I’m sitting on our shady stoep in my now well-worn sleeveless blue smock, my new friend Anne Smith beside me – beautiful, calm, reassuring Anne. She is holding her watch, saying ‘Well done – you’re down to 6 minutes between contractions now.’ Yesterday, on edge from the long wait and the heat, I convinced myself I could feel labour pains, was admitted, but it came to nothing and I was sent ignominiously home. This time feels different and I know it is for real … Now I am in a small delivery room half-lying back on a high bed, my legs hoisted up in sort of stirrups, feeling tired from pushing, and the doctor – there are a lot of staff around – is saying something about my being too small, about forceps and anaesthetics. And even though I don’t want this, I am going … And that’s how, at the last, I missed our son Paul’s arrival at 8.20 that evening. I woke to hear my baby’s cries but to my intense disappointment ‘he was whisked away to rest – and after the forceps they thought it would be better for me to see him all tidy.’ So Mark, who had called in to see how things were going (husbands being expected to stay well away from the birth) was first to see him, and then to reassure me of what a fine son we had.
What do You think about Roses Under The Miombo Trees?
