She's Having Her Baby

by Lauren Sams

  I briefly considered the wild hypocrisy involved in asking god to do anything for me after I had forsaken him my entire life, then decided it didn’t matter. Look, if god was real, he’d totally understand, right?

  Rita, who had left the room, returned with a contingent of assistants. She introduced them all to me but I had no hope of keeping track of their names. The full force of the pain bore down on me again and this time it was even worse. I couldn’t quite believe that was possible.

  Almut was by my side now, her hand next to mine. I gripped it, sensing she had left it there for just that purpose. I looked at her, into her lovely hazel eyes, and tried to plead silently. Please help me. Please help me. Almut nodded deeply and stared back at me. She was all I had.

  ‘I got rid of that awful doctor for you,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Nobody likes him. I had them call him into an “emergency”. Dr Gardener is much better.’ I opened my mouth to say thank you but nothing came out. Almut smiled anyway; she got the gist.

  Around me, people were calling out things like ‘Ten centimetres!’ and ‘Is the gas ready?’ and then ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ I yelled.

  Almut squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. Just saying the words had made it clear to me. Jase wasn’t here. Ellie wasn’t, Nina wasn’t. It was me. It was just me.

  Rita’s face hovered above mine. ‘Georgie, we’re ready. You need to start pushing. Can you do that?’

  I shook my head furiously.

  ‘Jana never even –’ pause for contraction ‘– taught me! I don’t know how!’

  ‘OK, OK. Georgie –’

  ‘George! Everyone calls me George!’

  Rita nodded. ‘Alright, George. I’m going to tell you something and you’re going to think it sounds crazy. But it’s true. You ready?’

  I stared back at Rita’s gorgeous espresso skin. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just pretend like you’re doing a really big poo. OK?’

  At that point, I must have been delirious, because I remember saying, ‘OK,’ and doing exactly what Rita told me to do. And sure enough, it worked.

  A few minutes later, I was crying with sheer relief and holding a tiny, pink, slippery little girl.

  30

  Day 1

  ‘Georgie? Are you OK? Can I get you anything?’ I opened my eyes.

  It was Mum.

  I felt my face soften. I had never been so glad to see her.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  She made a shushing motion, smiled and handed me a glass of water, the straw angled towards my mouth helpfully. I sipped, then realised exactly how thirsty I was, and kept sucking and sucking til the glass was empty.

  ‘I’ll get you some more.’

  She turned and left the room. I sat up, before realising that something was preventing me from sitting completely upright. A cord, or a wire. What was that? I lifted the sheet and saw – a tube up my lady parts.

  Bunches of flowers – small, tall, bright, pastel – dotted the room and filled it with a strong perfume. And in one corner, a plastic bassinette, dressed with the same hospital blankets I’m sure I came home in. Do hospital blankets ever change?

  No baby.

  There was no baby in the bassinette.

  Oh no, oh no, oh no. Something’s wrong. Something’s happened. Where is my baby? What happened, what happened?

  ‘Mum!’ I yelled, frantic now.

  She hurried back, still holding the empty glass.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Where’s my baby? Where is she?’

  ‘Oh. Darling, you worried me. She’s having a bath.’ She patted my head and gave me a gentle push, settling me back into the bed. ‘Have a rest now, darling. You did so well. And all by yourself.’ She shook her head in that motherly ‘couldn’t be prouder’ way and I felt a surge of pride.

  ‘Oh. OK.’ A bath? I thought. Shouldn’t I be giving her a bath? Then suddenly the past night, which had been filled with feeds on the half-hour, every half-hour, came flashing back to me, and I realised that the nurses had thrown me a much-needed bone and let me sleep while they took my baby for a ‘bath’. Lovely, lovely nurses.

  My baby.

  I had a baby.

  What did I know about her so far? She was small. She seemed to be entirely pink all over, from her tiny rosebud lips to her even tinier shell-pink toes. She was hungry – a clear sign she was my genetic spawn, if ever there was one – and she was loud (OK, another indicator).

  She was mine. It was pretty fucking unbelievable.

  What was even more unbelievable was that I’d done it myself. Well, by myself, with a shitload of drugs and a team of well-trained doctors and nurses. Not, like, alone in the desert with nothing but a coyote howling back at me or anything like that. But still. I was pretty goddamn proud of myself.

  ‘Mum?’ I asked, when she came back with the water. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Kevin’s just out getting some coffee for the nurses.’

  ‘No, no – Ellie and Nina. Jase. Mum, did something happen to Nina?’

  My head was dizzy with vague memories. Tim Kane. Accident. Nina.

  Mum took a breath and looked at me, narrowing her eyes a little like she was trying to decide what to tell me. ‘There was … something happened.’ The accident.

  ‘What? What happened?’ I braced myself. Well, I gave it my best. But really, no-one could ever be prepared for the words ‘your best friend is dead’, which is what I assumed Mum would say next.

  ‘Oh, darling, you don’t need to worry about any of that now. Just relax. Your beautiful baby will be back any minute. Let’s just concentrate on happy things for now, OK? Now, would you like a coffee? I can call Kevin.’ She picked up the hospital phone, which was lying right next to my own phone. I suspected Mum still didn’t know how to use a smartphone.

  ‘Mum. Stop. Listen to me. Tell me what happened. Is Nina OK?’

  She nodded, but turned away from me. ‘She’s upstairs.’

  ‘Upstairs, where?’

  ‘In the hospital.’

  I gritted my teeth. Something was going on. ‘I know that, Mum. But why? Why is she in the hospital?’

  Mum sat down beside me and took my hand in her own. ‘It was only a small accident, darling.’

  This was trademark Mum. Instead of just telling me exactly what was going on, instead of directly answering my questions, she’d skirt around them by repeating old information over and over. She usually did it when something bad had happened and she wanted to protect me from it. So what had happened?

  ‘Mum, please. Just tell me what happened. Fragile emotional state or not, I’m going to find out at some point. Please tell me now.’

  She took a breath, her hand still clutching mine. ‘Nina, Jase and Ellie were in an accident.’ She stopped.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they’re fine.’

  I waited. There must be more. She wouldn’t have made me wait like that if they really were fine – they must be technically alive but horribly disfigured or something.

  ‘That’s it?’

  She nodded and went back to the phone, letting go of my hand so it hung there limply. I looked around, waiting for some sort of Punk’d crew to pop out and tell me this was a big joke. All that for ‘they’re fine’? Sometimes – very, very frequently – my mother made absolutely no sense. Was this how I would behave one day?

  A knock on the door broke my thoughts. ‘Are you decent?’ Nina!

  ‘Yes! Um … not really. But come in,’ I said, looking down at my thin white nightgown, through which you could see the whole birthday suit. I hastily pulled the sheet up to my boobs, which felt tender and incredibly full.

  Later, I realised that the only people who care if you are ‘decent’ in hospital are your own friends and family. The hospital staff – the doctors, nurses, registrars, janitors and so on – couldn’t care less because they have seen it all before, and then some.

  ‘Oh god
. Thank god you’re OK,’ I said as the three of them traipsed in.

  Ellie and Nina looked fine, to the naked eye. Jase had a bandage on his left hand and one around his head, but apart from those, he looked OK, too.

  All three of them shook their heads at once and laughed.

  ‘Yeah, we’re fine,’ Nina said, once she’d finished her little laugh. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. I wasn’t the one in an accident. What happened?’

  ‘I was driving Jase –’ Nina began.

  ‘Because I only had my bike, and I didn’t know if there was secure bike parking here –’ Jase interrupted.

  Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. Only Jase would be worried about his precious bloody bike while his own child was being born.

  ‘And I’d dropped Lucas off with Simon, and then I decided to take the Jeep back to the hospital because it still had Lucas’s car seat in it and I thought we could just turn it around for the drive home, with the baby – even though of course you wouldn’t be coming home straight away, but I wasn’t thinking straight, you see – and so I’m in the Jeep, which I haven’t driven in months,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Yeah, that’s quite obvious,’ Nina chimed in.

  More laughter.

  What is wrong with these people?

  ‘And I’m at the lights, near Sydney Park, coming the back way, when I realise I have to get down King Street. Well, that’s not going to happen on a Friday night, is it?’ Ellie asked the room.

  ‘So then she decides to go the back-back way,’ Jase said, ‘and she forgets that Newtown is full of one-way streets, doesn’t she?’

  ‘So by the time I realise I’ve gone the wrong way down a one-way street, it’s too late, isn’t it?’ Ellie asked again, to everyone and no-one.

  ‘Then she sees us,’ said Nina.

  ‘Then I see them,’ said Ellie. ‘And I’m so frazzled because I know you’re in labour and I know I’m going the wrong way down a one-way street and I have no idea how to drive that bloody beast of a car that I accidentally put my foot on the accelerator, not the brake, and, well …’

  ‘Are you all OK, though?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, yeah,’ said Jase. ‘Probably got the worst of it – I put my hand up to shield my eyes and it got cut in the windscreen. Also, it didn’t exactly save my face,’ he said, pointing to the bandage around his head.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re all OK. God, I was so worried when Mum said you’d been in an accident.’ Mum looked over and smiled beatifically, like, who me?

  ‘Where is she?’ Jase asked, his face giddy with excitement.

  ‘Having a bath. Not even a day old and already at the day spa. That’s my kid.’

  Jase and I smiled at each other. It felt like all the tension and bad blood between us had been lifted away, and now we could see each other clearly. It felt good.

  ‘How are you?’ Nina asked, sitting beside me on the bed and holding my cannula-ed hand.

  ‘Good. Sore. Very, very sore. But … I did it.’

  ‘I know. Rita said you were incredible.’

  ‘Rita?’

  ‘Your doctor. She came up and saw us. Said you were shouting out our names and telling them to ring us all. She’d seen us upstairs before and she put two and two together. Clever.’

  ‘Oh. She said I was incredible?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Eager-to-Please, you were good at labour,’ Nina groaned. ‘Now when are they brining her back? I want to meet her!’

  As if on cue, the door opened and in came Almut with a tiny pink roll of flannelette.

  ‘Georgie, here is your child,’ she said, with her signature Eastern European warmth.

  ‘Thanks, Almut. Thank you.’ We exchanged a brief look, her hazel eyes meeting mine, and I hoped she could sense my gratitude. It wasn’t clear that she had, since she immediately gave my baby to Jase, whose face melted like Gouda. Almut began disrobing me and the bed, right in front of Ellie and Nina and Jase and Mum, as if this was perfectly consensual and normal.

  ‘I have to change your catheter,’ she said, fussing around down there like she was fixing a mojito. Which, incidentally, I could have really gone for.

  I looked up at Ellie, who had been so good at ordering hospital staff around yesterday, before she’d sent me off with Almut, who made up for what she lacked in empathy with stone-cold productivity. There was no question about it, the girl got things done.

  ‘Ah, OK,’ I said, seeing Ellie’s mouth twitch into a knowing giggle. She raised an eyebrow in solidarity and I smirked back. Friends again.

  A few seconds later, Almut shattered any last shred of my dignity by pulling down the sheet covering my chest, then pulling my nightgown up, revealing my horribly distended, suddenly elasticised stomach for the room to see. In a final blow to my autonomy, she took my right boob into her hands – plural – squeezed and smiled triumphantly when she was rewarded with a healthy squirt. Nina and Ellie allowed themselves a laugh while Jase busied himself staring directly into the baby’s face and absolutely nowhere else.

  ‘OK, ready now,’ said Almut, motioning for Jase to bring Pink over. He handed her over – like anyone would mess with Almut – and little Pink settled down on my tummy, ready for a feed. Of course she would be hungry after twenty-two feeds last night. Of course.

  ‘Good job, George,’ Jase said, bending down to kiss my brow. The hormones struck and I started to cry, not for Jase, or for me, but for my gratitude that it was all OK. A gorgeously strange-looking baby girl lay in my arms, she was healthy and hungry and seemed to understand that I was her mum. Or maybe just her reservoir.

  Nina was OK. Ellie was OK. Jase was OK. And I was OK.

  ‘I’m going to go ring Mum, OK?’ Jase asked. I nodded.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, as he rounded the door. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I was thinking Philippa. Pippa.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Nina, clapping her hands together and smiling. ‘I love that.’

  Jase smiled. ‘Philippa Blake. Sounds nice.’

  I raised my eyebrows and tried not to wince as Pippa really went for it, nipple-wise. ‘You wish! Philippa Henderson – well, maybe Philippa Blake Henderson,’ I replied, realising how perfectly Hollywood and magazine-y Jase’s surname was for a girl’s middle name.

  Jase rolled his eyes right back. ‘I’m kidding, George. As if.’ He smiled and went to call his mum, who would surely have a fit if she knew about this conversation.

  ‘Philippa?’ Ellie asked. I waited for the criticism, to be told that this name wasn’t right, it wouldn’t befit a child, there weren’t any celebrity babies with that name, blah blah blah. ‘What do you think of that, Sue?’ she asked, turning to my mum.

  Mum beamed. ‘I love it. Very fitting.’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Well, Kate – Catherine, I should say – is probably a bit obvious, isn’t it? But Pippa … oh, I love it.’

  I groaned. ‘Oh my god, I honestly – I swear to you – did not even think of that. Mum, I didn’t name my baby after the World’s Most Famous Bridesmaid.’

  Mum smiled at me, like, sure you didn’t.

  ‘Well, Perky Bottom or not, I think it’s beautiful,’ said Ellie. ‘She is beautiful. You did great, George. Really great. I couldn’t have done it by myself, but you did.’ She squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek and nestled in to Pippa’s head for a smooch, and it wasn’t at all weird, even though Pippa’s head was directly above my nipple.

  ‘I’m going to get a coffee. You guys want one?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘I feel like I’ve said this so many times before but never really knew what I was saying until now: “I have never been more desperate for a coffee,’’’ I said.

  ‘What she said,’ said Nina.

  Ellie took our orders and Mum left to look for the errant Kevin.

  And so Nina and I sat, in a hospital room, with a baby. It was not lost on me that this had all started very differently and that, if everything had gone to N
een’s plan, we would have been sitting here with her baby now. Me in the bed, recovering, and her trying to figure out how to get her boobs to make milk or something. Matt would have been here. Things would have been very, very different.

  I had a hunch Nina was thinking the same thing. I concentrated on keeping my feet out of my mouth and not saying anything that would upset Nina. But she knew something was up.

  ‘You OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, holding back yet more tears. ‘I mean, you know, apparently I have hemorrhoids the size of tropical coconuts down there, but I’m on so much Endone I can’t feel much, so … I’m good.’

  ‘I can’t believe you did it by yourself,’ she said, softly, gently rubbing Pippa’s back.

  ‘You and me both.’

  ‘Was it scary?’

  ‘On a scale of one to having Ellie run me over in a Jeep … I don’t know, eleven?’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here.’

  I shook my head, trying even more desperately not to cry. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I thought something bad had happened. I thought … I thought the worst thing had happened.’

  ‘It wasn’t even that big of a deal. I think they just brought us in to make sure nobody was concussed. Ellie was acting pretty crazy.’

  ‘Gosh, I can’t imagine that.’

  Nina smiled.

  We sat for a while, looking at Pippa as she fell asleep, her mouth still a ring around my nipple, her breath gently falling on me. A baby. A teeny little person. God, what was I going to do with her? How would I be good enough for her? How would I do all the things she needed me to do?

  ‘She’s so tiny,’ said Nina. ‘I can’t believe she’s ever going to be … like, a fully grown person.’

  ‘Right? Look at her fingernails – how will they ever be big enough for polish?’