Jamie sees the look on my face. ‘No! I don’t mean that. Give me a second to explain.’
‘Alright.’
‘Well, I used to visit gran a lot when I was a kid and one of the things I loved to do was play with her little Jack Russell dog.’
‘Are you about to suggest we name our child after a bloody dog?’
‘Um… yeah I am.’
‘Jamie! Of all the stupid things I’ve heard you come out with - ’
‘The dog was called Poppy. I thought it sounded nice. Poppy Newman.’
Oh crap, it’s perfect.
Sweet, musical and happy.
I’m going to have to name my first born after a small, yapping mutt.
‘I love it,’ I tell him, placing a hand on his arm.
‘You do? Only I thought you’d just laugh it off coz it was a dog’s name.’
‘Not any more it’s not. Now it’s our daughter’s.’
Jamie breaks into a beautiful smile. ‘Brilliant! It’s settled then. Our baby’s name is Poppy Lady Gaga Newman!’
He manages to skip out the way before I can swing the bed pan across his head.
***
And there we have it.
Poppy Newman sleeps soundly at the end of my bed while I sit here writing in this diary – which is rapidly becoming more dog-eared than a chew toy, it has to be said.
Jamie is currently doing the rounds letting people know about the birth, which I’m rather grateful for as it’s giving me some time to cultivate and nurture the reflective mood I’ve been in since the birth.
I feel like I’m at a crossroads in my life…
In many ways, the Laura Newman that used to exist was replaced the instant I locked eyes with little Poppy for the first time in the delivery room. I went from an independent woman - who spent far too much time worrying about what shoes go with which handbag - to a new mother, with more responsibility than she’s ever had before. I also have a new found sense of purpose to my life that’s been missing since the chocolate shop closed down.
I still have my career dreams and aspirations of course, but these ambitions are now joined by the overwhelming desire to bring up a well-rounded, stable human being, who will feel loved and wanted each and every day of her life.
I have no idea which one will be harder to achieve… but I can take a bloody good guess.
In a second I’m going to close this diary and shuffle down the bed to look at Poppy.
I find this to be an extremely satisfying past time. I could literally stand for hours watching my daughter sleep, her tiny eyes twitching as she experiences whatever innocent dreams newborn babies have.
Poppy has a name card on the front of her cot.
It has her first name and surname of course; but she also has a middle name now.
The only middle name she could ever have had.
My daughter is Poppy Helen Newman.
She is named for a small bouncy dog I never had the chance to meet – and the mother who was taken from me far, far too soon.
I love you with all my heart, Mum.
…and even though she is barely out of the womb and still can’t use her arms and legs properly, I know Poppy Newman does to.
Your tearful and hazy daughter, Laura.
xxx
Jamie’s Blog
Tuesday 10 December
This has been the worst week of my life.
I looked in the mirror just now and a ghost looked back at me.
After only two days on this Earth, Poppy caught pneumonia.
It was the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever had to endure.
At first, everything was fine. She seemed healthy and happy. Laura and I took turns holding her as often as possible. In many ways she was more football than baby, the amount of times she was passed around parents, friends, relatives and the staff of the hospital.
Then last Tuesday evening we noticed she’d started breathing rapidly and there was a hoarse sound at the back of her throat that sounded quite awful. We did what any new parents would do in this situation – we panicked.
Babies are so very vulnerable at this early age anything can be life-threatening, so even a cold could do serious damage that a baby of six months would shrug off easily.
The female on-call doctor examined Poppy while Laura and I held hands. I could feel Laura’s nails biting into my palm.
‘I’m going to get Poppy to the ICU immediately,’ she said in a grave voice.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ my wife said. I’ve never heard Laura Newman sound so lost and scared.
‘Her chest sounds congested and her breathing isn’t good. There’s a chance it’s pneumonia,’ the doctor said matter-of-factly.
Ultimately, it was a diagnosis that probably saved Poppy’s life.
…oh God, I’m so tired right now I can’t remember the doctor’s name. I’ll have to ask Laura about it when she wakes up.
How awful is that? I can’t even remember the name of the person who saved my daughter.
Poppy was placed in the ICU in an incubator.
I can’t express how horrific it is to look in through a plastic box at your baby, unable to do anything to help her. All Laura and I could do was wring our hands, as the hospital staff went about the business of administering as many antibiotics as was safe for a two day old baby.
‘We’ll monitor her from here,’ the doctor told us, from where we stood staring in at Poppy’s still form. ‘With luck, the antibiotics will start to kill the infection quickly and we’ll see an improvement.’
‘What if there isn’t an improvement?’ I asked. The way the doctor let out a long, slow breath made me want to cry my fucking eyes out.
‘We’ll have to re-address the situation and decide on what further steps to take.’ She took another deep breath. ‘This is a serious condition for one so young Mr and Mrs Newman, I’m not going to lie to you. But I think we caught it early, and Poppy is absolutely in the best place she can be right now.’
And so began six days of utter darkness…
A week in a thick, suffocating bubble, divorced from the outside world.
Laura retreated into herself. I guess it was a defence mechanism and I can’t blame her for it, but it left me feeling isolated from both her and my sick daughter.
Our friends rallied round to support us of course - and we had my family as well.
The absence of her mother weighed heavily on Laura though, as I knew it would. I tried my hardest to make up for her absence, but it was no good.
I have to confess that I hated my mum a bit for her brittle relationship with Laura. My wife needed maternal support, and my mother wasn’t there for her thanks to the walls she’d built between them for no apparent reason.
Thank God for the brilliant Melina.
She and I have always had a good relationship, but we were never what you would consider close. Now though, I would do anything for my wife’s best friend. The support she gave Laura - talking with her, bringing Hayley in to play with her, sitting with her while she just stared into space - was incredible. I don’t know what I would have done without her.
Also, I fostered an abject hatred of the internet during the six days my daughter was under the shadow.
The best thing about the internet is that you can find information on any topic you desire. The worst thing about the internet is that you can find information on any topic you desire…
I made the mistake one evening of typing ‘newborn baby pneumonia’ into Google.
The next hour was spent in an orgy of masochistic research that made me convinced my poor little baby was as good as dead.
Wikipedia went from being a handy way to cheat at pub quizzes, to the spectre of Death itself, whispering statistics and facts into my ears that tore my heart to pieces.
One failing of the human condition is that we always tend to pay more attention to the negative than the positive in dire situations like this, and I was no exception to that rule. I
would gloss over the more positive articles about recovery rates from infections in newborn babies, and dwell on the stories about how their delicate lungs cannot fight off the infection.
Never mind that these particular stories were generally about babies in third world countries, without access to the modern technology we in the UK hold so dear.
Do you have any idea how hideous the term ‘infant mortality rate’ is?
Unless you’ve had a baby with a serious illness, you have no idea just how abhorrent those three words placed together truly are.
I should have called Marigold for a chat. She would probably have set me straight.
I was torturing myself and I knew it. It took all the strength I had to shut the laptop down and ignore the black voice at the back of my head, repeating that dreadful, dreadful phrase over and over:
Infant mortality rate. Infant mortality rate. Infant mortality rate.
The absolute low point was Friday night.
Poppy had taken a turn for the worse. Her breathing was more laboured and she was barely moving in the incubator.
I’d gone to the toilet, leaving Laura standing in the ICU, surrounded by the poor sick babies forced to spend the first few days and weeks of their lives in small plastic boxes. It was a stupid thing to do.
Laura had been virtually silent for hours and she hadn’t eaten a thing for even longer. Leaving her even for a second in that place was a mistake I would hack off a limb to go back and rectify.
I returned to the ICU to see my wife with her hands pressed up against the incubator. She was breathing rapidly.
‘Laura?’ I said approaching her. ‘Baby? What are you doing?’
‘Wake up,’ she said in a low voice.
‘She can’t hear you honey.’ I took her by the arms and tried to pull her away, but I couldn’t move her an inch. A feverish heat boiled from her skin and I could see the veins in her hands popping out from beneath the surface.
‘Wake up!’ Laura said again, this time much louder. A couple of other babies in the room started to cry in lusty voices from behind me.
‘You need to come away now, Laura,’ I said, trying to be firm, but my voice cracked with stress and worry. Laura pushed me away and returned to stare at Poppy.
‘Wake up Poppy! Wake up now!’ she virtually screamed.
I started to cry. ‘Please Laura. Please calm down baby. She can’t hear you.’
‘For God sakes Poppy, wake up!’ Laura cried and hammered on the incubator. Poppy didn’t stir.
Then she said something that shattered what was left of my heart.
‘Don’t die, honey. Please don’t die, Poppy.’
Jesus Christ, this is hard to write.
‘Stay with me Poppy.’ Laura’s voice had dropped to barely a whisper. She turned to look at me. ‘What are we going to do Jamie? What are we going to do?’
I had no words.
Do you know how exquisitely painful that is? To not have any words of comfort for your distraught wife? The person you love more than anything else in the world?
All I could do was put my arms around her and hope that would be enough.
She cried then. For the first time since the diagnosis she cried in my arms.
In long, ragged hitching breaths she let out the pain that had built inside her over the past few days.
I cried too, as I have never cried before.
With our dear, sweet baby lying next to us, we cried for her, feared for her… and hoped for her.
Looking back on it now I know it was a cathartic experience and a necessary one.
But dear God, if you are up there, please never make me go through anything like that again.
Twenty four hours later Poppy started to show signs of improvement. The fever was down, her breathing was becoming more regular and there was a better flush of pink to her complexion.
People say a week is a long time in politics. These people have no fucking idea what they are talking about. They should try twenty four hours with a sick baby.
With Poppy’s recovery came the recovery of her parents as well.
We both managed to sleep properly for the first time in days. I was out for a full twelve hours – and awoke to be told that Poppy was also awake - and really not bloody happy about being imprisoned in a big plastic box.
The turn around was quite remarkable. From a listless grey shape, to a vibrating pink ball of anger, my daughter was proving the effectiveness of modern antibiotics in no uncertain terms.
Have you ever sat round with a bunch of friends and completed one of those personality quizzes?
You know the type: What’s your favourite place in the world? What’s your favourite time of day? What’s your favourite swear word? That kind of crap.
Well, I can safely say that if I ever have to answer the question: What’s your favourite sound? I will be able to answer very easily, by simply stating ‘my daughter crying after a bout of pneumonia’.
By Monday it was like she’d never had an infection at all.
‘It’s quite incredible,’ Doctor Abbotson said to us after a routine examination. ‘Poppy’s recovery has been lightning fast. You have a very special little girl here.’
…and that’s when the ‘dad gene’ kicked in for the first time.
This is the part of a man’s genetic make-up that convinces him his child is leagues above anyone else’s.
If the child in question is male, this sense of over-weaning pride usually kicks in when the little sod starts playing football (if he’s any good at it of course). If the kid is female it can be a little harder for a man to judge his daughter’s worth against other girls, considering he has no idea what the rules of netball are.
Therefore, a father must grasp any indication of his daughter’s brilliance whenever he can find it – at whatever age.
Well yeah! Of course she recovered quickly. She’s my daughter!
Chest puffed out with ridiculous pride I looked in at Poppy… who gave me the finger.
I kid you not.
I looked at one podgy little hand and I could swear that just for a second she curled her fingers up bar the middle one and flipped her father the bird.
It appears that from now on I will have not one, but two, women ready, willing and able to deflate my pomposity at a moment’s notice.
‘Did she just flip you off?’ Laura said incredulously, before erupting into laughter.
…which it turns out is the second best sound in the world.
So here I sit, a few hours after Poppy gave me the finger, having recovered from what could have been a fatal bout of pneumonia. Life is never ever predictable, no matter what the movies try to tell you.
I really should be asleep again. The twelve hours obviously weren’t enough and I’m finding it very hard to type, but I knew I had to get all this down as quickly as possible while it’s raw. I have a tendency to sugar coat the hard stuff if I’m given enough time to think about it and the past week deserves to be re-told in all its unvarnished glory. Otherwise I’d feel like I was somehow cheating my daughter.
Does that make any sense at all, or am I just so messed up at the moment I’m coming out with complete rubbish?
That’s how I feel though.
Poppy went through hell in the past few days, so the least I can do is pour out my pain on the page properly.
Now that horrible job is done, I have a warm, soft wife sleeping peacefully by my side, so I’m ending this post with a hearty thank you to whatever gods may be out there for sparing Poppy. I would have been beyond devastated to lose her.
…even if she does like flipping me the bird.
***
Judith Searle.
That was the on-call doctor’s name who saved my daughter’s life. I asked Laura this morning.
I can safely say that I owe her my life. She is one of the most important people in the world and I thank her from the bottom of my heart.
Laura’s Diary
Monday, January
13th
Dear Mum,
There are times - not very often, but every once in a while - when I despair for the future of the human race.
With Poppy now in my life, I wonder why I took the decision to bring a child into this world, which is so choc-a-block with complete idiots it’s hard to see how anything gets done.
My latest chance to revel in the stupidity of my fellow man came a couple of days ago, when I opened a letter that had just dropped onto the doormat.
Jamie was still fast asleep upstairs, thanks to the Saturday morning lie-in he’d been promising himself all week, and I was preparing to give Poppy her first feed after dawn when the letterbox rattled. I was quite startled as the Saturday morning post has been coming later and later recently, as if the postman was seeing how annoyed he could make his customers without getting a complaint levelled against him.
Shuffling down the hall yawning my head off, I pick up the long brown envelope and look at the back.
It’s from the Registrar of Births & Deaths, so either a distant relative has fallen off this mortal coil and left me a load of cash (highly unlikely) or Poppy’s birth certificate has finally arrived.
Jamie was meant to sort this out weeks ago, but as ever his sieve-like memory let him down time and time again. I was forced to hide his Playstation 3 controller until he got off his arse and drove down to the registry office.
With another huge yawn I open the letter, and with bleary eyes begin to read the certificate.
Ten seconds later I’m storming up the stairs, waving the certificate in front of me and shouting my gormless husband’s name at the top of my voice.
‘What? What?’ he exclaims in a sluggish voice as I sit myself down on the bed, ready to sally forth with a ticking off of no uncertain proportions.
I suddenly remember I have a newborn baby in the house and look over to where Poppy is blissfully unaware of her mother’s new found apocalyptic rage and is sleeping like a log.
Love... And Sleepless Nights MAY 2012 Page 11
