My forceps delivery at 40: when childbirth left me speechless

The supportive sweat-wiper

There’s a certain confidence that comes with giving birth at 40. You tell yourself you’re emotionally seasoned, worldly-wise, and not easily flustered. You’ve written your birth plan with military precision. You’ve read every blog, asked every question, and your husband – in my case, H – is prepped for his role as the supportive sweat-wiper. But childbirth, as it turns out doesn’t go to plan.

When plans meet the beep of reality

The first sign that things weren’t going according to plan came with the Pitocin drip and monitors that beeped like a frantic techno track. My calm resolve evaporated somewhere between contraction two and the midwife’s tight smile. I’d imagined a fairly straightforward delivery, but what I got was a bright, clinical stage set and I was centre stage.

The epidural apprenticeship

An apprentice appeared, gentle but visibly nervous, tasked with inserting a needle the size of a knitting needle into my spine. I tried to breathe. She tried to aim. Somewhere between her hesitation and my panic, I muttered under my breath: “gamaj, gamaj, gamaj.” In Rashti Persian, it means cooking pot, not exactly a spiritual mantra, but oddly grounding at the time.

Moments later, a senior doctor swept in and took over. Between the beeps and whispered apologies, I clung to the sound of the word “gamaj,” my little verbal lifeline in a room that had lost all sense of control.

“Childbirth has a way of stripping away the illusion of control, one beep, one contraction at a time.”

Forceps were not on my radar

By the time my husband’s reassuring grin faded and the midwife’s voice sharpened, I knew something wasn’t right. My baby’s heart rate had dipped. The calm professionalism in the room was replaced by a quiet urgency. Then came the word that made my stomach drop – forceps.

I hadn’t prepared for that. I’d visualised soft lighting and calm breathing, not stainless steel and surgical precision. Those instruments looked like something out of a museum of medical history. But they were also, ultimately, the reason my son arrived safely. I can’t romanticise it, it was raw, loud, and frightening, yet also profoundly human.

Lost in translation

Moments after the drama subsided, H’s mother appeared on a tablet screen from Tehran. There she was radiant, praying, and blissfully unaware that I was still being stitched up. I smiled through the haze, nodding along to rapid Farsi I couldn’t understand. Between the pain, exhaustion, and the beeping monitors, it felt surreal, part hospital ward, part family gathering.

And yet, somehow, it worked. Her words, even when I couldn’t grasp their meaning, offered a kind of comfort that didn’t need translation. We laughed, I cried, and the whole strange moment stitched itself into memory as tenderly as the doctor worked on the rest of me.

The day that left me in stitches

In the weeks that followed, I realised that childbirth is as much about surrender as it is about strength. My laminated plan meant nothing. But what stayed with me wasn’t just the fear or the pain, it was the laughter between contractions. The kindness of strangers. The sound of “gamaj” echoing through the noise.

Motherhood, I’ve learned, is about resilience and the small moments of grace that get you through the hardest ones. You emerge stitched, changed, but somehow stronger than before.

• Childbirth doesn’t always follow the script and that’s okay.
• Sometimes, humour and humanity get you through what textbooks can’t.