Bad Mother's Revenge
By Sonia Neale
()
About this ebook
Sonia Neale
Sonia Neale is a desperate housewife and mother. She has a wicked sense of humour, has published her short pieces on the Bad Mother's Club website and performs regularly on ABC Local Radio on the subject of the horrors of motherhood. She adores her three children, but frequently wishes they lived somewhere else. Far away.
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Bad Mother's Revenge - Sonia Neale
1
Q: SO, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT’S REALLY LIKE?
A: Fornication, Gestation, Lactation, Frustration, Vexation
In the Beginning
‘You’re pregnant!’ said my doctor, fifteen years ago.
Immediately, I sank into a state of blissful consciousness – a state of mind Supreme Buddhist monks spend six months of deep meditation and extreme fasting to achieve.
And there was more bliss to come – much more.
It wasn’t until I threw up my breakfast of olives and salami on toast every morning that I truly knew what cravings and morning sickness was all about. Just looking at my toothbrush guaranteed an extra blissful heave.
A pre-paid, pre-pregnant holiday to Bali left me feeling queasy; every morning I hung over the toilet bowl in our Legian Hotel. Not so different from when I’d been to Bali before, in a non-pregnant state, when I somehow always found myself listlessly resting my chin on the rim of the toilet seat, heaving my guts out in exactly the same fashion. Nothing to do with the pub crawl the previous evening of course, and everything to do with drinking the local water.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
When we got back from Bali, my boss informed me that daydreaming about impending motherhood was not in my job description, so I had to give up paid employment.
By this time I had a preggy brain, a state of mind that remains with some mothers until the last child leaves home. I spent the next six months rocking in my armchair, eating for two and watching my kneecaps slowly disappear.
I had no qualms about giving birth. I was having a drug-free, natural birth. Just how hard can it be to breathe and push?
Confidence is a state of mind, never more so than when you are completely ignorant of the facts.
And I was still as ignorant after attending ante-natal classes as I had been when I first walked into the class. Giving birth, I truly believed, would be a series of mildly uncomfortable contractions followed by a slight burning sensation when the baby’s head crowned.
These little pearls of wisdom were – of course – written by a man who would never have had the pleasure of delivering something the size of a bowling ball from an orifice the size of a ping-pong ball. If men had to give birth there would be only one child per family. Eventually, not only would we have zero population growth, but we’d also end up with population zero.
The mirth of birth
Having a birth plan is not quite the same as giving birth.
I planned my pregnancy according to the books and glossy magazines I read. Trouble was, my pregnancy hadn’t read the same books as I.
I was sixteen days overdue, had gestational diabetes, varicose veins and a haemorrhoid the size of a maternity hospital before high blood pressure dictated I be induced. Postnatal depression put in an appearance even before my baby was born.
In other words, prior to giving birth I felt I had already failed as a mother.
Failure #1: The induction
An induced twelve hour labour, an alarming dose of pre-eclampsia and an epidural that didn’t deliver what the glossy magazines had promised it would had not been part of my birth plans.
Pain was never an option. In fact, pain was not an option in any event of my life. Breathing exercises were highly overrated. Besides, should pain occur, the drugs and the spinal tap were going to take care of that particular problem.
Finally, I came to the conclusion that a birth plan, as with a hospital bowel management plan, was yet another of life’s oxymorons. No amount of laxatives or enemas can ever prepare you for that first excruciating crap.
If your baby rips you a new vagina then the first post-delivery bowel motion is akin to ripping you a new anus.
Failure #2: My unbreakable waters
OK, so it was a teaching hospital and we had let our medical insurance lapse so we could afford a new nursery. But now, with hindsight, I can see that paying a hefty monthly fee for insurance would have been far less painful than having a medical student spending sixty minutes up my whatsit trying to break my waters.
Finally, the senior doctor came in, put an evil looking hook on his finger, slashed at my vagina once and opened the floodgates.
Failure #3: The epidural
Another real doctor stabbed me in the back with a sharp needle; my husband experienced sympathy pains and promptly passed out. I lay there in agony while the doctors and nurses fussed around, handing him cups of tea and sympathy.
I couldn’t wait for him to come around so I could dig my fingernails into his hands during the next contraction, which would have been his punishment for having the effrontery to faint.
Failure #4: The failed epidural (the ‘It Could Only Happen to Me’ syndrome)
Before the induction started working I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, laughing and joking with the staff, thinking that waves of intermittent contractions were, as my mother told me, like riding waves at the beach.
As a teenager I’d suffered badly from period cramps, so I was the full bottle on what to expect, how to expect it and how much to expect.
At last, all lights were green and things were beginning to happen. We’d been fed and watered and excitedly awaited that first contraction. Ten minutes later, when I threw up my dinner and screamed for an epidural, several polar bears at the North Pole put their paws over their ears.
Like thousands of women before me, whose own mothers had subscribed to some conspiracy theory that giving birth was more like a gentle breeze than a fully fledged hurricane, I decided to regress into my childhood and started swearing and crying.
It’s my birth and I’ll cry if I want to. So I’m a baby giving birth to a baby. What amazes me is that I endured a full ten minutes of unendurable pain before screaming blue murder for the epidural.
It’s not that I’m a wimp, it’s just that my experience was the most harrowing and torturous ever. In the entire hospital. On the entire continent. In fact, in the whole world.
It was two hours after the epidural was administered before the doctor arrived and yet another two before it started to work. Then the needle began to worm its way out. Another two hours later it fell out. For good.
We learnt our lesson. Next time around we pre-booked the epidural at about the same time I went off the pill. Just to make sure.
I started to point out to the midwife that this wasn’t the birth I’d planned, that I was feeling rather cheated. She gave me a mask to suck on. I sucked and sucked, like a baby on its mother’s breast. Throughout the night I refused to be weaned and eventually, a tug of war broke out. The nurse, being much cleverer than me, switched the gas from nitrous oxide to oxygen. Without my permission, I might add. I still have issues over that.
And I still have lingering embarrassment over defecating on the labour room table, even though the mess was discreetly removed by a tactful nurse. The things we go through so we can be abused by our children when they become teenagers.
Failure #5: Post-epidural headache
Far worse than any self-induced hangover is the post-epidural headache, the one that makes you want to throw up every time you sit up. I had to sit up a lot in a vain attempt to breastfeed my mostly uncooperative baby.
My head felt brain-damaged and my mutilated nipples were pillars of agony. All my nighties smelled like a yoghurt factory. As well, my breath stank of onions and garlic, even though I hadn’t eaten any of these offending vegetables in recent days.
Every person I’d ever known decided to visit at exactly the same time, and they were all in a very jolly and happy mood.
Failure #6: Unnatural childbirth
Years later, after I’d unsuccessfully given birth to my three happy and healthy children, I received a phone call from a very smug first-time mother who proudly told me she’d very successfully delivered the perfect birth plan. I’m not sure if there was a child involved or not. Naturally, her plan was without drugs. Naturally, without pain. Naturally.
Apparently my birth experiences sat somewhere between the abnormal and the artificial. I told her that it’s easy for people without feelings to have a pain-free birth.
Failure #7: It’s a girl
Somewhere along the line, I got it into my thick head that having a girl first would be a disappointment.
Perhaps I would have been right if I lived in India or China, but Australia is, most of the time, a far more enlightened country. After a couple of hours I changed my mind and was glad I had a daughter, a view I held on to until she became a teenager.
Giving birth is like getting swept out to sea during a Force 10 hurricane and being repeatedly hit by an ocean liner, until finally, you get tossed into the eye of the storm, only giving birth is considerably more terrifying and painful. Surviving the distance through to the other side is called Parenting.
Multiple climaxes
A euphoric state of intoxicating bliss enraptured with the sheer joy of life itself. This is the definition of my first pregnancy.
Thirteen years later my euphoric state of intoxicating bliss turned into The Exorcist.
Here’s some Bad Mother maternity definitions that don’t exist in parenting propaganda magazines.
The pregnancy test
This is the acid test designed to undermine even the strongest of relationships.
A pregnant pause
The length of time between a stranger asking, ‘When is your baby due?’ and your reply that you are NOT. ACTUALLY. PREGNANT.
Here’s some wise advice from someone who learnt the hard way. Unless you actually see a baby’s head emerging from between someone’s legs – never, ever enquire if they are expecting a visit from the stork.
A postnatal examination
This involves having your head examined by a health professional at the very thought of going through pregnancy and childbirth again, with the added bonus of now having a gorgeous little toddler to help you maintain moments of decentralisation as you cognitively regress through the next nine months.
Moments such as these.
Morning sickness
A malady of unknown origin suffered mainly by non-pregnant people who have no desire to get up in the mornings and go to work.
Everything you wanted to know about labour but were afraid to ask
Sheila Kitzinger, Earth Mother Extraordinaire, equates labour and childbirth to riding waves of ecstasy before budding flowers open to full bloom. I read her books before I gave birth to The Exorcist; this line is a classic from Sheila’s book.
‘Childbirth is like having one huge climactic experience.’
Thank goodness I was not having twins or triplets. I don’t think I could have handled multiple climactic experiences.
Without passing judgement, I think Sheila might be faking her childbirths. And why not? After all, I’ve done a pretty good job of faking motherhood so far.
I was more than two weeks overdue with my daughter and she was dragged out of me by her head, kicking and screaming.
Nothing has changed. I do the same thing every school morning.
My first son not only arrived on schedule, but he also took only five gentle and peaceful hours to do so, thanks to the pre-booked epidural.
With my third child I opted for an elective caesarian, which is why he has a round head and my other two children don’t. He weighed 5.5 kilograms.
If I start getting clucky again, I’ll be opting for an elective frontal lobotomy.
Bad mother’s revenge frictionary – definitions of maternity
Afterpains
The rest of your natural life. Get over it.
Amneurotic fluid
What gets into your bloodstream and makes you cry at anything, even Bruce Willis films.
Anti-natal
Someone who never wants children, not in any circumstances.
Bladdered
The condition we end up in after celebrating the brief moment when all three children attend the same school, in the same location, at the same time.
Co-lick-ed
Finally, coming to the end of that stage where the baby screams and throws up during every feed.
Defoetus
The way we feel, ten years after giving birth to our last child, when we finally admit that motherhood, glittering career and that mature-age university degree just ain’t gonna happen.
Delivery sweets
Your wonderful friends who know that Lindt chocolates are better than a basket full of nappy pins, plastic pants and baby bum creams.
Demand feeding
What the rest of the family do if you’re dumb enough to let them see you anywhere near the kitchen.
Dumbrella
Taking the baby out in the pram and not noticing the increasingly dark cloud cover. Only when it buckets down do you realise you have left a rather vital piece of equipment back at the house.
Easy-peasy-otomy
Being convinced by virginal hospital staff that a 20 centimetre perineal cut heals quicker than a 2.5 centimetre tear.
Expectant father
Arguably, the most useless piece of equipment in a labour ward.
Fall-open tubes
Where the ova slide down the chute in order to become little people and, eventually, quite big ones who want to borrow the car and stay out all night.
Formulark
Trying to count and pour six scoops of powdered milk into a bottle of boiling water, getting up to number three and wondering if you weren’t actually at number four instead, thus having to ditch the whole lot and start the process again. This time you manage to get to number four before you lose count.
Functioning brain
An urban legend.
Home confinement
The next twenty years of your life.
Hormoanal
What he can hear ringing in his ears as he drives down the road.
Hysterectummy
Of course you can’t see the scar; your stomach’s hanging over it.
La-boring
The thirty-ninth week of your first pregnancy, when you think you are going to die of boredom, not realising that this is actually the best week of your life.
Lack-tation
Having to put baby on the bottle.
Materminator
Threatening your children with bodily harm on a daily basis.
Maternitty gritty
Tall stories and urban legends of the horrors of childbirth.
Menstrual cycle
What your husband gets on to pedal away from the fallout.
Midwiffy
That embarrassing moment during labour when you realise that your intense pushing has produced something other than a newborn healthy baby.
Monopause
The monotony of suffering various indignities due to the ageing process.
Mucus plug
Something left on the floor of the shower after your two boys have been there.
Nazi Nursing Mothers’ Association
‘We have ways of making you breastfeed.’ The NNMA Manifesto clearly states that every mother can breastfeed, and if you can’t, you just aren’t trying hard enough.
Neonatal
A character from The Matrix.
Ovary-ters Anonymous
Where hysterectummies go to get in touch with their inner Kate Moss.
Pelvic flawed muscles