Regulars: Column

Natasha Bell

Pregnency pride)

Due to her new arrival, Natasha Bell needs to give Pride a miss this year…

Try to link your column to Gay Pride” was my brief. As a heterosexual married mother of four, I fear this could prove to be somewhat challenging. I sit here, baby vomit smeared over my shoulder, as my tourettes toddler screeches obscenities. Spellcheck works overtime as my gelantinous brain stupefied with under-use and lack of sleep struggled to string sentences together. I think of the halcyon previous Pride celebrations with nostalgia. This year I will not be joining you in a bacchanalia of merrymaking. So my offer to you, my gay brothers, is a harrowing tale of pregnancy and childbirth from the hetero other-side, to reinforce your celebrations.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy being pregnant. Lavished with lashings of attention and enabled to eat anything without guilt, what’s a girl not to like? Except this pregnancy and birth has been, quite frankly, shit. Don’t get me wrong, the HIV side has been a breeze. Unlike my previous pregnancy my CD4 count has remained buoyant and my viral load firmly undetectable. The HIV team at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital have been exemplary – kudos and thanks to you guys. Okay, so I didn’t put on any weight apart from my bump and was able to wear high heels throughout my pregnancy, so there were a couple of positives. They were, however, over-shadowed by the daily fainting and collapsing episodes over the last few weeks of my pregnancy. There’s no glamour in collapsing on the concrete floor (inevitably undulating with MRSA) of a hospital waiting room, red hooker-esque knickers visible to all.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy being pregnant. Lavished with lashings of attention and enabled to eat anything without guilt, what’s a girl not to like?”

Despite the melodrama of being fitted with a mobile ECG, it turned out that my dramatic episodes were due to very un-glamorous anaemia. My husband’s tenuous sympathy dissipated. “It’s your own fault for not taking your iron tablets,” he would rage, as I lay on the floor of IKEA. I soon became housebound, assisted trips to the toilet my only taste of entertainment, rattling with so many binding-you-up iron tablets that pooing became a bi-monthly activity.

I was booked to have a C-section performed by the obstetrician who allegedly delivered Tony Blair’s baby (again linking me to the former Prime Minister through my vagina). My baby however had other ideas. Two weeks before I was due to be sliced and diced, contractions started. My husband, disillusioned with a hormonal banshee of a pregnant wife, had recently given his heart to another – a gleaming garish Aston Martin. It may be great for going 180 mph on the German motorway, not so good for transporting a woman in labour through London rush hour traffic. My only comfort, as I screamed over each cervix crunching speed bump, was the hope of my waters bursting en-route, dousing his precious leather seats with amniotic fluid.

Fortunately for him we arrived in time and I was soon wheeled into the operating theatre. My beautiful baby girl, weighing 7lbs7oz, was tugged out in excellent health. I however didn’t do so well. An hour after the birth my mother and aunt arrived for the inevitable photo shoot. “I don’t feel very well”, I whimpered, albeit still able to flash the veneers for the camera. I was soon surrounded by a medical team, pummelling away at my uterus and attaching me to drips, as they discovered I was busy having a fairly impressive haemorrhage. An all night blood transfusion session followed. I hoped I may develop the sunny disposition and mathematic prowess of the blood donor, but I’m yet to see any change.

I was freed from hospital hades a few days later, even more hormonally hellish than I had been during my pregnancy. The nightmare however continued. I developed an infection and my staples became imbedded in my skin.The bumbling community midwife, who tugged away with the equipment she admitted to having never used before, was unable to remove them. I had to return to hospital where I had them pulled out, screaming in agony, but high as a kite on the gas and air (guys, you’ve got to get hold of this bloody good stuff.)

It’s been 6 weeks since I gave birth. How am I doing? Well, I’m alive and my husband and I, despite my erratic hormones and lack of sleep are somehow still together. Don’t get me wrong, I love my baby, all of my children (and even my grumpy arsey husband) with a wild demonic passion. But a drunken hedonistic Pride Celebration? Tempting stuff. Enjoy boys. PN