Page 53 of So Thrilled For You

So many people were in the operating theatre. Tristan was in scrubs. When did that happen? I hadn’t slept in so long. They were urgently shouting their names for some recording of the operation, one they’d use to defend themselves legally if me or the baby died.

I was no longer in my body. I watched my body as it was vigorously sliced into like a slab of dead pig. They’d used my surgical gown to create the screen between my head and the violence of what was happening to my body. I remember thinking, ‘huh’and ‘what a useless bit of information to learn just before you die.’

‘Stay with me,’ a woman’s voice said. An anaesthetist. ‘Stay with me, Lauren.’ She started shouting about my heart rate. It was dropping . . .

Here it was. The crash. The attack. The dying.

Instead, there was the sound of crying. A baby crying. My baby crying.

I was back in my body and Woody’s body was being lifted out of me, spread-eagled like he was Jesus on the cross. Covered in blood and gunk and screaming.

I wanted him. I wanted my baby. But they took him away.He’s slightly blue,someone said.Need to check he can breathe.

The BreatheItOut account told me how essential skin to skin contact was the second a baby was born. It’s called magical hour. It needs to happen immediately otherwise the baby is so fucked up it’s likely to become the next Hitler. ‘You are legally entitled to get skin to skin straight away. Know your right. Use your BRAIN.’

But it’s hard to advocate for yourself when the baby is blue, your insides are still exposed to a hospital ceiling, and you hear the surgeon say they’re worried about how much blood you’ve already lost.

Tristan was right with me. He was weeping. He wouldn’t look at the baby. He refused to cut the cord.

I remember that. The stern wobbling of my husband’s bottom lip, his arms crossed like a child, as they tried to beckon him over to Woody, wielding a pair of surgical

scissors.

‘No,’ he told the midwife. ‘I don’t want to. You do it.’

We’ve not once talked about that moment, about why he didn’t want to cut the cord.

Not once.

I can’t remember much more. I try to pick up a glass of punch from the side table, but my hands wobble too much to grasp it so I give up, and lean further back in the sticky sofa, praying the flashbacks will end soon.

Tristan was taken aside to hold the baby while they worked on me. Sew me up before I bleed out.

‘Am I going to die?’ I asked the lady holding my hand. Who was she? What was her name? I’ll never see her again. I’m not even sure what her job was.

‘You’re fine,’ she told me. ‘The baby is fine. Congratulations Lauren.’

Congratulations.

Then the baby was plopped on my chest, wrapped in a blanket and hat. It was an ugly disgusting alien and it stared up at me with big black eyes and we were told to all smile for a picture. The nameless lady had Tristan’s phone and we both grinned obligingly. In days to come, we would send this photo to our friends and family, and they would send back heart-eye emojis and congratulations like this photo was taken of a good thing, rather than the worst moment of my life. The first few seconds of this New Me that was forged that day – in blood and sweat and agony and fear.

I remember Nicki sent back ten rows of heart-eyed emojis. I remember laughing as it was such a Charlotte thing to do. She followed it up by ‘OMG, this is perfect. It’s making me so BROODY.’ And here she is, not very much later, body bulging with impending horror, thinking she has a chance in hell of an easy water birth, tilting her head at me, waiting for me to reassure her that it’s all going to be OK.

‘My birth . . .’ What words to share. How can any of it fit into any words? ‘. . . it . . . it .. . it wasn’t the easiest few days of my life,’ I manage. It’s the most I can sugarcoat it. The most I can lie.

‘Of course not,’ she says, rubbing her stomach. Nicki looks visibly relieved that I’ve not said worse. ‘I have to remember birth is only a day or two, tops.’ Her attention is then directed towards the pile of gifts behind her. Someone comes over and offers her a drink, and, without the glare of her and Cara and Jeanie, I’m able to pick up my punch with shaking hands without them noticing. I gulp it down, trying to steady my breath.

It may only be a day or two. Or five, in my case. But you’re never the same, I think. Never. And it’s not like I got a chance to recover from the horror. I went straight from that horror into the horror of having a newborn baby.

Maybe it could’ve been different. I think, often, at 2am, when I’m sending private messages to BreatheItOutwith my burner account. Maybe if my birth had been different, my experience of motherhood would be different? Maybe if I’d trusted my body more. Maybe if I’d breathed harder . . . ?

Except it’s bullshit and lies, bullshit and lies.

Because I’vesincelearned that women have four different types of pelvises and some are basically incapable of giving birth naturally.

‘Can’t breathe my way through that, can I?’ I type, sending them the link to the research before they block me again. ‘How am I supposed to trust my body if my pelvis is literally not able to give birth and I would’ve died in the medieval times?’

‘IT WASN’T JUST A SURGE, IT WAS FUCKING AGONY YOU LYING CUNT,’ I type out again. ‘A CONTRACTION ISN’T A SURGE, IT’S A CONTRACTION. HOW ARE YOU ALLOWED?’

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