health

Raising Roo: What Goes in Must Come Out

/ jonathanrobb / 1 Comment

The relationship between food consumption and the terminal endpoint of this food’s journey through the digestive tract is one that is well known. Put simply: we eat, we poop. 

The facets of this complex interplay between our source of nutrition and our body’s assimilation and elimination of organic matter was originally explained to me by a giraffe puppet in a van parked in our school’s parking lot. While this may seem like the opening of a crime novel, one in which the next scene involves my parents finding my bed empty and a giraffe puppet left in my place, it wasn’t as sketchy as it sounds. The van was called the Life Education Van and the giraffe was called Harold, a character all us kids believed was real despite the fact that Harold only appeared from his hole in the van’s wall when the educator was pressed up against the same wall within arm’s distance of Harold. And despite the fact that Harold was clearly a puppet.

But except for the Victorian Government’s unique efforts to bring health education to primary school children, the mechanics of digestion is something not normally discussed in polite society. We invent euphemisms for it, saying socially acceptable statements such as: “I’m going to go wash up”, “I just need to relieve myself”, or “I’m going to drop the kids off at the pool.”

One of the first things you pick up as a new parent is that poop is no longer taboo. In fact, poop very quickly becomes a favourite topic of conversation. Some would even say an obsession.

Our journey into the defecation delights of our offspring began the first night in hospital. Due to the COVID restrictions at the time, I had been hustled out of the hospital and sent to my room like a misbehaving child, so I was sadly not there when Alex opened Roo’s tiny diaper and discovered the black sticky gold that is meconium. For the uninitiated, meconium is a baby’s first poop and is vastly different from the substance we’re more familiar with coming out of our backsides. It’s often described as a black tar-like substance, which isn’t something you expect to see leaking out of your newborn miracle of life. The upside is that it’s essentially odourless. The downside is the knowledge of what it’s made of.

Some of you may have already ventured down the thought-train of wondering how a baby that has previously never enjoyed a good meal has anything ready and waiting in his lower colon. It turns out that babies want to come out of the gate fully set up for that first delicious drink, and so in order to prepare their digestive system, they start taking small sips of whatever they can get their mouth around. Given that they’re suspended in a soup of amniotic fluid, amniotic fluid is what they drink.

This in and of itself is no great concern; amniotic fluid is a rather sterile substance. The problems start to arise when all this liquid they’ve drunk wants to come out, so their newly developed urinary system gets to work and pees most of it out, only it has nowhere to go except back into the fluid in which they’re suspended. But the baby still wants to practice their drinking so they guzzle it back down. And so the cycle continues. 

But urine isn’t the only additive to their amniotic brew. Thrown into this cocktail is flaked-off skin cells, fine fur-like hairs that the baby sheds in-utero, and equal parts mucus and bile, all of which slides down their tiny throat to pool in the belly and kick start the first journey through the newly minted intestines. This collected, digested, and compressed assortment of ingredients are what make up the black diamond that is meconium.

It is this disgusting and oddly fascinating secretion that is the gateway drug into the addictive world of being a diaper detective. 

When we first brought Roo home, his input concerned us more than his output. We were on the lookout for wet nappies, of course, but knew if we couldn’t get anything into him, there was no point worrying about what came out. 

Breastfeeding is a challenge for anyone, and despite the fact that this is how we’ve evolved to survive during these early helpless months, there’s no guarantee it will actually take. We went in fully armed, baby courses completed, books read, and breast pump warmed up and ready to go. Thankfully, Roo inherited his parents’ appetite and willingness to eat anything put in front of him, and so took to the nipple with the same gusto Alex and I take to a punnet of ice cream. This meant we didn’t have to wait long for poop number two. 

When that little brown stain appeared in the lining of his diaper, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was gold he was passing and not faecal matter given the sounds of celebration coming from Alex and I at this momentous occasion. We praised him on his cleverness, hoisted him aloft like the victorious hero that he was, then quickly returned him to the change table to avoid being peed on. 

It wasn’t long before we had a shared google sheet drawn up to track his colonic expulsions, the document updated with the accuracy and diligence expected from my nursing days. Each movement was oohed and aahed over appropriately before being wiped up and thrown away. The one who had done the wiping would handover to the other, providing details on size, odour, colour, and consistency, and, on a good day, the anatomical locations the poop had managed to track to despite our boy being essentially stationary. His best effort was the base of the neck, which, I know, seems to defy the laws of gravity, but there you have it. 

**GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING** (You didn’t really think you’d get through this post without seeing poop, did you?)

Our super sleuthing showed that the pattern of pooping was not always consistent, with the average duration between soiled diapers being two to three days, but sometimes extending to as much as a week before we again mined that brown coal. On these occasions we would wait with baited breath at each nappy change, peeling away the layers of absorbent material, only to slump our shoulders and shake our heads at finding a urine-only deposit. Please let me make it clear: it was for the health of our child and the reassurance that his plumping was flowing as it should that we were so keen to discover his next poop, not some sick delight in adding to our defecation collection, like a twisted version of Pokemon Go. Gotta catch ‘em all.

Once we crossed the five day mark and the poop drought was still ongoing, we would begin to get nervous, imagining the giant mass that must surely be building in Roo’s large intestines. I would gently palpate his abdomen, feeling for any collections and watching for signs of discomfort. Roo would smile and drool, as happy as if he’d had his morning constitutional just minutes ago. 

It was then that we would usually turn to the internet, which anyone living in the modern era knows can be an activity fraught with fear-mongering and misinformation, the equivalent of bathing in grease-coated water in an attempt to get clean. Nevertheless, we would dive into these depths, battering away sites convincing us of deadly diagnoses or miracle cures, to the haven of scientifically-mediated pages. It was here we learnt that it’s not uncommon for an infant to go a week without dropping their load and that it’s usually a sign of a growth spurt. Essentially, the baby’s body is working so hard figuring out the world and increasing in size that it uses every drop of resources available to it. Given there’s not a lot of bulk in breast milk in the first place, it leaves the bowels barren and any residual waste is disposed of via the urine. 

When the drought finally broke and we would see that look of concerned concentration on Roo’s features that we had deduced meant our son was involved in some internal reorganisation, we would cheer as if the rains had fallen on the drylands and dubbed Roo with the title “Super Pooper.” 

The joy in our new found hobby soured when Roo started on solid food. With carbohydrates, meat proteins, and fibre to fill out his downstairs cargo, those cute little near-odourless milky poops suddenly got an upgrade to proper stools, and while they didn’t match the volume of an adult voiding, they made up for it in strength of smell. 

The other thing that changed was Roo’s sudden interest in what we were getting up to down there during a diaper change. I presume he reasoned that given we were paying so much attention to his undercarriage, there must be some event taking place in which he should participate. And so, as not to miss out, he would plunge his hands down into the mess and grab and squeeze whatever he could get his fingers on. Those fingers would then reach lovingly for our faces to caress our cheek or perhaps do some finger painting with this newly discovered medium. 

This combination of increased odour and the risk of walking away with a poop handprint somewhere on your person cured us of our addiction and meant we instead would feel a trickle of dread every time Roo crawled over with a little extra junk in his trunk. Lately, while she’s prepping him for an outing, I’ve caught my wife whispering instructions to Roo to do all his pooping while he’s away, before handing him off like a loaded gun to the unwitting friend or family member kind enough to volunteer to babysit. 

This stool story, of course, still has a long way to go as we face the future challenge of toilet training, but for now we will continue to wind our way through the wastelands, breathing through our mouths, fending off rummaging little hands, and praising our boy on a job well done, hopefully sending the message that every number two makes him number one in our book.

Next week’s topic: Year One

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

Raising Roo: The Cost

/ jonathanrobb / 2 Comments

Back in pre-baby days when Alex and I were newly-weds talking abstractedly about the concept of growing a human, one of the biggest things that stayed my hand, or in this case, another appendage, was the thought of the cost.

I am a self-confessed introvert (see post ‘Vienna in the time of COVID – Chapter 19‘), which in a nutshell means I like my own company and am content locking myself away for prolonged periods of time, wandering through the words of a book or whittling away at some creative pursuit, such as drawing, crochet, or a blog about parenting. 

Even before beginning the process myself, I was given to understand that, as a parent of an infant, it’s rather frowned upon to just drop sticks and leave in the middle of a diaper change or when your baby won’t stop crying, even though you’ve asked him politely three times to keep it down, because you need a little me-time. In fact, the stark reality is that by volunteering to be the care provider for a helpless, immobile, beginner human, you’re essentially forfeiting me-time for the foreseeable future.

This idea troubled me greatly. At the time, I felt I was performing reasonably well as a husband/brother/son/friend, but knew I was able to give a lot to these relationships because I had the luxury of balancing my community commitments with isolated periods of hermitage and self-indulgence. Granted, my self-indulgence wasn’t anything extravagant, more binge-watching a science-fiction show with a bag of peanut m&ms and long solitary walks with an audiobook than weekends in Dubai and snorting lines of coke off a stripper’s foot (or whichever body part is currently in favour), but these were the activities I needed to keep the Jonathan train chugging along. Without these nuggets thrown into the firebox from time to time, I was concerned the whole locomotive might derail. 

I talked about this with my wife who was sympathetic and supportive, and didn’t just say, ‘Suck it up, buster, and join me in the real world’, which she would have been somewhat justified in saying had she chosen. Even as I talked about it with Alex, and even as I write about it now, I appreciate that this is most definitely a twenty-first century, first-world problem and that historically, and in other countries in our world currently, people are more concerned with earning enough money to feed themselves and their families than with the quantity of me-time they’re allotted.

With this unignorable fact pinging around the back of my head, suck it up is essentially what I did. I wanted to be a father, and I wanted to see what a person that was a milkshake mix of me and Alex would look like, therefore I needed to accept the cost of that decision. 

We were approximately half a year into the COVID lockdown when Alex broached the subject. We had already determined that we would procreate eventually, but knew there were still a few things on our life-before-baby list that we wanted to tick off, such as a trip to Bali with two of our favourite people, Damian and Holly. The trip was originally scheduled for early 2020, but a little something happened that year that got in that way. We naively thought the whole global pandemic thing would blow over in a month and rescheduled the holiday for November of the same year. When we found ourselves still waist deep in virus and November rapidly approaching, we stopped rescheduling, mostly to save ourselves the heartbreak every time our plans got cancelled. Hope may be the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson said, but it can also be a bitch.

Alex, normally a lover of plans and the adherence thereto, suggested we ditch the timeline and just jump in the sack together. Technically, she said it a little more eloquently than that, presenting the argument of years lost waiting for the pandemic to subside and the subsequent time spent pursuing those childless-and-free activities we had outlined for ourselves, followed by the time spent trying to get pregnant and our hypothetical ages when we did finally become parents, but it boiled down to the same thing: it was baby-making time. 

Given her persuasive argument, and the undeniable fact that not a lot else was going on, I agreed that, ready or not, we would try and get pregnant. I am not looking forward to the day when I have to explain to Roo that he is just another pandemic baby.

That feeling of the cost still weighed on me, however, mostly that my performance as a father might suffer due to my own inbuilt dependance on bouts of solitude going unmet. In an effort to game the system, I decided that from this point until we saw our little cluster of cells in an ultrasound, I would indulge in my favourite pastimes, thereby storing up a supply of introverted contentment to get me through the lean years. This was not a hard thing to accomplish given COVID meant that not much else was available to me other than lazy activities you can do in your living room. To be honest, by the time the world started opening up again, even this happy little introvert had had more isolation than he could handle.

One other hobby I was looking forward to indulging in was the increased efforts at sparking the candle of life with my wife. We already shared an ease and comfort with each other when it came to amourous activities and this connection only deepened and intensified when we partook knowing it could result in an act of creation. This was unfortunately short-lived as, once all forms of contraception were out of the picture, we had sex a total of two times before conceiving. At least we know we’re fertile.

Alex being pregnant really played into my plans as, not only was she increasingly tired, which further limited our social calendar, she also classified as a vulnerable group, and so our care in avoiding the virus increased tenfold. Our wild weekends, which were tame to begin with, shrank down to afternoon walks along the river, meals at my in-laws, and coffee and cake with friends in the comfort of our living room. By the time amniotic fluid started leaking from my wife, my introverted battery was fully charged.

But the anxiety of the scope of what I was committing to never fully went away, even though my excitement for meeting my offspring was growing exponentially. In retrospect, I suppose it was really the same anxiety every person faces when consigning to be responsible, in body and mind, for a brand new person. The influence such a decision has on your life is monumental, and should be monumental, and the act of bringing to bear what I would no longer have was my way of coming to accept the enormity of what I was devoting myself to: a life-changing experience.

When that moment came, when I saw my son’s face for the first time, his small cries croaking from his tiny perfect mouth, it was indeed a life-changing experience. I know it is cliche to say but I can only report the event honestly as it happened to me: I saw him and knew I would happily pay any cost to be the father of this amazing miracle. He was so little and vulnerable and he only existed because of me, and I accepted the responsibility of caring for him so utterly that to worry about less time rewatching The Office seemed so absurd. 

The scientific thinkers amongst you will no doubt be thinking of the flood of hormones that are programmed to release to invoke these feelings to ensure I don’t get distracted and let my baby be eaten by a crocodile. The psychologically minded amongst you may be contemplating some sort of instant and acute Stockholm Syndrome. Perhaps those with religious tendencies believe I’ve fallen under the sway of a very powerful and very tiny cult leader.

I won’t argue with you. Neurotransmitters most definitely swamped my brain and continue to do so, I fell instantly in love with my captor, and, boy, did I drink the Kool-Aid. But whatever the reason, it doesn’t make it any less true. My free time is almost exclusively devoted to my family and I am more content than I have ever been. What I failed to insert into my equation of effort expended versus time lost to calculate total cost is what I would receive in return. I was focusing on what I would lose and failed to account for what I would gain.

There is no question that parenting is exhausting, and taxing, and requiring of sacrifice, and there have been times in this past year where I have been physically, mentally and emotionally drained. But all I can tell you is that when my son flops down beside me in bed, or smiles up at me when I walk through the door at the end of a work day, or cackles wildly when I blow raspberries on his belly, my battery feels full.

Next week’s topic: Birth Story (Part 1)