Your whole life is going to change

The warning was all encompassing.  Family, friends and work colleagues repeated the same line, your whole life is going to change, during the build up.  I knew my whole life was about to change.  Everyone else did, too.  They loved telling me. 

 

It may be a cliché, but those words, your whole life is going to change, are apt.

 

We went public.  Kristine would give birth at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.  At the 20-week scan, the radiologist took images through Kristine’s belly.  Baby Watson looked like a clay monkey.  The radiologist, a young woman, measured the sac behind the baby’s neck and ruled out any abnormalities.  She showed us the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver. 

 

Then she frowned and moved the head across Kristine’s belly.

 

‘You’ve got fibroids,’ she said.  ‘Four of them.’  She measured them.  The biggest one was five centimetres by six centimetres. 

 

I’d never heard of fibroids before.  The radiologist made the explanation.  Fibroids are benign tumours that grow on the uterus wall.  They feed off pregnancy hormones.  They can cause issues during birth.

 

‘There’s a chance they might grow during pregnancy,’ the radiologist said.  ‘You’ll probably need a caesarean.’

 

Subsequent scans proved the radiologist right.  The main fibroid kept growing.  At 36-weeks, the obstetrician explained another risk, blood loss.  During a natural birth, fibroids don’t rupture but they can bleed.  Blood transfusions are often required.  Due to the size of Kristine’s main fibroid, the incision would be slightly elevated, rather than level. 

 

Weeks before Kristine gave birth, the fibroid felt like a coke can embedded in her groin.  You could hold it.  It prevented the baby from being fully engaged, which meant she wouldn’t naturally go into labour. 

 

Angus was born on 2 April 2012, at 12:04pm.  It wasn’t an easy birth.  The spinal tap didn’t work.  After the anaesthetist tapped Kristine’s spine, he tested the spread of anaesthetic with ice on her hip and belly.  Before she was wheeled into theatre, Kristine could still feel the ice around her waist.

 

About ten minutes later, when I was allowed into theatre, the obstetricians did a sharps test.  Kristine could feel it.  They waited for two more minutes then cut her belly.

 

Kristine could feel it.  Her face went red.  She started crying.  I wanted to cry.  Instead, I looked out the window, at a tree and composed myself.  I leant in and kissed her, wiped away the tears.

 

‘If you can feel it then tell me,’ I said. 

 

‘I can feel it.’

A midwife misunderstood her lack of composure.  ‘Come on Kristine,’ she said.  Don’t you want to see your baby?’

 

That made Kristine cry more.  The anaesthetist asked if she could feel it. 

 

‘I can feel the cutting,’ she said. 

 

The anaesthetist gave Kristine five injections into the spinal tap in the following ten minutes.  Each time he injected a drug, the obstetricians waited two minutes then cut again.  Kristine could still feel it, particularly on the right side where the main fibroid was.

 

The only option was a general anaesthetic.  An obstetrician, a German man with a heavy accent, asked Kristine if he could cut the fibroid out while she was under.  His blue gloves were smeared with her blood.

 

‘They can grow in the muscle wall or on a stem,’ he said.  ‘I might be able to get it.’

 

I was told to leave theatre.  When Angus was born I wasn’t there to see it and Kristine was out to it.  I sat in a recovery ward, where a nurse made me a coffee, gave me a biscuit and asked what book I was reading.  She didn’t know who Michael Slater was.

 

The coffee was unnecessary.  I didn’t want it.  Unsurprisingly, the ward was supplied with sachets of International Roast.  I read some more until a woman in theatre garb walked across the ward.  She looked at me.  I thought she was going to tell me something.

 

‘Hey,’ I said.

 

‘Hey,’ she said and stopped.  ‘Can I help you?’

 

She wasn’t the messenger.  ‘I’m waiting for my baby.’

 

‘Oh,’ she said.  ‘I saw you and your partner earlier.’ 

 

I hadn’t seen her earlier.  Maybe she’d seen us in a corridor somewhere.

 

‘Do you know what you’re having?’

 

I shook my head.

 

‘Oh, how exciting,’ she said and laughed.  She was young and slim.  ‘The staff here love it when the parents don’t know what they’re having.  Most people find out now.’

 

‘What’s the ratio,’ I said.

 

‘About ninety percent of people find out what they’re having.’  She smiled then looked at the book.  ‘What are you reading?’

 

‘Michael Slater’s autobiography.’

 

She frowned.

‘He played cricket for Australia.’

 

She wasn’t impressed.  ‘Is it a good book?’

 

‘His story is good but I hate the way it’s written.  I’m almost finished.’ 

 

She nodded and smiled.  ‘Want me to go into theatre and find out what you had?’

 

‘Sure.’

 

Before I’d finished the book, she was back, sliding into the ward with one hand on the door, a dramatic entrance.  She’d obviously done it before. 

 

‘Want to finish your book before I tell you what you’ve had?’

 

I shook my head.  ‘The book isn’t that good.’  I closed it.

 

‘You’ve had a boy.’  She smiled.

 

I almost jumped out of the chair.  I wanted to punch the air.

 

‘He’ll be out in a minute.’

 

Not long after, she beckoned me into the hallway.  Angus was there, face down in a humidicrib.  He wore a blue skullcap and made no sound.

 

In the special care nursery I sat next to him.  His breathing was rapid.  The midwives didn’t seem too concerned.  One midwife said I could touch him.  ‘You’re his dad, you can touch him.’

 

So I touched his back for a while, until another midwife got cranky at me.  ‘Stop touching him.  We are trying to get him to settle.’

 

I took my hand from the humidicrib and shut the door.  ‘I was told I could touch him,’ I said.

 

A nearby mother who was nursing her premature boy stuck up for me.  ‘She said he could touch him,’ the woman said.

 

‘We are trying to get him to settle,’ the midwife countered. 

 

In the recovery ward I gave Kristine a picture of Angus to look at.  Recovering from the general anaesthetic, she couldn’t focus.  Instead, she held the photo.  Her parents arrived, Jim and Jan.  We left Kristine alone and went for coffee.

 

About four o’clock Kristine was wheeled into the special care nursery to look at Angus.  Still drowsy, she was smitten.  Watching her fawn over the baby almost made me cry.

 

After she went to the ward on level six, I talked to a young midwife.  She said Angus was born with fluid on his lungs.  Instead of screaming on arrival he was a blob, barely moving.  He was lying face down to help clear his lungs.  Four hours after birth, his breathing was still shallow and rapid.

 

Angus stayed in the special care nursery for two days.  He was X-rayed, fed glucose through a drip in his hand, given antibiotics and monitored 24/7.  None of the midwives seemed concerned.  There were babies in the ward born nine weeks early.  They were tiny and red.  Angus had fluid on his lungs, which is common.  Compared to the premature babies, he had no problems at all.

 

On Tuesday I went to work.  I shouldn’t have.  On Wednesday Angus was still in special care so I skipped work. 

 

When I visited Kristine she was drowsy with medication, trying to squeeze colostrum from her nipples and catch the leakage in a syringe.  It was hard work.  I helped by massaging her breasts and squeezed out a tiny dribble.

 

‘Well done Wato,’ she said.  Later that afternoon I carried the syringe downstairs to the special care nursery.  We’d captured about two millilitres.  The midwives squirted the colostrum into his mouth.

 

When I got back to Kristine’s room, flowers had arrived from Sydney and Melbourne.  Her sister Rachael and her partner Vicki sent a bunch.  My mate Nemo and his wife Jill sent another.  The flowers almost made me cry.  Kristine trying to gather colostrum in a syringe almost made me cry. 

 

I left the hospital without sadness, though.  I was excited.  Kristine had been downstairs putting Angus on the boob.  He was mostly unresponsive but seemed to be working it out.

 

He went up to the ward on 5 April, three days after he’d been born.  When I held him that first time I was amazed how tiny he was.  His blue eyes were open, his arms moving.  He was so small and helpless, so totally dependent on those who love him. 

 

Kristine was squeezing her boobs.  Milk was arriving.  He was feeding but she’d had a bad night, no sleep.  Angus either fed or cried and wouldn’t sleep.  Kristine buzzed for a midwife, who took Angus away and let him cry elsewhere.  Kristine cried as she listened to his wail.

 

On Good Friday, 7 April, Angus came home.  He doesn’t do much.  He sleeps, feeds and does poo.  He doesn’t like sleeping for too long, just a few hours at a time.  Sometimes he cries during a bath.  Usually he cries during a change of clothes.  I don’t get much time with him, he prefers Kristine and her boobs.  I can hold him for a while.  Sometimes he sleeps, but mostly he fidgets.

 

Despite my pre-birth boast I wouldn’t change nappies, I have done so.  At the moment they’re not too bad.  Worse, I am told, will come.

 

My whole life has changed, as most people told me it would.  Some of those people laughed when they said my life would change.  The women at work secretly hoped I’d have a girl.  Some people couldn’t wait for my life to change.

 

I couldn’t either. 

 

 

22	Anne (8), Dave (8), Stevo (7), James F (7), Russ (8)
21	Paul (8), James (8), George (7)
20	Sandra (7), Matt (8), Wayne (7)
19	Eric (8), Donna (7), Matt B (7), Adam L (6), The Pole (7)
18	Andy (6)
17	Jim (7)
16	Dallas (4)
13	Nemo (5)

 

Comments