by Tony Hawks
Ten tractors and explanations later, I considered the option of hanging a sign around my neck saying:
‘THE ANSWER IS NO. PISS OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE.’
But I had no felt pen. Or card. Instead I tried to look at ease. Like I didn’t need help. Like I was on top of things.
‘Do you need a tow?’ the next driver asked.
Oh dear.
Twenty-six detailed explanations later, Ken arrived – the tractor driver whose help I actually did need. Brother Tom was still sitting in the trailer, being pulled along behind like livestock on the way to the abattoir. Both men looked at me, seeking an explanation. The required words left my tongue with consummate ease. I’d had a good thirty rehearsals for this and I’d honed the simplest way of getting the message across in the shortest time.
Ken’s solution was simple.
‘You just come down the hill behind me. If we have to stop and the brakes won’t hold you, just come into the back of me. That’ll be fine.’
I saw a flicker of anxiety cross Brother Tom’s face. Had Ken forgotten that he was towing his brother in a trailer? Or was he confident that the trailer was tough enough to withstand the impact of another tractor? I hoped so. I liked Brother Tom, and I didn’t want him to be on the front page of Tractor and Machinery magazine for all the wrong reasons. Ken set off before there was time for debate, and Brother Tom seemed content enough to have a tractor with no brakes follow him down a hill. These country folk were a hardy bunch.
I began to enjoy the scenery again for the rest of the journey. With Ken ahead of me I felt safe. This final leg of the tractor run was serving as a metaphor for what had happened to me since I’d arrived in the West Country. Whenever I was in trouble then Ken was there to sort me out. Be it lending tools, fixing washing machines, towing cars, felling trees, shifting pianos and now chaperoning tractors, he was always the saviour – just as he had been again today. Long may that continue . . .
***
Patricia, the doula, seemed to be a good call. Yoga teachers tend not to be a stressed-out bunch and Patricia was no exception. She’d had a ton of experience of delivering babies, and she’d even had a couple herself, so she knew the score. She made several visits to the house to see how we were feeling, and to gauge how our preparations were going. On one of these occasions she recommended we try an exercise that many expecting couples found very helpful.
‘We’re going to use visualisation to take you both on a journey,’ she said. ‘But before we do that, can you share with me one of the fears that you might have around the birth?’
I sat back in my chair for a moment and wondered how it had all come to this? Not that long ago I had been living the London life, pursuing a career and going to dinner parties where we discussed our favourite restaurants. Now I was being asked to embark on visualisations by a lady in loose-fitting purple clothes. What’s more, I was paying her. Was I a different person? Could I have changed that quickly? If so, had I instigated the change or was it a natural by-product of simple living. Had rural Devon weaved its spell on me?
Fran certainly embraced this visualisation stuff more readily than I did, and she answered Patricia’s question about our fears.
‘We’re concerned that we’ll get unsympathetic midwives who will bully us and try to force us into interventions that I don’t want.’
‘OK, close your eyes both of you,’ said Patricia. ‘Now picture the scene where this conflict is manifesting itself.’
Obediently I closed my eyes. I tried to imagine the scene, but I failed. Why I failed, I don’t know. Whether I was trying to process too much information – to see it like one might watch a scene from a movie – I don’t know, but I simply didn’t see the pictures. Patricia was quickly off onto the next part of the visualisation though. She now asked me to imagine what I was saying to the people who were there at this scene, and how they were reacting. This was difficult since there was no one there yet. But Patricia continued.
‘Imagine that these people are now gone. How do you feel?’
Well, I was doing better now because there was nobody there. But how did I feel? Well, the truth was that I felt confused, and a little concerned about what I was going to say at the end of this exercise.
This concern now dominated my thought processes. Patricia’s instructions faded into the background and I no longer focused on them. They had no relevance to me since they required me to imagine dialogue and interaction with people and things that I had been unable to imagine in the first place. I was in an imagination cul-de-sac. As the time passed, my mind started to wander. I began to consider whether we needed to buy bananas, or if we should take the car into the garage for a service. After a few minutes of this I heard Patricia’s voice again.
‘Now I want you to open your eyes and draw a picture. Make the picture represent what you were feeling at the end of this journey that you’ve just been on. Off you go.’
What? Draw a picture? Draw a picture of what? How could I draw a picture of what I’d been thinking about? A banana in a garage? I looked at Fran. She was off – happily scribbling away. This was because she’d paid attention and I hadn’t. I felt like I was at school. I had two options. I could tell the truth and explain that I’d failed at the very first hurdle and that my mind had wandered off – or I could bluff it out. The first option shouldn’t have been a problem. It was not like school, after all. I had hired Patricia and so effectively I was the boss. There was absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t have just explained what had happened.
Instead I began drawing. I heard a football result in my head.
Bluff It Out United 3, Integrity Albion 0.
Patricia went upstairs to the loo and I anxiously scribbled away, keen to draw something that would get me out of this hole.
‘So Tony, what have you drawn?’ asked Patricia when she returned, full of eager anticipation.
‘I’ve drawn some mountains.’
‘Great. Why?’
‘Because they represent strength. They tower above situations, looking down on them, but without being drawn into them. They are nature. They change and adapt with the seasons, but they are immovable.’
‘Superb,’ said Patricia.
‘And such a great drawing,’ said Fran, ‘I’m going to put that on the wall in the room where I give birth.’
I was a natural. I was going to be one hell of a birthing partner.
18
A Distinguished Guest
The date that Fran had allocated for the birth of our child passed without incident. It seemed that the power of the mind has its limitations. Perhaps the baby’s mind was stronger than Fran’s and that he or she had another day assigned in their womb diary: Tuesday – Be born.
I doubt it works like that though.
In fairness, Fran had picked a date that was four days before the date we’d been given by the midwife, so the lack of arrival was no cause for concern. However, when the due date itself arrived and passed without Fran showing the remotest hint of being about to give birth, some little alarm bells began to ring. I remembered Ken and Lin telling us how their son had arrived two weeks after the due date. Wow. Fourteen days waiting. That must have been tough. I wasn’t sure if I could face that long in limbo-land.
That evening over dinner, I looked at Fran and I simply couldn’t see a woman who would be a mother any time soon. I felt that, like Ken and Lin, we were in for a long wait, too.
‘Baby will come when it’s ready,’ Fran pointed out.
‘Yes, baby knows best,’ I replied, without conviction.
***
The following morning, Fran woke me at 5.30 a.m. announcing that she’d been up for a few hours.
‘What have you been doing?’ I asked.
‘Getting ready for having a baby.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that labour has started.’
I jumped out of bed, asked a string of useless questions and tried hard to mask the blind pan
ic and turmoil within. Strangely, this moment had unearthed a kind of ludicrous denial within me. Although Fran had been evidently growing in size, and although we’d seen scans of the baby with our own eyes – I still didn’t actually think it was going to happen. The actual baby bit. Not really. Not to us. Not to me.
However, now it seemed that it was going to happen. And it seemed like it was going to happen today. That wasn’t fair. I wasn’t ready. Fran’s body, though – or the little mite inside it – had decided otherwise, and the contractions or surges were well under way. Fran climbed back into bed with me and we discussed the day ahead. OK, there weren’t that many options on the table – a day trip to Alton Towers or a visit to a National Trust property were ill-advised – and we would be mostly responding to the events that came to pass inside Fran’s body. Fran was certain that she wanted to have this baby at home, and that she wanted to do it without any drugs or medical interventions. As natural a birth as would be possible.
I held Fran close to me, as she bore with great fortitude the surges of these initial contractions, and tried to recall all the information that I’d been taught in the run-up to this momentous event. I drew a blank. How long and close together should contractions be before we were supposed to call the midwife? I couldn’t remember. Neither could Fran. I called and woke Patricia, our doula, and told her that the contractions seemed to be coming every three minutes and they were about forty-five seconds long. She said she’d be straight over to assess the situation.
The bedroom was organised just how Fran wanted it for the birth, with drawings, photos and goodwill messages on the walls, and the sound system set up to play the hypnobirthing CD. The contractions were strong, but Fran was bearing them, soothed by the gentle voice in the speakers urging and encouraging her with positive affirmations, and reminding her to breathe herself into a relaxing place. In the meantime, nature was moving the baby ever closer to the world outside the womb.
When Patricia arrived – cool, calm, collected as ever – she immediately commented on how relaxed Fran looked.
‘Looks like the hypnobirthing is working,’ she said.
‘When shall we call the midwife?’ I asked.
‘What do you think, Fran?’ Patricia said.
‘Can we leave it as late as possible?’ replied Fran.
‘Sure.’
And so we returned to the job in hand, a trio now, rather than a duo. Fran announced that she wanted to throw up but couldn’t, I held her hand, and Patricia pulled out some knitting. We’d chosen well, I thought. If anything went wrong during the home birth, then we had someone on hand who could knit a hospital. Patricia was simply preparing for what could be many hours of waiting, but her first instinct was to be active. She went across to Fran and began massaging her back, the results of which could be read immediately on Fran’s face.
I continued in a more administrative role, timing and making a note of the frequency of Fran’s contractions – doing it all on my mobile phone. Initially, I felt this was an action that would be applauded, but then I became a little concerned as to how it looked to Patricia. Did she think that I was leaving my partner to battle her way through these challenging contractions whilst I sent texts to my mates?
BIRTH GOING OK, BUT BOY, DOES IT DRAG! YOU STILL OK FOR A PINT LATER? THEY’LL HAVE LIVERPOOL v UNITED ON THE BIG SCREEN
‘At eight thirty, she had a 45-second contraction, and at eight thirty-four, a 40-second one,’ I blurted out, anxious to reveal that I was on the case.
‘Thanks, Tony,’ said Patricia.
In the background, we could all hear the looping CD reminding Fran of what she wanted.
My birth will be easy because I am calm and relaxed
My baby is moving down gently
I wondered if this stuff actually did anything? Anybody’s guess. It certainly didn’t seem to be doing any harm. I’m not sure that the same could be said about many of the drugs that the pharmaceutical giants produce. A calm voice, set against a background of soothing music, does actually help you to relax, and it’s beautiful in its simplicity. It was certainly working for Fran, almost certainly better than it would have done for me in the same situation. I’ve come to resent the tone of the voice adopted by the narrators on these relaxation CDs. They’re too earnest. Too laden with implied meaning and depth. Then there’s that music. Pan pipes. Why pan pipes all the time? Instead of visualising a deserted beach with waves gently lapping at the shore, I’m picturing myself snatching the pan pipes off the bearded, cross-legged musician and chucking them in the recycling bin.1
***
Time passed. Fran managed her body’s recurring bouts of cramping, or whatever it was that was happening to her, with an admirable dignity and strength. As she had been coached to do, she seemed to be shutting the world out and going into her body, greeting each surge in the knowledge that it was bringing her closer to her new baby. How wonderful, I thought, that we were able to do this in the peace of our own bedroom, and away from the challenging atmosphere of a hospital. For us, no resuscitation machinery was standing by – instead, a framed portrait of a pig. Yes, Titch was looking on. Fran had been advised to surround herself with warm and loving images to help release the oxytocin that would aid the birthing process, and Titch had made it to the bedside table.2
‘Any new feelings, Fran?’ asked Patricia, as her knitting needles clicked gently together, sounding like a metronome that had rebelled against the straitjacket of uniformity.
‘Yes,’ replied a composed Fran, ‘it feels like I want to have a poo.’
Patricia put down her knitting needles.
‘Tony, I think you should call the midwife. This means things are moving on.’3
Patricia glanced across at me and raised her eyebrows, a look which I took to mean, ‘Get a move on.’
Forty-five minutes later, I was welcoming the midwives Odette and Fiona into our house. They were affable, composed, and although I couldn’t speak for Fran, if you had to have two strangers help extricate a living being from inside your tummy, then they seemed like the sort you’d want on your team. I offered them tea, which they declined, and asked them to have a quick read of our birth plan. In this we had outlined Fran’s desire for a natural birth with as little intervention as possible. They read it politely and promised that they would do all they could to follow it. I knew the form, though, and as much as any NHS midwife might want to leave a birthing mother alone to let events unfold as naturally and as peacefully as possible, they still had to follow protocol. These were the rules, and if they didn’t heed them they got into trouble. It was as simple as that.
Once the midwives made it upstairs to Fran, Odette immediately began asking the questions that we knew would have to come. When did your contractions start? How long between them? When did you have your last pee? The estuaries of which two Devon rivers join to the north of Bideford and west of Barnstaple to empty into the Bristol Channel?
Fran did her best to answer without breaking the magical aura of calm that now surrounded her. I thought that she did particularly well with the last question, and ought to have been awarded extra birthing points for a correct answer. However, in spite of the plethora of paperwork that was now laid out on the floor around Odette, there seemed to be no scorecard included. One for the regulatory authority Ofbabe to look into.
Examinations followed, all offered and delivered as unobtrusively and as delicately as possible. Blood pressures and temperatures were taken, and then the dreaded ‘internal’. Fran had not relished the prospect of this type of inspection, but it would enable the midwives to establish just how far into the birthing process she had progressed. As I looked at Fran lying there waiting whilst the midwife was pulling on a rubber glove, I recalled my own ‘internal’, as administered by Dr Shadley. At least when that had been done to me, three other people hadn’t also been in the room, with one furiously writing up notes on the state of my arse. Childbirth for the mother, it seemed, required a comprehensive farew
ell to bashfulness. Let’s just say that the birthing mother is unlikely to reach for the make-up mirror to check how the mascara is looking.
‘Wow!’ said Fiona, upon completing the examination. ‘That’s amazing. I can feel the baby’s head. It’s about an inch away.’
‘Fran, you may well be having this baby before lunch,’ said Odette.
Perhaps all that work had paid off in the preceding months. Fran’s pregnancy yoga, the hypnobirthing meditations, the active birthing exercises – maybe even the song that we’d sung – had prompted the baby to get itself into the right position to be delivered. Everyone smiled at the news of the baby’s possible imminent arrival, except Fran, who was still so focused on the job in hand that she wasn’t hearing the conversations around her. Yes, at 11 a.m. we were all feeling extremely optimistic.
At 2 p.m. it was a totally different story. I could tell from the whispered conversations of the midwives that all was not well. For some reason, Fran’s progress had completely stalled over the preceding few hours. Patricia had tried a few massage techniques, and yes, the contractions had continued, but the fact remained that Fran hadn’t really entered the transition stage, and she’d had no urges to bear down and deliver the baby. Odette went out to make a phone call and I had a strong suspicion that she was calling her supervisor to see how much leeway we could be allowed. Time had clearly now become a factor.
‘Do you have a mirror?’ asked Fiona.
What a time to worry about your appearance, I thought.
‘If we can hold the mirror below Fran, we can see what’s going on down there when she has her contractions.’
‘Down there’ was an expression that I was hearing quite a lot. In spite of the raw and uncompromising nature of birth, I’d noted that people were still rather squeamish about using explicit language. It was a little odd, but now I think about it, maybe ‘down there’ was preferable to ‘up your vaj’. That is what you’d hear if, owing to NHS staff shortages, you’d been sent a scaffolder instead of a midwife.