Why G&A is the new G&T
Looking back I can’t believe I waited until my third pregnancy to try out the delights of gas and air. Like a glass of crisp chilled gin and tonic, it soothed – momentarily, very momentarily – those deep, deep contractions with the promise of every magical inhalation from its mouthpiece. Gas and air helped me safely deliver my little boy.
I won’t deny I was a little dubious about turning to it. The hardcore whisky on the rocks numbing of the epidural certainly held its usual allure. But this time I wanted to try something different. This time I wanted to work my way a little slower up the pain relief scale. And I guess I was also visualising a much shorter labour. But for all that, it was definitely no less intensive! Sometimes I wonder how we women do it?
So anyway, like a teen taking that first drag of a cigarette, I got one helluva a head rush on my first G&A attempt. In fact I swore that that was the end of that! My lips were tingling and feeling really weird. I was a record spinning out of control on a turntable. So this was what they meant by the dizziness and nausea! Well, no thank you.
But then the next contraction came and it was a long and painful bugger. I grappled the tube back off the midwife. I didn’t look back. The edge this wonder stuff took off the discomfort was indescribable, prickly lips soon felt normal and the head spinning became an almost pleasant tipsy-from-having-one-too-many-glasses kind of sensation. I wondered why oh why I hadn’t turned to it before?
So much so that when it came for my waters to be broken because they hadn’t done so of their own accord, I would let the doctor do it on one condition and one condition only: my new partner had to be present. No way was that happening without my beloved gas and air!
Meanwhile, my poor husband had been relegated to the sidelines, his usual attempts to cool me down with a barely damp flannel and hand held fan not impressing me much.
And on my gas and air affair went. Together we had one passionate, intimate roller coaster of a ride. So much so that when my little boy was born, I was still clutching proprietorially at my darling G&A – even in those first Mummy and Baby photos!
And then I had to have stitches.
I wondered if G&A would like to accompany me again? You know, just one last time. For old time’s sake. Never before had stitches to the perineum felt almost serene. And this got me thinking, even then in my post labour state: Why aren’t there Gas and Air stations in the home?
Can you imagine how many situations we could restore? How many marriages we could save? How many teenage tantrums we could disperse? How many stressed out Mums could seek five minutes refuge in the Gas and Air cupboard while their four year old has a full-on Terrible Twos display with the Lego, Plasticine and a box of crayons?
And we could install them in office too! Workers cue up for some G&A relief in their lunch break. Or a Gas and Air Manager does the rounds with a portable unit to employees’ desks – a bit like the office masseuses you get in those new-age corporations. Can you CEOs out there see how your profits will rise? Who in their right mind will take a duvet day now?
Let’s bring Gas and Air to parliament, to the hot-headed meetings for the Knights of the Round Table at Number 10. How much more peaceful a world would we live in? Gas and Air stations can be fitted into the Big Brother House too. Shit, Ant and Dec can take one to the bush for their feuding Z list I’m-a-Celebrity campers when they head off for their annual Australian holiday – I mean TV presenting gig. And I’m sure The Duchess of Cambridge could have done with several inhalations of G&A just thinking about facing the press hours after giving birth to baby Charlotte.
I love you Gas and Air.
Though my fantasies about you may now seem like a long and distant dream that I am not sure really even took place, I will never forget that wonderful, wonderful time we shared.
