INTRODUCTION (April 2, 2007)
AS I write this article, Jones Jessica Lennard has been with us for 12 days. I can’t say I’m any less terrified at this point about being a father than I was nearly two weeks ago.
My memory’s fading a bit but here are my recollections of that eventful night of Monday, March 19 leading into the early hours of Tuesday, March 20.
Firstly, let me just say that Jones was supposed to be a boy – we’d believed all the old wives’ tales about Helen carrying the baby at the front and the fetus being extra heavy at around eight months. We’d even taken to calling Jones “he”.
Jones was due on March 16, three days after my 40th birthday. Naturally, he was late, but that was good in a way as it meant Helen’s older sister Julia (a doctor who’s handled loads of births, a mother of three AND the sweetest, kindest, calmest woman I’ve ever met) and her eldest daughter Alida arrived on the Saturday evening from South Australia to be there for us. I don’t know what we would’ve done if Helen had gone into labour before they turned up; if they’d not been at the birth and immediately afterwards. Having them around made a very difficult, pressure-filled time much easier for us to handle.
STAND AND DELIVER
MONDAY was weird – I went to work as usual, mainly ’cos there was no point staying at home until I got some news. Besides, Julia and Alida were there to look after Helen, so I didn’t feel too bad leaving for the office.
By now, my wife was starting to feel the discomfort of being overdue – she was having difficulty standing for any length of time. We were both getting anxious for things to start happening.
I got THE e-mail from Helen at 5.44pm: “Rain stopped a while ago. We walked the dogs. And brought on the baby – while I was out I had my first real contractions – about 12 minutes apart. I also had what is known as ‘a bloody show’. So hopefully Jones will be here in the next day.”
We were on…or close to it.
I caught the next train home and tried to calm myself by reading a book (World War Z by Max Brooks). As I arrived at Harris Park Station I still had a few pages to go, so I sat on a bench on the platform and finished reading it. I recall thinking as I closed the novel and put it back in my briefcase that this was also the closure to my old life. Things were never going to be the same again – I was on the verge of fatherhood. It was an exciting, frightening, numbing sensation.
When I walked through the front door, there was a sense of anticipation in the air. Helen’s contractions were coming 10 minutes apart, but she’d still been able to cook us lasagna for dinner (with Julia and Alida’s help).
I did a few things on the computer. We ate dinner. Things seemed to be rolling along nicely. It wasn’t till around 9pm that things started to go pear-shaped…
“IT’S FUN TO STAY AT THE R.P.A…”
AT THIS point, Helen’s contractions suddenly kicked up a notch to around three minutes apart. We rang the RPA Hospital in Newtown, but they didn’t sound too keen for us to come in (we only found out the next day that they were heavily under the pump…in all, they performed six C-sections that night).
However, things weren’t improving – Helen and Julia felt it was best we drive to RPA right away. Another phone call was made to the hospital to tell them we were coming and we were off.
By the time we got the car packed with Helen’s gear, the baby’s gear, food supplies and a CD player (no Enya, thankfully…but Helen had taped some cool music she wanted to play during the birth), it was past 10pm.
Thankfully, the traffic on the motorway and Parramatta Road was light at that time of evening, so it only took me 25 minutes to get to the hospital.
During that time, Helen had eased back to one contraction every five minutes. In between, she’d be carrying on a normal conversation with us, then for about 45 seconds, there’d be silence, then she’d resume chatting to us as if nothing had happened. It was fascinating to observe.
We’d only been in RPA for a few minutes when the contractions hit Helen strong again – now they were two minutes apart and there didn’t seem to be much relief for her in between – it seemed Jones wanted out and he wanted out now!
We went into a room for Helen’s initial assessment – to check the baby’s heart rate, etc – and was dealt with by a rather harried-looking midwife.
The baby’s heartbeat seemed fine at first, but when Helen started these rapid contractions, you could hear it slowing down, then speeding up.
Helen was in a lot of pain – how much I couldn’t tell at the time, but it didn’t look like a lot of fun.
I really wasn’t aware how bad things were going at this stage. None of us did, I think.
We decided that Alida should stay with our friends Adam and Penny for the night, so I called them and they agreed to come to the hospital ASAP.
They got to the hospital in record time and, after a short chat, I palmed Alida off to them. I also went back to the car to grab the rest of Helen’s gear.
As soon as I brought the stuff back into the room I knew things had changed dramatically. Helen glanced at the CD player and told me there was no way she was listening to any music at this stage.
Meanwhile, I’d got annoyed at the midwife’s patronising tone towards Julia and subtly (well, not so subtly) let it be known that she was a doctor. This only helped get Helen more on edge and I immediately regretted saying it.
A…B…C-SECTION
WE HEADED to the delivery room and, at first, I couldn’t understand why Helen was so adamant for an epidural – I knew the gas wasn’t working…she told me loudly and often. All I could do was mouth useless comments like, “You’re doing great, babe” and “Breathe deeply, babe. Suck in all that gas.” Like I said, useless.
I had no idea my wife was in serious pain – a contraction would come, then before it completely subsided, another one would come along. She was getting no rest and the speed of the birthing process was only distressing Jones in the womb.
I recall another midwife and a doctor coming in to examine Helen. When she asked for the epidural (around 12 midnight, I think), they agreed to it immediately. But first they wanted to break Helen’s waters and do more tests on the baby.
The waters were burst and the colour was brown – Jones had soiled himself in the womb.
I assisted on one test, holding Helen’s left leg while the doc inserted a large device to get a blood sample from the baby’s head. That was an unpleasant experience for both me and Helen.
Suddenly, we were being told an emergency caesarean operation was required. Helen didn’t argue – she just needed the pain to stop.
I looked across to Julia and she seemed just as bewildered as me.
(It wasn’t till the next day we learned the umbilical cord was wrapped around Jones’s neck, which is why the C-section was necessary.)
By 12.30am, I was in scrubs and Helen had been taken to an operating theatre. Ten minutes later (or was it longer), I was told that Helen needed a full anesthetic and I couldn’t be present at the birth.
In a daze, I was led back to the delivery room and Julia. Everything had happened so fast – from a simple birth process to a full-blown operation in the space of two hours. My head was spinning. How did this happen?
Then, at around 1am, the midwife wheeled a cot into the room and I got my first look at Jones.
“It’s a girl,” I was informed.
“Ha!” I told Julia. “All those old wives’ tales – and my parents – were wrong!”
Julia encouraged me to take off my T-shirt and hold Jones next to my skin. She was so tiny, so delicate, so beautiful and so inquisitive. Her eyes were wide open as she looked around the room, at me, at a whole new world.
Sure, I was disappointed not to be present at the birth, but holding Jones at this special moment definitely made up for it.
Oh…and Jones was 2620 grams (5lb 12oz) and 47 centimetres (18½ inches) – not a big baby at all, despite what previous ultrasounds had assured us! Damn you, modern science!
We anxiously waited for another hour before the doctors allowed us to see Helen in the recovery ward. That was due to Julia politely but determinedly harassing the staff till they let us see her.
I wheeled the cot in and Helen – who didn’t look too bad from her harrowing experience (thankyou, Mr Morphine) – got her first look at Jones.
And now the phone calls began – hey, my parents wanted to be the first to know, so I had no qualms waking them up at 3am to tell them!
I READ this novel a few weeks ago, but I really feel I need to tell you how much I enjoyed World War Z. Max Brooks first caught my attention a few years ago with the satirical-yet-surprisingly helpful The Zombie Survival Guide. It actually got me thinking whenever I walked past a large building or structure: "Hmmmm...would this building be able to protect me from a zombie attack?"
