One woman's perspective of (twin) parenting (and other thoughts about things)
TW: surgery, injections, blood
A heads up: this could get detailed.
I was a C-section baby. I know this because my mother enjoyed telling stories about how she wasn’t taking anybody’s crap about “not doing it properly” (real glad we’ve got over that one, nearly 4 decades later…oh, wait). Apparently a nurse visited her whilst she was on the postnatal ward and sat down on my mum’s bed (bad start - she hated people invading her personal space #likemotherlikedaughter) and told her it was ok to feel like a failure.
OK so maybe people don’t go quite that far these days, but there’s still a long way to go in the mum shaming game.
My mother’s reaction to that was to point out that she absolutely did not fail thank you very much and would she kindly go away now please. She may or may not have used other words for that second bit.
My approach to parenthood was therefore hugely influenced by my mother’s really quite awesome (and ahead of its time) opinions on C sections. My mum and I had a tricky relationship, but I understand so much more about her now that I’m a mum myself. As she always said I would. I’m genuinely sad that I never got the chance to tell her that (TW for link: grief, loss of parent).
Over the intervening years, I joked a lot about how I hoped I’d be allowed to choose to have a C section (I don’t think I realised this was already the case). I also joked a lot about how I only really want one pregnancy/child but if it were twins I suppose I’d keep them both but JOKES WHO HAS TWINS ANYWAY.
…(insert eye roll emoji here)
Fast forward to the very real situation of being pregnant with twins and to start with I just assumed that I’d be having a C section birth, because a) I’d kind of always wanted one and b) I was having twins and isn’t that what just happens when you have twins? There was a moment a few years ago when my singing career was really taking off where I thought perhaps a C section wouldn’t be the best idea on account of slicing through all those quite important tummy muscles (turns out they just move them out of the way, though, FYI), but thankfully, by this point I’d already decided that I wanted to change career. So here I was, staring down a familiar barrel for those who have been pregnant: they’re nearly fully cooked and they’ve got to come out somehow.
Somewhere near the end of the pregnancy, though, I realised I had A Choice. It was a combination of a number of things - NCT classes tend to be very vaginal birth-focused (not ideal, but that’s another story) and obviously via a law of averages, also very single-baby-focused. But as a result there wasn’t much focus on C sections (about which I already knew a fair amount) and a lot on the many many ways you can mentally and physically approach a vaginal birth. It got me thinking, and researching, and it turns out there’s a Whole Thing about doing multiple births “naturally” (EUGH). I was also doing an antenatal yoga course, which was run by this excellent Earth Mother (Bettina Rae - check out her YouTube channel here) who was unsurprisingly quite pro-vaginal births but very Zen about whatever people chose. Because that’s how yogis roll. It’s one of the many reasons I love yoga. Anyway, long story short, I decided that it was totally An Option for me to do this vaginally. I also decided where I sat on the “how much pain relief and intervention do I want” scale in an ideal world (aside: birth plans are almost entirely, but not quite, pointless) and waited to see where the babies would settle position-wise in the last few weeks. This is key because I had decided I was only going down the vaginal route (or, rather, the babies were) if they were in helpful positions (i.e. both head down essentially, or at least tending that way). I did not want to entertain the idea that I’d have one vaginally and one ‘through the sunroof’ (if I’m going to have stitches, I don’t really want them everywhere, thanks very much), and I didn’t want to make a choice that was meant to be empowering if it meant I was setting myself up for a stressful birth. But there it was, I’d decided that I was Prepared and Really Quite Excited about the idea of a vaginal birth.
If all this talk of vaginas is troubling, by the way, I’m afraid you’ll get no apology from me.
The end of this rather extended pre-amblepreamble is, of course, that they were absolutely not in a helpful position at all… Twin One, now known as Smol J, was firmly and resolutely a) bum down, head up, feet folded into their chest and b) very much blocking the way for Twin Two (Smol T), who had at least made the effort and was head down. Hence after all that, I went for an elective C section at 37 weeks. But, and I cannot stress enough how important this is to me, I felt like I owned the choice - it was mine to make, not anybody else’s, and I made it. HUGE. The tide is perhaps changing on this, but women, even (especially?) in ante/postnatal contexts and surrounded by other women, still struggle to claim and exercise agency over their own bodies. More of that in part 3…
A brief side point here - I imagine I will mention this woman’s awesome blog elsewhere, but whilst pregnant I discovered Forever Amber, and there was one part of one post that hugely resonated with me and brought me a lot of peace around this whole labour vs C section thing. In this post about surviving tokophobia, she talks about how her end goal was to be a mother, not a martyr to vaginal birthing. Basically, it didn’t matter one jot to her that she’d not experienced labour in her endeavour to achieve her goal. Amen sister.
You’ll notice, at this point, that we’ve not even made it into the hospital yet. That’s because, truthfully, I’m not sure I have a huge amount to write about the actual birth itself, other than just a series of snapshots. I’m writing this 7 months postpartum, which is a bit later than intended, and I think I’ve already forgotten a lot. Which makes me sad, but at the same time, it’s a good reminder to be humble and live in the present (Mindfulness 101)…
So we arrive at the hospital at some awfully early hour like 7.30 (hahahahaha “early”, good one, Past Me), having not eaten for hours (this is relevant for later) and line up in the corridor outside Maternity Triage (also the entrance to the pre- and post-surgery ward) and we are the last there of, I think, four couples. I go for a quick wee and in the intervening time, my husband notices that the other women look, in his words, “about 24 weeks pregnant”. I think I was aware that I was Big, but looking back at photos of me at 36 weeks, I really was very large indeed. It’s a wonder my knees actually survived. At some point, we get taken through and we meet Everybody. I can’t tell you who, or in which order, because somewhere around here, I just go into a kind of trance and decide the best thing is to let it all wash over me. I remember a friend of mine saying this when he was being treated for a brain tumour - he just sat in a room and a seemingly endless stream of people came in, spoke to him and left again, to be immediately replaced by another discussing something else. He said in that moment he realised there was literally nowhere else he needed to be and nothing else he should be doing instead, and that realisation gave him a huge sense of peace. That’s exactly how I felt, but it’s not good for retaining details…
I met the surgeon, obviously (no bedside manner, but that’s not really his department, he’s there to do Very Important Things), I met his junior (who did a very good job of trying to explain to the surgeon that I wanted to see as much of the process as possible - we’re a bit behind the “natural and empowering C section experience” movement Oop North), I met the anaesthetist (who I remember being really rather lovely and incredibly present and calming throughout), and I met a handful of nurses, all of whom seemed to be there to do a different but particular thing. Alongside the anaesthetist, the most memorable of all of these people was the student nurse whose job it was to basically hold my hand for the whole thing. I really really wish I could remember her name, because she was essentially my guardian angel. I think it might have been Hannah.
At some point during this period, we establish that, unfortunately, my pipe dream of having a side room on account of having twins via C section, was just that. Don’t get me wrong, the ladies I was sharing the ward with (and who I later saw on postnatal) were all (mostly) lovely, and for various reasons that will become apparent, it’s probably for the best that I was on the main ward so that I didn’t get forgotten about, but it was a bit of a let down and perhaps a good moment to practise humility and acceptance that you don’t always get what you want. It also set me up for a rather rubbish postnatal experience. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
So, like a group of nervous auditionees waiting outside a church hall, the surgeon tells us all the batting order for the day. I’m up first. I’m very pleased about this because this means I will have as long as possible before I’m separated from my husband (thanks, COVID). But it also means I’m almost immediately passed a surgical gown (“do I keep any underwear on, or– no, OK, totally naked, cool”) and VERY sexy surgical stockings (I do not realise at the time that I will not be allowed to take these off for many days, ew) and told that they are ready for me in theatre. Oh lordy, here we go.
What then happened was, I kid you not, one of the most amazingly empowering, transcendent experiences of my life. It feels very strange to use the word “enjoy” when talking about major surgery, but even before I was presented with two happy (albeit screaming), healthy babies to cuddle, it was On Another Level. I get that women who labour experience this because GRR I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR et c, but I genuinely didn’t expect it from a C section. Holy mama, though, it was one amazing experience.
I remember:
And then suddenly, there was crying.
So much crying.
Good crying. I mean, kind of. We discussed in NCT antenatal classes what a baby’s experience of birth must be like, and I’m pretty sure their crying was 73% PISSED OFF.
The surgeon whipped them both out so quickly I didn’t even register the sex of Smol J before they were taken to be cleaned up. But I remember so so vividly that those cries were the most amazing things I’d ever heard. When you have anything approaching an “early” birth, you are generally offered (if there’s enough warning) steroid injections in your bum which apparently gear the little ones’ lungs up for breathing air (as opposed to amniotic fluid) because there’s a risk that they might not be totally developed in time. So to hear them both screaming the place down was, and remains to this day, the most beautiful, life-affirming noise I have ever heard.
So then obviously I cried, and my husband cried. And I think some of the student nurses probably cried.
And all of a sudden we were parents.
Whilst I was being sewn up, my husband was invited to go and see them whilst they had their Vitamin K injections (he was escorted the long way round the theatre - apparently this is standard procedure to avoid seeing your wife’s insides). Smol J’s legs were still all concertinaed up (and remained that way for a couple of weeks) and Smol T was smaller than the last scan suggested, and was handed to me by a midwife who said “we’ve called this one Sparrow because they need to grow into their legs”… She wasn’t wrong.
I was asked whether I wanted them without nappies. Um, what? Why? “Some people prefer it, but it kind of just depends on whether you want to get covered in poo”…
Eventually, they were both placed on my chest in their little nappies (I decided to turn down the offer of poo) and hats (babies do genuinely come with hats - it turns out hospitals have an endless supply that lovely people knit for them), my husband came back and sat next to me and there we all were.
Still crying.
The whole thing lasted half an hour.
Then I was being transferred onto a different bed (back onto the same one from before? Who knows) and wheeled back into the ward I’d been on just a short while before. At which point I was offered toast and a cup of tea.
Friends, let me tell you about the toast.
Some mum friends of mine told me it would be the best slice of toast I’d ever tasted.
How good can a slice of toast be, I thought.
It was transcendiary.
It was, truly, the best slice of toast I’d ever tasted. I’d forgotten how hungry I was having not eaten to prep for surgery, and there is something unquestionably comforting about old school sliced white bread with butter on it and a cup of tea. I had a lot of both. Handy, because they’d had to buy the gluten free loaf in just for me, so I felt it was only polite to work my way through it. And as for the litres of tea, well, I had a catheter in, and I decided I should get the most use out of it as possible.
Accompanied by toast and tea, we all sat and just existed for what felt like hours. My husband had some skin to skin time (this is just a fancy term for putting the naked baby on your bare chest and piling blankets on top of them - it’s an amazing feeling and also helps them regulate their body temperature. I felt incredibly fortunate and grateful to have been able to do this so quickly whilst we were still in theatre and then for ages afterwards) and we recovered ourselves.
The feeling gradually came back in my legs (about as weird as losing it in the first place) and then at some point another lovely midwife came in to ask whether I fancied having a go at breastfeeding (I don’t think I’d even thought about the fact that they needed feeding…) so we did that for a bit. Colostrum, the first breast milk the body produces, is amazing stuff and so between us we managed to get a fair bit of it out and we syringe fed the babies because they were still a bit small to work out how to latch on themselves. It’s known as “liquid gold” because, I thought, it’s so good for baby and basically magic because it contains everything your particular baby needs. Turns out, it actually is also somewhat iridescent. Mental. At one point the midwife said “well, you’re not going to have a problem with supply!”, which holds a special place as simultaneously one of the most amazing and most heartbreaking things I ever remember being said to me. But my breastfeeding journey is another story…
Joyfully, my husband was allowed to stay much longer than the COVID guidance at the time suggested. But it still seemed way too soon when they came in to tell us that it was time for me to move to postnatal and thus for us to part ways. At this point in the pandemic, postnatal visits were limited to two hours, twice a day. I think I was moved around 4 or 5pm and the next visiting slot was 6-8pm, so actually it worked out quite well. At least for that chunk. I had a tiny bit of time to decompress by myself, my husband had a moment to himself (I still don’t know what he did other than take some bags to the car and bring some more back) and then we had a good bit of time together to watch them sleep, talk about names, try a bit more breastfeeding and generally ask “what’s next?”
And now, like the good game show host I kind of always wanted to be, I shall say “find out after the break!” See you for part 3…
xx