By Laura Mugridge
Rehearsals for the show started on a Monday, about 4 weeks ago. I wasn’t there for the first two days, I swanned in on Day Three. I wasn’t there because I was in St Thomas’s Hospital. I spent some time sitting on a birth ball, some time lying on the floor and a fair amount of time standing up. I also spent a lot of time staring at a floodlit Houses of Parliament, the rather extraordinary view from the window of the ward.
Last year, after the first tour of Kicking and Screaming, I trained to be a doula. A doula is, in essence, a birth partner, someone who is there at the birth of a baby to support the parents and can also offer pre natal and post natal support. This was my second experience of being present at a birth (third if you count the birth of my son in 2012- I was very much there for that)
The person doing all the work was my beautiful warrior friend Jules, someone for whom I have more love and respect than I ever thought possible. To see someone be so strong, so vulnerable, so primal and so beautiful all at the time was utterly overwhelming. I left the hospital at 5pm on the Tuesday, emerged blinking into the sunlight, and the world seemed a little bit different.
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