The birth story series. Part 5.

As much as I hated the gas and it’s effects, I also loved it for the same reason. It helped me to not perceive reality. And during the most painful experience of my life, I actually don’t want to really comprehend the pain.

So I drifted in and out of dreamland while on the gas, all the time feeling every bit of the pain, but not perceiving that the feeling was “pain” because it made my mind so murky that my thoughts were also jumbled.

I hallucinated throughout the end of the birth. I drifted into consciousness and the pain of reality to breathe out the words “epidural please” several times, because when I stopped breathing the gas, I could tell that a lot of time had passed, and this epidural was still “on it’s way”. I thought Craig and my doula needed more convincing. Apparently, it was really just a staffing issue. In the wee hours of Easter Saturday, 3 other women were labouring, and one needed an emergency c section. So she obviously took precedence over my needs right then. I’m a little disappointed now that even though I asked for the epidural at least 4 hours before I birthed, it still didn’t arrive in time. Next time I’ll hire my own anaesthetist, too!

In my hallucinations I was dying. I saw shapes in black and white. This must have been during the peak of a contraction. The darkness (the pain) would cover all of the white, until the white was just a pin prick in my vision. I would stop sucking the gas, because I thought, that’s it, I’m dead. I should walk towards the light… And then the reality would set in, and the bathroom would become clear again, and I realised that I was experiencing such extreme pain, that I had stopped breathing and instead, had been waiting for death to take hold of me. The dawning of this reality made the pain even worse, so I grabbed back the gas and would suck it down again until I could no longer think clearly again. So it was in this dreamland that I indulged in. I sucked the gas as much as I could before passing out (tip: keep a small amount of light around), then I’d regulate my breathing so that I could stay with the visions and not come out of it. Because coming out of the haze into reality was too overwhelming.

I had fallen to the floor during this time, and my doula found me a birthing ball to hang over. They diligently dug their glorious hands into my back with every wave. In my hazy dreamland, I said “thankyou for my cloud” which was the last phrase I muttered before delivery.