A Tale of Two Births 

I stare at the two pink lines. This is really happening. A couple days’ suspicion is now reality. I am having a baby. I rub my stomach— a habit I will keep up even before I start showing. I am excited, over the moon with joy. A million thoughts rush through my mind. How will I share the news with Davis? When will I tell my family and friends? What should I do next? I leave the bathroom, comfortably settle myself on my couch and begin googling things like ‘when to announce a pregnancy’, ‘how accurate are home pregnancy tests?’ I should be making dinner, but it will be hours before I finally drag myself to the kitchen.

I am torn between letting the news sink in before share it with anyone else, and sharing it
immediately. I decide on the former but when excitement gets the best of me later that evening, I send a photo of the positive test to a friend.

It’s my day off of work and my mum is in town which is a treat in itself, but getting to share the news with her in person ramps up the excitement. Right after I bite into my sandwich and complain about it not tasting like I thought it would, I casually tell her I am pregnant. She immediately goes into mum mode and bombards me with questions. How far along am I? How do I feel? Am I eating my vegetables? We talk a bit about what to expect and she shares with me a long list of dos and don’ts.
Over the subsequent months, she calls and texts inquiring about the morning sickness, doctor
appointments, which hospital I have picked for the birth, and whether I am exercising my body.

When I am done bending over the toilet at work, I straighten up and walk over to the sink to rinse my mouth. I smile in the bathroom mirror thinking to myself, again, “this is really happening”— a realization that hits me anew with every pregnancy symptom and body change. That smile is turned upside down as soon as I realize “morning sickness” does not only happen in the mornings. I am barely keeping any food down, and it is getting worse with each passing day. I am miserable by the end of the first trimester, even worse by the time the doctor diagnoses Hyperemesis Gravidarum, and explains that the pregnancy sickness will not go away and that I would just have to manage it to the end. I lose a lot of weight and the glow everyone promised I would get is elusive. Instead, I am stuck with ashy skin, a tired body and a constant metallic taste in my mouth. I am not yet showing, and will not until the end of the fifth month, leaving my workmates wondering why I am constantly late, have no interest in anything and more often than not, have my mouth in my nose. My hair thrives amidst all this.

Five years later I am staring at two pink lines. I just got back from the drug store with my sister to pick up a home pregnancy test to confirm what I already know to be true—because I never miss a period. My feelings are all over the place—excited yet scared, worried and nervous because of the timing, yet happy. Kind of like Rachel from ‘Friends’ when she takes the pregnancy test and asks Phoebe to read her the results. Rather than read her the correct results, Phoebe pulls a prank on her that brings out all these feelings she did not know she had about a possible pregnancy. There is no googling this time, no grand announcement. Just a simple ‘I am pregnant’ text to Davis.

When I tell my dad, I do not casually drop the news on him like I did with Mum five years ago—
though I suspect he already knows what I want to talk to him about. He does not like it when people spring information on him out of nowhere. I realize that I never did tell him the first time. I told my mum and that amounted to telling him, as was with most things growing up. He congratulates me and in true dad style proceeds over the coming months to send me newspaper articles about pregnancy and urges me to eat beetroot when I tell him the doctor’s concerns about my hemoglobin levels.

I feel the bile rise to my throat the minute my feet touch the ground. It is 6:30am and I have just enough time to prepare breakfast and get Daniella to school. I have no time to stay bent over the toilet, my insides threating to pour out together with the vomit. But before I even think of fighting it, I run to the bathroom and stay there for what seems like hours, but when I check it is only ten minutes. I had hoped this time would be different but I find myself, for the next few weeks, hunched over a toilet each time I get out of bed in the morning.

The months go by slowly. We move house, finally settle on a birth hospital and doctor, I schedule a maternity shoot, finally get round to writing down a shopping list and enlist the support of friends to go shopping with me. I am surprised with two baby showers. Being in a foreign country, I did not expect to have one let alone two! I wash, iron, fold, and refold tiny clothes as the third trimester drags on. We finally agree on one name for a boy, but continue to cross off and add names to the ‘if it’s a girl’ list.

It’s a week and a half to my due date. I have spent the last few weeks of my third trimester watching ten seasons of ‘Friends’, four seasons of ‘Devious Maids’, and when I cannot get through episode three of ‘How to Get Away with Murder’, I decide it’s time to stop binge-watching series and prepare for the baby. I have no post-partum meals in the fridge, have not yet packed the hospital bag and I still have a few items to pick up before I can declare that I am ready for the new arrival.

It’s a late Friday afternoon when I call Davis at work and let him know I am in labour. I pull out the bags I have been meaning to pack and slowly throw in items I have had listed but never got round to actually packing. By the time Davis arrives, I am done with packing, dressed and ready to go. We arrive at the hospital, answer a few questions from the nurse, and I am ushered in to the exam room where I soon discover that the only thing more painful than labour is the examination to determine how far dilated I am. I choose to stay back despite being barely a centimeter dilated and spend the night answering phone calls from my mum, siblings and friends, as well as reading a book in an effort to drown out the screams from other mums in the ward having their babies. By Saturday morning all the mums that spent the night in the ward have babies in their arms and I am only four centimeters dilated. By Sunday morning, I am at six centimeters and tired of it all. Tired of the vaginal examinations, tired of the phone calls asking whether the baby has arrived, tired of seeing mothers walk in and leave with their babies while mine still sits snug in my belly.

A short while after the labour is induced, I feel my stomach get tighter and contractions stronger. I am soon on all fours, my sister-in-law rubbing my back and praying over me. The nurse announces that it’s time, breaks my water, positions me in the birthing position and asks me not to push until she says so. I nod. I am ready but don’t really know what to expect.
“Push!” she says.
I push as hard as I can.

“Very good. Now stop,” she says.
“Push!”
Three pushes and the baby is out. It’s a girl. We do not have the ‘if it is a girl’ name yet.

I am seventeen weeks by the time I go for my first scan, leaving the doctor wondering what took me so long. Between settling down after another move, finding a school for Daniella, hating the school and having to find another, as well as figuring out which hospital to zero down on, I just haven’t had the mental capacity to schedule a hospital visit. The morning sickness has subsided but the pytalism persists throughout the pregnancy. I organize a gender reveal and enjoy watching Daniella jump with joy when she finds out she guessed right. I keep updating my name list which is shorter this time because I know the gender. I am close to thirty-six weeks by the time I get to shopping and sorting the hand me downs from Daniella that will now belong to Baby. Again, I am overwhelmed by love when those closest to me treat me to a baby shower. Second babies rarely get a shower. I am pleasantly surprised.

It’s six days to my due date. I feel my stomach tightening and relaxing but don’t think much of it. I get into bed only to be woken up at about 2:30 am with strong contractions. I time them. They move from eight minutes apart to five minutes apart. As I am deciding on whether to stay put and wait for the morning— I do not want to spend the entire weekend in the hospital like last time—I hear a pop sound and water comes gushing out. We make our way to the hospital and by the time we are done with all the checks and tests, the contractions are stronger. A kind talking doctor checks and confirms I am seven centimeters dilated. He leaves and I am left with one mean talking nurse and one kind nurse. The kind nurse rubs my back, and kindly but firmly explains that there is no way out, she is going to have to check again how far dilated I am. She tells me I am ready and sits me up in birthing position. The mean talking nurse and two other nurses crowd around me. I know what to expect and I am not ready.
“Push!” she says.
I take a deep breath and push.
“Stop.”
We repeat this rhythm a number of times, with the mean talking nurse telling me I am not pushing hard enough, while the kind nurse holds my hand and urges me to not give up. Finally the head is out. Then, the body. I fall back in exhaustion. She is placed on my chest as the doctor attends to me. I touch her and stare at her. She looks exactly like the name we picked out for her.