I remember being at a party when I was eight months pregnant with my first child. I got into conversation with three experienced mums. They looked at my round belly, and smiled conspiratorially as they unleashed their birth stories. They divulged everything – the baying, the blood, the fear, the chaos, the agony. They seemed to want to outdo each other’s horror and as they talked they were transformed into electrified, possessed creatures. I was terrified. The adrenaline rush sent my baby into back flips inside me.

I have never talked about the births of either of my two children. There are plenty of reasons. Most of them are pragmatic. Birth pitched me into motherhood. Suddenly there was no time, certainly not for dwelling on the past. The births were behind me, the children ahead.

At least it’s what I tried to tell myself. I had given birth twice. Each had produced a beautiful, healthy boy. Why linger on them? People went through far worse. It seemed churlish to brood, especially when so many women were unable to conceive. But my experience remained locked inside me, refractory and unexamined. If birth came up in conversation, I would stay mute hoping the subject would move on.

I knew that writing this article would be hard. I would have to face raw memories and all the old unanswerable questions. Above all, it would mean describing the actual births. I wondered whether the article should have a subtitle: not to be read by expectant mothers... Continue reading