Bump, Bike & Baby

by Moire O'Sullivan

  ‘So, two it is?’ I say, making sure we are both okay with this plan.

  ‘Agreed,’ Pete says.

  ‘Agreed.’ We shake on it.

  All I can think is, ‘Whoopee!’

  I don’t dare suggest that maybe his tiredness stems not from Aran, but from the arduous training he is doing for the upcoming Belfast marathon. Pete is pounding out such high mileage with gruelling efforts that I’m amazed he’s not injured yet. His Garmin data shows, however, that he is getting significantly fitter and faster. We both know he could potentially run a personal best come race day.

  Pete, Aran and I travel to Belfast the day before the event. We stay in a hotel close to the city centre, so that we can all walk to the marathon start the next day.

  We wake up early and Pete goes through his pre-race routine. He has a sausage roll and a coffee for breakfast, despite my protests on nutritional grounds. While Pete’s digesting his fat-laden meal, I put Aran in the Bob buggy for the short walk to the start at City Hall. My bump is too big, and Aran is too heavy for me to carry him around these days.

  ‘So where will I see you out on the course?’ Pete asks as soon as we reach the starting line. I look at the map that was provided in Pete’s race pack.

  ‘We’ll try to catch you on the bridge near Ann Street, around mile six,’ I say. There’s a nice shortcut we can take from the start to the bridge, that will mean we’ll get there in time to see Pete. Then I note that Pete will head north and way out of the city. Then around mile twenty he will pass close by our hotel.

  ‘Hopefully Aran and I will see you here,’ I say, pointing to mile twenty on the map. ‘If not, we’ll catch you at the finish.’

  Pete seems happy enough with that plan and heads off for his warm-up jog. As I watch him go, various advertisers hand Aran branded balloons and shaky things to keep him entertained.

  As soon as the marathon starts, I push Aran over to the pre-determined rendezvous point to cheer Pete on. It is mild summer’s day, so I sit on the kerbside while Aran cheers on random runners with his assortment of flags and toys. I’m not sure whether it is the day’s heat or the waiting around that tires me out so much. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m nearly six months pregnant. But when Pete finally passes us on the bridge at mile six, looking good and on target pace, I struggle to stand up.

  ‘Let’s go back to the hotel for a bit,’ I say to Aran as I strap him back into his buggy. I think a little lie-down would help me out immensely.

  By the time I get back to the hotel, I feel like I’ve run the entire marathon myself. Aran has been a model child all morning and has not tired me out in the slightest. It is his brother, who I’m forced to cart around inside me, who has drained me of all my energy. Though I had agreed with Pete that we would cheer him at mile twenty, I figure it wouldn’t matter much if we changed the plan slightly, that Pete would understand. Aran and I take a quick nap, and wake up refreshed enough to walk towards the finish. We arrive there just as the three-hour-thirty runners cross the line.

  Pete was hoping to do three hours forty-five. But when the race clock shows that time, there’s still no sign of Pete. Aran and I wait. And wait.

  Still no Pete. Aran’s branded balloon slowly begins to deflate.

  Finally, I see the four-hour pacer’s flag rounding the last corner. And there is Pete, sprinting with all his might, trying to overtake him. He manages to edge just in front of the pacer before reaching the inflatable finishing arch. Pete throws himself across the line, and collapses in a heap.

  ‘Well done, Pete!’ I shout as soon as he resurrects himself and finds his way out of the enclosed finishing area.

  ‘Where were you guys?’ Pete says to me. ‘I couldn’t see you anywhere.’

  I’m a little confused. We were at the bridge, and now we’re here at the finish.

  ‘I was looking for you at mile twenty,’ Pete says.

  ‘Oh,’ I reply. ‘Had a bit of a low-energy pregnancy moment. Sorry about that.’

  ‘You had a low-energy moment?’ Pete says, spitting out his words. ‘I was the one doing the marathon!’

  I feel like I’m in trouble, but I’m unsure what I’ve done.

  ‘I hit the wall, and I was looking for you guys to give me a boost,’ Pete says. ‘And when I didn’t see you, I ended up walking for miles.’

  Pete drops to the ground again, grimacing in pain and disappointment.

  ‘But you’ve finished,’ I say. ‘And that’s the fourth fastest marathon time you’ve ever done.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Pete says. ‘I’ve supported all the races you did last year. And the first time I try to do something challenging, you let me down.’

  I’m about to launch into a tirade about how it’s not my fault that my husband can’t overcome the marathon wall. Anyway, seeing I’m nearly six months pregnant, he can’t count on me to be always there for him when he’s feeling a little tired. And another thing: I’ve never asked him to support me on my events. It’s just that he has had to come along so that he can look after the child he wanted me to have in the first place.

  Fortunately, Aran sums up my frustration, without me having to say a word. Aran takes his battered balloon and starts beating up his daddy, who is lying lifeless on the ground. His actions lighten the mood a little and are surprisingly well timed: having a full-blown argument with my husband, who has just run a full marathon, could be considered inappropriate right now.

  Pete eventually resurrects himself and finds enough energy to hobble back to the hotel. We don’t mention the “mile-twenty incident” to each other ever again.

  The whole experience painfully illustrates that Pete and I can’t risk being simultaneously worn out. If we are, we end up having ridiculous rows that have the real potential to spiral rapidly out of control. From now on, we have to make sure that only one of us is tired at any given time. And, seeing that I’m on the cusp of my third trimester, Pete better make sure he’s constantly in flying form.

  Four weeks later, my third trimester arrives, and I can barely cope with the endless exhaustion. I’ve already given up running, unable to bear the resultant fatigue or the caustic heartburn it gives me. Bike and I are still just about soldiering on with easy indoor sessions. Eamonn continues to give me thirty minutes of strength and conditioning to do on alternate days. Most of these I skip, however, as they leave me breathless and shattered.

  I am so depressed by my body’s inabilities that I regularly come close to tears on my weekly calls with Eamonn. I feel fat. I feel unfit. I can barely even breathe these days, what with the baby taking up so much internal space. Even Eamonn’s suggestions that I ‘do what I can’ make me want to cry. What I can do now is so below par compared to what I was capable of before getting pregnant. Eamonn listens to my pregnancy woes and reassures me that it will soon be over. I struggle to believe him, even though I know I’ve less than three months of this ordeal to go.

  Eventually, I resign myself to going for the odd swim and giving the dog his daily walk. I convince myself that pushing Aran in his buggy, with Tom tied to its handle, is my new tailor-made strength session. But even this is soon curtailed when Aran decides he no longer wants to be pushed. Instead, he wants to walk Tom all by himself. He kicks and screams when I try to place him inside the buggy. I don’t have the energy to fight him any more, so I let him toddle off, pulling Tom behind him. I soon realise this is a bad idea, as I struggle to keep up with Aran who wanders off at speed. But when I do catch up, Aran decides he wants to stop and sniff every wild flower and pick up every stone strewn across the trail’s rocky path. If only Aran would learn to walk at one single consistent pace.

  To make matters worse, Pete is immensely worried by Aran’s new independent streak. During one of Aran’s particularly bad temper tantrums, all this comes to a head. Pete tries to pick up his son, who is writhing around on the ground. But despite Pete’s kind intentions, Aran wants nothing of his daddy.

  ‘Go-way,’ Aran shouts. �
��Go-way, Da-de.’

  ‘Go away, Daddy’ is the first complete sentence that Aran has ever said. Pete is visibly shocked by this grammatically correct outburst. I am amazed how such a small child can make a grown adult so upset.

  Aran gets to his feet and makes a direct beeline for my legs. He wraps his arms around them both. ‘Mama,’ he says, gazing up at me with unending adoration.

  ‘How am I going to cope with Aran when you’re in hospital?’ Pete says.

  I am going to be admitted to hospital in a matter of weeks to have my baby induced. Pete has this pleading look in his eye, like he is begging me not to leave. It is true that we have not yet rehearsed this impending scenario; I have not left Aran alone for a single night ever since his birth.

  ‘I’m sure you and Aran will get along just fine,’ I say.

  I’m lying. I’m not sure at all. I feel slightly responsible for this Oedipus complex of Aran’s, but I really don’t know how to crack it. Maybe making Aran go cold turkey, by me disappearing from our home, will break this Mummy attachment and allow Daddy some space on the parenting scene.

  The weekend before I am admitted, the European Adventure Racing Championship is held in Ireland. It is a non-stop three-day event, where teams of four are running, biking and kayaking from Westport all the way down the Atlantic Coastline to Killarney. For the first time ever, I am thankful I am not competing. The weather is woeful, with gale force winds and sideways rain, the worst that Ireland can muster up mid-summer.

  I follow the race online, watching each team’s dot travel further and further south. It is riveting stuff, as I see teams do battle on the mountains and seas, with some taking wrong turns and other teams falling apart as team-members drop out along the way. I see photos of bedraggled competitors conking out on mountain summits, as exhaustion and sleep deprivation hit. I, on the other hand, watch all of this from the comfort of my own sofa, knowing I am about to undergo my very own special endurance test soon.

  I am truly relieved when my induction date arrives. The veins in my arms look like pincushions, I’ve contributed so much blood for antibody tests. My maternity file is bulging with pictures of every brain scan taken of the baby’s head. The baby, in turn, has fought valiantly against the onslaught of my antibodies and has not needed the blood transfusion that was threatened if he had developed severe anaemia in utero.

  I am also relieved that, within days, I will get my body back. I have really suffered from being too tired to exercise over the last couple of weeks. And though I’ve known all along that this pregnancy will end one day, rational thoughts aren’t always forthcoming when all you feel are worried and exhausted and fat.

  Pete drops me to the hospital on Monday afternoon for my prearranged induction. The consultant has warned me that inductions are unpredictable. I could go into labour today, tomorrow, or even the day after. There is therefore no point in Pete hanging around the hospital waiting for his new son to arrive. It’s best he goes home and begins his own bonding process with Aran.

  I am straightaway admitted to the antenatal ward. It is crammed full of other women whose babies are also undergoing early evictions. One lady is waddling along the ward, clutching her back with both hands to support her enormous belly. She sees me watching her closely as she paces up and down the floor.

  ‘Good luck,’ she says to me, as I try to make myself comfortable on my hospital bed. ‘I’ve been here three days already, and still not gone into labour.’

  Oh dear. My adventure-racing friends have travelled halfway down the country in the time it’s taken for her and her baby to go nowhere.

  A midwife arrives to carry out some checks, and to start the dreaded induction process. Though I’m told to stay in bed for an hour to let the medication work, I’m allowed to wander the corridors after that.

  Three hours after the midwife’s visit, I start to feel a twinge while on a short walk. I was told that the medicine can cause false contractions and not to worry about them. However, the twinges start to repeat themselves thick and fast. This can’t be labour, I tell myself. It’s meant to take a day or two, not a couple of hours.

  By 7 pm, I’m convinced these contractions are for real. I ask a midwife to check if I’m in labour, and within minutes I’m bundled off to the birthing ward. I pass the same lady who was pacing the ward earlier, her jaw dropping as she sees me being whisked away to give birth.

  ‘Sorry,’ is all I can say to her as I shuffle past at speed.

  I can see her muttering something under her breath, something like ‘I can’t believe it.’

  I’m welcomed into a birthing room by two midwives, a young lady and a more senior one. They show me my bed, but I have to stop mid-stride as I approach it, as another contraction arrives.

  ‘I need to phone my husband,’ I finally manage to say. I grab my mobile from my bag, and instruct Pete to get to the hospital immediately. He makes it to my bedside within thirty minutes of my call, but I don’t have much time to fill him in on the birthing process thus far. My first labour took five and a half hours. I am less than an hour into this one, and there is absolutely no let-up. One contraction has barely finished before another one begins. I scream in agony. I find the louder I scream, the more I dull the pain. The young midwife seems shocked, however, by the primordial sounds I’m making.

  ‘Do you want some pethidine?’ she asks, out of desperation.

  ‘No, no,’ I whisper, before I let out another blood-curdling wail. I had forgotten to fill in the section in my maternity notes instructing the midwives how I’d like my birth to proceed. During my first labour, there was plenty of time to communicate such wishes between contractions. But this time around, I have no energy to explain my preferred pain control method is just gas and air. Every part of my being is instead focused solely on yelling.

  I close my eyes, and an image from the weekend’s adventure-racing championships flashes across my mind; I see a racer asleep on Galtymore Mountain, a stone wall holding his head up as an impromptu pillow. His body is splayed across the cold, wet bog, so exhausted is he from the endless racing. I feel just like that poor adventure racer, too shattered to get up. The only difference is the racer in the picture is finally getting some sort of rest.

  I have been in labour for an hour and a half when the midwives tell me to push. I’ve heard some women saying that a short labour is best. But this is way too short to be even remotely pleasant. I am in such pain, however, I’ll do anything to get this over and done with. I’m not going to keep this baby in any longer than needs be.

  Our son bursts out on to the scene at 8.30 pm that evening. Pete hasn’t even had time to yawn like he did during Aran’s birth. The midwives put the baby into my arms so he can have a quick cuddle and breastfeed. But as soon as we’ve made our acquaintance, they whisk him away from my side.

  The consultant had warned that the baby’s birth would not mark the end of my Rhesus Disease complications. Once free from my body, the baby would suffer something different, called Haemolytic Disease of the Newborn. Some of my antibodies have passed into the baby’s system during pregnancy and birth. These will now proceed to attack the baby’s blood cells and cause a build-up of bilirubin. High levels of bilirubin could irrevocably damage his nerves, especially those involved in hearing and movement.

  He needs immediate treatment.

  As my baby is bundled off to intensive care, I bid him a brief farewell. I hope that he’ll be able to fight the good fight, and that we’ll be able to leave the hospital together in the coming days or weeks.

  20

  Home

  I down the traditional hospital post-natal tea and toast before shuffling slowly over to the Intensive Care Unit. Pete says goodbye, then goes home to relieve Granny and take charge of Aran. In the meantime, I turn my attention to Baby. Pete and I still have no idea what name we will give our latest child. We figured we’d wait until he’s born to see what kind of name suits him best. Baby is his title in the meantime.

&
nbsp; I tentatively enter intensive care and look around for Baby. Inside the room, all I can see are high-tech machines with flashing numbers and blinking lights connected to transparent plastic boxes. The bleeps and alarms remind me of how serious Baby’s condition is.

  I am shown to an incubator near the door, and informed that this is my newborn. I peer inside, trying to recognise him from the countless ultrasound pictures that were taken throughout the pregnancy. Only the bracelet around his ankle confirms that he is indeed mine. ‘Baby O’Sullivan’ is scrawled upon the tiny plastic ring.

  An Intensive Care nurse comes over and suggests I pick him up. I look up at her helplessly.

  ‘But how do I get him out?’

  I can’t find the catches that undo the incubator’s lid. And even if I do gain access, Baby has so many tubes and wires attached to him, I’m afraid I might accidentally disconnect him.

  She helps me free Baby and places him in my arms. He is so small and fragile, what with being only a few hours old, even before considering the condition he’s now fighting.

  ‘Do you want to give him a feed?’ the nurse asks me. I look down at Baby, and see that he is half awake and looking a bit hungry. Though I breastfed Aran for over a year, it takes a while for me to successfully guide Baby to latch on. It looks like both of us are in need of a bit more practice.

  ‘Best we put him back into the incubator again,’ the midwife says, when she sees Baby has had his fill. ‘We need to keep him under the UV lights to help him get well.’

  The consultant had already explained to me the treatment that Baby will need. He is now undergoing phototherapy, which helps break down the by-product bilirubin that is accumulating in his body. Aran in fact had the exact same treatment two years ago. The medical staff will start measuring every few hours the bilirubin levels in Baby’s blood. If he can’t clear the substance quickly enough, he may need to undergo a blood transfusion. I can’t imagine how they’d go about pumping blood into this tiny being when his veins are so faint and thin.