Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘Well, at least we’re here finally,’ I said, putting the bag down on the floor. ‘Are you hungry?’

She shook her head.

‘I fancy a shower. Do you want to join me?’

I nodded.

When we stood under the shower, holding each other, there were new contractions, she leaned forward and hung onto a rail on the wall as the sound I had heard for the first time the night before was emitted again. I stroked her back, but it felt more like an insult than a comfort. She stood up and I met her eyes in the mirror. Our faces looked drained, completely vacant, and I thought, we’re in this all on our own.

We went into the room, Linda put on the garments she had been given, I lay down on the sofa. The next minute I was fast asleep.

A few hours later a little delegation came into our room and labour was induced. Linda didn’t want any chemical painkillers and instead was given something they called sterile water injections, that is water injected under the skin, on a pain-to-combat-pain principle. She stood in the middle of the floor, holding my hand, as the two nurses injected the water. She screamed and shouted SHIIIT! from the very bottom of her lungs while instinctively trying to wriggle away, and the two nurses held her tight with experienced hands. I had tears in my eyes from seeing her in such pain. Yet I had an inkling that this was nothing, and that worse was to come. And what would it be like now it was clear that Linda had such a low pain threshold?

Dressed in a white hospital smock, she sat in bed while they inserted a cannula into her arm, which from then on was connected to a transparent bag on a metal stand via a thin plastic pipe. Because of the drip they wanted to keep a close eye on the foetus, they said, and attached a small sonar device to its head, from which a wire ran out of Linda, across the bed to a machine next to her, where soon afterwards a number began to flash. It was the foetus’s pulse. As if that wasn’t enough, Linda had a strap tied around her, on which there were some sensors connected via a further wire to another monitor. A number flashed on it as well, and above it there was a wavy electronic line that rose sharply as the contractions started. In addition, a sheet of paper issued from this machine, showing the same graph.

It was as though they had decided to launch her to the moon.

When the probe was attached to the head of the foetus Linda screamed again and the midwife patted her on the cheek. Why do they treat her like a child? I wondered in my inactivity, standing and staring at all that was suddenly going on around me. Was it because of the letter she had sent them, which was probably somewhere in the nurses’ office now, where she had written that she needed a lot of support and encouragement despite being strong and looking forward to what was about to occur?

Linda’s eyes met mine through the confusion of hands and she smiled. I smiled back. A dark-haired stern-looking midwife showed me how to read the monitors, the baby’s heartbeat was especially important, if there was a dramatic rise or fall I was to call them by pressing a button. If the reading sank to zero I shouldn’t worry, contact had probably been lost. Are we really going to be left on our own in here? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t, nor how long this would take. Instead I nodded. She would come and see us every so often, she said, and then they were gone.

Not long afterwards the time between contractions shrank. And, judging by Linda’s reactions, they were a lot stronger. She screamed and began to move differently, as though she was searching for something. Again and again she shifted her position, she was restless, she screamed, and I realised she was looking for a way out of the pain. There was something animal about this.

The contractions passed, and she settled down.

‘I don’t think I can do this, Karl Ove,’ she said.

‘Yes, you can,’ I said. ‘It’s not a problem. It’s painful, but it’s not a problem.’

‘It hurts so much! So bloody much!’

‘I know.’

‘Can you massage me?’

‘Yes, of course.’

She sat up, holding on to the upright side-rails of the bed.

‘There?’ I asked.

‘Bit lower down,’ she said.

On the screen a curve began to rise.

‘Looks like one’s coming,’ I said.

‘Oh no,’ she said.

It rose like a tidal wave. Linda shouted, lower down! shifted position, groaned, shifted position again, wrapped her fingers around the side-rail as tightly as she could. As the curve began to fall and this pain retreated I saw the baby’s pulse had increased dramatically.

Linda slumped back.

‘Did the massage help?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she answered.

I decided to ring them if the pulse hadn’t gone down after the next contractions.

‘I can’t do this,’ she said.

‘Yes, you can,’ I said. ‘You’re managing just fine.’

‘Hold my forehead.’

I laid my hand on her forehead.

‘Here comes another,’ I said. She straightened up, whimpered, groaned, shouted, slumped back again. I pressed the button and a red sign began to flash above the door.

‘The pulse went very high,’ I said when the midwife was in front of me.

‘Hm,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to slow the drip a bit. Perhaps it was too high.’

She went over to Linda.

‘How are you doing?’ she asked.

‘It’s terribly painful,’ Linda said. ‘Is there a long way to go yet?’

She nodded.

‘Yes, there is.’

‘I’ve got to have something. I’m not coping. It’s no good. Can I have laughing gas, do you think?’

‘It’s too early for that,’ the midwife said. ‘The effect wears off after a while. It’s better to have it later.’

‘But that’s no good,’ Linda said. ‘I need it now! That’s no good!’

‘We’ll wait for a bit,’ she said. ‘OK?’

Linda nodded and the midwife went out again.

The next hour passed in much the same way. Linda searched for a way to deal with the pain, couldn’t, it was as though she were trying to escape it as the waves beat against and pounded her. It was awful to see. All I could do was wipe away her sweat, hold my hand on her forehead and make occasional half-hearted attempts at massage on her back. Outside, in the darkness which had fallen unobserved, it was snowing. It was four o’clock, one and a half hours since labour had been induced. It was nothing, I knew that. Hadn’t Kari Anne been in labour for twenty hours or something like that when Ylva was born?

There was a knock at the door. The cool dark-haired midwife came in.

‘How are you both doing?’ she asked.

Linda turned from her hunched position.

‘I want laughing gas!’ she shouted.

The midwife mulled this over. Then she nodded and went out, returning with a stand holding two bottles, which she positioned in front of the bed. After fiddling around for some minutes she had it ready and a mask was put in Linda’s hand.

‘I’d like to do something,’ I said. ‘Massage. Can you show me where it’s most effective?’

At that moment the contractions started, Linda pressed the mask over her face and greedily breathed in the gas as her lower body writhed. The midwife placed my hands at the bottom of her lumbar region.

‘There, I reckon,’ she said. ‘OK?’

‘OK,’ I said.

I rubbed in the oil, the midwife closed the door behind her, I put one hand on top of the other and pushed the heel of my hand against her spine.

‘Yes!’ she shouted! Her voice was muffled by the mask. ‘There! Yes, yes, yes!’

As the contractions subsided, she turned to me.

‘The laughing gas is fantastic,’ she said.

‘Good,’ I said.

The next times the contractions came something happened to her. She was no longer trying to escape, she wasn’t searching vainly for refuge from the pain, in the way that had been so heart-rending to watch, something new came over her, she seemed to be confronting the pain instead, acknowledging its presence and meeting it face to face, in an initially inquisitive manner, thereafter with more and more force, like an animal, I thought once again, but not in a light, frightened, nervous manner, for when the pain came now she stood up with both hands clenched round the bed rail, moving her hips to and fro as she howled into the gas mask, exactly the same procedure every time, it repeated itself and repeated itself and repeated itself. Pause, mask in hand, body on the mattress. Then came the wave, I always saw it slightly before her on the monitor, massaged as hard as I could, she got up, swayed to and fro, shouted until the wave retreated and she slumped back again. It was no longer possible to have any contact with her, she had totally disappeared into herself, she was oblivious to everything around her, it was all about meeting the pain, resting, meeting it, resting. When the midwife came in she spoke to me as though Linda wasn’t present, and in a strange way that was right, it did seem as if we were a long, long way from her. But not completely removed, suddenly she could shout in an incommensurately loud voice, WATER! or CLOTH! and when she was handed it, THANKS!