The big man had never roused himself from sleep so quickly—he was up and by my side in an instant, helping me up the steps into our home, asking me what he could do to help.
‘Run a bath,’ I said, and he did.
He helped me get undressed, get into the bath, and then he disappeared. Next, I heard the sound of jazz music, which I normally liked, but not today, sir.
‘No jazz!’ I cried, and off it went.
Then Marty, who was now fully awake, did as instructed by our birth-class attendant. He picked a flower and put it in a small vase on the corner of the bath, telling me in a soothing tone that it might be nice to have something pretty to concentrate on.
‘Stop talking like that!’ I yelled.
‘Like what?’ he said.
When my next contraction came, I knocked the flower to the floor and told him I didn’t want to see anyone! No one! If anyone came to the door, he must make them go straight away, and then I heard this low noise coming from nowhere, like an animal growling, and realised with some surprise that the noise was coming from my own mouth.
Marty rang a midwife at the birthing centre who said, nup, she’s ages away. Don’t panic. Just stay at home as long as you can. It’s probably not even real labour yet. Marty relayed this to me and all I said was, ‘Grrr, grrr, grrr’, which made me feel much better.
Next, Marty rang Defah, who we’d asked to be our support person. She was just a few streets away and got there in a flash. She herself was now almost eight months pregnant which, in my naivety, I hadn’t quite factored in. I cried when I saw her, said, ‘I am so sorry! I am so sorry!’ and she said, ‘I’m fine! It’s all good! Give me a job to do.’ She got me dressed, packed my bag, and agreed with Marty that it was probably time to go.
In the car, on the way down High Street, Northcote, we somehow got stuck behind a slow-moving farm tractor. Like some kind of cosmic joke, its wide tail appeared out of nowhere and proceeded to travel just in front of us, at seven kilometres an hour. When Marty said, ‘Why is there a fucking farm tractor in Northcote?’ I cracked up, but then I started moaning again, and swearing too, because the contractions were back now, and stronger than ever. The ‘Grrr, grrr, grrr’ sound started up again, but then the noise changed, beginning low but finishing high in a kind of ghosty, spooky guinea-pig of a sound that went ‘GrrrrrIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYI’.
Marty said, ‘Keep it low, Clarey’, just like the midwives had told him to. I was listening to him now. I did what he said. I heard that he was also scared, but he was trying. I wasn’t alone. I asked him to please keep talking.
We arrived at the hospital and they examined me and told me I had ages to go, that I was only two centimetres dilated. My heart sank. I told Marty, don’t call Mum and Dad yet. I don’t want them to worry. We could be here for ages.
But things began to move very quickly after that. Before I even really knew what was happening, they transferred us over to the hospital ward. Said there was meconium in the water so I couldn’t birth in the birthing suite after all.
Grrrrr, grrrrr, GRRRRRRR. By now, I didn’t care where I was. I wasn’t even aware of who was in the room. The pain in my back moved and I thought I might split in half, but Defah and Marty were working together, wearing rubber gloves, dipping cloth nappies in a bucket of hot water, flapping them in the air so they were just the right temperature of hot, and then slapping them on the small of my back, right where it hurt. I felt it then, the courage of this work, as I thought of the hundred billion women who had gone before me, as I thought of my grandmother, my mother, of my part in this line, and I felt the love of my sisters with me as Defah encouraged me to keep going, ‘You will hold your baby in your arms before you know it.’ The obstetrician said, ‘Oh, wow, she’s crowning!’ and out came my baby’s head, turning slowly clockwise as it prepared to edge its shoulders out of me, and into the world.
At this sight, Marty seemed to experience a brief moment of existential crisis. I heard him say, ‘It’s me! It’s actually me’, and I thought, Oh, no! He’s lost it! But, later, I would see that he had a point.
On the count of three, I pushed—and out she came. A girl. We had a daughter, a healthy baby daughter. And her sweet face looked just like Marty’s, like a tiny little cherub.
Using Marty’s old camera, Defah took photos just after this moment, photos of our darling baby girl trying to elbow her way from my soft stomach, up towards her milk. Unfortunately, in the rush, no one remembered to put film in the camera, but if you could see this photo as Defah describes it, you would see Marty, a proud young father, with our love confirmed—a baby girl on my chest—and you would see me staring at her with a look on
