SHORT STORIES: WELL, WHAT IS IT?

WELL, WHAT IS IT?

It was probably fitting that at half past twelve in the morning, my wife woke me to tell me that it was time. I sat up with a start, incredulous that the moment had finally arrived. The birth of a child after ten nerve-wracking months just never seemed to come. It was one of life's 'little' adventures that went on forever, time trapped in a vacuum of expectation, worry and hope. Every night, just as we turned out the light, the gymnastics session would start up like clockwork. Round and round the mother's stomach the baby would roll. It was no surprise it heralded its arrival in the early hours of the morning!

When he appeared at the head of the stairs some ten minutes later, my wife's father Harry, veteran of some seven previous deliveries, showed definite signs of his sixty-one years. Concern for his daughter was all too evident in his furrowed brow, not that I had long to contemplate his advancing years, because I was racing around looking for clothes and frantically searching for the 'hospital bag'.

The drive to Belmont Hospital, usually some ten minutes from home, seemed to take as long as the confinement. Robyn reassured me that the intervals between the contractions were not yet reaching crisis point but they were coming a little more frequently now. Hardly a car passed us on the normally busy road - there had to be some advantage to taking a drive at one o'clock in the morning!

We were ushered into the maternity ward without delay and Robyn slipped into a theatre gown. "Your doctor will be here in just a minute," the nurse said.

"He's just around the corner attending to another delivery." Our doctor appeared from the suite next door some five minutes later and to our surprise, it was not our usual specialist. Ten months of check-ups with good old Dr Cuffe, calm, reassuring, no panic with the bleeding at four months .... deep breaths .... "it will settle down quickly I am sure? It did. Good old Dr Cuffe!

"Where's Dr Cuffe?" I asked.

"It's his weekend off. I'm Dr Suchting, we work in tandem at weekends." Great! Just when you grow accustomed to another man tending to your wife's physical manifestations, another looms on the horizon at the eleventh hour. Dr Suchting, eh? Looks like a bit of an old fuddy duddy, what with the white goatee beard and all. Ah well ... what else could you do at 1:30 in the morning?

"Nurse, have you changed your theatre gown?"

"No, doctor."

"I don't approve of that. Go and change it right now please!" Hmmm, fastidious old feller, but I am not going to argue with that! Maybe he'll be OK after all.  And so it proved to be.

"The baby is in the posterior presentation position. If we roll the mother on her side, the baby usually turns within a quarter of an hour. We'll do that now, see how things are going next door and come back again soon."

After a quarter of an hour, almost to the minute, a nurse walked by and declared that things were going well. Her trained eye had detected the snow -white skin of the baby's fontanel starting to protrude as the dilation process began in earnest.

The doctor returned. "Sister, have you ever seen a baby delivered with the mother lying on her side?"

"No, doctor."

It's often quite a comfortable way to deliver the baby, especially for the mother."  I didn't believe him. My mind flashed back to those days of school diphtheria and whooping cough needles. "This won't hurt, just give me your arm!" Knickers it didn't hurt!

"Now you're staying for the birth, I take it sir, so I'll just get you to hold your wife's leg from behind. That's it, take hold of her thigh, it will be a little bit heavy but I am sure you can manage," he added.

The delivery moved into full swing. Robyn's face, if possible, became more and more contorted with pain. After half an hour of pushing and hard breathing and lots of 'keep goings', the moment of truth came closer and closer.

"How are you bearing up, sir?" the doctor asked me, looking up momentarily from the business side of the operating table. "I'm fine, don't worry about me, concentrate on my wife," I replied. I later learnt that my wife had made a mental note of our little aside. Too exhausted to comment at the time, she nevertheless told me later that I'd have walked into the lion's den if I had offered anything different.

The baby's head emerged face down. At first it seemed to wobble a little as it took stock of its strange new surroundings and then the shoulders appeared. Nurse and doctor at the ready, they rapidly slid the rest of its tiny body from the warmth of its mother's womb into the clinical sterility of a hospital blanket. A suction hose cleared out its mouth and the wail of the newborn announced to the world that it was alive and well. The nurse soon came back and passed the babe over to the waiting arms of an expectant mother.

I looked at my wife. Down the years many spectacular events and moments have been etched into my mind forever but the expression on her face when she was handed the baby remains the most vivid of all. That look I will take with me to the other end of the spectrum, a look of complete exhilaration, a triumph over pain and care, an emotion forever unknown to man.

The babe, securely wrapped in a warm white blanket, nestled close to its mother's face still flushed from the recent trauma.

Bewildered by the excitement of the moment and the surprising speed of the delivery once the baby's shoulders appeared, I hadn't been able to detect the gender of the newborn child. That the baby had made its entry into the world face down and tail up from my point of view contributed to my general confusion. Now that the baby was firmly wrapped up in its generic white hospital blanket, there was no other tell-tale sign of its personality.

Feeling rather foolish, the sole person in the room not privy to the obvious, I asked rather hesitantly: "Well, what is it, a boy or a girl? Can someone please tell me?"

Mark is now 31 years of age - seems so long ago chronologically - but it feels just like a few nights ago.