Today we caught up with S & E — old friends from Bangkok who relocated to Melbourne where they had their first baby — F — and then moved again to Sydney.
We met in Rushcutters Bay Park — obviously a favourite amongst families as foot-tall bubs were popping up all over the lawn like mushrooms in the wet season.
When S, E and F arrived, one of my S’s first questions was to E — asking after her labour.
“Oh My God.” replied E.
Here we go — I could tell this was going to be the labour story S had been waiting for…
E went on to describe the labour as a black hole — her drug doctor was too late to administor anything much more than calming words, so it was largely without any pain relief — and we kept coming back to the contractions…
“First timers don’t understand what it is like,” said E, “They gear themselves up for a bout of intense pain, wanting to believe in themself that they can survive the pain, but in all the preparation, they’re sort of missing the point.
“I’m not saying contractions don’t hurt — cause they bloody well do — but rather that labour is more than one contraction. They just keep on coming — it’s not the pain from one contraction that leaves you spent — it’s the pain and the drain of contraction after contraction after contraction…”
Husband S chirps in, describing the run to the hospital, the peak hour traffic, torrential rain, E on hands and knees on the backseat screaming words that are not really suitable for this blog…
They’d not settled on a name for the baby and didn’t know if a boy or girl was on the way, and this chaotic run to the hospital wasn’t how they’d envisaged having their first child.
When the baby, a beautiful, healthy baby girl was finally delivered, he handed her to E saying…
“After what you’ve been through you can pick any name you want!”