by Jenni Ogden
“You’re doing well, Kirsty,” I shouted against the howling wind and torrential rain that had not abated one iota throughout the long night.
Another contraction shook her body. “I’ve got to push. Get it out of me. Shit, shit, shit, it hurts. I can’t do it, give me something for fuck’s sake.” The contractions were coming fast now; she hardly had time to take a breath before the next one ripped her up.
“Why on earth do people think childbirth is beautiful?” I hoped no one heard my mumbled words over the racket outside. “The baby is coming, Kirsty,” I yelled. “Hang in there, girl. Not long now.”
“I’ve got to squat,” Kirsty screamed.
“Okay. Let’s get you up.” I knelt in front of her and she grabbed my hands in hers and clung on like a vise. I could see her inflamed vulva pulsating and gaping with every contraction.
“Diane, push a pillow—two pillows—under her backside and get Ben in here to sit behind her and support her back,” I shouted.
Ben materialized, looking as scared as I felt. I got Diane to stand behind me and grab Kirsty’s hands so I could concentrate on the delivery.
Another contraction, and I saw her vulva spreading in the light of my turtle-tagging headlamp as a glistening, dark shape pushed against it. “I can see the head, it’s coming, it’s coming,” I shouted.
Kirsty let out a bloodcurdling scream. “I’m burning. It’s burning me. I’m splitting open. I can’t do this.”
“Yes you can. You’re nearly there.” I saw the next contraction coming. “Push, Kirsty, push.”
“Eeeeooooww.” The primitive sound pierced the stuffy room, echoing the howling wind outside.
Half the head slid out into my waiting hands.
Diane was squealing. “It’s coming. Kirsty, it’s coming.”
“With the next contraction, push like you’ve never pushed before,” I yelled. There was an almighty crash on the roof, and the gas lamp flickered and went out.
“Lordy, what was that?” Ben’s voice sounded alien in this women’s lair.
“It’s coming again,” screamed Kirsty. “Eeeeoooww.”
The rest of the head catapulted out, facing the floor, and I cradled it in one hand and tentatively explored the tiny neck. It was clear. I had been petrified that the cord would be twisted around it. I moved my hand to find the shoulder. “One more push to get the shoulders out, Kirsty.”
“Go, girl,” Ben yelled as another contraction shook her.
One shoulder came out and then the other. The little head coughed, and coughed again. I gently rotated the miraculous body and it slipped easily around. Now I could see the scrunched up face. I reached for the damp flannel in the bowl beside me and wiped away the mucus. Its little cries grew lustier, the lower half of its body still inside Kirsty. She was sobbing so loudly that I could hear her over the racket outside. “One more push with this next contraction and your baby is in your arms,” I said.
And he slithered out, all boy. I cradled him for a second while I wiped my finger inside his soft mouth to remove the mucus. Ben was laying Kirsty back and putting a pillow under her head. Diane and Kirsty were sobbing. I looked over at Ben and the light from my headlamp fell on his face. His hand came up to cover his eyes, and I reached up and dimmed the light, feeling as if I had intruded upon a moment too intimate for him to share. Gently I passed this perfect baby to his mother, the umbilical cord still attached. I could feel my own tears seeping down my face.
I got up and stretched. My back ached, my legs ached, but my heart soared. I grabbed a soft beach towel from the now very small pile on the bed, and tucked it over the baby’s tiny body, still shrouded, like an infant ghost, in greasy vernix. I pulled the towel up around his head. He stopped yowling and, cracking open his blue eyes, looked at his mother. His rosebud mouth moved into a shape resembling a smile.
I looked at Ben and Diane standing behind the fledgling family, their arms around each other and tears still trickling down Diane’s weary face.
“Thank you, team,” I said. “Good job, as they say in the States.”
“You were amazing,” Diane said. “Thank god you were here.”
“She would have done it fine all by herself if she’d had to.” I laid a towel over Kirsty’s lower half in a belated attempt to restore her modesty. “I’d better cut the cord. Ben, could you get those scissors and pegs you’ve got boiling away in the kitchen, please?”
Kirsty didn’t even notice when I clamped the cord with the clothes peg and then cut it, severing the lifeline between mother and child. It was clear they didn’t need it now. They were forever bonded. Kirsty continued to hold him while I tied a knot in the cord, close to his little tummy, hoping I was giving him a belly button to be proud of.
I pressed my hand gently on Kirsty’s lower abdomen, jelly-like now. I felt the contraction and parted her legs as the placenta slithered out, just like that. If a neuroscientist with barely a jot of experience and no kids of her own had to deliver a baby in a cyclone, Kirsty was the mother to choose. A thin river of blood trickled from between her thighs, but then it stopped, even when I pressed again on her uterus. I examined the placenta carefully. It was bright scarlet, intact, and beautiful. Holding the amazing, life-giving sac in my hands, I went into the kitchen and laid it on a paper towel on the bench. In the cupboard I found an empty ice-cream container, and in that modest vessel I reverently placed the placenta with its twisted blue cord and put it in the freezer. I’d better remember to label it later, or Ben and Diane will be opening it and wondering what the hell it is. I’d once heard a story about an elderly woman who, slightly blind and perhaps a little confused, almost cooked her great-granddaughter’s frozen placenta, mistaking it for liver.
THE DAWN, IF WE COULD HAVE SEEN IT THROUGH THE sullen black skies, should have been breaking by the time we had settled a tired and happy Kirsty in the double bed. The baby had attempted to suckle, with a little success, and Kirsty had consumed three cups of lemon and ginger tea and a large plate of scrambled eggs. In fact we had all scoffed large plates of scrambled eggs. The howling wind and torrential rain had continued unabated. And yes, corny though it may be, Kirsty had decided to name her newborn after the cyclone.
Hamish was even clothed. To our amazement, after she had been cleaned up, Kirsty calmly announced that she had a stash of size 000 baby clothes next door, including some triangular-shaped terry-toweling diapers sized especially for newborns. Violet had carefully washed and folded Danny’s baby garments for Kirsty some weeks previously, and packed them lovingly into the bassinet—complete with bedding—she had used for her own two. Apparently she was quite definite about having no more kids herself. The cloth diapers were a glorious consequence of her and Bill’s dedication to saving the environment. Pat had also knitted some tiny booties, hats and jerseys. Why did this not surprise me?
When Ben and Diane returned from their mission next door to get the baby booty, they also brought back diaper liners, baby wipes, Johnson’s baby powder, and zinc ointment for tender baby bottoms, all of which they had “borrowed” from the top of young Danny’s chest of drawers.
So at seven o’clock, with Hamish dressed in a doll’s-size purple-and-green-striped all-in-one and tucked snugly into his bassinet, his clever mother asleep in the bed beside him, Diane and Ben braved the elements once more and returned to Violet and Bill’s to bunk down in their bed. I opted to sleep beside Kirsty. I wasn’t about to leave her alone to hemorrhage or develop some other unlikely complication.
The noise outside and the adrenaline still pumping through my system thwarted my efforts to fall asleep, in spite of my whole body feeling as if I’d just got off a plane after a twenty-hour flight. The events of the long night replayed in my exhausted mind and I smiled into the hot darkness as I remembered how scared I’d felt only fourteen hours ago as Cyclone Hamish racked up steam and I climbed onto the top bunk in my lonely cabin, my puny possessions around me. I breathed in deeply as the timeless smell of Johnson’s b
aby powder curled about me.
ELEVEN
We were woken by the baby’s mewling cries and Basil’s “Blimey.” He was standing in the door of the bedroom, water dripping from his oilskins and his mouth wide open. As Kirsty had another go at nursing, I made some coffee and relayed the night’s events to him. It was ten thirty in the morning and the rain had eased a little. Basil hadn’t been able to get any radio contact to discover where the cyclone was but he was confident that it had passed us by. Apart from tree limbs ripped off, including one large branch across the roof of Diane and Ben’s house—no doubt the crash that had shaken the house during the birth—he had found no serious damage. Apart, that is, from the noddy tern chicks. They lay, many almost fully fledged, in their hundreds on the sodden ground, tipped out of their nests by the wind. And there was nothing to be done. The parents wouldn’t accept them back even if we knew what nests to put them in. It was heartbreaking. Basil said that as soon as the wind died down he’d shovel them into his trailer and find somewhere in the center of the island to bury them, many of them still alive.
“On the plus side,” he told me, “there are still plenty in the nests. It could have been much worse. It’s nature’s way of controlling the population; otherwise it would get so enormous the island couldn’t support it. In a couple of seasons they’ll be back to their maximum numbers again.”
Cold comfort for the agitated parents wondering where their babies had gone. I took a peek in the bedroom and smiled when I saw Earth Mother with her tiny infant lying across a pillow on her stomach, his rosebud mouth clamped over her nipple. Kirsty was a natural. She looked up and made a face.
“He’s got a grip like a moray eel,” she said. “It hurts like hell.”
“I suppose it will take a while to get your nipples hardened. Perhaps you should rub them with Vaseline to stop them cracking?”
“Yeah. My fanny too.”
“Is it sore? Silly question, I suppose it must be.”
“It’s not too bad, actually. But I’m having crampy contractions all the time; they’re bloody painful.”
“That’s normal. Stops you bleeding. Have you checked that you aren’t too much? A bit is normal, but not a flood.”
“I’ve got some blood on the diaper I stuffed into my knickers—thank god for those, they have myriad uses—but not a lot. All good, really.” She scrubbed at her eyes. “Sorry. I don’t know why I feel weepy. He’s perfect.”
“I’d be worried if you didn’t feel weepy. I feel like having a good bawl myself, and I haven’t done anything to deserve it.”
“Gosh, Anna, you saved our lives. What would I have done without you and Diane?”
“You would have popped Hamish out all by yourself, without any trouble. But I’m glad you didn’t have to. It was very special to be part of it.” I wiped my own eyes. “Give me a yell when you feel up to Basil coming and having a peek, now that he’s recovered from the shock. He said he’d get his fish scales and weigh Hamish if you liked. We should do, really, just for the record.”
“He can come in now. I’m sure he has seen boobs before, although perhaps not this huge.”
HAMISH WEIGHED IN AT SIX POUNDS THREE OUNCES—A splendid size for a baby born five weeks early. After the weigh-in, we had a meeting—Diane and Ben, Basil, Kirsty, Hamish, and me. It was decided that Kirsty and the baby would shift in with me when the winds died down. She could sleep in the bottom bunk with the bassinet beside her, and I would take the top bunk.
She got pretty upset when we began to discuss her going back to the mainland, perhaps by helicopter when it was possible to fly safely. “But I have nowhere to go to,” she wailed. “Why can’t I stay here for a few weeks?”
“Where were you planning to go when you went back next week?” I asked her.
“I was going to stay at Mum’s place in Brisbane until she got back. She’s in the UK on a holiday jaunt and she’s not coming back for another month. But I didn’t know I’d have a baby with me. I thought she’d be back in time for his birth, and she could help me look after him.”
I stopped myself rolling my eyes. “Okay. We’ll see how you and Hamish are over the next few days, and if there are no problems you can stay with me until your mum gets back.”
“Anna, you are the best. Thank you. I promise we’ll be no trouble.”
“I’ll hold you to that. No crying baby in the night, no diapers to wash.” I grinned at her. “You know what, I don’t want you to leave. I’ve never had a little baby living in my home, and I think I’ve missed out badly.”
“How come you know so much about it, then?”
“I don’t. I just remembered it from the bits I learned as an intern, and from novels I’ve read.”
Kirsty giggled. “We’ll make a great team. Here, you hold him for a bit. How can he get so heavy when he’s so tiny?” She passed him, fast asleep, over to me, and I held him close.
THE WILD WEATHER WENT ON AND ON. KIRSTY AND I moved to my cabin the next day and there we stayed, both dotty about the baby. I ventured out for a walk on the beach each day, a scarf tied around my head to lessen the pain in my ears as I bent double against the howling wind in one direction and flew back in the other. The reef flats, usually so serenely lagoon-like, had been battered by surf that even three days later still thundered up the beach in front of every high tide. The sand was littered with branches, and the sea had reached almost to my cabin, leaving a high-tide line of debris partway into the campground, but there was no serious beach erosion. I hoped the nests of baby turtles ready to hatch would have some way of knowing it was not a good idea to appear, and stay put. I certainly never saw any hatching over those wild days.
Basil and Ben had cleaned up the baby noddy terns—two full trailer loads. It was amazing to me that there were any left in their nests, but the trees on the inside of the island were still alive with resilient parents blowing in and out, feeding their young. Fortunately the shearwater chicks remained snug in their underground burrows, although I supposed some of the parents would have been lost at sea.
Basil made radio contact with the mainland on the tenth of March. Cyclone Hamish had forged a path parallel to the Great Barrier Reef and never veered inland to mainland Australia. Turtle Island and the other islands on the Capricorn reef had been spared this time. From Cairns to Brisbane, winds and seas were high, and all trains and planes had been cancelled for days. Jack would not be able to get over to our little island for a while yet, and it was still way too windy for helicopters.
But Kirsty didn’t need any rescuing; she was as happy as a pig in clover. Hamish was a mellow little chap, sleeping and suckling in turns. Kirsty’s nipples were still tender, and every time he latched on she would screw up her face. She said the pain was so bad her toes would curl. Her determination to breastfeed him never wavered. Not that there was any option; Violet had no stocks of baby formula in her pantry. Luckily Kirsty had an abundance of milk, and Hamish was feeding every two and a half hours. The whole thing was totally involving. I now understood why nursing mothers got nothing else done.
Daytime thoughts of Tom were fleeting, but at night, as I lay in my top bunk listening to Kirsty’s soft breathing and Hamish’s contented little slurping noises, I allowed myself to indulge a little. What would Tom think when he returned and found me playing auntie (I refused to be an honorary grandmother, as Kirsty had at first innocently suggested)? Would he become besotted as well? Unlikely. Perhaps he’d feel a twinge of regret about his vasectomy. He would have made a wonderful father. Even though I was glad he wasn’t, as that would have made us impossible.
IT WAS ANOTHER FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE WIND completely died away and the days were blue again. We all pitched in with the island cleanup. The reef was a different story. Basil was receiving dire reports of extensive damage to the delicate corals of the reef. When the tide receded we could see the damage to the exposed coral, broken up by the days of turbulent seas. It would take a survey to find out if the damage extended to
the coral in the deeper waters.
Now that Basil’s Skype connection was back up and running, he was able to communicate with Jack. He would be returning to the island on his usual trip the coming Saturday. Violet and Bill and their children, as well as Pat, were due back then. Tom had told me before he left that he might return then as well, but no promises. It seemed like a lifetime since we’d seen them, not two weeks. Basil had been given strict instructions by Kirsty not to let the cat out of the bag about baby Hamish’s unexpected arrival. She wanted to surprise everyone.
On Saturday I must have ventured out to the beach six times before I saw Jack’s boat approaching. I went back to the cabin to get Kirsty, and she hauled a sleepy Hamish from his bassinet and secured him cozily in the long shawl she wrapped around her body as a baby sling. As we almost ran along the beach to the wharf, we could see Basil, Diane, and Ben already welcoming the people coming off the boat. I could hear Chloe’s excited voice as her small figure jumped up and down. Then we were there, and Pat was following Violet and Bill onto the wharf, and there were hugs and oohs and aahs as Kirsty pulled aside the shawl to reveal Hamish’s little face, sound asleep again.
My heart was thumping as I looked for Tom. A petite woman with a cloud of dark, wavy hair emerged from the wheelhouse. A late-season camper? And then Tom appeared, his hair on end and his dear face split into a grin as he looked at the excited welcoming party.
Ben was slapping him on the back and Kirsty was showing him her treasure. I felt suddenly shy. I could hardly throw myself at him; we’d been pretty discreet about our affair. Hopefully no one knew about us. I could feel the heat rising up my neck as Tom looked past Kirsty and winked at me. I shuffled towards him.
“Hi. Tom. What do you think of our new islander?” I sounded ridiculous.
“He’s a corker. Can’t leave you lot alone for a minute without everything going west. Babies, cyclones. I dunno.” He bent and kissed me chastely on the cheek. “You okay, Anna?”