Page 2 of Always Alchemy

Before the last one, I sent them a badly spelt rant about how fucking painful this is along with some inarticulate death threats to Belle for mismanaging my expectations.

Aida responded with the following:

There are no heroes here. Get some fucking pain relief and do it now.

I replied:

Trying to hold off. Better if I can do it naturally. I really want this to be a successful birth

Aida has just expressed her view of that particular perspective:

LISTEN TO ME. A successful birth is one where the mother and baby are both healthy. OK? Nothing else. Forget the fucking birthing pool and whale music. If you need pain relief TAKE IT.

God I love her. I lift the phone as Zach comes back around the bed and type out all I can manage.

K xxx

When the anaesthetist finally shows up, I beam at him. He’s the most angelic human being I’ve ever seen. I have never, ever been so happy to see anyone in my entire life. But as he takes out the massive epidural needle and begins to fiddle with it, I eye it warily.

My antenatal teacher’s words play in my mind.

If you’re scared of the needle, you don’t need an epidural badly enough.

Fuck that. If this guy brandished a length of lead piping and told me he was going to jam it into my spine and feed the epidural through that, I’d be on board. As far as I’m concerned, he can do what he likes.

‘I won’t give you a total spinal block,’ he warns as he turns me onto my side. ‘You’ll need some pain to work with, okay?’

You’ll need some pain to work withmight be up there with the biggest load of horseshit I’ve ever heard, but whatever.

‘Okay,’ I agree.Stick it in me, mister. Give me everything you’ve got.

Words I may not be saying to my husband for quite some time.

I cannot with this baby.

He is literally the most beautiful human being I’ve ever seen.

His eyes are enormous, his irises sky blue. He has the softest little tufts of black hair (no paternity test required) and he’s not overcooked or undercooked or… anything. He’s justperfect. I can already tell he’s going to be super smart, and I silently give thanks for the excellent physical and intellectual gene pool I chose in my smoking hot husband.

But the best thing of all is his little mouth. It’s like a tiny rosebud, and I’m obsessed with every little thing he does with it. He’s only a couple of hours old, but I already know his main moves.

There’s the purse of his mouth, unimpressed and thoughtful.

There’s the way he presses his little lips together in a way that I know in a few weeks’ time will turn into a smile, and I also know it’ll slay me when it happens.

But his favourite move right now is the rooting thing, where he opens his mouth like a tiny baby bird, eyes squeezed shut as he searches blindly for his mama’s frankly massive boob. It’s the cutest and cleverest thingever.

His name is Jonny.

I’ve always hankered after the name Jonny, partly because I had a huge crush on the England rugby star Jonny Wilkinson when I was little—though I didn’t divulge that to Zach. I may be well and truly over my blonde era now, but I still love the name. It’s wholesome but cheeky, and it turns out Zach’s a fan too, though he’s insisting we call him Jonathan on his birth certificate.

I’m not sure how I feel about the name Jonathan. It always feels like it should end inthon, like marathon. Jona-thon. I mean, it’s a totally square name. Perfect for the nerd I’m sure he’ll be, if he takes after his dad (I’ll do my best to temper that with my coolness, but I suspect the French genes are strong. I mean, look at that hair). Anyway, I do take Zach’s point that he needs a barrister name, and that Jonny won’t cut it.

We’ll name him Jonathan, but we’ll call him Jonny, and he will be the most amazing little boy who’s ever lived.

He does the rooting thing again, and I transfer him to my totally engorged boob and manage, after a few flicks, to get my nipple vaguely into his mouth. Fuck, those tiny gums arestrong.And I can’t imagine how porno I’ll look when my milk actually comes in properly. I wonder if I’ll even be able to stand up straight.

I look down at him, sucking away, his ridiculously small hand curled into a fist on my boob. His breathing is so regular,his head so downy. I stroke it with the lightest touch and marvel at the fact that a fully fledged human brain lives under this tiny, delicate skull. I know we have a fuck-load of mountains to climb from here, but in this moment of peace, as our little son suckles peacefully and all these fantastic feel-good hormones course through my body, I feel stupendously, gloriously happy.

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