Bad Midwife Experience

IVAN: When the time came for W to be born, a doctor came in, a Dr B------, I'll never forget his name. Of course, having gone to NCT, we had our birth plan, and we knew basically what was going on, and the one thing she had said to the doctor was, I don't want to be cut, I want to tear. And as W was coming out, the next thing I knew was, there was an arc of blood shooting out across the delivery room, because this bastard had whipped out a scalpel and cut her, to make the birth easier - basically for himself, which is what doctors tend to do. 
 

Bad Midwife Experience

On top of that, when he stitched her up, he cocked it up. She spent six months after the birth in a lot of pain and discomfort. Eventually she had to go to another hospital to have an operation to put it right again. Someone had to cut her open again, then stitch her up again. But this doctor, Dr B------, as he was stitching her up, he uttered the immortal words: 'One for the husband.' Which meant he was going to stitch her up a little bit tighter. It's 16 years ago, but I would love to hit that guy in the face, even now.

To get to the good part - and I think this is peculiar to the first one - when W was finally born and I saw him there, that was the most amazing experience of my life. I always describe it as the Frankenstein moment, because the first feeling was this sudden rush of blood to the head, and you think, my God, we've created life. And I felt immensely powerful. And immediately afterwards you feel incredibly humble, because you think, oh my God, look at this little thing down there. I wept. Imogen wept. It was the single greatest moment of my life.
 
LESTER: After our scanning experience in one of Prague's two maternity hospitals, we booked into the other one for the big day. All seemed well. There was even an English-speaking nurse to help us so we wouldn't have to rely on our Czech.

The first hurdle was our son's unwillingness to be born. The due date came and went. Lilith guzzled beer hoping to get him drunk and trick him into dropping down. She went on long bumpy tram rides over the cobbled streets of the Old Town, but nothing would shift him. He would have to be induced.

On the big day we traveled to the hospital in style, catching one last tram in the hope of some action. Lilith bemused the polite Praguers by refusing every offer of a seat. Once at the hospital, she was installed in a waiting room and told that our English-speaking nurse was off sick. I was shooed off to work. I left Lilith in free form loudly practising the Czech for 'When do I get the drugs?'

Two hours later I managed to dodge the guards and track Lilith down. By this time she had been moved to a delivery room, having been given the injection to start the induction. 'When do I get the drugs?' Lilith wailed at me as I entered. To judge from her physical appearance she had been getting the drugs on a daily basis for the previous ten years. The healthy young wife I had left two hours previously now looked like Anita Pallenberg going cold turkey. To find out more, you can check out Bad Midwife Experience.