the milk-collection thingy. ‘The pain is awful and seems to be getting worse.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said the midwife. ‘You have no time to heal, you see. Because you have to keep feeding.’

  ‘I’d like to switch to formula,’ I decided, my voice rising. ‘This has all been a dreadful mistake.’

  ‘You can’t do that now you’ve started breastfeeding,’ said the midwife. ‘Babies won’t take to a bottle once they’ve had breast. They call it nipple confusion. Breast is best. YOU CAN’T CHANGE YOUR MIND.’

  ‘When will the pain stop?’ I asked, tears in my eyes.

  ‘It’ll get worse before it gets better,’ said the midwife. ‘Your real milk hasn’t come in yet.’

  ‘What? Not real milk? What is this stuff coming out then?’

  ‘Colostrum. It’s pre-milk, just to keep the baby going.’

  ‘So what happens when the real milk comes in?’ I asked.

  ‘When the milk comes in, she’ll be feeding for much longer. So . . . it’ll probably hurt more.’

  Hurt more than this?

  Oh good god.

  Prior to breastfeeding, I’d been spoiled by my range of movements. Even after abdominal surgery, I could still reach for a cup of tea or a bag of peanut M&Ms. Manage the occasional hobble to the toilet for a terrifying ‘try’ at a bowel movement.

  Now, any movement of my giant, sore cow udders brought waves of pain. Bras and clothing were right out. I had to hang out in hospital topless. What on earth was I going to do when they let me out on Civvy Street?

  I couldn’t walk around Brighton with no top on. It was winter.

  Before I had a baby, I had a scientific, computer-like view of breastfeeding. Baby goes on, milk comes out. Baby is full of milk, doesn’t need feeding for three, maybe four hours.

  Oh, no, no, no.

  This, I quickly realised, was not how things worked.

  Baby goes on, boobs are in agony. Baby comes off. Why has baby come off? It’s only been a minute!

  Baby has fallen asleep. Baby has woken up and is now feeding again. Demi arrives at hospital and offers to take baby for a walk, since she’s ‘just fed’.

  Scream at Demi, ‘But it’s all so unpredictable! Yes, she’s just fed now, but she might need another feed in ten minutes. I don’t know anything any more! I can’t even leave her side! And it hurts so much!’

  As I was feeling sorry for myself, a new mother moved into the next bed with her newborn baby. She was only a teenager, poor thing, and looked terrified.

  Within minutes, a midwife clipped over. She drew the curtain around the girl’s bed as if to ‘dampen’ their private interview, but we could hear everything.

  ‘How are you planning on feeding this baby?’ the midwife asked.

  ‘Milk?’ the girl replied nervously, sensing a trick.

  ‘From a bottle?’

  ‘Ye-es?’

  ‘So you won’t be trying breastfeeding?’ The midwife’s words were laden with disapproval.

  ‘No.’

  There was a collective intake of breath around the ward.

  ‘Breastfeeding really is much better for the baby,’ the midwife continued.

  ‘My mum says it’ll be hard enough as it is,’ the girl whispered.

  ‘Oh, breastfeeding isn’t difficult,’ the midwife lied. ‘In many ways, it’s easier than bottles. No washing-up!’

  I lay beside the girl, my boobs literally bleeding, wondering if it was fair to pressure everyone into breastfeeding.

  I mean, yes – some women love doing it. Not all women find it painful. I have seen many a calm, dreamy-faced mother having a lovely time feeding her baby.

  But some of us have a really hard time, especially if we’ve already been through a difficult, tiring labour.

  Maybe what a baby really needs is a happy, smiling mother – not one wincing in pain and shouting at her partner, ‘It’s always me! ALWAYS me! I get no days off, no nights off. I NEVER get a break!’

  When the bad-cop midwife left, I whispered to the girl: ‘Good for you. Make up your own mind.’

  The girl started to cry. ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ she said. ‘I’m too young.’

  ‘Age has nothing to do with it,’ I reassured her. ‘None of us knows what we’re doing. I’m nearly thirty and completely terrified.’

  And it was true. Especially as the time drew nearer to leave the hospital.

  Being incompetent around a team of qualified midwives was one thing. Being incompetent at home, with a major surgical incision and no morphine, was quite another.

  #10 LIE – YOUR NEW BABY WILL TELL YOU WHAT IT NEEDS

  After three days in hospital, the midwives decided I was well enough to take Lexi home.

  They judged this on one simple question: ‘Have you been for a poo?’

  Yes. Yes, I had.

  Well, to be precise, I’d staggered to the toilet that morning and done the longest fart ever as unbelievable quantities of air left my body. (If you’ve ever had abdominal surgery, you’ll know exactly what I mean.) Then, very tentatively, I chanced a poo, clinging on to the toilet seat and terrified that I might shit my insides into the bowl.

  I didn’t feel well enough to go home. Not at all. My intestines felt like they were falling out whenever I rolled over, and I was lying around topless due to breastfeeding agony.

  But the hospital needed the bed, so it was tim
e to go.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the midwives. ‘You’ll be fine. Baby will tell you what she needs.’

  Taking Lexi home from hospital should have been a joyful day, but I didn’t feel all that joyful. In fact, the godawful grey wintery weather matched my mood perfectly.

  (A lot of writers are obsessed with the weather – the howling bleak winds, lashing grey rain, etc. We’re a pretentious bunch and I am no exception.)

  Leave the lovely, sterile hospital environment with its nice painkillers and wipe-clean surfaces? Without the professional expertise of the midwives, bad breath or otherwise? How would we cope?

  Lexi was awfully cute, with her downy head, little hands and so on. I enjoyed looking at her, holding her close and so forth. But I was also in a lot of pain and . . . well . . . scared.

  I didn’t have that soft, loving face you see on new parents – you know the one. ‘I’m in love with this precious new life’ eyes, teamed with a soft ‘tired but blissfully happy’ smile.

  When I looked in the mirror, I saw the vulnerable female lead in a horror movie.

  I looked terrified.

  I had no clue how to care for this baby. Lexi absolutely did not tell me what she needed. She just cried, which could mean anything. Hungry? Uncomfortable? Angry because Demi dressed her in an Arsenal baby outfit? Who knew?

  (Demi: ‘You said you liked that outfit!’)

  You know those teachers at school? The harassed ones who aren’t really coping. The teachers you know you can mess around (sorry we did that, Mrs Taylor). That’s how I looked.

  Overwhelmed, overworked and afraid.

  How would I cope out in the wild?

  When it was time to leave the hospital, Mum and Dad came to visit. They offered to drive me and the new baby home, since Demi and I were too cosmopolitan (and immature) to own a car.

  It was very kind of them.

  And maybe they could help me interpret Lexi’s cries. Crack the baby code. Get some proper communication going so Lexi could actually tell me what was wrong.

  Pre-kids, I had a very separate life from my parents.

  We lived in different places, knew different people, had different interests – everything.