REVIVAL

The logistics of getting to the hospital on time had been preying on our minds, to the point that whenever someone asked me where I was having the baby I replied “The Mercy,” and then added “in other words, on the Tullamarine freeway.” So when pre-labour started at around 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon a week before my due date, I was excited and relieved. The house was full of family at the time, but I kept the news to myself for a few private hours.

Scott’s workplace was over an hour’s drive away, but at that time he would already have been on his way home. The hospital was also over an hour’s drive away, with the distinct possibility of a traffic jam or two, but it would be well past peak hour by the time things hotted up. Best of all, I was looking at the prospect of being pregnant at least one week less than expected – a godsend for someone who finds pregnancy physically and emotionally debilitating. The thrill of having a baby to bring home just about took a back seat to all this logistical good fortune!

The pain of the labour and birth rather took me by surprise. Granted, my last experience of childbirth had been eight years ago, but I didn’t think of myself as someone who indulged in selective amnesia. Then, a few weeks later, it dawned on me how it happens. The early weeks with a new baby are blissful but also stultifying. And so I found myself casting my mind back, again and again, to the last really exciting thing to have happened to me, to the most recent incidence of high drama, of great effort and endurance. And that, of course, was the birth.