The C Word

The pain shoots through me in waves, one directly after another. Nothing has prepared me for this, nothing could have. I haven’t been to any antenatal classes yet, haven’t covered any breathing exercises. I’ve been in denial, didn’t think this would ever happen. Now, like it or not, I’m going to have to improvise.

I inhale through my nose to the count of four, then exhale, slowly, through my mouth. One… two… three… four… Sweat breaks out on my neck and forehead, gathers between my shoulder blades. A high-pitched tinnitus-like ringing starts up in my ears. I spread my thighs a little wider apart, lean forward. Palms down, fingers straight and turned in towards each other, tips touching, I brace against my bare legs with some force. I can do this. I have to do this. A muffled grunt escapes me.

The door opens. Footsteps. Someone walks into the neighbouring cubicle, the lock clicks into place.

Shit. Or rather, not, as the case may be.

All of the pregnancy books warn about constipation, yes, but it was not one of the symptoms I decided I would suffer from back when this all began. Cravings for gherkins and white chocolate chips with a side of coleslaw at 2am? Show me where to sign up. Minor backache that prevents the lifting of heavy items? If I must. Constipation? I figured it could join morning sickness, swollen ankles and shortness of breath in the ‘only to other pregnant people’ category.

Worse, nature’s siren call is evidently oblivious to the fact that I’m at work. A digestive system that has been carefully honed over the years to kick into life only when comfortably near my own loo has failed me. Not that I’m as bad as one particular ex-boyfriend who, as a child, would only crap at home, and, for this reason had to be repatriated from his first overseas holiday by his concerned grandparents on day five of a two-week holiday in Greece. Although the fact that this random story has stuck after all these years… well, I must have been able to relate at least on some level. Indeed, it may well have been five days since my last… evacuation.

Has whoever’s in the next stall picked up on my heavy breathing? I’m practically panting. I could masturbate more quietly. Are they never going to flush and get out of here? Is this some kind of punishment for all the laxatives I took during the bulimia years?

Under normal circumstances, I would buy medicine to ease the problem, but medicine seems to be out of bounds if you’re pregnant. From hacking coughs to severe hay fever, this is not the time to get sick.

Who am I kidding? Under normal circumstances, I would smoke a cigarette to instantly fix the problem. Or, in a previous life, do a line of coke. Bad coke, that is, the kind that’s been cut with baby laxatives. It would be cheaper, and safer, of course, to buy the laxatives direct, cut out the middle man, but where would be the fun in that?

During pregnancy, however, it seems that, even more than usual, prevention is better than cure. I’m going to have to wave goodbye to the morning banana, even if it does ensure that I’ll have a girl. (Or was it a boy?) Everyone knows bananas cause constipation. (And banana milk? Who do I direct questions like this to?) It’s adieu to peanut butter on white at Franco’s and bonjourno to boring old brown. Good riddance to grilled cheddar cheese with everything, greetings to daily greens. Oh Goddess of All Things Good, if you happen to exist up there, just let me finish what I’ve started here today and get me out of this godforsaken cubicle. I’ll take the post-delivery cigarette and plate of ripe runny Brie and crackers off my birth plan – even though they are currently the only things on my birth plan – and vow to never crave either again on entering motherhood. Nor lust after baby laxatives, in any shape or form.

There’s the sound of flushing from the next-door cubicle, and I grab the opportunity to strain with impunity, safe in the knowledge that any groans of agony or splashes of success won’t be heard. ‘Push,’ I command myself, mentally. ‘Push, goddamn it.’

And, just like that, something happens… It’s crowning!

Constipation, it would appear, is like a hundred little preparations for birth. Except the wrong orifice.

The door to the Ladies swooshes closed and, mercifully, I’m alone. I give it my final few ounces of energy, silently reciting an old familiar mantra: ‘No pain, no gain… No pain, no gain… No pain, no gain…’

Nothing. There is no proceeding, no receding. We are stuck. This is starting to scare the bejesus out of me.

Unbidden, a memory surfaces, a momentary distraction from the discomfort, the almost long-lost memory of a small, male cousin sitting on the toilet at our house, newly toilet trained, clearly constipated. There was the holler, ‘Mummy!’, then my aunt traipsing upstairs, me banished from the bathroom. Afterwards, the hushed voices of our mothers, the horror on realising my aunt had had to, whisper it, pull it out.

Now I’m panicking. How long have I been in here? Hours? Days? Can I still invoice for this time? Should I call my aunt?

The door opens once more. Voices. Voices I recognise: Hannah and Victoria. And there are only two cubicles, so one of them is going to have to wait. Will whoever’s waiting start to wonder what’s going on in here? Be tempted to look under the door? Recognise me from my footwear? Why, oh why, did I ever wear boots as conspicuous as these: black, high heels, so shiny you could quite feasibly see your face in them if you bent down to check them out under a cubicle door. Worse, you could see my face, all twisted and stressed and humiliated, a slave to my own bodily functions. Subjugated by my baby already, before it’s even born.

I try again, give it all I’ve got, and am rewarded with a solitary sheep dropping. It hits the water in the pan with the force of a bullet. The embarrassment of being heard is a small price to pay for the security that certainly no one is now going to look underneath the door. You might do that to ascertain if someone’s died in here, or if the door’s somehow locked itself shut, but only a crazy person would investigate further after hearing shots like that being fired in the vicinity.

Another ‘ping’ follows, then, accompanied by a searing pain that I don’t even want to consider the reasons behind, I’m rewarded with a barrage of small artillery fire. Euphoria washes over me, almost better than ecstasy. The toilet bowl, I dreamily imagine, must be filled with at least a bunch of grapes’ worth.

The other toilet flushes and the girls switch over. I can hear hands being washed, paper towels being pulled out of the dispenser, the door swinging open and closed as one of them strides off back towards her desk.

I yank a handful of paper from the roll on top of the sanitary waste bin and press it gingerly to my still-smarting point of exit. Pulling it away, I cannot help but look. After all I’ve been through, this is no time to be coy.

It’s a good thing that I’m sitting down, because my legs start to wobble when I see the scarlet splodge soaking through the paper.

It’s what I’ve been dreading; what I’ve been looking out for every time I pee: I’m having a miscarriage.

No, again, wrong orifice.

My head starts to throb; I can feel my blood pressure soaring, although the problem here is clearly less high blood pressure than common or garden pregnancy piles. Easing myself into a standing position, shaking my stiff, cold legs to get some feeling back into them, I think about how ironic it is that now, on the verge, loosely speaking, of motherhood, embarking on the journey that woman was biologically programmed to travel, I feel asexual in a way that I have never done before. Robbed of my femininity. Because suddenly, without any shadow of a doubt, I know that this is only the first of countless indignities. Over the coming months I will be weighed; blood will be taken from me; there will be urine sample after urine sample after urine sample. I will rapidly outgrow anything in my wardrobe that doesn’t have an elastic waistband. Which is everything in my wardrobe. There will be heartburn and headaches. Spots and sciatica. Christ, there will even be dizziness, swollen ankles and shortness of breath, no matter how much I want there not to be. And somewhere along the line, there will be hospital food…

I flush and step out of my cubicle, surprised to see Hannah still there at the mirror, squeezing a spot.

‘Hey sexy lady! Love the boots.’ she says. ‘They new?’

And turning on the tap to wash my hands, I nod, say ‘thanks’. I don’t mention that they’re from Clarks. Or that I bought them because they have non-slip rubber soles and boast a patented in-built secret comfort system, called ‘Active Air’. Or that there’s an elasticated panel at the top of each to allow for calf swelling.

A woman, after all, should be allowed to have her secrets.