Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?

by Kristen Bailey

Genres: Family Life; Holiday books; Humor & Satire; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Holiday Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

‘I was crying laughing.’ The Writing Community Chat Show, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘The funniest book I have read in a very long time.’ Heidi Lynn’s Book Reviews, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Hilarious, I laughed so much!’ Mum of Cubs, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘OMG I snorted with laughter.’ Loopyloulaura Sure, my bedroom gets lots of action. It’s called snoring. Will and I didn’t have a clue what we were signing up for. There’s loads we weren’t warned about: 1) You’ll spend more time spooning your child’s cuddly donkey than your own boyfriend. 2) Communication will be via post-it notes on the fridge, mainly telling him to buy more milk. 3) If you make the mistake of going to a nightclub you’ll nod off, drool, and be woken up by an angry bouncer. 4) In the middle of the night you’ll be begging Siri for advice on getting your baby to sleep. (Whale music doesn’t work.) 5) Sex is something that happened in another dimension. At least I’ve got Will. Our old life – festivals, sambuca shots, an actual sex life – might be a distant memory but we can get through anything together. At least that’s what I thought… Until, one day, the unthinkable happens and everything changes. But I love Will, and he loves me, so we can get through anything. Right? A totally hilarious and absolutely relatable tale for anyone who has survived parenthood purely on microwave meals and wished for an IV drip of coffee to get them through! This uplifting page-turner will make your belly ache with laughter. Perfect for fans of Why Mummy Drinks, Sophie Ranald and Sophie Kinsella. Readers love Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash? : ‘Had me cracking up… Literally rolling on the floor laughing… Genius pure genius! ’ Heidi Lynn’s Book Reviews, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Makes you howl with laughter until you have tears rolling down your cheeks and you can’t catch your breath!! ’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Plenty of belly laughs… Get ready for a healthy dose of hilarity and a slice of side-splitting silliness… You’ll either have a smile on your face or be howling with laughter.’ For the Love of Books, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Wooohooo… Fabulous… I loved it… Utterly hilarious, there are some emotional rollercoasters involved too… Take one of this author’s books and the sun will come out.’ B for Bookreview, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Had me belly laughing throughout! A real joy.’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ I always look forward to laughing so hard that I cry… I found myself crying at points as much as I laughed at others.’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ YAYYYY!… Kristen Bailey is such a sassy lady! I literally choked! Well, maybe not literally… Just with laughter! ’ Diagnosis Bookaholic, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ I tried to list what parts of the book made me laugh, but there were just too many to fit on the page!… Giggles and guffaws… I found myself wiping away not just tears of laughter… This author is an absolute genius with her clever writing and skill of taking day-to-day things and making them so funny! Reading one of her books is a sure-fire way of making sure I have a smile on my face for the rest of the day!!!… Comes highly recommended from me!! ’ Stardust Book Reviews, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ I loved it, I read it in 2 days, difficult to put down, always one more chapter… Hilariously funny… Cannot help but make you smile.’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Both hilarious and heartwarming in equal measure... Will have you doubled over in chuckles and you might even shed a tear… Brill! ’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Release date: January 11, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

The first time I had sex, all I could think about was getting pregnant. There I was lying quite naked under the duvet of one Christian Riley (seventeen years old, blue eyes, loved The Cure, now fixes fridges) and the only thing that went through my head was how scared I was of bringing this boy’s kid into the world and becoming a teenage single mother. All I could see were the ruddy faces of middle-aged biology teachers, the righteous tones of my mother echoing in my ears. I don’t want to be a mother. I can’t be a mother.

Needless to say, the sex was a bit of a non-event. I spent most of the time asking him if the condom was on, never came and watched in bewilderment as his bulging eyeballs informed me that he had. Any momentary joy was only experienced some fifteen days later, after my period made her appearance and I squealed with delight in a toilet cubicle, so loudly that a rumour started that someone was masturbating in the college loos.

My sexual adventures soon progressed at university where, admittedly, I thought less about the possibility of babies, and more about personal fulfilment, exploring the potential joys of a penis around my person. There were episodes of morning-after shocks, morning-after pills, sex in cars, great sex, stoned sex, stranger sex, bad sex, your best mate’s crush sex, on a countertop fridge to get revenge on Paul who dumped me the night before my first-year exams sex. A fair bit of sex. As university should be, I was party to an educational experience that enhanced my interpersonal relations and allowed me to build a credible and applicable skills base.

Then I left university, and I started having real-world sex which is like university sex except the rent is higher. On a teaching placement, I shagged the head of PE (decent cock; made hamster noises throughout). I went out a lot and hooked up with postgrads who ran marathons but lived in house shares with bad Wi-Fi and rotting bathrooms. One time I half had sex with my sister’s brother-in-law (non-penetrative dry humping in the back of a black cab; they bring that story up to shame me at most family meals). I had a couple of flings that never really went the distance, a couple of relationships that ended in heartbreak (I’m talking to you, Tom Edwards; he who shagged his ex-girlfriend the night he broke up with me).

Until along came a young man called Will Cooper and with him, sex in a long-term relationship. Being on the pill gave me licence to envisage babies as part of our sketchy, future life plan of suburbs, family motors and possible rings on fingers. For now, there was just spontaneous sex, condom-less sex, comfortable sex, know-how-to-make-me-come sex, unshaven legs sex, make-up sex, sex in the shower, sex on an IKEA coffee table that couldn’t take our collective weight (ending with plywood splinters in my arse cheeks). Sex because we loved each other.

Then one birthday weekend in October, we ended up at one of those electronic music festivals in a London park where we consumed far too much alcohol, painted our faces dayglo and had drunk sofa sex when we got home. I awoke the next morning worse for wear and forgot to take my pill. Or I may have thrown it up. That bit I don’t remember. And now, I’m lying in a hospital bed, having trouble looking over my bump as a midwife called Maggie wears me like a hand puppet.

And believe it or not, as I lie here, it’s young Christian Riley who jumps into my head: scuffling about in his bedside drawer, pretending that those weren’t the first condoms he’d ever bought in his life. I think back to that atypically responsible teenager who understood the biological realities of the situation. I lie here revelling in the irony that I have become such a rubbish adult. For as soon as I had pushed babies out of mind, into some realm of contraceptive impossibility… well, here I am. I seriously think that Maggie has her whole hand in there.

It’s a Wednesday night. I’m fourteen days overdue so I’m being induced, having just experienced another sweep, though I might need to get Trading Standards in on that debacle. A ‘sweep’ is a light, feathery motion favoured by orchestral conductors and autumnal leaves. I would have defined what I just experienced as a looter’s ransacking of my undercarriage. In the neighbouring bed, another pregnant woman called Kate is giving explicit instructions to her husband, Rob, as to the whereabouts of her forgotten paper knickers. According to my sister I won’t need those. ‘Imagine knickers made from kitchen roll,’ she tells me. I don’t suppose to tell Kate. She has brought the baby car seat along and everything. Ours is in the boot of the Suzuki Swift. I hope.

Will’s holding one of my hands, looking though a names website on his phone. ‘What about Rex?’

‘Like the dinosaur? The musical band? Or Harrison?’

‘Who’s Rex Harrison?’ he enquires.

Lordy, you think you know people. I’m about to have his child.

Maggie the Midwife interrupts. ‘Looks like you’re only one centimetre dilated, my dear.’

Maybe she’s joking.

‘He’s just too happy in there.’

She’s not. She continues to lecture us with some authority about drips and possible two-day labours while my eyes glaze over. Maybe I’ll be like an elephant and gestate for three years and they’ll make a Channel 4 documentary about me. ‘The baby was “too happy” in there so grew and emerged as a feral toddler beast with long mullet hair, suckling until he was ten. The mother grew to the size of a house and survived the gestational period in a series of kaftans made of old curtains.’

Maggie looks unamused by me, like I won’t provide any good midwifing excitement for a couple of days, so she gathers her gloves and giant tube of lube, abandoning us. Will still mumbles about baby names like Ace and Gandalf. I think it’s to hide the fact that he’s nervous as balls about what’s going to happen in the next day or so. That’s if this baby ever comes out. I huff with boredom and realise the only way to better my disappointment is with babies of the jelly variety.

‘Why don’t you eat the green ones?’ asks Will, his fingers raking through the sweets.

‘They look like bogeys?’

He doesn’t question it. We’re strangely silent. He then directs an impromptu jelly baby play on the bed sheets. I am red and he is green. It starts innocently enough – the jelly babies slow dance for a while to a porno soundtrack which makes me giggle. However, they end up quite quickly in a 69 position.

‘Why is my jelly baby so easy?’ I ask.

He pops them in his mouth. ‘She wore red, the hussy. What did the midwife put inside you?’

‘Some sort of hormone gel.’

‘How does it feel?’

‘Like my vagina just ate an oyster.’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

A kiss. He always kisses me on the forehead. I like to think of it as a tender gesture of love but he often jokes it’s because I talk a lot. I tend to ramble, so he can never get near enough to my lips. A smooch on the forehead allows him to display love but also calm me down like an off switch.

‘How about Spike?’ he asks.

‘Dog’s name.’

‘Ted?’

‘Bundy.’

‘Noah?’

‘Too biblical.’

‘Henry?’

‘Too… royal.’

Will puts his head on my pillow and looks up at me like a forlorn cat.

‘Adolf?’

‘Wanker.’

‘That’s a terrible name. You can’t call a baby Wanker.’

I laugh. He puts his hands in mine and pulls me up in the same way you see whales being released back into the sea.

‘C’mon. Midwife’s orders. Let’s go for a shuffle.’

I decided to have this baby in a hospital because I just wanted to go down the easiest route possible. At my NCT groups, there was a mix of women who touted around birthing pools, home births and hypnobirthing but I always took a more practical approach: I don’t want fuss, I don’t want a baby in a bath, if I ask for drugs then give them to me, let’s get this baby out. Zero expectation would mean that no one would end up disappointed if it all went wrong. My sisters birthed babies in a variety of ways: Meg had the emergency C-section as her little Eve was upside down, Emma had her girls in posh hospitals with birthing centres where they gave away free pyjamas. I opted for my local hospital that provide extras like birthing exercise balls, free hot drinks and dimmer switches but you have to bring your own slippers and snacks. I bought said slippers from Primark. As for the snacks, Emma told me to bring glucose tablets for energy in case I have one of those eight-hour inductions but I haven’t eaten those since I did cross-country running when I was eleven.

I look down now and the slippers are the wrong size. My feet look like bricks they’re so swollen. I toddle along next to Will, who looks like he’s taken his pregnant girlfriend on a walk. The walk is supposed to push things in the right direction, downwards I suppose, so we’re doing as we’ve been told. I spy a rainbow of vending machines and stop. Ice cream. It’s been nine long months of Will getting to know and understand how pregnant ladies must be fed so he rustles around in his pockets.

‘Are there any fancy ones?’ I ask. Now is not the time to fob me off with a crappy fruit-based lolly.

He looks at me, bemused. ‘They’ve got Magnums: white, normal or nuts?’

‘Nuts. Get three. One for the baby.’

‘The baby might like white chocolate.’

‘I know the baby likes nuts.’

‘Do we get a sense of which football team he might support?’ he asks.

I smile. ‘He’s a Gunner. I feel it. Can we call him Thierry? Bergkamp? Tony? A combination of all the Arsenal legends, perhaps.’

‘It’s like you want me to leave you to birth on your own.’

We find a window bay to perch ourselves on. It’s silent, bar the crack of chocolate, mainly due to nerves about all that unknown territory we are throwing ourselves into. When they say a baby isn’t planned then you start to realise what that really means. It means the sketchy blueprint that was once life is being totally rewritten, with all control and free will lost. When I got pregnant it was scary as crap, but all Will and I knew was that we liked each other enough to bring a baby into the world. I drop a bit of chocolate on my bump and am grateful it’s there to catch it. See how useful the baby is already? I retrieve the chocolate and pop it in my mouth. Will looks over and laughs. I wasn’t going to waste that. He then hugs me, the only way you can hug a pregnant woman: with your body arched out to the side.

Wait. I think Will may have squeezed so hard a little bit of pee came out. I pause for a moment. Something definitely just happened. Like someone’s fired a water pistol up me. Have my waters broken? I stare at my feet. Not the tsunami I expected but I clutch Will’s hand and he instinctively knows it’s time; there’s a look in his eyes like a rollercoaster is just setting off. We’re having a baby.

‘It’s just a show, my dear. You’ve got a while to go yet. Any pain and you can have a paracetamol.’

I glare at Maggie the Midwife. Surely stuff leaking out of you is a warning that the baby is on his way? The curtain closes. I was told that the drugs would be stronger, like stuff I wouldn’t be able to get in Boots. A period-like pain stabs at me and I bend over the bed.

Will gets his phone out and sets it to timer mode. ‘What exactly am I timing?’

Neither of us know. Will abandons the phone and starts massaging my back. I inspect my knickers again. Blood.

‘Is that supposed to be there?’ Will asks. I’m not entirely certain myself. Surely all that’s supposed to emerge from there is water and babies? Will roots around in my bag and finds my marrow-sized sanitary towels. Whatever boundaries we may have had between us are gone as he sees me attach it to my knickers and lunge to adjust how it sits in my gusset. I don’t need to say anything; he can read that emotion in my eyes. What the hell are we doing? We press our call button and I fall into a squat position. Pain. Bad period pains. Will’s massage turns into a baker’s kneading.

‘Siri, WhatsApp call Emma Callaghan,’ I hear Will instruct his phone.

I look over my shoulder curiously as he puts the phone on speaker, calling my sister, the doctor.

‘Hello, Will? Has she popped yet? I’m adding in the other sisters. Put her on.’

I shake my head. Now is not the time for a phone conference. The screen splits into five different views and all of their faces appear: Meg, Emma, Grace and Lucy. The first two are mothers, the others are not. They all strain their necks, trying to work out if there’s a baby in the room.

‘We didn’t do this for Meg, or you, Ems?’ I inform them.

‘That was because the technology wasn’t available. What’s happening? Are we in a position to livestream?’ Meg says, laughing.

‘I DON’T WANT TO SEE UP HER VAG!’ Lucy shrieks. Will turns the volume down.

‘Can we get the midwife to GoPro it?’ Grace adds, her screen going fuzzy, in and out of focus. I wave at her. I miss my Grace. What time is it in Japan? Is she in a karaoke room? They all talk amongst each other, someone commenting on the weather and someone asking why Lucy is sitting just in her pants. Hello? Woman in labour here, you bitches. They’re all laughing at my discomfort. None of them are getting birthday presents.

‘Ems, the midwife thinks I had a show. Am I supposed to be bleeding?’

‘How bad? Give it to me in egg cups,’ she replies.

‘Who measures blood in egg cups? I feel like I’ve got my period.’

‘Standard. How many pads have you filled? Waters?’

Ems is like this, efficient. I imagine she coaxed her babies out with an encouraging tone at the precise time of her choosing. The sisters all listen in, Lucy’s face a tight grimace.

‘I think they’re still there,’ I reply.

‘You think? Mine burst like the banks of the Seine,’ Meg tells me. ‘All over the kitchen floor. The dog licked them up.’ Will retches off screen.

Emma studies my face. ‘If you were in real labour then you wouldn’t be able to talk, let alone stand.’

‘It hurts though.’

‘Squat, open up the passages.’ Meg had her third five months ago. In her front room. I think they literally walk out of her now.

‘Should my back hurt?’ I ask.

‘Didn’t you read those books I gave you?’ Emma replied.

I didn’t. I read magazines and I binge watched Friends. I thought if I saw Rachel and Phoebe give birth enough times then I’d just absorb the knowhow through the screen. The two younger sisters look ashen but also know when they’re out of their depth.

‘Ems,’ Grace pipes in. ‘Go easy on her, we love you, B.’

‘Yeah, can we go? I don’t need to see the pushing and fluids bit. I just want to see the little baby,’ admits Lucy. The elder sisters relieve them but then switch their glares in my direction. Guess it could be worse. Our mother could be here. Beth, we’re Callaghan women, we birth things. In the olden days, I am sure we birthed them in fields and went back to work within hours. Pull yourself together. I wince out loud at another stabbing pain in my back. Meg jumps into action.

‘Will, get her to breathe. Long exhalations.’ I hand the phone back to my boyfriend and hear the group talk amongst themselves. He nods, his face white, as the two sisters give him instructions. Is she telling him how to check my dilation?

He hangs up and takes a breath. ‘Are you sure you’re in labour?’

‘What?’ I know what Meg and Emma would have said. She was always a nightmare on her period, this may be her hypochondriac tendencies coming into play.

‘Emma said that it’s early to be…’

‘Seriously, you can all piss off.’

‘OK. Emma told me to get a midwife. I’m going to leave you for just a second. Do you want music?’

I nod. That much I know. We devoted evenings to preparing this playlist in preparation: ‘Labour of Love’. Music is a shared love of Will’s and mine that the baby needs to inherit or else we will disown him. We have played him everything in our indie lockers; we explained that trance and house are two very different genres; we experimented with classical and rock and punk because we want a child who has edge too. I’ve even decided to birth him in a Kings of Leon T-shirt. If we play our cards right, this child will end up being an international hit-producing DJ or the next John Lennon. Will sets up my phone and carefully inserts two AirPods into my ears. It’s some jazz. Jazz is calming. ‘Jaaaaazzzz,’ I say in a lilting voice. It’ll do. He does some curtain twitching while I feign impending death.

‘Go, find someone.’

I climb into the bed and curl into a ball. It’s like someone’s throwing weights at my stomach, like fire enveloping my nerves. I whimper and suck air through my teeth. Right, let’s put those NCT classes to some use: a house on a beach, palm trees and warm summer breezes, the sun shining, waves lilting on the sand – and deep, gut-wrenching spasms pounding my stomach and punching into me like a double-decker bus. I try to gain perspective: this is surely not the worst of it – the midwife said with inductions it could be a wait of up to two days. Two days of this? Breathe. Pain means the baby is coming and he will be with us soon.

Crapping mother of tits, that stings. My beach house has been enveloped by an upsurge of liquid magma. Jazz can piss off. Next up on the playlist, Boney M., ‘Daddy Cool’. That’s some bassline. I hum it out loud but assume a position on the bed on all fours, rocking to that beat like I’m a small bucking donkey. Christ alive, this is horrific. So horrific I yell. Kate and Rob next door stop chattering to eavesdrop. The curtain opens and Will stands there a little confused to see me in the table-top position. I pull him close, retch repeatedly and throw up on him. He looks down at his new trainers, trying not to care. My knuckles turn a lighter shade of pale clutching my metal bedstead. A girl stands there who looks like she’s here to wash my hair and sweep the clippings off the floor.

‘The midwife will be with you in a minute,’ she whispers. ‘What’s the matter?’

I glare at Will. Is this girl medically trained? How old is she? I want ID.

‘I think, I think I’m in labour…’

She shakes her head and reassures me that it will probably be a while yet. I glance at her badge: Maternity labour assistant trainee breastfeeding clinic girl. I nod and smile, shooing her away like a pigeon.

‘When I die, can you make sure our baby learns to be kind? Make sure he appreciates the outdoors. And Stevie Wonder, play him Stevie.’

I hope Will heard that. Maybe he needs to write it down. He mops my brow and tries to kiss me but I can’t even feel it. A dentist could be pulling out my molars now and I wouldn’t feel it compared to the volcano that is my abdomen.

‘Don’t give the baby a stupid name either. Everyone will think he’s a tosser.’ I wince. Will furrows his brow at me. I am jibber jabbering away which is my default setting when angry or stressed. Usually he solves this with chocolate and leaves the room. I can see the thoughts whirring around his head. I am pretty sure this is not death.

‘I’ll make sure our baby isn’t a tosser.’

The curtain moves again and this time it’s Maggie, who twitches her eyebrows at the sight of the blood. She hoists my legs up in the air and examines my nether regions.

‘Daddy, can you just push the button to the left of the bed, please?’

The button? That’s the emergency button. Aren’t you supposed to push that if my heart’s stopped? Will does as he’s told and looks at me, panicked. Another wave of pain strikes me and I bellow out some feral crescendo through the ward. Wolves in London Zoo howl back in reply.

‘Yup, Mummy. Looks like that gel worked quicker than we thought. We’re about seven centimetres dilated at the minute. Let’s get you moved into a room on the labour ward,’ she says, trying to contain her concern.

‘I can’t be. It hasn’t been two days yet.’

‘Babies don’t work to schedules, love.’

Baby. Now? I look into Will’s glassy eyes, tears on standby, trying to keep up as he skids around in a puddle of my vomit. Shit, it really is time. I feel Will’s hand in mine, fingers squeezed down to the bone. I squeeze back. It’s a flurry of activity as they adjust the bed and start to wheel me out of here. Kate and Rob look over at us, ashen. I’m sure your birth will be much different. There will be candles and stuff. Not like this visceral slanging match I’m having with my own body.

We stop at a lift. All fours worked before, so I take off the sheets covering my nether regions and try to rearrange myself, baying like a wounded deer, my bulbous arse and much more staring at the face of the porter. This is how farm animals birth and they always look fairly unaffected by the process, I tell myself. Will and the midwife wrangle me down.

‘Let’s leave that move for upstairs, Mummy.’

Who is Mummy? Oh, that’s me. I’m a mummy? Everything is a bustle of strip light, a metal-clad service elevator, nosy onlookers, orange curtains. We suddenly stop. I see Crocs and retch again.

A man with blond hair smiles at me. ‘Hi! I’m—’

But the pain charges through me and I arch my back, trying to get off the bed to better position myself.

‘Whoa! Careful. If you break your arm, how are you going to hold your new baby?’

At this moment, I’d wear him on my back like a monkey for all I care. Blondie can see my reticence for polite chit-chat, spreads my legs and gloves up, chatting to Maddie from downstairs. Will, who would normally be more protective about who looks at his lady’s private areas, has a look too and they all rub their chins like they’re figuring out the best way to tackle a blocked drain. Blondie looks up.

‘Alright, this baby wants out.’

‘DRUGS!’ I say with some force.

I’m handed a mouthpiece. I bite down on it and I inhale. Not even inhale, I suck that stuff in like crack. Man, this is good shit. It numbs everything for a small moment and takes my focus elsewhere. I love Will. I really do. I love Blondie here too. I take a couple more hits, wondering why this isn’t sold in supermarkets. They need to sell this part of labour far more.

‘OK, so I can see the head and I need you to concentrate on pushing. No more gas and air.’

I pout. Will laughs as he tries to prise the mouthpiece from my hands.

‘Mine!’ I bark back at him. ‘I’m not sharing this shit. Get your own.’

‘Beth, do what the nice man asked…’

‘No.’

Will is forced to wrestle me, which is excellent preparation for fathering a toddler. He releases my fingers from the mouthpiece and transfers them to his hand.

‘You can do this, B.’

I suddenly feel pressure. I push and grunt against the flood of pain with every ounce of reason, sweat and gumption I have, waiting for my body to respond. We’re doing this, aren’t we? Just summon something up and push like a motherfucker, right?

I push.

And push.

And push.

And is that the baby?

No. I think that was an actual poo. Was it? To be fair, I couldn’t give a flying fajita right now. I’m just glad I’m not in a bath. Will keeps whispering clichés about pride and love. I inhale some Will instead. He smells fruity. Like jelly babies.

‘You need to push down,’ Blondie informs me.

I give him an incredulous look, wondering how else I could have indeed been pushing. Up? Sideways? Wait. What in the living daylight of fuck is that? Stinging. What exactly am I giving birth to? A traffic bollard? A watermelon?

Puuuuuuuuuush. A head. The head is out. Blondie asks if I want to touch it but I’m a little scared. And it’s crying. I have a crying head hanging out of my foof. I close my eyes and pretend I’m tired and in a deep state of concentration because I’m too ashamed to admit that I don’t want to acknowledge my own baby’s head. All I can hear is ritualistic chanting about pushing. Part of me wants to tell them to piss off, part of me just wants to meet this baby. I opt for the latter. I bear all my energy through the lower half of my body, ready to propel myself off the bed, my teeth gritted so tightly I feel they might pop out like broken tiles. Where are my legs? I didn’t know they could stretch that far apart? My stomach contorts and I feel a strange fish-like presence gliding out of me.

‘Congratulations. And we have a boy.’

I don’t look down. I lie back, hearing a full-bellied scream as his little lungs fill with air.

Relief. We’re OK. He’s here. They push him up on top of me and perch him on my chest, gift-wrapped in a yellow NHS blanket.

‘Hello,’ I whisper.

He doesn’t reply. It’s a really, really little person. Tiny. He has eyes and ears and toes and everything. I do a swift digit check, because that’s what they do on the television. All accounted for. He nestles into my T-shirt which I take as approval for guitar music. Good lad. He stuffs his whole hand in his mouth and stares straight into my eyes. Hello.

I await the love to overwhelm me, my world to change. Yet all I feel is slightly confused. Blondie is clambering about with injections, placentas and cutting cords. ‘Well done. Now there’s a tear that I’ll have to fix up. Can you hoist your legs open or do you need stirrups?’

I’ve pushed a baby out; I can take on the world. Without stirrups. I swing my legs up in the air like a showgirl. The little one still stares at me like he wants me to claim ownership. I’m knackered. The anaesthetic stings. I keep saying ‘hello,’ not really knowing how to follow that up.

Then I look over at the corner of the delivery room where Will has been taking cover. Eyes glazed over, cheeks moist, both hands on top of his head. I reach out a hand and he comes over to inspect his son. He nestles into me and kisses the baby’s head, grimacing as he realises our son is still covered in baby goo. We’re both maniacally speechless.

‘I’m your midwife,’ says Blondie. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself.’

‘I’m Beth and this is Will. I’m sorry I shouted.’

‘I’ve had worse. And what about bubba here?’

‘Just Baby Cooper for now.’

‘Well, I’m Joe.’

Midhusband Joe continues to talk from in between my arched legs. His face and the giant lamp down there are slightly disconcerting, like he’s mining for something.

‘You did well there, Beth. Some inductions can be brutal like that but A-class pushing if ever I saw it. This is quite a tear but we will sort you out.’

I don’t want to envisage what that looks like and frankly, I don’t care. The relief that the pain is gone is everything. Instead, I beam. I did that.

Will perches on the bed beside his family.

Family. We are family. I should sing. I don’t.

The screaming has subsided. Perfect silence. A bizarre concoction of feelings overcome me: I can feel the adrenalin thrusting through my veins, pride at the marvels of my female biology, disbelief at the speed of everything. Pure shock. I can’t quite believe my little body-. . .