Now I appreciate that this sounds like an odd thing to say, and also as if I m moaning (again) but sitting on this sofa really isn’t the pleasant and comfortable experience that DFS intended it to be.
This of course is not the fault of the sofa, which is, under normal circumstances, very comfortable indeed, and entirely the fault of the beachball-like appendage attached to my midriff. I am told that birthing balls are good in these circumstances, but I am not sure they are good for balancing a laptop or, for that matter, my dinner. Also, what does one do with a birthing ball after one has given birth? It hardly seems worth the time, expense or sacrifice of harmonious interior design.
Anyway, the baby’s head is now engaged. At least, this is what I was told by the midwife today. She also thinks he may have turned around and be facing the right way. HALLELUJAH. Hopefully this means I will not have to endure “back labour” and be screaming for an epidural before I’ve managed to breathe through the first contraction. Although that said, someone at work was singing the praises of epidurals today and saying she couldn’t believe she had endured her first two labours with only gas and air and wished she’s realised the benefits of painlessness sooner. I am so confused. I thought epidurals were all wrong and a way of evil male doctors reinforcing the patriarchy by making women lie down and endure being ripped apart with forceps and scalpels. I mean, that’s what my hypnobirthing books say. I am so confused. My hypnobirthing books also say women in Africa give birth by finding a suitably secluded tree, then crouching down and breathing the baby out painlessly, which contrasts hugely with what I’ve read in the Guardian, which says women in Africa are all suffering needlessly long labours which last for weeks on end and culminate in obstetric fistula. In whom is a confused mother-to-be to place her trust? The Guardian probably has a better claim to authenticity, given that it has previously been right about a number of things, such as that Jeremy Clarkson is an emissary from the Dark Forces of Patriarchy and that nobody looks good in dungarees, but then I did see a recipe for saag paneer in there today that didn’t include tomatoes and I like tomatoes in my saag paneer, so perhaps I cannot live my life blindly following the Rules of Being a Liberal Feminist set by the Guardian. Also I remain conflicted by an article I read in there a while ago which suggested that same-sex marriage should be opposed by all right-thinking liberals as marriage as a concept reinforces the patriarchal idea that women are the chattels of their husbands and therefore no one-gay or straight-should get married.
The latter is a convenient view for a washed up spinster such as myself to pretend to have, though.
Although the Gaurdian also says I am not a washed up spinster, and that no woman should feel defined by their marital status or how good the Daily Mail says they look in a bikini, which is an even more convenient view to have.
GOD I AM SO CONFLICTED ABOUT LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING. How am I going to write a birth plan expressing my “choices” when there is no consensus about what the right choice is, ever, about anything?
