I PUT MY hands to my belly, run my fingers over, its looseness, and feel enormously relieved. It sounds horrible, but I don’t even think about the baby, except to compute that she is gone – thank God! – from my battered body. The sorest part of me is my throat, from the oxygen tube I think, but the whole lower part of my body feels like it’s been under the wheels of a bus. I try to move my toes and I can – just.
The nurses in the recovery ward are so nice. They fuss and check on me, ask me how I’m feeling. After about twenty minutes of slowly regaining my normal mind, I ask about the baby.
‘She’s waiting for you in your room,’ one of the young nurses tells me.
Soon I’m wheeled into a tiny room by an orderly, and at first I think I must be dreaming when I see Nathan O’Brien with a tiny, swaddled baby in his arms. How can it be him? I thought he didn’t want us.
‘What are you doing here?’ I croak.
‘Shauna,’ he says in a shaky voice, as the orderly closes the door behind him. ‘Why wouldn’t you talk to me?’
It takes me a while to answer. ‘I thought you wouldn’t want her. Or me.’
He walks to the bed and holds the sleeping baby to my eye-level. She has the most perfect little face, with a tiny nose and a red rosebud of a mouth. I lean over and kiss her plump, pink cheek.
‘How could anyone not want her?’ says Nathan. ‘She’s so beautiful.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know whether I could rely on you.’
I can’t move much, but Nathan lays the sleeping newborn in my arms. I gently hold her against my chest. Oh God, I think, the world can really hurt me now. It occurs to me in that instant, looking down at her face, how much my parents must have loved me and my brother, how completely. I know in my heart that they did the best they could with both of us, and that I will do the best I can with this child. I look from her to her father, bursting with love.
Finally I screw up the courage to say it. ‘God, I love her, Nathan.’
‘I love her, too.’
My parents come into the room and when they see me with the baby they both start crying. They’re so proud of me, and I’m proud of them, too. My massively tall, bearded father looks like a dashing bushranger with his hair pulled back into a low ponytail. He’s wearing his best slacks and his R.M. Williams boots. My dark-skinned mother with her wildly patterned dress and soft, generous lines is a picture of black femininity.
‘Julie’s driving out tomorrow to see you,’ Mum says. ‘She’s bringing Andrew, and the rest of them will come the next day.’
Everyone clusters around me. When I open my mouth to introduce Nathan to my parents, my voice is feeble and crackling.
‘Popping a baby’s not the easiest thing to do, is it?’ says Mum.
While Dad and Nathan get chatting, Mum turns to me and mouths, ‘He’s so handsome.’
‘I know,’ I mouth back.
We talk for ages in that little room, until Jenny’s aunt Coralie comes in and boots out all my guests.
‘Shauna needs rest,’ she says gruffly, not knowing what an understatement that is.
When everyone’s gone, she turns nice again.
‘It’s about time you learned how to breastfeed,’ she says.
‘But I’m too tired!’
‘Welcome to motherhood, Shauna.’
I call my baby Olivia Jamie O’Brien, and I hope she turns out like her namesakes. She has my brother’s nose and lips, and in some way, I feel like she’s a little piece of him. Only the best parts.
Over my five-day stay in hospital, my whole extended family comes to Sydney to visit. My school friends visit multiple days, too – Lou-Anne, Bindi, Indu and Olivia once in a big, noisy group, and then a more subdued visit from just Lou-Anne and Olivia, who are becoming firm friends in my absence. Jenny comes four days out of five. Self-Raising Flour visits once, but stays for three hours, her eyes locked onto my baby’s face.
‘This is one delicious little girl, Shauna,’ she says, and I know what she means. Every now and then I get the urge to gobble baby Olivia right up.
Nathan rents a hotel room in the city and spends time with me in hospital every day, helping me wash and change our daughter. My parents can’t afford to stay in Sydney long, so they go back to Barraba after two nights. It’s Nathan who drives Olivia and me back up north after we’re discharged from hospital.
When we walk out to the hospital car park, I see that Nathan’s exchanged his souped-up aggy ute for an unspeakably dorky Camry.
‘It’s my mum’s car,’ he says with embarrassment as he opens the rear door, revealing a brand new baby seat. I hadn’t even thought about that.
Nathan admits that his parents are still pretty bugged out about what’s happened, but that they’re looking forward to meeting me and the baby. We’ve talked again about what I thought his mum did to me at the Easter Show.
‘You’re wrong, Shauna,’ said Nathan, and I could tell he meant it. ‘Mum’s not like that. She was so stressed out that day. She’s always in a filthy mood at cattle shows.’
I have accepted that I am capable of being wrong, and that I might have been wrong about Nathan’s mother. I feel apprehensive about meeting the O’Briens, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. They want to be involved with the baby, and I think I’m going to let them.
I sleep most of the way on the drive up the New England Highway to Barraba, waking only once when Olivia wants a feed. When we pull into my parents’ driveway, they’re waiting outside for us. I have never, ever felt so exhausted or so happy to be home.
Nathan comes in for a cup of tea, but he soon heads back to Kootingal. He plans to come and pick me up the next day so I can meet his parents at their farm, and I’ve agreed.
‘Not a bad sort of young bloke,’ admits Dad when Nathan’s gone. I wasn’t sure how things would go between the two of them. Dad’s physical presence can seem pretty frightening.
‘He’s got good manners,’ says Mum. ‘He’s well-raised.’
I realise that after days of having Nathan at my side, I already miss him.
That night after dinner, I call Jenny.
‘I just wanted to thank you,’ I tell her.
‘What for?’
‘For hooking me up with your aunt and the hospital.’
‘It’s a good hospital, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a super hospital.’ Which is true, but, honestly, that’s not what I really want to thank her for. ‘Jenny . . . look . . .’
I sigh, searching for the right words.
‘It was nice to see Nathan with you every day,’ says Jenny, as if reading my mind. ‘He was really great with the baby. I know how scared you were. I know that’s why you were reluctant to tell him.’
‘You told me at the hospital that day that I had the scan, that I might, you know, want Nathan’s love.’ It’s so hard to admit this. I start to choke up. ‘I was so afraid of wanting it and not getting it.’
‘You didn’t think you deserved it, but you do. And I’ve seen the way he looks at you . . .’
I end the call with Jenny so I can have a cry, but it’s a happy one. How lucky am I to have a friend like Jenny! A challenging friend. She’s not sweet and unendingly devoted like Lou-Anne. Nor does she worship me like Olivia does. But she does have my back. She has had my back during this whole strange, wonderful, embarrassing and ugly process. She stood up to me when she thought I was wrong, and that’s no easy task.
Where would I be without my friends?
I’m not only talking about my Oakholme friends either. I’m talking about my old Barraba friend, Ashley, who’s full of advice about breastfeeding and getting an unsettled baby off to sleep. She’s almost as excited as if Olivia Jamie were her own baby. And my over-the-back-fence friend Taylor is smug – the only one of our mob who’s not a mum, and therefore free to do as she pleases. Lucky her. She’s more the leader than I ever was.
Where would I be without these girls, common like me, posh like me?
I don’t have much time to consider my question, because the peace is rent by the lusty little cry of my hungry newborn. My boobs sting at the mere sound of it. I know that these are just the first stirrings of all the pain and love Olivia Jamie O’Brien is going to bring during our time together – the rest of my life.