A nephew to love
A scribble while my babies sleep
My sister is having a baby. It is her first, nearly a week overdue. We’re all teetering on the edge of suspense; reaching for our phones on waking for updates. Nope. Waiting for a baby is a special sort of hell. Sinews and time stretched taut, unforgiving.
There’s no news, until there is. The contractions are a relief from the anticipation at first. But the hours drag their feet, the labour creeps on, baby does not emerge. We, playing along at home, check our watches, check our phones, chew our lips.
Mid-morning and it’s hot, the palm of the sky stifling. The air is dry and papery, whitewashed with smoke from a grass fire up the range. 156 hectares, my fire app tells me. Under control. Still, these burns feel mid-summer. They feel uneasy. The easy abundance of spring now a threat, the colors leached from the corners of the landscape, stained a muted khaki and grey.
The flies are a cape on my shoulders, buzzing around my horse’s neck where the force-field ends from the bug spray I applied earlier. I’m uncomfortable, legs sticky under my synthetic jods, the band a little too tight around my tummy. But I’m on and it’s good to be out of the house and not a single small person touching my body; even if the air smells like a bonfire and it all feels vaguely dystopian.
I walk on a loose rein, trying to convince Casino I am relaxed. He’s a spook riding out; always looking for The Next Big Fright. He blows out his nostrils in studied fear. Next-door’s horses take off and I feel him tense under me. A roo thrashes suddenly in the long grass and he whirls and my heart is in my mouth and I consider getting off. I feel misshapen and soft, my bravado dissipated alongside my core strength. I feel silly, like crying.
Updates from my brother-in-law. Babe is posterior. After 20 hours of labour, my sister is only 1.5-centimeters dilated. She is exhausted. An epidural. She sleeps. Baby still refuses to emerge. His heart rate oscillates.
Now Casino is on his tippy toes, ears flicking. I click him on and talk incessantly, to calm myself rather than him. Maybe a trail ride is not the thing today. We do some flat work, working down into a soft lather. Big looping circles across the undulating long side of the field. His tension melts and my shoulders drop from my ears. We ride home calmed, and I feel blindly along the edge of my power again, like braille, furled and fuzzed as my 10-week-old daughter. I have read that we birth ourselves, a new iteration, each time we birth a baby. This rings true, as I work around the new corners of self. The bedrock is there, laced with new threads.
I call Mum and we vent our anxiety. The updates are sporadic. There’s talk of a caesarean. I walk around the kitchen, unload the dishwasher, strip the line where the washing flaps in a ripening wind. The treetops bend with it like a woman raking her hands through her hair. Clouds boil on the horizon, mulberry black, and I can taste the rain. It arrives with thunder and settles into a steady rhythm; 40 blessed millimeters.
And then finally, FINALLY, 33 hours later, a photo. My beautiful sister, shiny with euphoria despite the deep exhaustion, clutching her precious son. Head of black hair, curled as a kidney bean, the face of his daddy. 4.3 births happen every second around the world. It’s the most ordinary thing, and that’s the paradox. That something so common, so universal, can tip the world on its axis so completely.
I go out to feed the horses and the afternoon glints with post-rain sweetness. The gums glimmer gold, leaves twinkling in the day’s end. I’m absolutely struck with the flux of things; that the only permanence is the impermanence of it all.
The list:
Apparently this pod is great - next on my to-listen list.
Am listening to Anna Funder’s Wifedom on Audible, about the invisible life of George Orwell’s wife. So far, so excellent. Will report back when finished.
Hucky and I went to the Toy Library last week. Wowowowow. For $22 a team you can borrow six items fortnightly. H borrowed a massive ride on digger, a cement mixer, puzzles, games and two helicopters that he now sleeps with and wakes up with propellor indentations in his cheek. All run by volunteers, what a fabulous facility. The novelty of the new, without the expense or waste.
For those ahem needing Jodie’s a little stretchier and stickier, these have been great, Lots on sale too.
Enjoying the odd glass of vino now baby earthside. Friends brought this around and it’s v v v v v v drinkable.
Have made this twice for mates last couple of weeks. Easy and yum. From Ottolenghi’s cookbook, Simple.
If you enjoyed reading this or found any value in the scribbles, I'd love it if you could send it on to a friend! Thank you so much for your replies, emails and comments. Sometimes I send these into the ether and wonder if anyone is there; to have your support means the world.
Until next time, keep well.
Em x