envy

‘Ava! Bathroom! Now!’ The midwife disappears from my bedside, where she’s been comforting me while I have a post bleed blubber.

Thudder of feet. Call the senior Reg. Urgent! Yes, CTG, BP machine. Get a line in. Fluids. Can someone get some fluids! It’s hard not to eavesdrop.

20 minutes later I get up to go to the loo and they are all still running around. Three four doctors in their hairnets and blue scrubs, midwives panting and pushing trolleys, the burly porter who I know is the guy who wheels you in to surgery. You can feel the adrenaline in the air.

And what did I feel as I watch all of this drama?

Envy. Mostly envy. I wished it was me.

Wait. What?

I watch as women come and go on the ward. You’ve a bleed? Your waters have broken? 37, 38 weeks? We’ll probably keep you in and get you going tomorrow. They start puffing and groaning and go off down to induction or delivery. On one of my walks I see them a day or two later with deflated bellies on the way to the loo.

Envy.

Another bleed starts and there is a perverse part of me that wants this to be the one that doesn’t stop, the one that means that the baby will be born, that this part of the journey will be over. I want to be the one with all the doctors running round me and the porter waiting at the door.

Of course I don’t want a 24, 26, 27 week old baby with all the attendant horrors that google spits out at 3am (google + 3am = never a good idea). Of course I want to get to 36 weeks and hold my newborn on my bare chest instead of them being carted off to the NICU in a plastic bag. Of course I feel blessed to be lying here waiting for my bizarre 11am bowl of soup.

But I do still have a weird creep of envy for the pregnant lady collapsed on the bathroom floor.