When Anna Goldsworthy, pianist and perfectionist, falls pregnant with her first child, her excitement is tempered by the daunting journey ahead.

In this extract from her book, Welcome to Your New Life, she shares the dizzying wonder and crippling anxiety that come with creating new life.

“At ten weeks, you are no longer embryo but foetus. You are a small strawberry, with nipples. I carry your polaroid in my wallet, admiring you throughout the day. Your stowaway cunning amuses me: the way you concealed yourself as embryo, coming out only when foetus.

There are advantages to being out of touch with my body: I have made it to the end of the first trimester without noticing morning sickness. There are disadvantages, too. Every obstetrician we call has been booked up for weeks by women more self-aware. I mention this to a neighbour’s new girlfriend, a student of midwifery. ‘You don’t need an obstetrician.’ She spits out the word like an expletive. Her soft face is covered with down, fine as lanugo.

‘Why not?’

‘The medicalisation of childbirth is about the pathologisation of the female. Studies show that male doctors repeatedly engage in excessive penetrations during labour.’

‘What sort of penetrations?’

Her tiny rosebud mouth twists to one side. ‘Digital rape, for one thing.’

I visit my friend Fiona, who has recently given birth using an obstetrician. She is practising cello in the kitchen while her infant daughter sleeps in a bassinet beside her, compliant as a household appliance.

‘Did you feel digitally raped during childbirth?’ I ask.

‘God, no. I felt empowered !’ She returns the cello to its case and fills up the kettle. ‘Giving birth was the greatest physical triumph of my life.’

The baby wakes herself with a large grunt, and Fiona buries her nose in her nappy. ‘Heaven!’ She offers the child’s bottom to me. ‘Please. Have a whiff. It’s the most delicious bacon-and-egg croissant.’

I sniff delicately. ‘It’s certainly tangy.’

Anna, 32 weeks pregnant with second baby, and her son, Reuben 4.

‘Have you written your birth plan?’ she asks, as she places the baby on the kitchen bench and changes her.

‘Birth plan?’

‘You know. The script of your labour, your delivery. Pain relief, but other things too. Preferred positions. Choice of music.’ She takes a DVD from a shelf. ‘You won’t believe this, but Matilda crowned exactly at the recapitulation of the Elgar concerto!’

I catch a glimpse of the DVD’s title before it is swallowed into the machine: Matilda’s birth. December 14.

‘I do believe it. I don’t need video evidence.’ ‘But I’d like to share this with you.’

Is it bad manners to decline a childbirth video with your tea?

Panic rises in me like nausea. Then I realise it is nausea and run to the bathroom, embracing morning sickness like deliverance. When I return, the DVD has been removed, and Fiona has brewed a pot of ginger tea.

‘I think you’re in denial. When you’re ready, you should watch my video. Or if for some reason you don’t want to watch mine, you should at least watch somebody else’s.’

‘It’s not that I don’t want to watch yours in particular. If I was going to watch anyone’s, it would definitely be yours.’

She waves her hand impatiently. ‘Preparation is key. Think of labour as the biggest performance of your life. I swam two kilometres a day when I was pregnant, but that was the least of it. It’s all about psychological preparation.’

The baby hiccups politely, and Fiona attaches her to a neat breast.

‘What sort of psychological preparation?’

‘YouTube is a great resource. I watched all sorts of animals being born. Chimpanzees, hippos, baby whales. And I watched other things, too.’

As the child drinks, she makes the noise of an outboard motor. It is extravagant, orgasmic, a celebration of appetite.

A pink flush creeps up Fiona’s neck. ‘I wish she wouldn’t do that.’

The baby’s tiny mouth works up and down, and the hooligan noises grow louder. I marvel at how she can drink and yell at once: surely it requires circular breathing.

‘What other things?’

She places a hand over her yodelling baby’s ear and drops her voice. ‘Porn.’

‘Why?’

‘To overcome my squeamishness.’ ‘What sort of porn?’

‘Insertion of objects. Fisting. Anything that challenged me.’ She moves the child from one breast to the other and tucks away the depleted nipple. ‘There’s a lot of weird stuff out there, if you make the effort to find it.’

I already have a lurid conception of childbirth, furnished by Baba and Sash. Baba’s near-fatal haemorrhaging when I was born, because of a family bleeding disorder; Sash’s regular dispatches from the frontline, during her years of medical training. Of a labouring woman defecating into her hand, hurling her faeces against the hospital walls. ‘We came running in to find a shit storm, literally. Flying here, flying there! The nurses huddled in the corner, screaming.’

Into this surreal landscape, I now have to introduce digital rape, alongside the helpfulness of fisting. As I drive home, I glance down and am reassured by your size. Labour is still a long way away, still largely hypothetical. Some supremely improbable events have to occur first. I have to grow an extra brain inside my belly, a spare pair of ears.

When I arrive home, Nicholas is on the phone. He hangs up and then sits on the sofa beside me, cradling my hand.

‘That was Fiona. Do you think you might be in labour denial?’

At twelve weeks, you have grown fingernails and a pancreas. Pain has been switched on. Sometimes you cry silently in the womb, but what do you have to cry about, little bean? Are you lonely in there, with your unseen, unknown face?

I am determined not to be in denial, so I begin swotting pregnancy books. Preparing for birth, it seems, is like preparing for a wedding. There are guests to invite, soundtracks to organise, catering to plan.

Spare a thought for your husband who will doubtless become peckish as you labour. You may not have time to bake once labour begins, so why not prepare in advance? It can be a good idea to bake muffins beforehand and freeze. Start to defrost when you feel those early, mild contractions.

‘Why do you find that so amusing?’ asks Nicholas, as I read this to him in bed.

Now that I am aware of them, birth plans are everywhere.

My email inbox brims with their successful realisations.

Surrounded by a nurturing circle of love, Archie was born joyfully into water.

After a second entirely drug-free labour, Laila has arrived to join Mummy, Daddy and Big Sis Cecilia.

Anna and 10 month-old baby Reuben.

There is a stridency to them that I had not previously noticed, and I begin to dread their arrival, feeling reprimanded in advance for a drug-assisted labour that has not yet taken place. I confess this to Grace and Bruno, who have been attending hypnosis classes in preparation for a drug-free birth. ‘No-one’s judging you,’ Bruno says. ‘The issue is more society’s expectations around birth pain.’

Grace’s pregnancy is four months more advanced than my own, a reassuring buttress between me and labour. She is glowing, as pregnant women are supposed to, and wears her hair wrapped in a dramatic red turban. ‘We have the most wonderful doula. She’s going to coach us through the entire birth experience, even the pain.’

Bruno takes her hand. ‘But there will be no pain, my cocotte. We have learnt this already in the classes. Labour pain is completely a social construct.’

This is something I would like to believe. ‘Really?’ ‘Absolutely. If you go in without the expectation of pain, you simply will not feel any. This is the point of the hypnosis.’ ‘Birth can be a really sensuous experience,’ Grace explains.

When she is anxious she smiles widely, and now her perfect teeth gleam at me. ‘Apparently, some women have the most powerful orgasms of their life when they give birth. I’m not necessarily aiming for one. An orgasm would just be a bonus.’

I have never heard of a doula, but immediately I want one: barefoot, enlightened, smelling of lavender oil. A script forms in my imagination, of candles, ambient music, the soothing ministrations of a doula. A midwife catching you, possibly into joyful water. A small happy splash, and then a baby’s tinkling laughter. A group hug. Maybe even a singalong.

I admit this fantasy to Sash over the phone. Foolishly, I use the expression birth experience.

‘Oh yes, we all love experiences,’ she begins. ‘Candles, essential oils, warm water. Aren’t they lovely? Go on, have an experience. You work hard, you deserve it! Run yourself a warm bath. Listen to some Enya.’

‘I wasn’t planning to listen to Enya.’

‘But guess what? Sometimes things go wrong in childbirth. And when they go wrong, they go very wrong. Here’s an idea: have your experience when you’re not having a baby!’

I can never manage a rebuttal when under attack from my sister.

‘Why would anyone risk their child’s life for an experience? And in your case especially. You’ve got a fractured back. A bleeding disorder!’

Suddenly I find my rebuttal. ‘Studies show that male doctors repeatedly engage in excessive penetrations during labour.’

‘Like what?’

My voice falters. ‘You know. Digital rape.’ There is an ominous silence.

‘Do you even understand what giving birth is? It is a reverse penetration! The biggest one you’re ever going to have. If you feel violated by a doctor’s pinkie, how do you plan to cope with your baby’s enormous head?’

‘That’s a good point.’

‘Run yourself a bath and meditate on it for a while.’

After I hang up, I do just that. And as the bath fills around me, I come to a decision: the size of a baby’s head is a feminist issue. It is poor design that our heads are too big for our pelvises, but why should women be the ones to pay? Should we not use our expanded brain capacity – the source of the pain – to ease our torment? Instead, we demand stoicism. Orgasms. Muffins. And then we email our masochistic triumphs to everyone in our address book.

I start a new birth plan by finding an obstetrician. Monica has a clear scrubbed face and the trim body of an athlete. Her form-fitting pencil skirt refutes all my chaotic notions of child- birth. I tell her about my fractured spine, my bleeding disorder. A tiny furrow, needle-thin, bisects her brow. ‘You’re an interesting patient. It’s good to have interesting patients.’

Then she takes my blood pressure, and asks me to lie down. She applies a doppler stethoscope to my stomach so that I can eavesdrop on your heartbeat, blessed and improbable as life on Mars.

This is an extract from Welcome to Your New Life by Anna Goldsworthy,

Black Inc. $19.99

http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/welcome-your-new-life-0