The midwife is quite surprised

Tess Hoens' life is amazing, but getting pregnant didn't go as she had thought. Because there is already enough of a facade and because honesty helps, she writes about how her pregnancy is going. This week she talks about the first contractions.

‘Check if the amniotic fluid is clear,’ comes the voice from the bedroom while I sit on the toilet letting everything flow out without making a mess. If the amniotic fluid is clear, then there is no reason to act quickly and you can call the midwife the next morning, that's what we had learned. But since it keeps flowing, I call anyway. Could it be that the little one is getting too dry? A midwife I have seen very often in practice answers. Great! She tells me that it can't hurt and that we might as well go back to sleep for a bit. The labor is coming, but after the waters break, it often takes hours, if not days, for the contractions to start. As I hang up, I feel a nagging sensation in my lower abdomen, probably just nerves. I walk to bed but feel the pain getting stronger. These can't be contractions already, can they?

I step into the shower. Just to calm down and let the warm water ease the cramps. But it gets increasingly intense. ‘I think the contractions have really started,’ I say hesitantly to my boyfriend because it still feels like I'm talking nonsense. We decide to time how often they come and how long they last with an app that keeps track of that. The nerves I felt after my waters broke are fading and I feel brave, puffing here in the shower while I still make jokes in between. A feeling of ‘yeah, I can do this’ prevails. When my boyfriend checks the app to see how much time there is between each contraction, it turns out to be only two minutes. Two minutes! There should still be at least ten in this stage, right? This time he takes the phone and calls the midwife again. She is, to say the least, quite surprised. She asks him if I still want to give birth in the hospital. Then she wants to meet us there immediately and not waste time by coming here first. In a hurry, he starts packing things while I stay in the shower as long as possible. ‘Your dad wants to take us, he’ll be here in three minutes,’ he says. I step out of the shower and put on only a bathrobe over my bare body, which keeps falling open because it's made of silk. My boyfriend cautiously suggests putting on something more covering, but I refuse.

There we are, outside in the soft night of a heatwave, waiting for our transport to take us to the place where this adventure continues. Where our son will be born. Between contractions, we kiss each other briefly, pausing to appreciate the special moment, in the calm of the night.

A car comes speeding up and through all the haze of pain, I immediately recognize by the driving style that it's my dad. I get in the front and squeeze my eyes shut, it’s becoming increasingly unbearable and I groan, grunt, and mumble while feeling nauseous. Focus! Don’t throw up in the car. We arrive and the midwife is ready with a wheelchair into which I let myself fall. The large hall is completely empty, except for a security guard. As she pushes me through the large hall, she tells me that there was no room available with a bath. I wanted to give birth in the bath, or at least catch some contractions in it, that’s what I had planned. But I couldn’t care less anymore. I’m starting to feel exhausted and the only thing I can imagine having strength for is lying in a bed.