At 30 and a bit weeks, I attended a “pre-admission interview” at the private hospital where I was booked in to have my baby. This was basically supposed to be a quick run through of your medical history, so that they don’t have to ask you what your allergies are when you arrive in the throes of labour.

Why they call it an interview I don’t know. Perhaps they want to find out whether you’re pregnant enough to give birth in their shiny 5-star wards. Or whether you’re going to be hard work (as opposed to a hard worker, like in normal interviews).

I pictured how this interview might unfold. “So tell me why you think you’re right for this hospital.”

– “Well, I always remain calm in a crisis.” (Lie!)
– “I’m a great planner and I prepare really well for momentous events like having a baby.” (Lie!)
– “I’m intelligent, perceptive and a great communicator.” (Though not when I’m pregnant.)

After having attended hundreds of job interviews over the past 15 years or so, I think I have a solid arsenal of suitable answers to all the questions that interviewers usually throw at you.

But I didn’t have any decent answers to the questions my midwife fired at me in the pre-admission interview, and if I really was being screened, my file would have been tossed in the bin the second I left the interview room.

It started out with her asking me if I had received my Anti-D injection yet, for my negative blood group. I hadn’t.

She disappeared to get me the injection, and I blithely rolled up my sleeve, ready to show off my lovely fat veins (nurses always go mad for my veins and I’m secretly very proud of them). She returned to the room. “Turn around, and roll down the top of your pants please.”


So I did, cool as a cucumber. (Flexible under pressure, you see.)

She turned back with the needle poised. “Oh! Not that far!”

Christ. I’ve never received a needle in my bum before. It wasn’t something I was expecting in the first five minutes and it did throw me off my game just a tiny bit.

“Now then,” she said, settling down to her notes again while I tried to regain my dignity. “Birth plan?”

“Umm… no, not really.”

“I’ll just write, take it as it comes, then,” she said, in a soothing voice. “Would H like to cut the umbilical cord?” she said, smiling.

“Umm… I think so.” I couldn’t remember if he’d agreed to that or not.

“Ok,” she said, scribbling in her notes. “Ask… on… the… day. -- Would you like to be given a mirror to see the baby’s head crowning?”

“Ooh. I don’t know,” I said, grinning like a half wit.

She tried to mask her exasperation as she dug the pen in a bit harder. “Ok. Ask her on the day. Now—”

I had so desperately hoped the next question was going to be easy.

“--do you want to see your placenta?”

All I could think of was the magazine article I’d read about an earth mum who’d saved her placenta after the birth, freezing it in pieces and eating a little bit each night.

This in turn made me think of Hannibal Lecter, and the brain-eating scene.

“I only ask because some women feel very upset that they missed out, if they’re not offered the chance.”

“…oh,” I said.

“It’s a very beautiful organ,” she added.

“I’m sure it’s… lovely.” Just not with fava beans and a nice chianti.

“Ask her on the day,” she wrote.

Apparently the placenta looks like a slab of steak. Given that I retch at the sight of raw meat, I don’t know how I’d go being presented with my placenta right after giving birth. I think I’d prefer a chocolate biscuit and a hug actually.

I’ve decided to switch to the public hospital now anyway, and I have my first “interview” (except at this hospital it’s a good old fashioned “ante-natal appointment”) in two weeks, so I’m hoping I’ll sail through that one, now that I’ve had some practice. And with any luck I won’t have to attend any more interviews that require me to present my bum cheek for inspection (and/or injection).