This is it

On the Monday before the operation, I sat down to finish the knitting that I wanted to get done in the four days I had left. Bambino was doing his usual moving around, until I felt one very painful kick, and then, I was in a Hollywood movie. The nurses and books all warned me that the waters breaking was nothing like on film, where the liquid suddenly gushes all over the place. Well, true to my Bridget Jones existence, my waters breaking were very much like they would have been in a film - it felt like someone had emptied three bottles of evian between my legs. It was everywhere and all I could do was laugh hysterically.

I called Krusty in a panic, who told me to sit down while I waited for him to come back from work, and after updating my facebook profile (this was no time to be behind the times!) we left for the hospital. We rushed down to get a taxi, at which point the sky's waters broke too - we both arrived drenched at the hospital.

Unfortunately I had had a piece of toast before the excitement began, so the C section that I was still planned for (although now that it was an emergency operation Krusty would not be able to attend) would have to wait six hours until the food had passed through my system (otherwise I could choke on it in the event of general anaesthesia). And so I lay on the monitoring bed, sans Krusty and hooked up to all sorts of machines, as the nurse told me to relax.

I was quite cosy, until I suddenly felt what a real contraction was. The books don't tell you what kind of pain this represents. Then again, I don't think anyone could ever describe it adequately, or that anyone who hasn't felt it could ever understand. They say that the pain is equivalent to having an ear infection, but as the sufferer of numerous DOUBLE ear infections, I can confidently say that they came nowhere near the pain of labour.

By now I was worried that I would have to have the baby naturally (after months of "too posh to push" jokes, I was now more than ready to go under the knife to escape the pain that was escalating, not to mention the fear of my baby's umbilical necklace tightening to a choker on the way out), and I called the nurse, who immediately changed the plan and rushed me to the operating theatre.

A string of unknown faces appeared above my bed telling me to relax as I watched the neon lights go by on the ceiling. In no time I was in a very bright room full of women who had been summoned to lift me from the stretcher to the table. I burst out laughing as these eight or so tiny, fragile Chinese ladies tried to pull me over - me, the "obese" Westerner... I think they had called the entire staff to help for what would seriously have taken two people back in Europe. I mean, I'm not saying I'm skinny, but this was just hilarious! My attitude obviously did not impress the anaesthesiologist, who asked me what I thought was so funny...

A contraction soon called me back to order.

The same doctor then started to put my legs and abdomen to sleep, telling me to co-operate between contractions, which had by then become about 30 seconds apart. The drugs took quite fast, and suddenly I was blissfully unaware of what was going on behind the curtain that had been placed in front of my chin. I couldn't even feel the tilt in the table anymore (this had scared me at first, as I felt I was going to fall off, but it is apparently designed to prevent the uterus from crushing any arteries. Then again for all I know this might be some veterinarian trick that they used on me because of the fact that my height and weight was off their charts...). All I could do was look up at the giant lights while someone played cheesy lift music in the background, saying "focus on the piano". It was all rather odd.

After a few minutes, I asked why they were giving me electric shocks (they were in fact moving things around to grab the baby, but it felt like I was the conductor for some weird electrical experiment). Someone said "Congratulations" and while I wondered why (had I guessed right about the electricity?) someone shoved a pair of testicles in my face, asking "is it a boy or a girl?" (apparently this is protocol in Hong Kong to make sure parents accept the sex of the child and don't accuse nurses of swapping babies - rather crucial when you're over from China and the one child policy makes you wish for a boy). But then, bambino was turned around, and I got to see for the first time the face that would melt my heart a million times a minute forever (well, until his teenage rebellion at least).