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I was scared of giving birth as long as i can remember. It must have started sometime in my childhood when that image of my screaming, sweating, red-headed mother surrounded by a couple of rather less helpful nurses was created in my mind and it never left me since. i remember telling people that i wanted to have children but not give birth. During my teenage my admiration for Angelina Jolie was grounded on the relief I felt when I found out that it was OKAY to adopt. It's not like giving birth was the only thing i thought about since my childhood and it was not an obsession in any way. But somehow that fearful thought kept on popping into my head whenever i saw a baby and when i found out that i was pregnant- woooops!- here we go again!

I have a beautiful baby daughter now and yes, i survived. Looking back, giving birth was the most amazing experience of my life.
But hang on! Let me tell you about my birth story and quite a few funny events along the way!
My contractions started two days before I was to give birth. They weren't awful, but they hurt enough as to make me unable speak. That's right, I couldn't speak everytime i got a contraction. That would make things kind of awkward whenever people came around. I would be in the middle of a conversation when i could feel it kreeping up on me again, SH... I thought, I would stare at a focused point or shut my eyes and try to relax. Good on you, you would think, you have contractions, that's what happens when you have babies! But for me it was just the beginning of the weirdness of that whole experience.
Two nights later I was in full labour. I had been up all the night before because I was so nervous and longing for a good sleep. I couldn't sleep, obviously, because i was in too much pain.My partner drove me to the hospital, they gave us some panadine and a sleeping pill which I still hate them for and besides they treated me as if I was totally over exaggerating my pains. The sleeping pill just made me awfully tired but the pain wouldn't go away and I kept on driving my partner (let's call him Dan) nuts. Remember, I couldn't speak when i was in pain and i was in pain constantly now, having one contraction after the other and Dan was getting tired. The worst possible situation! What do you do if you need your husband's emotional support but you can't ask for it because you're focusing on your pain and you see him getting sleepy and you can't even get mad at him and verbally abuse him because you'r focusing on your pain and the pain is all you have?
You call your mother-in-law! Yes, I managed to do that. I guess it was the desperation of having a sleeping husband next to you on the bed when you are in full labour.
She helped me through the whole thing, she was really good, didn't talk too much, showed me how to breath.
Early in the morning, my water broke. When I finally told my mother-in-law and Dan that I felt the urge to push (after I realized that no, I didn't have to go to the toilet) my husband topped the whole story when he went to the bathroom to have a shower. "To be nice and fresh for the bubby"! Can you imagine that?

Learn more about this author, Karina Rammelmeier.
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