Now that I can sit down without wincing (much) and go for short walks I have decided that the time has come to review the notes that I took during my labour and attempt to form them into some sort of coherent thought. At the outset I should be clear that I have a healthy little girl and that therefore my efforts in the delivery room have been worth it. Similarly I should apologise now should this piece not be up to my usual standard but lack of sleep recently has resulted in my mind becoming somewhat sluggish and denuded of creative thought.

I tried to take notes throughout my labour, assuming that someone – if only my child-to-be – might be interested in reading them. Like all writers I have a splinter of ice in my heart that means any interesting situation is ‘material’ and my birth process was no different. What stands out most about my birth diary is that as soon as the hospital gave me heavy painkillers the notes stop immediately and they weren’t the only thing to be so dramatically affected.

I had wanted a romantic home birth with a birthing pool and three lovely midwives to help me but a visit to prenatal clinic changed my opinion. The midwife in attendance that day told me that lots of first time mums order the pool for the home birth and then ring a couple of hours into the contractions so that they can be admitted to hospital and be given pain relief. Even if I had not made this decision beforehand I would have still ended up in hospital as the baby was a week overdue and we decided to have the birth induced. İIwas grateful as I was fed up carrying the big lump on my belly and was curious to see what my body had made.

Despite being fairly worry free throughout the pregnancy I had three distressing child related dreams on the Sunday night prior to being admitted to hospital on the Monday. İn the first my friend Shaa’s son was attacked by his nanny with a metal spike, in the second my sister had had two more children without telling me and İ was made to feel foolish as İ tried to introduce them to people who already knew them and in the third I was attending a party being held by some glove puppets (?!) in a house built into a cliff face. At some point late in the evening one of the glove puppet kiddies toppled out of a window and into the sea below and drowns. She is fished out soggy and limp and İ wring the water from her fabric body and try unsuccesfully to give her the kiss of life.

A crude self analysis tells me that Dream 1 represents my old doubts about whether to have a chil or not resurfacing. Dream 2 represents my fears that İ may be unable to bond with and establish a good relationship with my child and Dream 3 could perhaps be construed as a fear of being unable to care adequately for any child in my custody. None of them were reassuring fantasies and the only positive thing i was able to take from them was that all the terrible events happened at one remove –I didn’t see myself directly failing my own child.

In that positive mind set we left for the hospital and I checked in at 9.30 Monday morning, routine tests were done on me and the first contaction inducing pessary was given at 3pm-ish. Hours later there was no result and at 10pm I was given a second hormone tablet. My journal at this point is lucid, I note happily that my contractions conveniently don’t begin till the end of CSİ (a favourite TV programme), I am examined and found to have dilated 1.5cm out of the prerequiste ten and that the pain I am feeling is somewhat akin to someone pressing their foot hard into my lower back, uncomfortable but not unbearable. The pain intensifies through out the night and I wander the lonely blue-lit hospital corridors seeking Rachel the midwife in the hope she can give me something for the pain. The paracetamol are just the first instalments in a series of narcotics.

At 7am my mum and Sezgin are with me and İ am in serious pain, the contractions monitor İ am on is showing readings of between 70 and 80 and for birth around 100 is average. My dilation however is exceptionally slow and I have only opened up inside to about 3cm. By now I am groaning in pain and the contractions are only minutes apart. The midwives put me on to gas and air and the relief is immediate. So much so that I am able to put pen to paper and scribble how fantastic the gas and air makes me feel and that İ have become blissfully oblivious to the pain. I jot down optimistically that maybe I won’t need anymore pain relief and will be able to get through with just this. Within a few hours I am snorting the gas and air with the same ferocity as a great white shark in a feeding frenzy. My mum advises me to slow down andonly use it when I ‘really’ need it, I snap that if İ didn’t really need it I wouldn’t be using it.

My notes never made it beyond here, as the pain intensified I asked for a pethadine injection and then for an epidural the combined effects of which were to knock me out and let me sleep but also to entirely eradicate my contractions. The birth took 9 hours pre-pain relief and 21 hours from the point where İ started on gas and air. Exhausted and bloody İ finally pushed my little girl into the world with no aid from any uterine contractions but with the help of my fantastic midwife Becky and Sezgin and my mum. Without their trio of special skills, Becky was the coach, mum was the trainer and Sezgin the supportive fan base, I may have given up on getting Gül Peri out but they hung in there and made me work for what I wanted. She finally emerged at 4am on Thursday morning with the birth cord wrapped twice round her little blue neck but like her mum she was cajoled and caressed into crying and carrying on and we are both now 1- Nil up in the Game of Life.