THE NIGHT BEFORE my English exam, Olivia pops into my room with a handmade card. On the front is a flying pig shaped from pink lace with a ribbon tail and tiny black buttons for a snout. Inside the card, in Olivia’s tiny, anally neat hand, are the words: You are proof that pigs can fly. Wishing you the best during your challenging time. Olivia xxo.
‘Well, this is almost as nice as the card my cousin Andrew made for me with his own two hands,’ I tease.
Olivia’s mouth draws into an injured fart-shape. ‘What card?’
‘Oh, the card with two hundred bucks in it, so I can buy a stroller.’
Olivia slams to a seated position on the end of my bed, her back to me.
‘Where could I have found two hundred bucks, Shauna? Huh? I’m not Keli Street-Hughes,’ she says shrilly. ‘I thought you’d appreciate something with a little care and effort put into it!’
I reach out my long leg and tickle her side with my toes. Olivia laughs on cue, like an automaton. When she turns around to look at me, her face is a pincushion of smiles, dimples and dental plate.
‘I appreciate everything you do, you idiot!’ I mock-abuse her lovingly. ‘Don’t you know that, moron?’
It’s hard to believe that the rude, spiny girl who I met in the withdrawing room at the beginning of the year is now signing off with kisses and hugs. I know that I am partly responsible for her transformation. I know that I stepped up for this child, and I know that I have it in me to step up for my baby, to be a better parent than my parents were. I have the power to influence others. I know that now.
My English exam is a breeze. I only get up twice for bladder pressure, and other than that, the time just flies by. My quotations come to mind when called, and none of the questions is a surprise.
My horror day happens a few days later when I have a three-hour Biology exam in the morning and a three-hour French exam in the afternoon. Jenny’s in the same boat, and we hang out together the whole day, testing each other and discussing approaches to possible questions.
As soon as French is over, I go to bed and no one wakes me for dinner. I finally stir under my own steam at about 10 p.m. to find that Lou-Anne has left a plate of pork roast on my bedside table that’s now congealed. I eat it anyway, and then go back to sleep without brushing my teeth.
The next day is my due date. I attend my outpatient appointment with Dr Jacobs and she gives me and Beryl the baby a check-up.
‘No signs of labour yet,’ she says.
‘Is that a statement or a question?’
‘A statement. It’s pretty common for first-time mothers to go past their due date. My daughter came nearly three weeks late.’
‘That would be great,’ I say. ‘For me, I mean.’
‘It means the baby will be very big, and possibly hard to deliver.’
‘I can only think as far as my Maths exam,’ I admit.
In the meantime, I try to keep my cervix clamped shut. Modern History goes well, even though I have to get up every half hour to wee. Mathematics is my final exam and I cane it, even leaving early so that I can collapse in bed. As I pass out, my final thought is that I might not have made a single mistake in maths, because I answered all the questions and still had time to go back and check every answer.
Lou-Anne wakes me up for dinner, and when I sit up I feel my whole crotch and upper thighs soak with water. I look down at my sheets and so does Lou-Anne.
‘Did you wet your pants?’ she asks with a nervous giggle.
I shake my head. ‘Too wet to be a wee. I think my waters just broke.’
‘Oh my God, Shauna! We’ve got to get you to hospital!’
She shouts to Bindi to find Miss Maroney, who I’m barely on speaking terms with. She arrives moments later, car keys in hand.
‘Let’s go, Shauna,’ she says, offering me her hand.
‘I’d prefer it if Bindi drove me,’ I say sourly. Bindi now has her very own fifth-hand, nipple-pink Alfa Romeo since James got a promotion and bought a new car.
‘You’re not getting into my car like that,’ says Bindi with a curl of her nostrils. I’m in too much of a panic to make a fuss about it, but I think Bindi loves her car’s upholstery more than she loves me. In the end it’s Miss Maroney who drives me and Lou-Anne to the Royal Hospital for Women. Once we’ve arrived, I call my parents. Mum cries and assures me that they’re ‘on their way’, but if it’s a race from Barraba to Sydney, and from womb to big, wide world, who knows who’ll arrive first?
In a flash, I’m in the maternity ward on a hospital gurney with Lou-Anne beside me. I get wheeled into an examination room with a midwife to have mine and Beryl’s vital signs taken. Everything is fine, normal. Then the midwife swab-tests the liquid oozing out of me to see if it’s really amniotic fluid. It is, of course, and it means that the baby has to be delivered in the next twenty-four hours because there’s now a greater risk of infection. By hook or by crook, I’m going to be a mum this time tomorrow. If I don’t go into labour naturally then I’ll be induced with drugs to give birth.
I feel nervous and happy and terrified as Lou-Anne and I settle into one of the birthing suites. There’s a rather confronting pair of stirrups hanging from a bar over the bed, and the walls are slathered in posters detailing birthing positions and massage techniques to reduce the pain.
‘You’re life’s about to be over, you know,’ says Lou-Anne darkly. ‘Look at my sister.’ Then she smiles, ‘But in another way it’s just about to begin.’
For a few hours, nothing happens, other than Bindi, Indu and Olivia’s arrival. They bring soft drinks, chips and cookies, and eat them on my behalf. In spite of my hunger, I’m not allowed to eat, in case I end up needing a general anaesthetic. We hang out nervously, cutting up and fielding dirty looks from midwives who obviously think there should be fewer of us in the room.
‘Could I have gone into labour without knowing it?’ I ask Lou-Anne, eventually. As she is the closest person in our group to an expert on childbirth, having witnessed her sister give birth to twins, I keep calling on her knowledge.
‘Could you have stuck a besser block up your arse without knowing?’ She shrugs in response to my withering look, and everyone else cracks up. ‘Well, it’s the same question. The baby’s not going to just slide out while you smile, Shauna.’
Not much longer after her comment, and all of a sudden, the besser block action begins in a way that leaves no doubt. It strikes like an unexpected bowel-nado, uncomfortable but bearable. It lasts for about twenty seconds.
Olivia gasps, horrified, as my face contorts.
‘It’s okay,’ I pant. ‘But can I have one of those chips?’
‘The midwife said no food,’ intervenes Lou-Anne, grabbing the packet from Olivia.
‘But Beryl says yes,’ I plead.
Lou-Anne hands me one very small, very thin chip.
‘Thanks for your generosity, Lou-Anne.’
‘You’re in for a wild ride,’ she replies. ‘Hopefully they’ll stick a needle in your spine sooner rather than later.’
An epidural, or an anaesthetic needle in the spine, is something I’ve already discussed with Dr Jacobs. She said that I can have it more or less when I ask for it, though I wonder which is worse: labour pains or a needle in the back?
A few hours later I’m in no doubt about which would be worse, because I’m in the most savage, agonising physical pain I’ve ever experienced. I’m talking a wheelbarrow load of besser blocks dropping and clanging and bumping around inside me. It’s astounding how painful contractions can be. It’s even more astounding that no one really lets you in on it beforehand. Not even my own mum gave me any clue what to expect.
Olivia and Bindi start to cry and one of the midwives asks them to leave the room and sit in the waiting area. I’m crying, too.
I look out the window and it strikes me how dark it is outside. It must be the middle of the night. I hear someone moan, ‘Mummy! Mummy!’, and then I realise that the scared voice is mine. I’m buzzing with pain and fatigue. My eyes close against the bright lights above me, and I can feel Lou-Anne behind me rubbing my back.
‘Your mum’s coming,’ she says. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘I want the epidural,’ I manage to mutter. My lower torso is a rod of pain. It’s all I can think about. From time to time I forget that there’s a baby.
Indu calls the midwife and I roll onto my back. I feel the midwife put her fingers inside me to check the dilation of my cervix. I don’t even care that there’s a stranger down there prodding me. I stopped caring about that kind of nonsense hours ago, but it feels like years.
‘Four centimetres,’ she announces.
She summons an anaesthetist, whose face I don’t even see. He rolls me over and I can sense him busying himself with my back. I feel a sting on my spine followed by a dull scrape. In a matter of minutes my legs feel warm and I can’t feel the contractions anymore. I smile up at Lou-Anne and Indu. It’s such a relief.
It’s my friends’ job to keep me awake now, because all I want to do is fall asleep. I drift in and out of twilight, having no idea how much time is passing. When my mum arrives, she holds my hand. I feel so happy that she made it, and I try to tell her so. Then I hear Dr Jacobs’s voice.
‘No more people in here,’ she says firmly.
‘Can I sleep, please?’ I murmur.
‘You’re in active labour now, Shauna. It’s not a good idea.’
‘What time is it?’
No one tells me and it’s not until much later that I appreciate the timeline. I’m in labour until sunrise, which is when Dr Jacobs realises that Beryl’s head is not going to fit through my cervix.
Her face appears like a ghost’s over mine.
‘Shauna, you’re going to need an emergency caesarean.’
I sob. She reassures me that it’s not all that out of the ordinary, but I can’t fight feelings of exhaustion, failure and doom. Fluorescent lights flash overhead as narrow corridors sweep past. I hear my mum call my name. Then my dad.
Then I’m being asked to count backwards from a hundred, but I can’t. I see my brother’s face and I’m sure I’m dead. He smiles at me.
‘It’ll be all right, kiddo,’ he says.
Then, nothing.