Your Birth Day

The outside world loosely bobbed further and further from sight as you took its place. There was no rushing through traffic or down hospital corridors. No water breaking in bed as Mom had it. There was no panic. Labour simply began when we were least expecting it.

These seven days with you have been hazy, surreal. Speaking in full sentences is taxing. But the moments stand out vividly.

The labour ward hospital bed, Mom knitting your orange and white scarf-blanket on one side, the machine printing graphs showing my contractions and heart rate on the other. I can see myself squirming with each stab of my uterus pulling into itself like a sea anemone. And then it passes and I return to watching Mom’s hands winding the knitting needles through wool.

How quickly the morning progressed from 1 am to 10 am, from the start of the spotting, lying awake in bed with you tucked up inside our human nursery still.

I can see the reply from Dr A’s secretary to my 9 am email: Hi Tamlin, please go to the labour ward immediately. I see myself collecting our hospital bag that had been waiting in the wings by the front door, climbing into my red Toyota and heading to Mom and Dad’s house.

That morning, your grandfather kept watch over the animals as I drove your grandmother and I to the hospital. We walked into the maternity unit still not expecting that day to be the day.

After showing photos snapped on my phone of the morning’s spotting to the midwives (pregnancy will force you to be vulnerable and exposed with complete strangers again and again), we waited to hear back. Dr A confirmed: we needed to get going right away. The anaesthetist was called and the wait for her arrival began. I didn’t expect the contractions to start so soon, but feeling my insides twist, the lower back cramps and waves of constrictions starting under my ribs, heading down, I knew one thing for sure: I needed pain killers.

I remember Dr A walking in, her wry comments making me feel at home, with a few midwives around her. Someone said, “Time to go,” and then Mom headed to change into hospital scrubs. You and I were wheeled to the operating room. I remember the table of scalpels and other steel objects, I remember shifting from one bed to another as though the whole weight of the world had collapsed onto my lower half. Music was playing, something instrumental.

Mom arrived in her green kit, holding our cameras. I remember her smile, her warm voice, anchoring me. The anaesthetist began explaining the next few steps – a petite, gentle woman, she stood behind me as the midwife kept her hand on my shoulder while telling me to stay very still. I wanted to ask her to keep her hand there forever. But the words didn’t come.

Seconds after the epidural took effect and my legs grew heavy, the flood of nausea and dizziness tugged me down and I prepared to tell the doctors, attendees, Mom, to stop. The operation is off, I wanted to say. I can’t do this. But the laughing gas mask was strapped to my nose or mouth or both and I inhaled each dose of relief, as the edges softened. I focused on Mom. Her smile, her voice.

A curtain separated me and the doctors cutting across the skin at the bottom of my belly. It was time for you to make your entrance and in the mirror-like reflection of the lights over the operating site, I could see it all: Dr A, who we had sat with month after month, watching you grow, listening to your heart beat, studying your every move. She now lifted you up into the light, your face and body illuminated, your arms reaching upwards, outwards. On the other side of the curtain between us that maintains the sterility of the operating area, I instinctively lifted my arms and grabbed you. No! everyone shouted.

There was laughing and then you were carried over to a heater, lights, a scale, a table around which our paediatrician, a midwife and Mom gathered. I watched you from a few metres away, not wanting to take my eyes off you, grateful for Mom being right there, beside you, cutting your umbilical cord, taking note of all the tests, the words I couldn’t hear, the things I couldn’t see.

I remember Mom asking, “Why is he so blue?” But I turned my eyes back to that reflection in the lights, watching Dr A and another doctor stitch the cut that let you enter the world safely.

4,5 kilograms! 4,5 kilograms! The exclamations from the nurses came. There was shock in their voices. We had expected you to be around 4,05 kilograms. “This is my first 4,5 baby!” The anaesthetist said. A 10 pounder, just like your grandfather at birth.

Your broad shoulders, your thick thighs, your large head, those long legs… how had I held you inside for so long?

Finally you were placed beside me, while the doctors added the last few stitches. I remember looking at you, then Mom, her face beside ours, and back to you, as I touched your skin for the first time and the tears broke out. Even through the haze of the gas, I felt it all. You were strong, firm, tangible. No longer a dream or kicks in my stomach. You were here and you were perfect.