The fears of giving birth (and One Born Every Minute)

I need to stop watching One Born Every Minute. I can’t handle it. 

I’d watched it a couple of times before, but now I can’t get enough. You can watch the entire back catalogue of series on 4OD, and knowing that you’re going to go through it yourself makes it even more compelling. (I did the same with Don’t Tell The Bride while planning my wedding, and haven’t watched it since.) But it isn’t good for me. The emotional roller coaster, even when everything goes smoothly, is too much. Any given episode can result in worry, panic and tears. All the tears. 

And of course it makes you address the fact that at some point, you’re going to have to push a baby out. The range of emotions while watching goes a little something like this: 

When women arrive at the hospital writhing around in pain, and get sent straight back home again…

And you feel like, ‘I wonder if I could handle that without an epidural?’ And the answer is ‘probably not’, but you don’t want to be one of those women who looks like she’s pushing really hard but can’t feel a thing, so may well just be exercising her grimace muscles. 

And you consider hynobirthing, but think you’re probably too cynical for it to work. Then you take a moment to pause and think about just how big 10 cm is. Ouch. (This… #sorrynotsorry)

And then the baby starts coming but its head is upside down or it’s coming out bottom first or bursting out of the mother’s stomach like an alien (C-section specific) and you think, HOW THE HELL WILL I EVER DO THAT?! 

And you consider having a water birth (because baths are great, right?) but then you think about what you end up swimming around in… 

 And just when you think perhaps you’ll just keep your legs crossed and hope it all goes away, the baby is out. And it’s being handed to the mother for the first time.