Tick-tock. The seventh of December came and went without so much as a twinge. I had practised yoga that morning. Followed by a walk. Followed by a coffee—I didn’t even feel guilty about the caffeine—and a curry. It seemed she was just too comfy in her little amniotic ocean and was not yet ready to sail into our universe. Tick-tock. The days that followed were the hardest of my whole pregnancy. I had had an enviable pregnancy up to that point, experiencing all the lovely things without the sickness, pain, swelling or stretch marks that are most often associated with growing a human. 'Good job, body,' I would say, thanking it every time I practised yoga. I was researched and ready for my due date but what I hadn’t foreseen were the challenges of the ten-day waiting game that followed after that date came and went. Tick. Tock. I was highly attuned to every cramp, gurgle, and twinge. I would mentally prepare myself for labour only to be left deflated when it didn’t happen. A few days of this is enough to leave anyone exhausted, let alone someone waddling around with a watermelon. ‘No baby, yet?’ messages didn’t help either. I questioned my body’s ability to finish what it had started. Would I ever go into labour? Would I be the first woman to be pregnant forever? Tick-bloody-tock. 

To add to the pressure of waiting for the mini Big Bang to at last burst from my belly, my parents and sister arrived. They flew—quite literally—across the world to meet the newest member of the family. Only she hadn’t arrived yet. ‘We'll book flights to arrive a week after your due date. She’ll surely be there by then.’ Surely. So, on top of being rotund as could be, I was stressed out. Worried that I would let my parents down by failing to time my labour to coincide with their trip. After all, I'm the one that lives on the other side of the world. That damn ticking clock. 

The morning my family arrived from Hong Kong, I popped by to say hello first thing. I had a sweep—where the midwife pries the membranes from the uterine wall just beyond the cervix with her fingers in an attempt to get the hormone prostaglandin going and induce labour—booked for midday and I didn't think I would want to play tour guide that afternoon. After having my cervix “gently” widened, I cycled home to rest. Yes, cycled. My mother couldn’t quite believe it, cycling at forty-one weeks pregnant! But it really is the most convenient way to get around Amsterdam, not to mention faster than walking. All the Dutch mums do it, maybe I wanted to fit in.  

My other half was ready with tea when I got back home, somewhat shaky from the procedure. We snuggled. I felt odd, but couldn’t put my finger on it. He whizzed (I waddled) around the supermarket, stocking up for dinner—my family were coming over. We opted for homemade pizzas. Impressive without actually having to try too hard. Entertaining and pizza-making went off without a hitch. The only problem was the cramps. And the diarrhoea. Not wanting to alert my family incase it was a false alarm, I played it down. Only papa-to-be was privy to the pain I was in. As mum and dad dug into (delicious) homemade pizza, I bounced on the birth ball with one eye on my iPhone’s clock, counting the gaps between cramps. Two things to clarify: 1. I was able to bounce on the birth ball without giving anything away because we were one chair short and 2. I say ‘cramps’ because, at this point, I was in denial.   

By eight I couldn’t concentrate or make coherent conversation, so I politely asked my parents and sister to leave. ‘I don’t feel great,’ I said, as I ushered them out. With the house to ourselves, I looked papa-to-be in the eye and telepathically told him this was it... or at least, I thought it was. I couldn’t be sure. I had no reference. I hadn’t given birth before! We set up camp on the sofa. Hot water bottle, check. Tea, check. Music, check—he had hours of ambient tracks ready to go. We watched the clock. Tick-tock. My head was an ocean. Fragmented thoughts came in waves. Call the midwife when they are five minutes apart. Contraction or another bout of diarrhoea? Did I pack his toothbrush, too? When did I last shave down there? We took a shower and the thoughts gradually washed away. The pain intensified.

‘Don’t tell me.’ The midwife peered up from between my legs. At the last moment, I had decided I wanted to be kept in the dark about how dilated I was. The pain was already eye-watering with contractions coming thick and fast. The last thing I needed to hear were the words 'two centimetres.' I needed to stay positive and ignorance, as they say, is bliss.

As if on some hallucinogenic-fuelled trip, our bed became my safe space. I'd have moments of intense clarity when a wave of pain flowed through me. Then, exhausted, I'd be knocked out until the next wave hit. Deep, yogic breathing was the board on which to surf the pain. After hours, weeks, years of this wave-like contraction cycle with nothing but a hot water bottle for the pain, my midwife suggested she go home to get some sleep. ‘We should all sleep. We’ve got a long night ahead,’ she said, assuring me that it was unlikely I would need to go to the hospital for another five or six hours. The midwife left, leaving me adrift in a sea of pain, willing the clock to go faster. Tick-tock. 

To weather the contraction storm, instincts took over. I was writhing and roaring like some wild beast on a water bed. I felt nauseous. I climbed down from our comically high bed (the Dutch Working Conditions Act stipulates that maternity beds must be at least 80 cm high to save the backs of the midwives and nurses who visit for a week post-birth. We accidentally ordered the wrong base and ended up with a bed so high, I had to Fosbury Flop up into it), ran to the bathroom, and threw up. Multiple times. It must have been the violent act of vomiting that dislodged the mucus plug. For a moment, I couldn’t decide which end of me should be prioritised over the toilet bowl. I was both appalled and amazed in equal measure by the bloody, slimy show between my legs. The mucus plug had, after all, served as the protective barrier that had kept my baby safe from bacteria all those months. Isn’t nature clever? 

The tidal shift. My contractions veered to my lower back and I felt the urge to push. The intensity escalated. What did I have at my disposal? Hot water. Papa-to-be ushered me into the shower again. This time half-dressed, pushing into my lower back. When each wave crested, I clung to his neck and felt like a buoy anchored offshore and out of reach. ‘Call the midwife.’ I swayed and rocked, half-crouching as I succumbed to another contraction. Let the body do its thing, I told myself. The mind will follow. 

A phone in an outstretched arm floated for a moment in the bathroom doorway, listening in. I only caught snippets of the conversation in Dutch trying to convince the midwife that she ought to come back. ‘Know you just got home… needs to push… too soon? Oh, you can hear her?’ He reentered the bathroom. I was still bucking like a bronco as yet another contraction came. ‘The midwife had just got home, but she heard how your contractions sounded. She’ll be here in thirty.’

I felt suddenly aware of my body in the harsh bathroom light and against the mouldy tiles, it’s slippery nakedness and its convulsing. I needed to get to dryer ground before the next wave came. I had wanted a water birth, but not like this. I inhaled deeply, willing my legs to move. Left, right, left, right. My arms instinctively held my belly, urging the baby to stay put until help arrived. 

‘Nine centimetres.’ This time, the midwife looked up from between my legs with a look somewhere between surprise and being genuinely impressed. That escalated quickly. Like a dog making circles, I sought out the most comfortable place on the bed. Animal instincts in full swing, I hunkered down on all fours. ‘We can still go to the Bevalcentrum, but we have to go right now,’ the midwife said in a very calm manner. I weighed up my options. Hospital or home? The idea of getting down two flights of Dutch stairs and into a stranger’s Uber amid tsunami after tsunami of contractions was just too much. For those unfamiliar with Dutch stairs, are notoriously narrow and steep. I looked up at papa-to-be, he was already nodding at me. And, just like that, it became a home birth. I had been granted a desert island-refuge when I'd been lost at sea. What a relief.

 

The midwife snapped into action. Quickly and quietly, she made our bedroom suitable to receive a baby. Papa-to-be stepped naturally into the role of midwife’s assistant—it was to be just the three of us. That being said, I was alone on my desert island (the bed) with little awareness of what was going on around me. Every now and then, my partner would kiss my forehead and ask me if I wanted tea—I didn’t—but the sparrow-like sips I had of Vitamin water he offered kept me going. I had expelled so much liquid—sweat, diarrhoea, tears, mucus plug—I needed to replenish. Birth, I was quickly realising, is wet and messy. And, in the Himalayan salt lamp-lit setting of our bedroom, not medical at all. Turns out, birth au naturel is gloriously primal. 

A contraction, like an orgasm or a dream, is impossible to describe. Every woman has their own experience and to reduce it to a string of letters and punctuation is an injustice. What I can say about the second phase of birth—pushing—is that it is like getting caught in the undertow of a wave. It is scary, painful, and beautiful in equal measure. Well, pushing a watermelon through the most delicate part of your body would be, wouldn’t it?

Somewhere a foghorn sounded. Or was it stampeding wild animals? I didn’t realise at first that the loud groaning emanated not from something external, but from deep within me. A primordial siren. I clawed the bed as her birth song surged out with a power I didn’t know I had. With very little break between waves that were intensifying, the pain was all-encompassing. Every muscle fibre, sinew, and neuron was focused on breathing. It was all I had for the pain. Oh, and my hot water bottle, of course, which was, by that time, tepid. ‘Direct your energy down to your baby’ my midwife cooed ever so gently and reassuringly as she travelled to my head-end, having checked the progress at my back-end. No crowning or breaking of waters, but I’m pretty sure she wiped something else away. I had dreaded that the most, but it seemed so insignificant in the wake of yet another vice-like wave. Breathe, god damn it. Breathe. 

They say you have a Big Brain and a Small Brain. Your Big Brain does the clever stuff that helps us live in the modern world like driving a car and coming up with witty captions on Instagram. Our Small Brain is responsible for instinctual behaviour. The cocktail of hormones released during labour effectively shuts down the functioning of the Big Brain, meaning that you run on pure instinct alone. All the worrying I’d done beforehand—about what I might look like, what I should wear and all that anxiety over potentially defecating on my poor partner or midwife—went out of the window. Turns out, there simply isn’t the energy or cranial capacity to worry about such trivial things when pushing a human into the world. 

Even running on pure, unadulterated instinct, I realised my midwife had a point. While the groaning and moaning was spectacular, it sent precious energy out of the wrong hole. On the next contraction, I consciously directed my energy down and pushed and breathed. I tried to catch my breath in the momentary lapse before the next wave came crashing down and I pushed again. Rinse and repeat. 

I had no concept of time. Someone had turned the bedside clock to face the wall. It ebbed slow like honey and as quick as gushing water. I felt like I’d split in two. And sunk into the bed. And floated up to the ceiling. I gripped my partner's arm like a lifeline. 

‘You’re nearly there. You’ll meet your daughter soon. You’re so close.’ 

The head’s out, I thought. Wrong. I hadn’t even crowned. All that pushing! I reached down, not quite believing I wouldn’t feel her head there. It was at this point I broke down. I cried and gasped for air, for strength, for a break. ‘I can’t do this.’ I looked up into my partner’s eyes properly for the first time since pushing began. I was shaky, sweaty and at the absolute apex of my pain threshold. ‘I can’t do this.’ ‘You must.’ He had a point. I was way past the point of no return. No break, no pain relief—not even paracetamol could help me now. It was up to me and me alone to carry our baby across the threshold, as it were. You lucky thing you, being granted the natural birth you had wanted all along.

The pain was unlike any other. Not a ripping, damaging pain, but a forcefield that served to protect. Waves and torrents and tsunamis of pain. I tried to be present, I tried to breathe. I couldn't keep this up much longer. Tick-tock. 

I soon found out why crowning—the point at which the baby’s head finally becomes visible in the fully-dilated birth canal after being pushed slowly down through the cervix—is also known by its other name: The Ring Of Fire. I huffed and puffed and blew the house down. Then my waters broke.

For a moment, time stood still in the quiet between the final set of waves. Her head momentarily held between two worlds. Her watery one and ours. The past and future simultaneously. With one final almighty push from all-fours, I caught her entire body in my arms. Slippery and wet. I held her tightly to my chest for fear she’d slip away like a half-caught fish and it would all have been a dream. I felt the gentle tug of the umbilical cord. She wasn't going anywhere. I looked to my partner, his face streaked with tears just like mine, and we three were happily lost at sea.

Ding-dong. The doorbell broke the spell. The midwife's assistant arrived just in time to capture a few blurry photographs of the scene: bed, blood, baby, bliss. My daughter lay on my chest, her grey-blue eyes open and alert. We waited until the umbilical cord stopped pulsing before my partner cut the cord. It was like cutting a rubber band with chopsticks. And just like that, this tiny creature and I were no longer connected. I had grown her eyes, bones, and fingernails, but now she was her own person.

‘Breathe in,’ I felt a hand on my stomach, ‘exhale.’ Plop. The placenta was suddenly there, on my bed. All big and red and wet. ‘Do you want to keep it?’ I was grateful for this strange, disposable organ, but had no desire to have it encapsulated. I thanked it and sent it on its way. 

The next part is a blur—it was nearly three in the morning and I was high on a cocktail of hormones, trembling and shaking uncontrollably. I’m fairly certain the baby was weighed and checked, I was given a few stitches, and the midwife's assistant urged me to eat something. What I do have is a vivid memory of the sweet tangy smell of birth. Our bed splattered with blood and disposable bed pads. My baby held by her papa, skin-to-skin. And me, trembling like a plane at take-off, trying to eat a hummus and cucumber sandwich. Of all the sandwiches I have had—and will have—none hold as much significance as that humble one.