To say that I am afraid is the understatement of a lifetime. Petrified, terrified and horrified are better adjectives but even they don’t come close to describing the fear that is slowly but surely permeating Pleasantville. In approximately ten week’s time (actually nine week’s and 3 day’s time – if all goes as planned), a baby with long arms and a big belly, judging by the measurements taken at today’s scan, will be squeezing its way down my birth canal. Oh woe! woe! woe! is me. My lamentation cannot be reckoned with. I have spent the last twenty-seven years avoiding doctors and it seems that at least two decade’s worth of irrational fear is going to culminate in one moment consisting of many hours (literal or figurative, or both) of pain and humiliation. Did I say “Woe is me” already?
I have been to a Doctor twice in my life: at the age of seven I was taken to the Doctor to receive an inoculation against hepatitis – I hid under the Doctor’s table and my dad had to drag me out and hold me down so that I could be injected; and the second time was when, at sixteen, I burnt my leg on the exhaust of a motorcycle – the plasters I used to try and hide the wound from my mom proved redundant when Roxanne Gibb tattle-tailed and I ended up at a stupid Doctor anyway, who told me that I would probably need a skin graft. Ha ha, funny joke. So let’s just say that pregnancy has forced me out of my comfort zone and as the final test looms before me, my inclination is to run … very far but not very fast, thanks to my steadily growing baby-bump.
When it comes to ‘comfort zones’, I do adopt a philosophical attitude; I ardently believe that most of life’s best experiences are lived when rejecting the familiar in favour of that which is initially uncomfortable. So I am well aware that birth is an unpleasant means to a rewarding end. But my intellect and my emotions are constantly waging war against one another. I know that ‘women have been doing this for years’ … blah blah blah, but in my current frame of mind, it makes not an iota of difference to me. I still have to go through it and I am feeling very sorry for myself. Fuck feminism, and female strength and fortitude. I am fear personified right now. Admittedly, it was probably not the best idea to have invested the last month in Tudor history; reading about the fifty-million failed child-bearing experiences of Henry viii’s six wives. In the familiar head versus heart battle that characterizes my existence , the fact that sixteenth century hygiene was worse than appalling only registers as a microcosm in my thought process when I contemplate the tragic death of poor Jane Seymour.
At 32 weeks I am still feeling physically fabulous, in spite of some blossoming water retention in my legs, but I cannot say the same for my mental stability as enemas, episiotomies, placentas, blood, gore and guts permeate my thoughts. Most who know me will, however, be aware that a great deal of the time my mind tends to hang out in some pretty strange places with some pretty weird peeps, so my claim to slight insanity will be of no surprise. Whilst waiting for my scan appointment this afternoon, a man wearing some ominous looking black cyborg-ish gear emerged from one of the Doctor’s rooms and proceeded to follow a host of people down the corridor. I leaned over to my husband and asked with interest if he thought that there was a bomb in the hospital as the man with the gear looked like a bomb-detector. My husband looked at me as if I had fallen out the nearest tree and amidst his laughter told me that the device strapped to the man was in fact a camera. Naturally, it never occurred to me that there is no way that I would be sitting in a waiting 
room with ten other people had the hospital received a bomb threat. I think my baby is cannibalising my brain cells. I have also been having a recurring dream in which I birth kittens. This probably relates to the fact that my ‘mothering instinct’ is more inclined toward the feline species than an actual human child. The kittens I birth in my dreams are always black, although on one occasion I did birth a black and white kitten – probably linked to the fact that I had to abandon my poor black and white cat when I moved to London. I also had a black cat that was mauled by the dog next door – perhaps I subconsciously think that my baby is the reincarnation of my long deceased kitty. As I get all Freudian on myself why not throw breast-feeding into the mix – I intend to try it, and I intend to try and express milk as well, which means … breast pump. The thought of milking myself like a cow is positively less than appealing so I at least intend to do it with an electric pump as opposed to a manual pump. And then one has to start thinking about breast pads, nipple cream and nipple caps – alien devices that cause me to cringe upon mention. All this paraphernalia and advice about what gadgets I do need and don’t actually need causes a real pain in the brain. I am just going to do things my own way: mistakes will be character building for both baby and mother … and that’s what I’m sticking to.
I have given myself permission to ‘keep it real’ and I intend to wallow in self-pity for as long as I choose. Having another being inhabit one’s body is a very strange thing, and pregnancy elicits a host of uncomfortable and unwarranted invasions – physically, emotionally and intellectually. In some moments, the excitement of meeting my baby girl and being a mom is overwhelming, and in other moments, the fear of childbirth engulfs me. These conflicting emotions are what I like to call ‘being human’ although the intensity thereof is probably magnified by womanhood, never mind pregnancy. So, my frank thoughts, whilst they may worry and upset others, do not upset me; being honest with myself is paramount and the denial thereof is detrimental.
