Six: Do you think we should have a baby naming ceremony?

Parsley: Or we could indoctrinate him into the Christian faith.

[Baby Boco spontaneously emits projectile vomit two feet across the bed and his doting mama]

Parsley: So, not the Christian faith, then?

Monday 24 September

I am at the Big Hospital. I have been sent there by my GP to have my abscess drained. I was transported to the Big Hospital via ambulance, since my inability to sit up makes travelling by car difficult.

I have already been laying on a hospital bed for a number of hours and been seen by several nurses and one doctor. I am waiting for a second doctor to attend and pronounce a diagnosis.

Six: Imagine if I get Doctor Badcop back again!
ParsleySage: Unlikely, I think. He doesn't get let out of his cage very often. They need 3 security staff to key in the entry codes.
[Six and ParsleySage giggle at the thought]
Six: [in passable imitation of Dr Badcop] Right, if this cyst hasn't burst in 15 minutes I will be using either a javelin or a spear to lance it! Any questions?
ParsleySage: Spear to Room 15! Spear to Room 15!
[Six and ParsleySage laugh uproariously]

Footsteps are heard along the hospital corridor.

The door to Six's room opens.

It is Doctor Badcop.

Thursday 16 August
6.30am Six wakes with odd crampy pains in her bump.
6.31am Six has a bath and shaves her legs just in case.
7.30am Six tells ParsleySage not to make too many plans for the day.
10.00am Odd crampy pains are occurring with alarming regularity every 8 minutes.
10.01am Six phones the birth centre. They say to come in when the contractions are 3 minutes apart and last a minute each.

I have planned to have a water birth at a very small, midwife-led unit that promotes ‘active, natural birth’. There are no medical staff, and therefore limited drugs or pain relief options, on site. Any complications, and they have to ship you out to the Big Hospital 40 minutes away.

6.00pm Contractions are 3 minutes part and last a minute each.
6.01pm Six phones the birth centre again. They say to leave it an hour and call them back.
7.00pm Six phones the birth centre again.
7.01pm They say “oh sorry, we’ve already got 2 ladies in so we’re not sure we can take you now”.
7.02pm Six has a strop.
7.10pm The birth centre phones back and says we can go in.
8.00pm Arrive at birth centre with all the luggage.
8.30pm An internal examination reveals that Six is only 2cm dilated.
9.00pm Six is sent home again.
10.00pm Six eats a bag of chips.
11.59pm Six is watching There’s Something About Mary, holding ParsleySage’s sleeping hand. She periodically drops off to sleep, but only for 2 minutes at a time because she has a contraction every 3rd minute.

Friday 17 August
4.00am Six lies in bed strapped to the TENS machine, sobbing with pain, exhaustion and frustration.
9.00am Six returns to birth centre.
9.30am An internal examination reveals that Six is still only 2cm dilated.
9.31am Six is sobbing again.
10.00am The birth centre encourages Six to have a nice warm bath and employ relaxation techniques for the next few hours.
2.00pm An internal examination reveals that Six is still only 2cm dilated.
2.30pm The birth centre staff tell Six that they can’t take her because the lack of progress suggests complications.
3.00pm Six is transferred to The Big Hospital.
3.30pm Six begs ParsleySage to slow down over the speed bumps.

At my ante natal classes I was the rampant ‘natural birth’ campaigner. When the midwife passed around the tube that goes into your spinal cavity when you have an epidural, I shuddered and publicly declared my refusal to entertain the concept.

An epidural has suddenly become the Holy Grail.

6.00pm Six has an epidural. Then they break my waters with a plastic crochet hook thing and start feeding me an intravenous drug to speed things up.
6.30pm Six pays homage to the Goddess Epidural.
8.00pm ParsleySage is sleeping, sprawled across two hospital chairs.
9.00pm Six finally manages to get some kip.
11.00pm An internal examination reveals that Six is 9cm dilated.
11.01pm Everybody cheers.
12.00 midnight Six is fully dilated.

Saturday 18 August
1.00am Six is told to start pushing.
2.00am The midwives offer ParsleySage a job, so talented is he at shouting Come On Six! Push! You Can Do It! I’m So Proud Of You! You’re Doing Really Well! Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

I push for an hour. The lights are switched off in the delivery room and I am cocooned with ParsleySage, the lovely midwife D and the lovely student midwife KV. I am quite happy in my work.

2.01am The door of the delivery room opens and a small black man enters, switches on the blinding overhead lights and demands that the midwives roll me onto my back.

Six: But I don’t want to go on my back!

The midwives scuttle to obey the small black man. They roll me onto my back and have my legs strapped up in stirrups before I can say WTF is going on?

The small black man exits.

2.03am Six suddenly discovers the lucidity to come over all self righteous and indignant.

Six: I have no idea who that man was or what he was doing in my room!

Apparently he is the doctor on duty this evening.

2.15am Six still pushing, but to no avail. The dulcet tones of Doctor Badcop are heard in the corridor.

Six: [panicking] I want to lie on my side!
Midwife: Dr Badcop wants you on your back, Six.
Six: [cajoling, and with cunning] Just for a minute. Please please please please.
[Midwife reluctantly releases Six’s feet from stirrups. Six rolls onto her side].
Midwife: You have to keep pushing, Six.
Six: No. I’m not going to.
Midwife and Student Midwife: You must push when you have a contraction, Six.
Six: I can’t push, I feel sick.
Midwife, Student Midwife and ParsleySage: Sixey, you need to push!
Six: No no no I’ve had enough I’m not pushing I feel sick!

2.16am Dr Badcop re enters.

Midwife: On your back now, Six.
Six: I don’t want to lie on my back.
Midwife: You have to lie on your back.
Six: I’m not lying on my back! It hurts!
Midwife: Student Midwife, will you please pump Six full of drugs to get her to shut the fuck up and stop being difficult top up her epidural?

2.20am Six’s protest is forced to an untimely end. She is on her back with her legs in stirrups. She has no idea what is going to happen next.

Dr Badcop: [lurking between Six’s thighs] Any questions?
Six: Yes. [Thinking: Are you going to use the big metal barbecue tongs or the sink plunger thing? Are you going to have to slice into my bits with a big knife along the way? Did you learn your bedside manner at charm school or does it come naturally?]
Dr Badcop: [fiercely] What?
Six: Er, no. It’s ok. As you were.
[Six cranes neck to see what instruments of torture are being unwrapped from their sterile packages. It turns out to be the sink plunger, which is plunged forthwith into Sixey’s nether regions.]
Dr Badcop: I pull and you push.

So I push and Dr Badcop pulls, with what feels like the force of the entire Clacton On Sea Tug Of War Team. Six thinks, this can’t be right can it? It feels like my insides are being extracted by vacuum power. He’s going to end up with my intestines all over the bed in a minute.

The midwife tells me to stop pushing and pant. Because I’ve been a good girl and done my pregnancy reading, I know this means the baby’s head is coming out. So I obligingly make small puffs as if blowing out a candle, as taught at one of the few pregnancy yoga classes I went to (at £7 a shot, I couldn’t afford any more. £7 to sit on the floor for an hour and a half?)

2.38am Midwife: One more push and you’ll meet your baby.

So I give one last heroic push, and a small thing covered in my blood and its own shit is placed on ParsleySage’s Bury FC t shirt, which I am wearing (I hope he doesn’t want it back). Nobody’s told me what sex the baby is, or if they did I didn’t hear them, so I check for myself and observe a fine set of male genitalia.

The baby is whisked off to be cleaned up.

Six: What’s happening with the placenta?
Midwife: It’s in a dish over there! [points to other side of room]

But I didn’t feel a thing!

Six: [feeling slight tugging sensation] Am I being stitched up?
ParsleySage: [looks pale around the gills and nods]

I am in a galaxy of my own now. I’m so exhausted everything has gone blurry. I really can’t remember much after this. ParsleySage dresses the baby and puts him in a plastic hospital cot on wheels. The midwives wash me, since I can’t be roused enough to walk to the shower. I am wheeled to a bed on the ward, and ParsleySage departs for home to not sleep a wink and impart the joyous news.

Baby Boco has arrived.

NB. The next morning the midwife comes in to tell me that the reason my cervix couldn’t dilate normally is because the baby’s head was pressing against it at an angle, not straight on. They know this because the suction mark on his head from the sink plunger is on the side of his head, not the top. This is why I had all the pain with none of the gain for the first 36 hours of labour.
And the reason I couldn’t push him out is because the little bugger had his hand up by his head!
Still – he’s here at last!

· A Bartholin's cyst or abscess can be very painful and the diagnosis may be suggested when the patient walks into the consulting room with a gait that is reminiscent of John Wayne.
· There is usually a unilateral mass that may be as large as a hen's egg. It may be soft and fluctuant or tense and hard.
· Symptoms of an abscessed Bartholin's gland include:
- pain that occurs with walking, sitting, physical activity, or sexual intercourse
- fever and chills
- increased swelling in the area over a two- to four-day period
· It is said that the risk factors are as for the risks of sexually transmitted infections, but as will be discussed below, this may be an unwarranted slander.D
· If infected, a Bartholin's gland cyst can form an abscess that will increase in size over several days and is very painful. In order to heal, a Bartholin's gland cyst usually must be drained.

Three words:
That. Bloody. Hurt.

...the pastime of kings.

Actually I'm using it to distract me from the agonising pain of sitting on the loo with my current medical condition (see previous posts). There are many activities that you can adapt to non-sitting positions but let's face it, having a crap is not one of them.

TMI??

I write from my sick bed with my crappy laptop (the c, m and n have worn off, it crashes every 5 minutes and frequently forgets where tinternet is) balanced at a precarious angle, owing to my still being unable to sit up. And if you've ever tried eating your (recently ridiculously renamed by Sainsbury's) cereal from a semi-supine position you will understand that this makes all kind of daily activities very difficult.

I am possibly feeling slightly better than I did yesterday (or during the night, when I virtually began writing my Last Will and Testament) but I can honestly say I have had more pain in my lady bits this weekend than the day after I gave birth. Still too scared to go to A&E though (I can't think of a way of telling a doctor I need him to lance my ladyparts without a few raised eyebrows at the very least).

ParsleySage has been a saint whilst I have been confined to bed, running around after me, doing all the housework, and looking after Boco AND the artist formerly known as littlun. Boco is grouchy and pooey and sicky because of all the antibiotics I'm taking and The Artist... keeps PS very busy with his constant "Dad. Dad! Dad?" So between the three of us we are fairly high maintenance. I'm sure PS is looking forward to going back to work tomorrow for a rest. And I am hoping I'll be able to walk by then, since looking after Boco will be difficult otherwise.

I did manage to have a bath and wash my hair this morning but as I've been laying on it ever since you just know it's going to dry all stupid. So then I'll have bad hair on top of everything else!

That's enough for now but I'll be back when I find something else to whinge about.

Not only have I had mastitis in my right boob, TWICE, and an infection in my uterus caused by the decay of 'residual tissue', but I now have a HUGE ABSCESS where my stitches were, which is so painful that I cannot SIT UP, and in fact it hurts to move around AT ALL, and I am having to feed the baby lying down, which means he keeps falling asleep at the nipple, so it takes bloody hours to feed him, as he has a quick slurp, dozes off, then wakes up five minutes later expecting it still to be pointing at him, and cries if it's not. Men!!

So I am now on my THIRD course of anti biotics - double dose this time.

The doctor said "I don't wish to alarm you but if it gets any worse you should go straight to A&E and ask to have it drained." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or I could just kill myself now and save myself and the staff of A&E such an excruciating experience.

It actually came out just before the baby, but I got distracted by blogging (or should that be blagging) about other things and forgot to mention it. Plus, it seems very greedy to produce a book and a baby at the same time.

Anyway. I am now a published writer and all that wotnot. Hooray for me! If you are genuinely interested in purchasing a copy then please PM me and I will email you the details. There will also be a launch event in Leicester on 22 October for anyone in the vicinity who has the urge to attend.

The book is contemporary poetry and some of it's a bit rude (no surprises there then). Here's the blurb:

'This is the debut of a mature, flexible poetic voice ranging from sardonic wit to pathos... Celebrates the bodily and spiritual here and now while suggesting there is no certain divide between dream and reality. Many poems read like one act dramas, where just one ambiguity or disarming reference may give us an uncomfortable jolt into surprising perspectives.' Michael Tolkien

'...sharp, original and sensual... the physicality of her lines ranges across landscape, love, memory and skin in all their traps and wonders. She displays a confident mixture of lyricism, almost surreal imagery at times, and passion throughout.' Robert Hamberger

The book also features a rather splendid front cover image by bcuk's very own dennypoos.

Plus, if you buy it you will be helping to keep afloat a quality small press who, like many other poetry publishers, have had their funding withdrawn by Arts Council England...

Sorry about the shameless marketing but... oh fuck that. Please buy it. Go on, go on, go on.

Instructions on packaging of baby nail clippers:

Care should be taken during use.

Well, thank f**k I read the instructions first! And to think I was planning on cutting my baby's tiny nails while simultaneously splashing lighter fuel on the barbecue, pouring myself a gin and tonic and dropping fag ash on his head!

Fab day with ParsleySage and Boco yesterday. Went to support Market Randomtown's annual street arts festival which was a lot of fun. Boco behaved like an angel, even when nearly pecked out of his pram by a passing velociraptor, and was cooed over by everyone.

But was I really party to the following exchange?

I am talking to S, who you may remember as the person whose maternity leave I covered at Market Randomtown District Council (as in, "When is S coming back?")

S: Oh hello ex-Councillor Totteralong [names changed to protect guilty]. Do you know Sixpence? She covered my post while I was on maternity leave.
Usual Selfimportant Egotistic Local Ex Councillor Sort (USELECS): Oh. Yes. I did meet her once.
Sixpence: [thinking - did you? I have no recollection of the fact.] Hello!
USELECS: So, S, are you back from leave now?
S: Oh yes, I came back in May.
USELECS: Well, it's nice to have some quality back again.

Did he really say that?
Did he really mean it?

What a happy coincidence that I don't give a shit!

ParsleySage gave the baby a shot of formula milk earlier while I was catching some zeds (not that Zeds, the sleep sort) and he was screaming (baby not PS)... and now that I'm awake he (baby and PS) is catching some zeds and my boobs were exploding, so I was forced to express some using the breast hand-pump thingy which is very odd. It sucks your nipples into a vacuum so they grow to a tremendous size (shoulda called this post 'twin peaks') and gives you twice the RSI of wanking for less than half the fun.

Anyway. In exactly the same period of time I expressed 50ml from my right tit and 80ml from my left tit!! How can this be??

My right tit now has a complex and requires counselling.

Ok so it's been a while and I apologise for absence and general crapness. I appear to have turned into a machine whose sole function in life is to provide milk for wailing small person every 2 hours and spend the time in-between washing items of own clothing, baby clothing and soft furnishings soiled by wee, poo, sick etc (the baby's, not mine) and/or walking up and down trying to stop wailing small person from wailing.

Is it a bad sign when you find yourself rocking gently backwards & forwards even when you're not holding the baby???

My nipples feel like they are going to FALL OFF and my entire skull aches from exhaustion.

On the plus side of course he is the most beautiful baby ever to have been born, ever. Can't believe he's two and a half weeks old already.

I find that singing to him helps with the wailing. This may be because he has discovered that oblivion is preferable to listening to my singing. I don't know the proper words to the one that begins "hush little baby, don't you cry..." so I keep my brain lively and alert (muhahahahahahahaha) by making up my own versions. It has to rhyme or it's disallowed. E.g.

Picture scene: 3 a.m. Six paces living room in nightie. Wild staring eyes, unkempt hair etc etc. She sings:

Hush little baby don't you cry,
mama's gonna bake you a cabbage pie.
If that cabbage pie tastes foul,
mama's gonna buy you a snowy owl.
If that snowy owl won't hoot,
mama's gonna buy you a welly boot.
If that welly starts to leak,
mama's gonna buy you a... oh feck Boco what rhymes with leak????

Boco: I don't give a shit. Now will you shut the fuck up so I can get some sleep please? Bloody poets.

Anyway... let me know if you still want the blow-by-blow birth blog. I realise that your interest may have waned by now.