THE BIRTH

After a pregnancy comes the birth...

It was summer of 1966 and Lydia was screaming.

“I wanna go home!” she screeched, sucking as hard as she could from the gas and air mixture in between syllables until her head somersaulted somewhere in its depths. “I wanna go home right now!” she added, and shuddered as another gigantic contraction thumped her everywhere at once until all she wanted to do was commit murder there and then.

But she didn’t do anything of the sort. Of course she didn’t. Murder wasn’t realistically on her agenda even though she wanted it to be. Instead she decided there and then that neither Tommy nor any other man would ever do it to her again. From now until they carried her out in a wooden box she was going to keep her thighs welded together, impenetrable and belatedly virginal This was it, the ultimate pain and she was damned if she ever planned to go through anything like it again even though the gas and air had to it an element of fun.

“But you can’t,” muttered Tommy, not sure how to respond to the love of his life who temporarily looked far from the lovable little woman he seemed to spend half of his life adoring. “You’ve got to stay here. It won’t take long.”

“You’re doing very well,” wittered the midwife, staring up between her legs and mentally estimating the dilation. “Baby won’t be long now.”

“It’s not baby. He’s got a name!” gasped Lydia, and she shrieked as a fresh double-barrelled contraction tore her body in half.

“Already?” smiled the midwife. “There’s nothing like being prepared! What are you calling him?”

Lydia screamed again and Tommy went pale.

“Is she okay?” he asked, thinking that the love of his life looked as if she might never be okay again. For the first time he wished they’d never had that conversation about starting a family, about her hiding her contraceptive pills at the back of her knicker drawer and the two of them seriously setting about the task of producing a pregnancy and a wonderful perfect family. Of producing this pregnancy. This screaming horrible birth.

What if something’s gone wrong? This can’t be right, can it, this pain, this noise, this shrieking? It can’t be normal…?

When you love someone, he thought, you don’t like to see them suffering like this! But then, when you love someone you do the sort of things with them that ends up with them suffering like this! It’s just not fair … not fair on we men for suffering in silence while they scream their pretty little heads off, or on the women for the pain they seem to go through….

“Oliver,” grated Lydia during a moment’s respite, “the little sod’s called Oliver if I ever allow him to live long enough to hear his name spoken out… oooh … loud!”

“That’s a lovely name,” almost cooed the midwife and Tommy looked at her and smiled. She was just a young slip of a lass from the look of her soft skin and peaches and cream complexion, too young, probably to have gone through this kind of nightmare herself. But she was good, he had to admit that. She seemed to know the right expression to mask her face with and the right words to whisper...

“Have you…?” he found himself asking, indication Lydia’s birth-end.

She blushed. “Twins,” she said quietly, “two girls… they’re at school now, which is a blessing...”

So I was wrong, he told himself, thinking her so young herself. Twins at school. Goodness me…

Lydia was screaming again before the thought ended and he squeezed her fingers gently and tried to absorb some of her pain, to help her, to be part of something he couldn’t really even dream of being part of.

“Oliver’s head’s coming!” said the midwife, excitedly. “You’ll be able to hold him before you can say Jack Robinson!

Tommy felt like saying Jack Robinson himself, loud and insultingly, a sound in the room contrasting with the screams of pain, but he refrained. He’d been brought up to have some manners, at least. The lass was doing her best. Both lasses were, and he knew he was an intruder.

Not so long ago fathers were kept out of the birthing suite, strictly out to where ashtrays on poles suggested the best thing they could do in a woman’s world was smoke as many cigarettes as possible in the hours it took. Back then, and it wasn’t so long back either, fathers didn’t have much to do with birth.

Conception maybe, but not the consequences of the fun they shared when pain hadn’t entered into the equation.

“My mate said he wasn’t allowed to see his kids born,” he found himself saying. “Not that he wanted to,” he added, “he said he was better off in the pub.”

“Don’t leave me...” begged Lydia. “Tommy...”

Of course I won’t, though a pint would go down real good right now, flashed through his mind.

“If you leave me … I wanna go home!” screeched Lydia, then: “if you leave me here and now I’ll never forgive you!”

“He’s not planning on going anywhere,” soothed the midwife, and the door swung open.

The newcomer was a dragon. Senior nurses in hospitals seemed to have been specially trained in a school for dragons. Every line on their faces suggested it. Every squint of their eyes. Everything about their body language.

“What’s all the fuss about…?” she demanded.

“Olly … I mean babies almost here,” squeaked the midwife, the young one with the pretty face and twins at home.

“I told you, he’s Oliver!” shrieked Lydia, sucking like mad on her gas and air.

“You shouldn’t need that!” reproved the senior dragon. “A little pain teaches us to be strong and bear life with fortitude. Now get on with the job, and less fuss! And you...” she glared at Tommy, “go to the coffee bar and have a cigarette!”

“But I don’t smo….”

“I said go to the coffee bar and have a cigarette!” ordered the dragon. “This is no place for namby-pamby men and their tendency to faint at the sight of the smallest drop of blood!”

“Oliver!” bawled Lydia.

“Darling...” began Tommy.

“Are you deaf, young man?” demanded the dragon.

“I’m going...” he muttered, both wanting to stay and wanting to go. But that face, that ferocious face, made his mind up for him and he slithered out of the birthing room after a sickly, apologetic look at Lydia who was obliviously mid-scream, hung the hospital gown on its hook in an anteroom and went to the coffee bar where he bought ten cigarettes which he didn’t know how to smoke, struck a match and lit one in a choking cloud of nervous uncertainty.

And in the birthing room the baby Oliver took one look at the dragon as she stalked out, and wept loud and long.

“Tommy...” sighed Lydia, and she closed her eyes for a moment or ten.

© Peter Rogerson 10.12.16