Octopus 22

21.02.22

I'm standing in the supermarket, just before the checkout. Propped up against a freezer. I can't remember whether it contained ice cream or frozen vegetables. I look dreamily into the freezer while Nicolas and Franca buzz through the shop and do another bulk purchase. Nicolas likes bulk shopping. Because we're hungry from the hike and the birth could start at any moment, the shopping trolley is full to the brim. I blame my slowness on the hike and the car journey, but I can't think logically and keep putting individual items in the shopping trolley. Ground hazelnuts, for example, you can always use them.
Nicolas finds me at the freezer and asks if everything is OK. Of course everything is okay and he continues on his way. I stop and feel a pulling sensation in my abdomen. It's very similar to the pulling I've been feeling for the past two weeks. Lower contractions, I think. But this contraction is different from the contractions before. Not because it is more painful, but because I am forced to go into my inner space. The supermarket becomes a blur while I am only occupied with the feeling. The feeling passes, Franca calls me to the magazines and we decide on a Vogue because it has an extra long horoscope section. I'd never bought a Vogue before.

When I get home, I run myself a bath with arnica essence. Again, because I think I'm tired from the trip. Nicolas goes into the kitchen to make lasagne because we're all hungry. Franca sits down with me and reads me my two-page horoscope. I keep getting this feeling in my stomach and I sink into myself again. I didn't notice anything about the horoscope.

I feel like I want to be alone. I get out of the bath dreamily and head straight for the bedroom. Only now do I realise that something is different. Confused, I lie down on the bed in my pants and T-shirt, close my eyes and listen. In the last few weeks of pregnancy, a refrain I had heard on Tiktok kept coming back to my mind: „Whenever you're ready“. So I google the chorus, find the song ‚Surrender‘, switch on the noise-cancelling headphones and listen. With my hands on my stomach, I feel more connected to the person inside than ever before. Crying, I try to tell him*her that I'm ready. That was the most carefree moment of the birth.

I keep getting this feeling in my stomach. No one had ever explained to me what the start of labour felt like. It was always „you just know when it starts“. It's starting now, but I don't know yet. So I'm unsettled by the recurring feeling and ask my sister Lara via Telegram how to tell when labour is starting. Then I download a labour counter app because I can't manage to look at my watch during the intense feeling. In the app, you just have to tap when the feeling starts and when it ends. Hoping to understand from a regularity that this is the start of labour. The feeling comes back every six to three minutes and lasts about a minute. Because I think it's regular, I call Nicolas. He had long since realised that something was strange. But as I had previously said that I wanted to be left alone during the birth, he stays in the kitchen and keeps peeking in through the door. So I call him and tell him that I think it's starting and that I'd like to call Lena. I tell Lena about the feeling. She asks me if I just want to tell her or if I want her to come. I want her to come because I want to find out what's going on. She announces that she will get the children ready for bed and then come.

In the meantime, Anngret has come to visit without knowing what might be going on. Everyone seems excited but doesn't come any closer to me. Because I am convinced that things are about to start, I start the birth meditation from „The Peaceful Birth“ and sink into myself a little. Gradually, the feeling in my stomach becomes a pain and I find it difficult to stay with the meditation. I no longer manage to just lie on my back and hold my belly, but take the position of the child and start breathing deeply into my belly. Breathe in as long and as deeply as possible, stretching my belly out and exhaling quickly.

When Lena arrives, I have already picked up the exercise ball to help me and am savouring the feeling of leaning over it. She asks me what I want and I decide I want to be examined. My cervix is two centimetres dilated and Lena confirms that I'm ready to go. That's all I need at that moment. So Lena goes back home to get some more sleep. But I can always call her if I need her. She talks to Nicolas on the way out, but I don't hear much of it. Nicolas and Anngret then set up the pool in the living room and get everything ready: Plastic under the sheet from the sofa, Nicolas„ desk in Franca's room. We had discussed all this well, I know they know what to do. I'm still in the bedroom, breathing away the pulling and the pain. Anngret comes to my bedside at some point to say goodbye. I tell her that we all have to go to bed now. I feel drunk and the way the others treat me is similar. They smile inwardly and do as I wish. Anngret has gone and the three of us sit down at the kitchen table to eat lasagne, which has been ready for a long time. Because I was so busy with the labour, I hadn't read Lara's answer and asked Franca to read it to me. Leaning over my lasagne, Franca reads out a few confusing things: “You'll notice when the contractions stop in the bath„, “No, the other way round„, “You'll definitely notice when you feel thirsty". Although I now know I'm in labour, the news confirms it. I feel like I've lost it. After dinner, I ask everyone to go to bed. I can tell it's going to be a while yet and I want us to get some more rest.

From the time I'm in bed, I no longer have any sense of time. I put the headphones back on and try to go into hypnosis. However, the contractions become more and more intense and come so often that I don't really succeed. I stick to breathing deep into my stomach, but this slowly makes me feel sick. I run to the loo and vomit. I lie down again, try to breathe, then I have a contraction and vomit again. In the meantime, Nicolas has put a bucket by the bed. All the delicious lasagne is now out again. I try to drink and vomit again. Because I feel so sick, I give up breathing and only breathe very shallowly during the contractions. Focussing on deep breathing always brings on the nausea. So I breathe lightly. I tense up so much that Nicolas asks me to keep breathing: „You have to breathe“. I get angry. He doesn't know any better advice. In the meantime, I start to shake and feel very weak. Now I ask Nicolas to call Lena and go into the shower, hoping that the warm water might somehow relieve some of this incredible tension. The warm water on my back is pleasant, but doesn't do much for my breathing and pain. I stand, squat, stand, squat. My eyes are almost always closed. I am so weak that I have to stop showering, dry myself slightly and lie down on the prepared couch.

Lena is coming. Lena finally arrives. It's around 2 a.m. and she immediately emphasises that she thought I'd call much earlier. That she thought she could only sleep for two hours. „You've already done a lot“. I huddle on the couch and wish for instructions, some kind of help from Lena so that it's not so bad. I'm shaking. Nicolas tells her how things have gone so far. Lena asks for pretzel sticks and Coke for me. Nicolas had wisely bought these on a tip from Nele, although when I asked: „Do you think you'll want Coke during labour?“ he replied: „Oh no, nonsense“. Lena gives me a Buscopan suppository (probably my first suppository since I can remember) and guides me. She lies down behind me, presses against my coccyx, notices how I cramp and offers me a sound. In contrast to the peaceful birth, the focus is on exhalation. I finally find something to deal with the pain. I accept the sound, not particularly loud, but powerful. My voice sits on the pain and glides down it until the contraction slowly subsides. Wave yes, but also contraction, it hurts so damn much. It hurts, but I can feel the strength returning to my body. I ask Lena to stop walking from now on. Lena replies as a matter of course: „I'm staying here now, we're going to have your baby“. And this security gives me confidence. I realise how every birth is so different. While my sister kept telling me that she didn't need outside instructions during labour and always knew exactly what to do next, I just needed the midwife by my side. I know that she wouldn't do anything I didn't want her to do, and that's why I want to let myself fall into her knowledge, her motherliness and her wisdom in order to escape the helplessness. To hand over responsibility to the outside world in order to do this job with Babylaska, who is still alive inside me and is now on her way to being born.

In the meantime, Franca has also arrived, I think she's sitting at the entrance to the room, very still, waiting to be used. Lena asks Nicolas and Franca to fill the pool. I don't notice much of it, one contraction follows another and I am overwhelmed by the effort. I'm delighted when I'm allowed into the pool. In hindsight, I learn that the contractions were so frequent that Lena was hoping the water would relax me and shorten the intervals between contractions. It takes a while for this effect to kick in, but it works. From two to three minutes between contractions to four to five minutes. I don't move around much, I keep taking the straw with cola and the pretzel sticks in small doses. I alternate between the Yogi Squad, this one turned sideways, and sitting on the little air cushion in the birthing pool. I keep thinking about the ‘peaceful birth„, frustrated at not being hypnotised. I have long since taken off the headphones and try to imagine my place of power for a moment. I slowly let go of the idea of experiencing this birth under hypnosis. I waver between focusing on the contractions and wanting to distract myself from them. But I am there, in every moment I am in this room, in this pool, in my home. From that moment in the pool, different moments blur into one another in my memory. Lena asks for apple for me and I get apple. Ellie comes quietly into the room. It's quiet in the room the whole time anyway, which is why everything I do feels loud. Later I find out that this also sounded very quiet. Ellie says: “Hello Kattalin, I'm Ellie. I'm here from now on too„. I reply: “Hello Ellie„ and am glad of the care that is in every drop of vapour in the room. Everyone is in this 14m2 room, the pool, the baby and me, Lena, Nicolas, Franca, Ellie and even Puka is lying on her blanket and just being there. The night is quiet. I keep asking someone to press against my coccyx. I can't quite tell who is doing the pushing in which labour, but I push against it every time. I notice how the muscles in their arms have to work to withstand this contraction. It helps. A little. But it's still unbearable. In between, I slip from sounding to a whiny squeak and Lena keeps saying to me: “Don't cry, you can do it„, “You've already done so much„, “You're doing great„. Lena leaves the room to make a phone call. I only notice in passing that it's exciting. Phone calls at night are always exciting. But especially now. Lena comes back and explains that the second midwife has now also given birth and that Ellie (who is actually still doing her induction) will be the second midwife. It doesn't worry me at all. I feel safe. And yet I'm scared of what is and what is to come. Everyone but me is wearing a mask, but that makes no difference to me. It also makes no difference to me that the midwives wear gloves during examinations. Again and again, Lena or Ellie brings a device to my stomach to listen to the baby's heartbeat. Lena tries to examine me vaginally as little as possible and I'm happy every time she examines me vaginally because then I find out where we stand. How long a person can put up with that. Lena keeps asking me if I want to go to the toilet. For the life of me, I can't imagine getting up. I don't want to. At some point she says in an astonishingly demanding tone that I should go to the toilet now and helps me up. So I follow her. I walk to the loo with my legs wide open in my bathrobe, I have a contraction in the corridor, another in the loo, I pee a little. Again, I only realise afterwards that walking and peeing can sometimes help the birth process. I plod back into the pool. I just want to get into the pool. I just want to crouch down. Just as I had learnt from breathing what the best birthing positions are, I avoid anything that resembles the typical hospital birth supine position. I say, “I can't take any more„ and that's when Lena knows I'm fully dilated. Lena offers to examine me herself. Without really feeling any desire to do so, I do and feel something that feels like a water balloon in my vagina. I am startled and Lena tells me that this is my waters. During one of the following contractions, I feel a cracking in my body and I imagine I can hear it. I am startled and because you can't see the amniotic fluid pouring into the pool, you can only smell it. This vivid odour that I can't describe immediately hits my nose. In between, Nicolas and Franca collect bits of faeces from the water with a sieve. I don't really notice it. Slowly, I feel the urge to push during the contraction. It burns, it pulls, it bites. I can feel something moving out of me. Lena only asks me to push as long as the labour is there, not beyond. I want it to be over so badly that I probably would have kept pushing. So I stop and again and again I feel the head move back as soon as I stop pushing. So tedious. I push and push and it comes, it comes and as soon as I stop, it slips back again. This is necessary so that everything is slowly stretched, but I can't think about this abstraction at the moment. So I feel the contraction coming, start to push and intensify the pressure. Lena offers me a new position that I had resisted for so long. I lean my back against the pool wall and spread my legs out in front of me. But it's the right position. With Franca's hand on my right and Nicola's on my left, I can lean into them with every contraction. I need this support to exert this enormous force. As if I were pushing the baby away from me. And releasing it into my own life. At some point, the school bell rings and for a brief moment I realise that while I'm giving birth here, normal life is taking its course outside and I feel like I'm enclosed in a magical sphere. Lena keeps checking and at one point tells me to feel for myself. But I don't want to feel, I want it to stop. Lena takes my hand and holds it to the head that is peeking out of my vulva. This unforgettable feeling of feeling a hard, hairy head coming out of you. I'm fascinated and terrified at the same time. I take my hands again and squeeze. And it takes time. Many contractions until the head is born. And this is the only moment in the whole labour when I feel like screaming. I support myself and push along with my voice. The head is there and I can take a deep breath. I really have almost made it now. One or two more contractions and everything slips out of me in one go. Lena receives the baby and immediately places it on my chest. Laska cries out without hesitation. I am overwhelmed. I'm so happy and overwhelmed and almost a little embarrassed. I've given birth to a human being under witness and I've never learnt how to deal with it. Ellie and Lena cover the baby with lots of towels. I am happy and look at the creature and am a little shocked by the shape of the head, the hair colour and the skin colour. You can see the labour of the last few hours. And you are screaming. And I wonder whether you have a penis or a vulva. I ask myself what I never wanted to know and what I wish I had never known. But as a parent, I have no choice but to find out and deal with it. I say it out loud: “What is it?" I say the sentence that I find so silly. It's a baby and everyone knows what I mean. Lena laughs and asks me to look. I look and see a swollen testicle and a small penis. Nicola's face on the left, Franca's on the right. I feel smiles and tears.

Lena asks me if I would like to give birth in the pool. I would like to. But because nothing happens, Lena asks me to stand up. I get up from the blood-covered pool, lift my leg over the pool wall, which somehow works, even though I've just given birth to a head. Blood flows out of me as I take two steps to the sofa. I lie down on the bed, still holding the baby on my chest. I feel energised by what has just happened. Proud like perhaps never before in my life. I have achieved something that I would never have imagined at the time. Rationally, this person had to get out of me, but emotionally and semiotically I had given up for a moment because I thought I would suffocate from the pain.

Lena and Ellie fiddle with my abdomen. Ellie tries to help me attach the baby to my breast so that the milk donor reflex releases oxytocin, which in turn causes the uterus to contract and expel the placenta. Nothing happens. Lena tells me to give an oxytocin injection to help the afterbirth. I have no objections. Here, too, I trust that Lena will intervene to the best of her knowledge and belief. The injection goes into the thigh muscle. I feel a contraction coming, I push, nothing comes. I push and it hurts. Just like before, only lighter, but I am still amazed at the intensity. The placenta is born. It comes out of me like a soft jellyfish. Lena asks who wants to cut the umbilical cord. Everyone looks at each other, we had never discussed who would do it. We sense that Nicolas wants to do it. Lena helps him. I can see in his face how strange he finds the feeling of cutting into this thick piece of flesh with the scissors. He pulls himself together, cuts and cries.

The story of my first birth goes up to this point, and I want to tell you what happened afterwards, but it's all so exciting to this day that I couldn't find an ending. That's why I'll stick to this day, your birthday. The rest of that day, 22.02.22, was like being wrapped in cotton wool. Lena, Ellie and Franca retired to have breakfast. Nicolas, Laska and I lay there. Just my great-grandparents' white blankets over the blood. You were lying on Nicolas' bare chest and you were just there now. Ellie and Franca came back with a beautiful print of the placenta. This now hangs over our family bed. I first had jam sandwiches, later a delicious muesli and didn't really move from the sofa until the afternoon. Lena did the first checks on the baby and weighed it. She went into the shower with me. The few steps to the bathroom were difficult, I was standing in the shower with bloody, soaked fluid running out of me. My pelvic floor was so weak that I had to pee without realising it. It was burning. Lena stayed with me in the shower because she was worried about my circulation. I slipped into the glitter pants I had bought especially for the occasion. Postpartum in fine style - I was happy about this precaution. The two midwives slowly left us. Lena came round again in the evening. I moved into bed and we slept a lot. You lay between us. That first night I couldn't bear that you weren't lying with me, so I laid you protectively right next to my belly. You were in there and for the first few days I would have to detach myself from you and my feeling of being solely responsible for you. Breastfeeding was still strange, a bit clumsy, uncomfortable.

I was happy. The way you were born was as good as it could be. It was hard and perfect. And I know that I am not solely responsible for it and I am so grateful for that.