I finished work Friday night, cleared out my office and got home at 11pm. You were due on the Sunday, but we expected you late so Angel and I had a nice day just the two of us, walked from Circular Quay across the harbour bridge, weaving down through Lavender Bay. On the Monday I was poking around Balmain Library at 4.30pm and the contractions started.
I tried to squeeze some more shopping in, started timing them, texted Angel. He came home in a hurry. "Caitlin's in Labour" he announced as he walked in the door to my mum and Gaby who was busy in the garden tending to the strawberries.
What??
Calm down, apparently this will go for hours.
We were at the birth centre
by 6 and there was howling, breathing, catching, biting, baths, gas, crying, begging and finally the midwives saying sternly Caitlin! Stop this nonsense! Its too late for drugs! You must push! Your baby wants to be born! This baby wants to be born!
Pleeeeease give me drugs! You said I could change my mind, I could have drugs if I wanted!
Its too late! Your baby wants to be born, NOW! She shouts out the door to the other midwife on duty: Marie, come in here an help me.
At 9.28 on 28/9 you arrived, the night of the blood red moon. By 1am we were in a hospital room with you, this very
tiny baby, sleeping peacefully beside us.
Everything happened so fast, the lack of painkillers left me a little traumatised for a day or two, this really intense primal experience which needed
processing. I had secretly been planning to ask for them half way through.
I felt like I had been on a
really intense acid trip with Jason and these two women, beaten up and thrown
naked off a truck going 160 ks/hr on the side of a jagged road in
Mexico, parched and dazed and confused. And yet joyful. Angel was amazing in
what must have been a very intense experience for him and was really good with
letting me talk about it to process it.
Just came out of hospital yesterday
with you. It's such an odd feeling. I am really happy but
really hormonal and emotional and it's all a bit confusing. Happy to be out
of hospital but felt funny leaving with you, this little sleepy human that I
am now responsible for, getting to know you, you getting to know us. But you are hardwired to connect and so am I. You are a feeding monster but you know who I am and I have known you for months already. We are now finding our feet with how to take care of you. Hopefully this will start to make more sense soon.
When time has passed and all the
suns disciples have been cloaked we wont remember this. But you are an amazing
baby. You hardly cry. We figured out breast feeding together fairly easily. The
nurse showed me how to let you lead and after head butting me with your tiny
fluffy mouse head a few times you would show me what worked. You are pretty regular
with feeding, when you get grizzly it is usually for a reason we can figure out
and if not it is always solved by a cuddle, especially with Daddy.
I think we are pretty lucky fluffy
mouse. So why is Mum such a basket case?
We came back to Singapore on a
Saturday, so we all had time to acclimatize before daddy went back to work.
It was hard to leave. I felt for
the first time a terrible feeling that it might be the last time I see your
grandma, my mum. I suddenly understood how Mary felt all those years when she would cry at the airport before flying back to Canada. I cried a
lot on the way to the airport.
You were so good on the plane. All
the hosties were in love with you. We watched movies and cuddled you the whole
way. You didn’t want to be put down. We arrived in Singapore, made it home and
started life again in the tropics. You were confused and missed grandma but
were excited about your new bed. Mum and Dad felt the same but were happy to
have their space again.
The next day I tried to play you
Waltzing Matilda, your song. I wound up inadvertently playing a mix of
Australia-missing music, including I Still Call Australia Home and I am
Australian. Felt like I was in a Qantas commercial. I tried to go shopping for
fish and salad materials and ended up crying in the bok choy section.
We chose to be here, so I cant cry.
Im so lucky to be here with both of you.
A week has passed and we are
settled back in.
I wouldn’t say it’s going great,
but Im going to meetings, he hasn’t left me, and today I pumped a bottle of
breast milk.
Im finding it a little challenging
and am rocked by irrational thoughts. When I look at you my heart breaks as I
take in how perfect and innocent you are. I feel sad about time passing and how
you will never be this small again. I am struggling to live in the present
moment with you. Its all stress about the future – 5 months, 5 years, 20 years.
I have suddenly realised that I am growing old and will die. [Don’t be so
morbid! he says to meYoure just like your mother.]
I don’t want anything to change
you, or for the world to ever disappoint you or any person ever hurt you or let
you down. And yet it is inevitable.
You still sleep well and you guzzle
milk like a bastard. I realised today, after pumping and emptying the boob that
half the time you are just wanting comfort and safety and the warm feeling of
being nestled in and latched on, its not about hunger and thirst. And I am that
to you! I am your place of comfort and safety. Its quite beautiful really.
I just need to pull it together.
********
Your dad is being amazing. He seems
to have made a conscious decision not to be unkind or censcorious but to just
give me unconditional love and support and to allow me to work it out on my
own. He could be dark and angry and fling words around with perfect
justification. No one would judge him if he left me. I don’t know how he is
doing it, it must be heart breaking. I have a feeling, if he stays, I will pay
for it later. That kind of anger doesn’t dissipate, it is buried or transforms
and waits. But he is being so kind and is waiting for me.
I fall in love with him all over
agin every day, stressed and strained though he may be. He also, I would like
to shield from the bitterness and disappointments of the world. I fear the
jealous wrath of others because of how perfect he is and the world we have when
I am straight. I would do anything for us [Then why cant you just do this
Caitlin?? I keep waiting for you.]
Now at the witching hour, you are
either side of me. He sleeps, his chest rising and falling in gentle
undulations across broad shoulders, the Doona tangled up between his legs as I
used to be. You are in your cot, wrapped up and bathed in the alpenglow of rock
salt lamps.
There were lullabies playing but
the battery faded and now it is the sound of breath.
