The miracle of life

There's nothing like new parents to put you off having a baby. Well not the parents per se, but their experiences. I have been privvy, in the past, to all sorts of information about births that leave me either wincing or feeling slightly off colour. 

Anyone who knows me, also knows that I have a deep seated fear of blood. It's so bad, that even red liquid can make me feel a bit, you know - queasy. Take yesterday for example. I had to avert my eyes at a school I was visiting when the teacher did a demonstration with some water coloured with red food colouring! (when she added cornflour to it I almost had to leave the room!) So, let's face it, it's not going to take much of a birth story for me to balk at the very idea of childbirth and everything that the process entails. 

For that reason, now that I am of an age where becoming a parent is a consideration, and I have friends where that consideration is, or already has, become a reality, I always hope and pray they will have straightforward births, so I don't fret and stress about my own future. You know the kind of birth I'm talking about: the ones you see on American soaps, where the actress barely breaks a sweat through her make up, the baby arrives soft lense style, wrapped up in a gender specific coloured fleecy blanket, without even a smear of blood, (heaven forbid) all cuddly and swathed in a cloud of Johnson and Johnson baby smell. That's what I want. None of this primal screaming and, god almighty, placenta.

But I have to face facts. Life isn't like that. There's going to be a bit of pain involved. OK, I can cope with that. But, you know, my friends REALLY don't help. A couple of weeks ago, my closest friend was kind enough to wait until I got home from Spain to pop out her baby. I'll spare you the details of the whole saga. It's enough just to say that she didn't make it to the hospital on time and ended up giving birth on her bathroom floor! (it has floor to ceiling white tiles - the mental picture has been haunting me for some time now) Lucky for her the birth was complication free - I think she is built to produce children factory line style. I mean, she basically coughed and out came the baby (a little girl, in case you were wondering.) But, this hasn't helped with my whole aversion to child birth, particularly as she described her husband being 'white for a very long time afterwards.' I bet he was! 

So, if, and I stress the word if here, I ever have the inclination to have a baby, I think I'll opt for an elective caesarian. Failing that, I'll stock my bathroom with an overwhelmingly abundant supply of black towels!