Hospital

Raising Roo: Birth Story (Part 3)

/ jonathanrobb / 1 Comment

I navigate my way through the hospital maze to a small supermarket built into the building and buy some fruit, a bread roll, and a sandwich. When I walk into the suite, the victorious hunter returning with food, I feel like I have accomplished my first useful contribution for the day. It’s fair to say that Alex has been doing all the heavy lifting.

We eat, Alex sitting on a large inflatable ball, bouncing a gentle rhythm, me in a chair, and Christina on the bed, and Alex and Christina talk while I eat my sandwich. There’s grit in my eyes when I blink and a headache at the back of my scalp telling me I haven’t had enough sleep, but I feel wired from adrenaline and relief that Alex is looking better. 

I have seen my fair share of suffering during my time as a nurse, but was always able to disconnect myself from it, playing the role of the professional. But having someone I love afflicted with such torment right in front of me fills me with a hollow despair that is hard to swallow. 

Christina performs another examination and is happy to report that Alex’s exertions have cracked her cervix open to four centimetres. We all cheer and then Christina leaves to tend to her responsibilities, and we find ourselves, shockingly, bored. The epidural pump chirps with each dose of analgesia it pushes into my wife’s spinal column, announcing that it has everything under control.

I lock eyes with Alex. ‘Wanna watch TV?’

She shrugs. ‘I could go some Friends.’

I set up a laptop on a wheeled table, curl up behind my wife on the bed, and we watch Chandler attempt to keep his relationship with Monica secret from the rest of the gang with hilarious repercussions. 

About halfway through the second episode, Alex speaks up.

‘I can feel it again.’

I’m instantly alert. ‘The contractions?’

‘Yep. But weirdly only on the left side.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. It’s like someone’s drawn a line down the middle of my body that the pain can’t cross. But I can definitely feel it on the left. Through my stomach and back.’

‘Is it bad?’

‘Nothing compared to before, so I’m not complaining.’

‘Can I do anything?’

‘Just watch Friends with me.’

I settle back into the mattress a little less at ease than before.

By the time the third episode is about to start the pain has ratcheted up to the point that I turn off the laptop. All of Alex’s attention is pulled towards her discomfort. She gets out of bed and tries pacing around the room, pulling her IV pole around with her. It isn’t long before she has to sit down again, the pain dragging through her body in ceaseless waves.

Christina returns and Alex updates her on her condition, gritting her teeth throughout sentences as the contractions grip. She is looking pale again. The hollow feeling in my gut is blooming. 

Christina administers a bolus dose of the anaesthetic to try and get back on top of the pain and we give it half an hour. By the time we reach the deadline, Alex is moaning through each spasm and hasn’t spoken for the past twenty minutes. I suggest to Christina that we call the anaesthesiologist back to try and reposition the line, fearful that it has slipped, causing the strange hemispherical numbing that Alex is experiencing. Christina pages them and we wait.

After what feels like an eternity of joint deep breathing and pain lines deepening on my wife’s face, the resident returns and I am shooed from the room. I pace again for ten minutes, fatigue forgotten with fear taking the reins, before being allowed to return. Alex looks no better.

The resident gives another bolus before leaving and a cheerful goodbye, having accomplished exactly nothing. Alex is on her side in the bed, sweating despite the moderate temperature of the room.

‘How are you holding up, beautiful?’ I ask.

‘There’s no break,’ she says, out of breath. ‘If I could only get a break. But they’re one after the other.’

She’s cut off as what looks like every muscle in her body constricting to its limit. I encourage her to breathe and tell her she’s doing great.

‘Oh god,’ she pants, ‘my left side. It’s my left side. Why isn’t there a break?’

I rub her shoulder and breathe with her through the next contraction. She looks exhausted. Her body has been working since two in the morning and I have no idea how she’s expected to keep going. She purses her lips and forces her chest to slow, to not hyperventilate despite the adrenaline screaming at her to do just that, and rides the latest crest of pain. I am simultaneously distraught and bursting with pride. She is so strong.

The afternoon ticks away, time measured by the endless cycle of contractions and marked by the next strangled moan that Alex no longer tries to suppress. We cheer her on, applauding when she lets the pain out in an explosion of volume. Christina comes up with various strategies from her bag of tricks to try and speed the process along and provide Alex with some measure of comfort.

She has Alex shift to all fours on the bed and then drapes a folded bed sheet over her hips, with Christina at one end and me at the other. We pull back and forth in time with each other, Alex’s pelvis swaying in between, as if we’re trying to polish her backside to a high sheen. The movement is designed to help shift the baby lower and trigger further dilation of the cervix.

Next, we reconfigure the bed so that a cushioned part of the bed head folds down, allowing Alex to get her elbows onto it and rest her weight, knees tucked under her. She complies, but struggles against the paralysing effect of the all-but-useless epidural. The resident’s latest bolus did nothing to tamp down the pain and only managed a complete lack of sensation in my wife’s lower right body. She giggles and sobs as she tries to draw her right leg up, sliding back down in a puddle of pain and exhaustion. 

In the end, I manhandle the limb into position and she sags against the bed head, spent. After ten minutes, this position only amplifies her discomfort and she slips back down onto the mattress, knees under her, arms at her side, and head on the pillow turned to me. Her face is red, sweat-damp hair stuck in a scribble across her forehead, and her eyes are pleading for a respite. I stroke back her hair and hold a cold wet cloth to her face, the best I can offer and completely insufficient.

A look of panic crosses her features. ‘I’m gonna be sick.’

I bolt upright, looking around, knowing there’s no vomit bags from my perusal of the room earlier in the day. I grab a cardboard kidney dish from a stack by the window and shove it under her chin. Alex vomits, over-strained muscles squeezing again to empty the contents of her stomach. The kidney dish is full to the brim.

‘Just wait, lovely, I need to swap this over.’

I turn away, moving painstakingly slow to avoid spilling the hot liquid over the floor. I feel a rush of elation as I place the dish down without losing a drop. I’m reaching for another when I hear the gag of the next vomit coming up behind me. My shoulders slump.

I turn to find my wife slumped into the pillow, eyes red rimmed and a fan of spew on the sheets from her mouth to down over the edge of the mattress.

‘I’m sorry, love. I was too slow.’

She just closes her eyes, wanting it all to go away. 

With the help of soap, warm water, and fresh towels, I clean up Alex and the bed, and get a few mouthfuls of water down Alex’s burned throat. 

After another stretch, a doctor comes in, a short skinny man, and announces he needs to do an inspection. Christina has been working hard to report back to the doctor on shift, thereby circumventing any need for him to visit. After five minutes in the room with his arrogant demands and clipped bedside manner, I’m appreciative of Christina’s efforts.

We get Alex onto her back and I notice her eyes are squeezed tightly shut, riding out yet another body-jerking flood of pain. I narrate what’s happening.

‘The doctor’s just doing an inspection to see how dilated you are. You will feel a bit of pressure.’

‘I don’t care,’ she whispers.

Fair enough, I think, and kiss her forehead.

She lets out a grunt as the doctor probes his way inside, far firmer than Christina’s examinations. He takes his time and when he finally straightens, he pulls off his gloves and announces that the baby is face up, the less than ideal position for birth, and one that increases the likelihood of needing a caesarean. Having successfully lowered the mood of the room, he leaves. 

‘Fuck that guy,’ I say to Alex, ‘you’re doing great.’

She grunts in acknowledgement of my inspirational speech, or perhaps she is just grunting. She’s in a lot of pain, after all.

The intensity of the contractions continue to climb and a long drawn out moan comes from deep in Alex’s throat. I feel smothered by the pulsing need to help, to take this load from my wife’s shoulders for a spell, and want to scream at my impotence. 

‘Can I do anything, babe?’ I beg.

‘My hip,’ she pants. ‘Can you massage it? Oh god, it hurts.’

I feel a gush of gratitude that she has granted me a purpose. I make a fist and gently knead my knuckles into the flesh over her left hip.

‘Harder,’ she says.

I press deeper, rolling my fist back and forth.

‘Harder, please.’

I lean forward, letting my weight fall down through my arm until Alex’s skin pillows around my knuckles. I’m genuinely worried I will bruise her. I rock back and forth, watching her face to make sure I’m not adding to her pain.

‘Yesss,’ she breathes, features relaxing a little. ‘Better.’

I raise my brows and nod, and get to work.

At around five-thirty in the afternoon I look at my phone and find I can’t reconcile the time displayed on the screen with my own internal clock. Alex’s ordeal feels to have stretched on for far too long, for days, and yet wasn’t it only a couple of hours ago that we were in our bedroom studying a collection of amniotic fluid pooled on the bed?

Alex divulges to Christina that she needs to use her bowels, but is unsure how to go about it given her right side isn’t giving or receiving signals at the moment while her left side is a cacophony of contracting agony. Christina answers with just one word, ‘Bedpan,’ and makes the call to stop the epidural altogether. At this point, it’s only doing more harm than good. She holds down the power button, suffocating the chirping once and for all, and disconnects the tubing. 

Between the three of us, we manage to position Alex on her knees, bedpan cradled between her feet as she squats down on top of it. Utter exhaustion has robbed her of the ability to hold herself erect for long periods, so she lowers her weight onto the bedpan, folds herself forward until her head is on the pillow, and tries to ignore the pain long enough to let nature take its course. 

After twenty minutes of no action, Christina suggests that the bedpan be removed. Alex begs her off, stating she is too tired to attempt moving. We cajole her, promising we will help, but she is used up and groans that she simply can’t. It’s when I notice that her calves and feet, still drawn up under her, are turning a shade of purpley-blue more commonly found on drowned victims than healthy pregnant women that our entreaties become demands. Alex turns her head so she is facedown on the mattress, summons resources I’m amazed she still has, and with great effort and discomfort manages to manipulate her numbed leg and get onto her back, allowing blood to flow back into her limbs. 

‘I’m just going to do another quick inspection, okay?’ Christina says.

Alex’s lack of protest acts as consent.

‘Yeah, so you know how you thought you needed to poop?’ Christina says, head reappearing. ‘I think that was your body letting you know you’re ready to push something else out.’

Adrenaline surges through my tired body like electricity. ‘Did you hear that, babe?’ I say. ‘You’ve done it! We’re in the home stretch.’

She nods, brow furrowed and sweat running down her cheeks.

After the interminal whiling away of the day, the endless cycle of Alex bracing, us breathing together, long deep moans, and all too brief moments when she can slacken before the next round starts again, things are suddenly in motion. Christina is at Alex’s other side, instructing her to bring her knees up. I’m dimly aware of other midwives coming and going, but can’t spare the attention. 

‘I can’t lift my legs,’ Alex huffs through the effort of trying. Her body is still unresponsive from the epidural.

We bring her hands and thighs together until she is curled up, face red and eyes still clenched closed. 

‘Okay,’ Christina says close to Alex’s left ear, voice calm and reassuring, ‘so, you’ve been clamping down with each contraction, keeping it all in, right? Now I want you to do the opposite. When the contraction hits, I want you to push for as long as it lasts. You understand?’

Alex jerks her head in a nod, lips curled inwards.

‘Are you contracting now? Then push!’

Alex cranes her head forwards and a strangled cry warbles from her strained throat, her face going a deep red. 

‘Pushpushpushpushpushpushpush!’ Christina cries.

Not knowing what else to do, I lend my voice to hers.

‘Pushpushpushpushpushpushpush!’

‘Now breathe!’ Christina orders.

Alex sucks in air, cheeks drawn taunt and mouth trembling. She collapses back into the pillow, fingers losing their grip on her legs. Christina and I take up each limb, raising them to help add more power to Alex’s labours. 

‘Excellent! When the next one comes, I want you to do the exact same.’

Alex’s hands make fists in the bedsheets and she bends forward again, every muscle from her neck, shoulders, back, and abdomen locking rigid as she pushes with everything she has. 

‘Pushpushpushpushpushpushpush!’ I encourage.

‘Keep going, keep going, keep going,’ Christina calls, bending towards the end of the bed to inspect the progress. 

Alex’s face is veering from red to purple, the pressure and lack of oxygen painting her features an alarming mask.

‘Breathe, baby! Breathe,’ I say into her ear, and she must hear me as air explodes from her open mouth and her face returns to a more normal colour.

This is how it goes. Alex strains, silent and unbreathing. We cheer her on. Her face discolours and I beg her to breathe. She draws in air with a cry or a sob or a scream. Repeat.

Christina provides feedback of Alex’s progress, somehow managing to be beside Alex, coaxing her on, and at the end of the bed, coordinating efforts, all at once. I hear mention of a head and peak between Alex’s legs to see a flash of the wet dark features of my child for the first time. It is alien, the colour unsettling, and so very very wonderful.

Alex is dipping into reserves I swear had run dry hours ago, face glossy with sweat, eyes pinched closed, teeth bared, and pushing on like a warrior. I am awed by her. I know that no athletic effort I have done has asked so much from me, that I have never known the physical toll she is enduring. She has run a marathon and is somehow sprinting towards the finish line.

I find myself babbling, words of praise tumbling from my lips, telling her how well she’s doing, how I admire her, love her, and to just hang in there and go a little bit longer. She is so consumed by her exertions that I have no idea if she can hear me, if it’s helping at all. It’s helping me. 

‘A big push, now, Alex. The shoulders have to come through,’ Christina calls from the end of the bed.

I repeat the instructions into Alex’s ear, feeling guilty for demanding more. She doesn’t react, but when she next tenses, she gives everything she has left, body coiled with strain, muscles trembling, a wail escaping her whitened lips, and pushes. 

There is a small chorus of exclamations from the other end of the bed and movement as midwives reach for blankets.

‘You’ve done it,’ Christina says, and I hear the relief in her voice. ‘Your baby is out.’

A tension unlocks inside me and deflates like a balloon. ‘You did it,’ I whisper to Alex, pressing my forehead to hers. ‘You amazing thing, you did it.’

Her eyes are still closed but she flashes a tired smile. I kiss her cheek and taste the salt of her struggles. 

Then Christina is approaching with a bundle of white and red blankets and, nestled within, a perfect new little lifeform. Alex lifts tired arms, opens her eyes for the first time in the past hour, and looks upon the small sticky face of our child.

‘What is it?’ she asks in a dreamy voice. ‘I mean, a boy or a girl?’

Christina bats tears away from her eyes and laughs. ‘You’re the one who wanted to see for herself. You tell me!’

Alex tugs aside the material and smiles. ‘A boy.’ Her eyes lock with mine. ‘We have a boy.’

He lets out a croaky little cry as Alex repositions the blankets and then he calms against his mother’s chest. 

I gaze at his features, taking in the minute details of lips and chin and ears and cheeks, all sculptured in ideal and fragile lines. He is so beautiful my chest aches and I want nothing more than to protect and love him. 

I lean in, face pressed to Alex’s, and kiss my son for the first time.

Next week’s topic: What goes in must come out

Raising Roo: Birth Story (Part 2)

/ jonathanrobb / Leave a comment

I meet the midwife on shift, a friend of our midwife, who explains that Christina had rang ahead and ensured Alex was hustled off the ward and into the birthing suite as soon as possible. I thank her profusely for reducing our apart time, and reflect that, once again, in Austria, it’s all about who you know.

The midwife explains the current options, all of which boil down to different ways of waiting, and Alex goes with the most comfortable sounding: a bath. The suites are fitted with a private bathing room containing a circular tub the size of a spa. The midwife gets the water running, provides some towels and shows us the adjoining bathroom, and then leaves us to it.

Alex disrobes and eases into the water, her tight pregnant belly glistening, and it still doesn’t feel quite real, even here and now, that a baby is ready and waiting inside.

‘Do you want me to get in with you?’ I ask, winking.

‘I don’t know how the midwives would feel about that. They’re used to dealing with naked women, not men.’

I sigh. ‘All the perks go to the pregnant lady.’

‘Damn right.’

We talk, conversation broken regularly every time Alex has to focus on another contraction and I get to practice my encouraging breathing instructions. She says that the warm water is helping, but it feels as if they’re getting stronger. 

I bring out a bluetooth speaker and we listen to George Ezra strum his brand of upbeat pop, Alex soaking in the bath and me on the floor, one hand dangling in the water, waiting for our baby to arrive. 

After an hour, the contractions step up a notch and the discussion and laughter starts to thin out. The pain has increased to the point that she cannot keep talking, cannot keep the thread of conversation. I default back to a string of reassurances but can see their effect lessening with each new spasm. 

At a little before seven, Alex is towelling herself off when Christina arrives. We both soften a little with relief. The hero is here to make everything better. Which, of course, is an unfair expectation as a baby still has to pass through my wife’s genitals and there is little Christina can do to bypass this. Nevertheless, her presence and positivity is a comfort.

Half an hour later and that comfort is dissipating under the ceaseless strain each new contraction is demanding from Alex. She’s hunching now, all efforts directed towards taking long slow breaths through this latest wave of squeezing pain.

‘Any reason they’re coming so fast?’ I ask Christina.

She shakes her head. ‘The body is in charge, and every body is different.’

Christina suggests an examination to get a gauge of where we’re at. Alex lies down on the mattress, once again dressed in an oversized black t-shirt, and I sit at the head of the bed. I hold her hand and give a hopeful squeeze that all her efforts will result in good news. Alex squeezes back, but I think it’s more due to pain than optimism.

‘One centimetre,’ Christina says, and the announcement hits me like a splash of cold water.

I think of all that Alex has given already and multiply that by ten, the magic number before anything can start happening, and feel a heaviness in my gut. I catch her eye and force a bright smile.

‘Progress,’ I say. ‘Only nine more to go.’

She gives a weary grin but the expression is cut short by another contraction.

Once she is breathing normally again, Alex sits up. I’m watching her closely and see the colour drain from her face. She purses her lips and lets out a long stream of breath.

‘I don’t feel so good,’ she says.

‘Do you want to lie back down?’ I ask.

‘No. I want to go to the toilet.’

She stands but pain ripples through her middle and I grab her elbow for support. We shuffle out of the room together, Alex’s weight pulling more at my arm the further we go. 

‘I really need to get to the bathroom,’ she says, a touch of panic in her voice.

‘Almost there.’ I pull open the heavy door and guide her past the round bath and towards the bathroom.

She shambles out of my grip and stumbles against the toilet door, banging it open and dropping to her knees. The sound of retching follows, deep and guttural, the type of heaving that seems determined to scrape away her insides. The contents of Alex’s stomach erupt out of her and continue to do so until she is rung out.

‘I missed the bowl,’ she says in a croaky voice.

I look over her shoulder from where I was rubbing her back and note that the bathroom contains a sink, a bin, and a toilet, and that she had managed to miss all three. I decide not to share this observation.

‘Why don’t you go sit down. I’ll clean this up.’

Alex gives an exhausted nod and pads back towards the bath. I find a cup and fill it with water from the sink and carry it to her, then get to work with some paper towels and disinfectant left on top of the cistern. By the time I’m done, a little colour has returned to my wife’s face, but pain lines have set up camp around her eyes and mouth.

‘Are you okay?’ A pointless question I can’t help but ask.

She shakes her head, the formation of words proving too much.

We get back to the birthing suite and fill Christina in on what she missed, and she suggests we try walking around the ward to ease some of Alex’s discomfort. Alex concedes with a worn-out nod. The three of us venture into the large open space between rooms, Christina on one side and me on the other, with Alex hunched over between us. 

We don’t get far before Alex stops, fingers tight around our arms, trying to breathe through the iron grip of her uterine muscles. Christina and I garland her with praise and encouragement, and try to coax her further, but progress is slow and it’s not long before she is waving us off, silently pleading for a rest while she hunches against a work desk, arms crossed against the smooth surface and head hanging in between. 

The contractions come back-to-back without any respite to allow Alex to catch her breath and detense. I squat beside her, trying to look up into her face.

‘You are doing great, babe. That’s perfect. Long breath in and long breath out.’

I enact my instructions, breathing with her, and she follows along, face scrunching up and cheeks ballooning as she exhales. She opens her eyes and looks so very tired. She has become increasingly non-verbal and it’s making me nervous. My brain feels like a bird flapping up against a cage, wanting to shout out that something is wrong, that my wife is in pain, but everyone is behaving as if it’s normal so I have to believe that it is. I attempt to quiet the manic bird and smile and rub Alex’s back and prompt her to take a step.

We manage to cross the length of the ward, a weird shambling six-legged creature letting out a jarring combination of painful moans and upbeat assertions. Alex is wrecked by the end of this journey. She leans into a sink mounted on the wall and I ask if she is going to be sick again. She only shrugs and sags lower.

Christina spots a physician and excuses herself. We are alone in the hallway and I want to do something to make the situation better but my options have shrunk to cheerleader and backrubber. I have never felt more useless to my wife. She is bearing this physical burden for us and I am repeating the same sentiment I’ve been saying for the past hour. I’m amazed she hasn’t asked me to shut up yet.

Christina returns. ‘The doctor said he’s been watching you and believes you’re ready for an epidural.’

I feel a flush of satisfaction that Alex’s painstaking parade has been good for something.

‘Is that something you’re still wanting?’ Christina asks.

Alex looks up with dark hollows under her eyes and breathes out, ‘Please.’

We start-and-stop our way back to our suite, moving with the tide of her contractions, until Alex finally collapses onto the edge of the bed. I expect to see relief in her face, but sitting hasn’t eased the waves of pain squeezing her body. Her entire focus is committed to enduring.

‘Just a little longer, beautiful, and then they’ll numb you right up. You won’t even know you have a uterus by the time they’re done.’

She gives a fluttering smile at my weak attempt at humour then returns to her ordeal. 

It takes another forty-five minutes of deep breathing and moans trickling from pursed lips before the anaesthesiologist and his resident arrive. I am given blunt instructions to leave the room; COVID restrictions separating us again. My caveman side wants to thump my chest and tell him ‘Make me,’ but I concede after giving Alex one more pep-talk and a kiss to the forehead.

The door slides closed and I stare at the white surface for a while, picturing my wife exposing her back for the needle, before turning to the open ward. 

I stay within a five metre radius of the room, wandering out to my self-imposed limit and then snapping back. I lean against the wall beside the door, and then the door itself, and then stride out again, restless. From my nursing experience, I know the procedure should take around twenty minutes, providing all goes well. At the forty minute mark I feel like a shaken up bottle of soft drink with the lid on tight. I bite back the urge to hammer on the door and demand they let me in. I pace my small circle and wait.

Five minutes later the door slides open and the anaesthesiologist and his resident step out, glancing at me before striding away. I rush the room and find Alex sitting up in bed with her latest accessory — IV pole, pump, and tubing snaking under her shirt — erect beside her. She smiles at me and I breathe again.

‘How are you doing?’ I ask, sitting on the edge of the mattress.

‘Better,’ she says.

‘The contractions?’

‘They tell me they’re still there, but I wouldn’t know it.’

Tension is draining from her features and her shoulders have relaxed. It’s good to hear her voice again.

‘Took them long enough,’ I say.

‘I don’t think the resident knew what she was doing.’

‘Just what you want when someone is shoving a needle into your spine.’

She leans forwards until our foreheads touch and we each exhale. The respite feels well deserved.

With the pain under control, we find ourselves unsure what to do next. The morning has been swallowed in a haze of agony for Alex and a fog of anxiety for me.

‘So, what do you feel like doing?’ I ask.

‘I could eat.’

I laugh and know I have my wife back.

(To be continued…)

Raising Roo: Birth Story (Part 1)

/ jonathanrobb / Leave a comment

‘Babe, wake up. My water’s broke.’

It’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m disorientated, lifting my head off the pillow and looking around with squinting eyes as a bedside lamp blazes to life. I find my heavily-pregnant wife lying beside me, looking down at herself with a faint expression of disgust, then at me, eyes wide and expectant. 

For a second I wonder what she wants, then the fog slips away, the pieces of this jigsaw slide into place, and her words come into focus. I react with the best my sleep-addled brain can manage in the moment. 

‘Oh wow, that’s exciting.’

Not my most inspired effort.

‘Are you okay? Do you feel okay?’ I ask.

‘I think so.’ Her voice is shaky. ‘I don’t know.’

‘This is really happening.’ I give her an enthusiastic grin that she tries to match, but the expression is a little watery, fear butting up against excitement. ‘Do you want to get out of bed?’

‘I think it’s still leaking out.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘It’s all over the bedsheets.’

‘That’s also okay. We can clean it up.’

She nods. ‘Alright.’

Alex eases back the doona and places her feet on the ground while I trot around the bed to help her stand. She grips my arm as she levers herself upright and doesn’t let go as she straightens, each of us looking at the other, her dressed in a long black t-shirt and me in nothing but my own skin, and then to the puddle collected on the mattress.

‘It’s running down my leg. God, that feels gross.’

I’m struck with a bolt of inspiration. ‘Towels!’ I say, relieved I can make myself useful. ‘Are you good?’ 

She nods and I let go of her arm and step into the hallway, grabbing a few of the second-best towels before rejoining my wife. I drop a faded, rainbow-striped towel on the floor between her legs and we watch as more liquid trickles from her ankle and into the material. Her limbs are trembling, muscles overloaded with flood-levels of adrenaline. 

‘Do you want to call Christina?’ I ask.

‘Yeah. Good idea.’ She takes small careful steps, edging around the sticky mess on the floor, and plucks her phone off the bedside table and rings our midwife.

I hover around while they talk, wired from the unreality of the moment but unsure where to direct my energy. I decide that getting dressed is a good use of my time and put on some clothes.

Alex hangs up. ‘She said it all sounds normal. She’s not at the hospital at the moment but starts her shift at seven, so that works out well.’

‘Who knows, maybe the baby will beat her there.’ I wink.

She rolls her eyes. ‘That would be the dream.’

‘So we’re heading in?’

She chews her lip and looks at me. ‘I think I want to shower.’

I laugh. ‘That is allowed.’

I pass her another towel that she wedges between her legs and then she waddles to the bathroom to feel more like a human again and less like a leaky pot. As the gentle roar of the shower starts, I consider the bed, figuring clean sheets will be desired when we next return to this room, exhausted from the marathon to come. And with a baby on the outside of a body instead of within. 

It hits me then, that the countdown has really begun, and in a collection of hours our little family will have a new member. There’s a bubbling in my chest that’s just on this side of uncomfortable and I grin. The concept that’s been housing in my wife’s uterus will soon become a very real reality. I get to changing the sheets.

Alex emerges from the shower looking better, with colour in her cheeks and more steady on her feet. She looks beautiful, healthy and ripe with pregnancy. I hug her and feel my emotions spike for the fourth time in the past twenty minutes. 

She dresses and adds the final items to her pre-packed bag and suddenly it’s time to leave. 

‘Ready?’ I ask.

She gives a big smile. ‘I hope so. A photo first and then we can go.’

We stand together and immortalise the last moment before we become parents.

The city is dim and quiet as we wind through it, skimming along the edges of its heart under the glow of street lamps. The radio plays softly under the burble of our conversation.

‘That’s another one,’ Alex says, hand going to her midriff and pressing before eventually letting out a big breath.

I take note of the time. ‘How regular are they meant to be at this point?’

‘They say roughly twenty minutes apart this soon after your water breaks.’

I frown. ‘That was only around six minutes.’

She shrugs. ‘Lucky me.’

We pass nightclubs still thumping with the bass of dance music and I have never felt more removed from that lifestyle. The roads are all but empty and before long I am pulling into the hospital underground carpark. My heart is thudding in my ears as we get out of the car and I pause to photograph the bay number, sure this information will fall out of my head by the time I return to the car. I sling the overnight bag onto my shoulder and put my arm around my wife and we slowly make our way up to the hospital entrance.

The sky is lit with the dark illumination of light pollution and the hospital rears in front of this ghostly backdrop, foyer bright despite the hour. Two guards, one man and one woman, stand just inside the glass front, enforcing the COVID visitor regulations around the clock. 

Alex totters through the automatic doors, belly leading, and explains she is in labour and would appreciate a room in which to continue this activity. The male guard responds with the most absurd question I can imagine given the circumstances.

‘Do you have an appointment?’

Alex and I look at each other and then she turns back to the guard and explains that, no, she doesn’t have an appointment for three o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, but hopes she can still give birth here despite that. 

The guard briefly discusses this with his colleague, then again on the phone to a hospital staff member, while we wait, Alex taking long breaths through another contraction.

‘Okay,’ the male guard says, nodding at Alex, ‘you can go up. But you,’ he turns to me, ‘have to wait here.’

I feel a hiss of protective anger at being separated from my wife and the irrational urge to push past this uniformed poser and charge the hospital, but this is the caveman in me and the more civilised part of my subconscious reminds me that this situation was not unexpected.

During prenatal check-ups, all of which Alex attended solo as my presence was again forbidden thanks to the global pandemic, we were informed that no visitors would be permitted to accompany the patient until she was taken to the birthing suites. 

‘Okay then,’ she says, smiling through her anxiety.

‘I’ll be sitting right here until they let me up.’

She nods and we hug, and kiss, and then I watch my wife wander into the vast expanse of the hospital, alone.

There are a few tired looking chairs dotted around the glass walls of the foyer and I settle into one while the guards take their own seats at a desk by the entrance. I pull out my phone but am too stimulated to focus on anything and tuck it away again. I take stock of my situation, an Australian sitting in front of a Viennese hospital at three in the morning while somewhere inside my child is stirring inside my wife’s womb. I feel simultaneously connected and disconnected. 

I decide the best use of my time would be to try and nap, to conserve resources for the day to come, and so lean my head back against the glass and close my eyes. An hour passes this way, my facsimile of rest broken with periodic checks of my phone in case Alex messaged and I missed it despite the phone being clutched between my hands.

I eventually get an update saying that the cardiotocography has been done and our little foetus’ heartbeat is strong and steady. My own feels three times too fast. I return to waiting, each second protracted with the knowledge that important things are happening and I am sitting out the front of a hospital with my eyes closed, feigning sleep.

At four-thirty in the morning, the male security guard saunters over and I sit up, ready to defend my right to be here.

‘Robb?’

‘Yeah, that’s me.’

‘You can go up.’

Relief washes through me and I’m standing without realising it. I babble out a thanks while he gives cursory instructions, most of which go past me as I hurry inside, confident I will be drawn to my wife and unborn child like iron to a magnet. 

This presumption turns out to be premature. I gain this insight while choosing from three different banks of elevators, finding lift doors opening on identical-looking floors, trotting down long empty hallways then retracing my steps to the elevator, convinced I should have turned right, not left, when leaving the lift, only be become unsure once wandering deeper into the maze of Austria’s largest hospital.

Finally, while walking down a dimly lit corridor that shows no sign of human activity and convinced I’ve made another wrong turn, I spot the sign for the birthing suites. I press the buzzer and bounce impatiently while I wait for the response. I give my name and my justification for being there, soon-to-be dad, and the glass doors slide blessedly open. 

The ward is mostly quiet at this time in the morning and the midwife at the reception desk points me towards a birthing suite door. I step inside and see my wife and feel the stone in my chest that had been growing steadily larger for the past two hours fall away. She smiles and everything is better.

‘I got lost,’ I confess.

‘But you made it.’ She kisses me.

‘Are you okay?’

She raises her brows. ‘The contractions are coming a lot faster than I expected, but otherwise, all good.’

‘How far apart are they?’

‘About every three minutes.’

‘What? What happened to a slow build up?’

‘Apparently my uterus is in a rush.’

‘Are they bad?’

‘They’re not fun, but they’re okay.’

I shake my head. ‘What a stupid way to make humans. We should follow the kangaroo’s lead and just have them come out when they’re the size of a grub.’

‘Yeah, but then I’d need a pouch.’

I step back and consider her. ‘You could pull off a pouch.’

Alex laughs and runs me through the tests that were done and the action I missed, showing me around the suite, complete with a configurable bed to make any birthing position possible. Outside the window, the city and the sun are waking up, pre-dawn spilling across the sky to herald a new day. A day in which we will have a baby.

(To be continued…)

A couple of kids off to have a kid

TWENTY-TWELVE

/ jonathanrobb / Leave a comment

The ending of a year and the commencement of a new one always struck me as a strange event. A non-event. Humans determined how long it takes the earth to fully circle the sun, gave this orbit a starting point, then decided to celebrate the anniversary of this fictitious starting point. And for a long time I couldn’t figure out why we gave such an obviously invented holiday any weight.

I remember as a kid sitting on the beach and feeling an electricity as the count down began. The tension increased until the final digit fell away and everyone along the sand exploded with a tremendous “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Bracing hugs were shared, kisses given, and fireworks would launch into the air. But as those coloured lights faded quickly from the night sky and normal conversation resumed among the adults, I remember thinking, Is that it? I don’t feel any different. Why is everyone making such a big deal? And by all outward appearances nothing had changed. The new year looked and felt suspiciously like the last year.

The anti-climax of new years turned me off the event. It seemed to me a desperate excuse to party, to drink, and generally do stuff you wouldn’t normally do. Creating an excuse to celebrate is no bad thing, but new years always came away as shallow because so much hung on it. We were closing the door to the problems of last year. We were resolving to be different and better people come the new year. But those pesky problems always seemed to find their way into the new year regardless of the closed door, and the new people we were meant to be had a lot of the flaws of the old.

There was too much pressure on this invented holiday that it ultimately failed to live up to the hype.

But as I’ve moved into adulthood and garnered adult pressures and responsibilities, the value of new years has started to emerge.

The first value: An excuse to party.

This didn’t carry much weight for a child who came home and read books and watched television, and whose major concern was a three-hour shift behind a supermarket register. The excuse to party was every weekend, and the chance to unwind wasn’t essential. I was pretty unwound to begin with.

But as an adult the chance to gather with friends, to turn off the train of thoughts linked to job, career, and finances, is like an oasis in a storm. And in that oasis you feel like resolutions are a good thing, and are accomplishable. Which leads us to…

The second value: Resolve.

New years is traditionally a time to make resolutions. An opportunity to improve. As a child I found this pointless; why wait for a made up date on a made up calendar? If you want to change, change. And why there is some truth to this, there’s also truth to the fact that after working a stressful eight and a half hour shift without a lunch break, the resolution of not eating junk and exercising is almost laughable. High fat foods and doing nothing when you get home are compulsory.

New years gives you an opportunity to reflect away from the exhaustion of work on what it is you really want to be achieving. Because while financial stability is an accomplishment, it’s not always satisfying. It’s not all you want to be doing. The fugue of endless work days makes this hard to remember, but new years is a marked point in time to stop, think, and resolve yourself to the person you really want to be. It doesn’t matter if you don’t stick to the goals word for word, only that you remember what you’re doing and why, and bit by bit, work towards them. This action is usually accompanied by reflection. Which leads us to…

The third value: Reflect.

The idea that the problems of last year will magically evaporate in the face of a new year is still a stupid one. Young me got that one right. But what new years does offer is the opportunity to reflect on those problems, to weigh them against the successes of a year, and realise that you may have done better than you thought you did. It’s a moment to summarise what’s not working, to appreciate what you accomplished, and to take those wins and losses and decide what you’ll do with them from that point onwards. And there is definitely value in this.

For me, 2012 was a big one. A year may only be a fictitious span of man-made time, but mine was an eventful fictitious span of man-made time. 2012 saw my first published work, my first purchased home, my first published illustrations, my first promotion, and my first hospitalisation. Phew. And I only really appreciated this list when I stopped to reflect, calculate, and appreciate what I had accomplished in a year.

Here’s hoping it only gets better.

Happy new year everyone, and all the best for 2013.

HOSPITAL BED PERSPECTIVE

/ jonathanrobb / Leave a comment

My previous post detailed how I found myself turning twenty-six in a hospital ward. Happy birthday (Can you hear the slathered on bitterness and irony? You can? Good).

The experience was unanticipated and has been disorienting, but made even more surreal by that fact that I’m normally the one standing over the hospital bed rather than laying in it. I guess I should thank rhabdomyolysis for allowing me a patient’s perspective. I should, but I’m not going to.

When I chose nursing as a career I had only been inside a hospital three times: when I was pushed out into the world, visiting a sick cousin, and saying goodbye to my dying great-grandmother. Except for my birth, of which I oddly have little recollection, my other visits were short and superficial. I was there to be with family and largely ignored the hospital as a whole.

Therefore, when I came to nursing I came with virtually complete ignorance of the hospital system. This ignorance only became apparent during my first student placement; until this point I presumed the various television shows and movies I’d watched that had taken place in a hospital would have adequately prepared me. This was not the case. Apparently, liberties had been taken when writing those scripts.

My first placement consisted mostly of me learning where to stand so as not to be in the way. I soon mastered this skill. Eventually, I saw the overlapping cogs of the multidisciplinary health team and what my expected role was within them. A hospital can seem a chaos of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, cleaners, PCAs, patients, and visiting family members. But there is a pattern in the chaos and it wasn’t long until I knew where to go, what to do, and who to speak to; basically, how to be a nurse. Prior to this I had the skills – I could take blood, hang an IV, administer injections – but now I had the knowledge of how and when to apply them.

By the time I graduated and started working as a nurse the wards were a familiar place. I could recognise people by their roles, I knew what to do when a buzzer went off, how to placate a distressed patient, and the perfect place to stand so as not to be in the way (This skill still came in handy when a herd of doctors descended on one of my patients). Like any well worked in workplace, the hospital became commonplace and I could navigate its walkways with ease.

This did not prepare me to be a patient.

The first thing I noticed as I was lead into the emergency department with a patient name band around my wrist was the casual condescension of the staff. There was no intended insult in this; they’re used to speaking to people with little health knowledge, and often, with limited knowledge of the English language. However, with both medical knowledge and a strong grasp of the English language, the small and simple explanations I was given seemed only to patronise. I immediately scanned back to the multitude of conversations I’d had with patients, and prayed I didn’t come off so bad.

I received descriptions of my condition in language usually reserved for five-year olds. I itched to interrupt and explain that I knew all this, that I was a nurse and the equal of them. I didn’t, as I figured the intrusion into their well-meaning explanation would only serve to paint me as arrogant. However, when the natural segue presented itself, I quickly slipped in the fact that I was a nurse. The change was instantaneous. Suddenly, I was a person again, not a patient.

The next insight was of dependence. Even in my state of physical competence, I was dependent on the whims of the hospital. Food came when it came. If I wanted a shower I had to wait for towels. Doctors and answers appeared on their own schedule, not mine. And I waited.

Working as a nurse is a job of hectic tasks, a never-ending to-do-list that begins when you step onto the wards and ends when you handover with a breath of relief to the new nurse taking over. For a patient though, it’s one long day of boredom. You stare at the same four walls, bounce between the same time-wasting activities, and wait. You get excited when the food tray comes, not because the food tastes particularly good, but because it gives you something to do. You watch everyone rush, and you sit, and wait for the moment when they say you can go home.

In here I’ve seen how miscommunication between staff and patients serve to add to the cloud of confusion and unease. Patients don’t quite know how to phrase their questions and staff have no time to decipher their desires. Presumptions are made, things are missed, and the patient settles back and waits.

The other side of this coin however is how vital and appreciated the staff become. Whether the dependence is enforced or genuine, a helpful nurse is a godsend. A doctor who takes an extra minute to explain what the blood results mean gives a patient an afternoon free of anxiety. Simply having a friendly face and a quick laugh to break the tedium is a gift worthy of a bear hug.

What I hope to gain from this enforced role reversal is a better insight into what my patients are experiencing, and what I can do to ease their pain/anxiety/discomfort/boredom. I’ve been shown the other side of the looking-glass and the details reflected back have shown me the importance of small mercies and kind words.

Hopefully, being a patient will make me be a better nurse.

Thank you, rhabdomyolysis.