If you have ever been pregnant, the thought of being made to go through it against your will is sickening
I write this on my birthday, a date when traditionally my mother likes to reminisce about her labour. I was a much-wanted baby, and that love has carried me throughout my life. I have never, for a fragment of a second, doubted it. I used to gently tease my mother about her reminiscences, but now that I have my own baby I understand the impulse more. In the past few weeks, I have been trying to put what happened during my own labour to bed, or at least arrive at a place of full acceptance. I was not traumatised, as I feared I would be, but there is still a process that needs to happen, a mourning perhaps of the birth I thought I would have.
One day, when my son is grown and it is his birthday, and he asks me how it is that he came into this world, I would like to be able to tell him a positive, happy story. I think this is what people tried to do when he arrived unexpectedly early, and they said, “he couldn’t wait to meet you”. It isn’t true but it somehow soothes, in retrospect, the terror I felt when my waters broke early. These are the stories we tell each other and our children. They are palimpsests. The text beneath is written in blood, and it says that 50 years ago, 100 years ago, we would be dead.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author Continue reading...
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