This was me eleven years ago today, not quite nine-months pregnant, waters broken and needing a little push to get me going.

After the necessary incendiary devices were inserted, I sat for the next 24 hours like a hand grenade with its pin pulled out.

But when that thing went off - oh boy! – the devastation was breathtaking.

I was told the excruciating pain wasn’t proper labour but something more insidious: back labour. Medical people describe it as the baby’s head pressing down on nerves leading to mother’s legs and feet. I would describe it as having the lower half of your body dipped in a vat of boiling oil. No contractions. No breathing exercises. Just pure blinding pain.

A few hours later the anaesthetist arrived with his magic needle and put the universe right again.

The next morning at 2 am, a surgeon named Izaak arrived with his machete and rushed me to theatre. The next part is fuzzy as this is when I passed out on the table, having volunteered more than half my blood supply to decorate the ceiling, walls and scrubs of medical people. I gather a healthy baby was removed during the melee. 

The next few days I was off my head on heroin opiate cordials. A few days later came the blood transfusion. Was the blood tainted with the prions of Mad Cow Disease? I guess I’ll have to wait and see. But on those drugs, they could have infused me with hydrochloric acid and I wouldn’t have minded.

But do you know the worst part of this experience? In the country where all of this took place, it wasn’t Labour Day. They celebrate Labour Day on May 1st! I was deprived the splendid coincidence of having labour induced on Labour Day.

And for a gifted typist, this is the ultimate cruelty.

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