Serenade for a Small Family Read online

  into the corridor for Mum to pick up.’

  ‘Really? That’s funny.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I snack all day,’ said Debbie, taking a slice of apple and

  a wedge of cheese. She showed me how to sign up to the

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  website, and each Monday morning I hungrily checked my

  emails and discussed current symptoms with her.

  At eighteen weeks, Benny came into the hospital with me

  for a routine scan. We giggled and joked as the radiographer

  pointed out heartbeats, faces and tiny arms and legs on the

  screen. Then she went quiet.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Umm . . .’

  She leant in closer to the screen, and I tried to read her

  face: ‘What is it?’

  She stared at the screen and said nothing. Then finally:

  ‘I’m sorry . . . but it looks to me like your cervix is shortening.

  You may not have long.’

  I resigned from work, lit the tea lights, and moved back

  onto the couch.

  Lying down, day in and day out, to keep the pressure

  off my cervix, was gruelling.

  For one thing, I was nervous the whole time. If I stood

  to walk to the toilet or have a shower, I was aware of the

  downward pressure, and paranoid that I was jeopardising

  my pregnancy. Every twinge was a threat.

  Also, it was hot. Most days that November hovered

  around the mid-thirties, and in our house there was pretty

  much a no-aircon policy. (Why did I go along with that?

  What an idiot!) My temperature was already high, but lying

  on the couch with pillows made me hotter.

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  My labia remained swollen with fluid for weeks, which

  was uncomfortable as well as freaky. My stomach also

  remained swollen and sore, and I was nauseous from being

  pregnant. My back ached, and the lack of exercise made

  me sluggish and headachy.

  Mum came back, and I was dependent on her and Benny

  for everything. Having to ask for things might be okay for

  a couple of days, but for weeks it’s the pits. Benny likes to

  do things in his own time. I could tell it irritated him to

  be asked for things.

  Mum might not believe I found it hard to ask. When

  I woke each morning I was famished, without fail, and

  hollered in her direction: ‘PORRIDGE! I’M STARVING!’

  Through the night, Mum would get up with me to give my

  back a rub and bring me snacks. One night she brought in

  a plate of peanut butter toast and proclaimed: ‘I don’t even

  need to turn the lights on any more!’ In the dim lamplight

  I took a bite of toast, but it included a substantial lump of

  butter. ‘Aah! You do need to turn the lights on! I just ate

  a mountain of butter!’ We laughed out loud; then hushed

  each other so as not to wake Benny—he’s a monster when

  he’s sleep-deprived and he had a work day to get through.

  I got up only to go to the toilet or for a quick shower in

  the morning. When I was upright, I worried that I might

  go into labour at any time.

  At the end of each long day, at five o’clock, there was

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  the ceremonial drawing of a red line through the date

  on the calendar and a glass of white for Mum. Grace, the

  acupuncturist, gave me some inscrutable Chinese medicine

  that looked like black ball bearings, with instructions to

  take twenty a day. I swallowed five and pulled a face; then

  I swallowed another five and pulled a face, etcetera. She

  said they were good for holding on.

  ‘Whatever you say, Grace,’ I said. ‘Whatever. You. Say.’

  ‘Another day! Hang in there, boys!’ I lay stitching dolls’

  limbs onto bodies and miniature clothes onto dolls, watching

  DVDs, staring at the calendar and the walls, day in, day out.

  ‘I can’t stand it, Mum.’ At three o’clock on another long,

  hot afternoon, I raised myself onto an elbow. ‘I have to get

  out of the house! I have to get off the couch. I’m coming

  with you to the video shop.’

  ‘Really, darling? Are you sure?’

  ‘I have to get out of here!’

  I made my way cautiously to the car and lay down along

  the back seat to stare out the window: ‘Slowly, Mum . . . easy

  on the bumps. I can see the clouds! This was a great idea!’

  Mum laughed. ‘Ah, the sky!’ I sang out. ‘The sky!’

  Every day was a countdown: ‘Twenty-one weeks and

  three days!’ ‘Twenty-one weeks and four days!’ ‘Twenty-

  one weeks and five days!’

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  ‘What will we call them, Benny?’ I lay on my side, with

  pillows under my tummy and between my legs, pinning

  a pocket onto the front of a tiny pair of yellow overalls. ‘I

  like “Leo” and “Jordan”.’

  Benny sat with his ankles crossed on the coffee table,

  eating toasted slices of the gourmet fruit loaf his mum Josie

  had sent.

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, darlin’ . . . We’re not

  there yet.’ He sipped from a steaming cup. ‘Is it twenty-

  three weeks today?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We want to get to forty! We’ve still got a long way to go.’

  That night, during dinner, I went into labour.

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  Part Two

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  10

  I knew there was bad news ahead when a NICU midwife

  called to invite Benny and me to a meeting with David,

  the neonatologist, later that afternoon. I sat down on the

  bench beside our Adelaide front door, hugging my knees

  close to my chest as I tried to guess what he would say. Ben

  was busy with work, and I wished I had a friend to talk to.

  I missed our Alice friends, and I felt remorseful that I had

  been so focused on getting pregnant for so much of our

  time in Alice. I made a mental note: You can wish for things

  as much as you like, but you can’t know what’s around the corner,

  so don’t wait till later to know you had it good. That afternoon,

  we followed David into a small, windowless room where

  a sign on the door read: ‘Quiet Room’ . We sat together

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  on the couch, and I wondered whether the woman in the

  framed photo on the wall behind David had died or donated

  money to be on display.

  ‘Leo’s stomach has been bloated for some time . . . as

  you know. And his platelet count has been low,’ he said.

  His glasses sat low on his nose and he peered over them

  as he spoke. My grip on Ben’s hand tightened and stayed

  tight. ‘He’s now been diagnosed with a rare gastrointestinal

  disease—necrotising enterocolitis . . . or NEC.’ David paused

  and the room suddenly felt airless. Why aren’t there any fucking

  windows in here? ‘Less than five per cent of premature babies

  contract the disease. It can be life-thr
eatening.’ Adrenalin

  made its way into my veins and my heart began to doof. ‘It’s

  likely that he will need surgery, down the track, to remove

  part of his bowel.’

  ‘Oh my god,’ I said.

  ‘We will watch him for a while. If the surgery goes

  ahead, he will have a temporary colostomy bag. We have an

  excellent specialist surgeon . . . internationally well respected

  in his field.’

  The famous surgeon was no taller than me (pretty short)

  and didn’t say much. When he came into NICU each

  morning to feel Leo’s swollen stomach, I would stand by,

  eagerly awaiting his diagnosis.

  ‘The bowel has formed a lump,’ the professor said.

  ‘Right . . . What does that mean? Is that bad?’

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  ‘It’s too early to tell—the bowel disintegration may be

  staying localised.’

  I moved in closer. ‘That sounds good . . . yes? Hopeful?’

  ‘We will wait and see. It could be good.’

  ‘Right . . . right. I’m hoping and hoping.’

  He turned and left, followed by his troop of awkward

  students.

  For a while the lump was resolving. ‘Oh my god, Benny,

  isn’t that fantastic!’

  ‘So far so good,’ said Benny in his measured tone.

  One of the professor’s students came in late one morning

  and approached Leo’s cot. I stood up. ‘Hi . . . what are you

  doing?’ I asked, blocking access to Leo.

  ‘I have to feel his stomach,’ he said.

  ‘But the professor has already done that this morning.

  Is it really necessary to do it again?’

  ‘Okay . . . I guess not.’

  He walked away and I vowed again not to leave NICU

  unless I really, really had to.

  We spent Christmas Day in NICU; Jordan and Leo were

  seventeen days old, but it felt more like six months, as when

  you travel somewhere so culturally new and shocking that

  time slows down and a day feels like a week. We were living

  in a whole new world now. We arrived at the boys’ cots to

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  find red Christmas stockings full of presents—stuffed toys,

  bubble bath and baby oil. There were tacky fridge magnets

  with photos of each baby wearing red Christmas hats that

  someone must have taken overnight. I wasn’t sad to be

  spending Christmas Day in NICU. I didn’t even see it like

  that. I was content to be spending the day with my babies,

  and I sure didn’t want to be anywhere else. Benny seemed

  okay too. Cheery staff wore Christmas earrings and hats,

  and we brought in a box of chocolates and placed it on the

  counter, along with other open chocolate and lolly boxes,

  for all to share. ‘Help yourself!’ said a passing midwife,

  popping a truffle into her mouth.

  Ben’s dad, Frank, had sent us cups with prints of each

  boy’s feet on them. I sat with Leo, and Benny sat with

  Jordan. I leant down to the cot’s porthole: ‘It’s your first

  Christmas, Leo!’ I said. ‘Happy Christmas, my boy.’

  Four days later, when he was three weeks old, Jordan had

  surgery to close a duct to his heart. Afterwards, he lay

  unconscious and paralysed, with a swollen stomach and a

  small piece of white tape stuck over each eye. He was pale

  and bruised, and my heart swelled thick against my rib

  cage. He was in one hundred per cent oxygen with high

  ventilation pressures, and hooked up to a rusty, green nitric

  oxide tank that looked as if it had come off the side of a ship.

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  ‘Any surgery is hard on these babies,’ said the registrar.

  ‘They don’t have any immunity; they can’t afford to lose

  any weight because there’s practically no fat on their bodies;

  and they’re susceptible to infection, especially with needles

  in their arms for the antibiotics and insulin.’

  I slowly stroked Jordan’s eyebrow all the way out to his

  temple with my thumb. I took his limp hand between my

  thumb and forefinger, tears bowling down my cheeks. ‘Can

  he have another blanket?’

  Animated talking and a gutsy laugh billowed up from

  behind the admin counter, and anger rose from the pit of

  my stomach. I turned crossly towards the nurses behind

  the desk: ‘Can they keep it down?! The noise in here isn’t

  right! It’s too much!’

  The registrar bit the corner of her lip and held out a

  tissue box. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said.

  It took Jordan a gruelling two weeks to recover, one tiny step

  at a time. I sat by his side and waited and watched, scowling

  at noisy talkers or loud laughers; I cursed monitor alarms,

  banging doors and the visiting siblings of other babies. I

  shifted to sit with Leo when he was unsettled, then back to

  Jordan when Leo was calm again. I skipped to the waiting

  room to text Benny with exclamation marks when Jordan’s

  oxygen requirement came down by the smallest amount.

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  The staff roster was of increasingly vital significance

  to me. I got along well with most of the midwives, and I

  trusted and respected the way they worked. Sometimes our

  chatter was light—about living in Adelaide or about the

  weekend. At other times I let it all hang out and cried on

  uniformed shoulders—about how I wished we could take

  the boys out of the hospital, how scared I was, and how

  sick of not knowing what each day would bring.

  At the start of a new shift, when the midwife assigned to

  Jordan or Leo was one I knew and loved, I would greet her

  with enthusiasm, gasping, ‘Have you got Jordy and Leo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yay!!’

  If it was the beginning of a night shift, I was so relieved.

  I slept so much better knowing that someone I knew and

  trusted was looking after my boys.

  I had no say over who handled my babies or how, though

  I drove people mad trying. If a midwife didn’t respond

  quickly to alarms, or laughed too loudly and woke them up,

  or disappeared for long periods and wasn’t there to watch

  the monitor, I was reluctant to leave the room. Instead, I

  stayed and resentfully watched her work, cringing at any

  rough handling or insensitive comments.

  I got to know the midwives’ jobs. ‘That oximeter’s too

  tight around his foot,’ I would say. Or: ‘What do you mean

  he has to have a heel prick? He had one this morning.’ Or:

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  ‘I know his notes say he’s getting an average of seventy per

  cent oxygen, but that reading kept cutting out. I’ve been

  watching it—those machines are crap. You need to do the

  test again before you turn it up.’

  As they walked in to start work, they must have groaned

  when they saw me sitting between the babies’ cots, but there

  was no way I was going to keep my mouth shut. There

  were so many staff and so many shifts that
one baby could

  be looked after by a lot of different midwives in one week.

  Sometimes the same staff were rostered on for several shifts

  in a row but, for the most part, I was the most continuity

  those babies had. ‘Don’t you think he’s had enough handling

  for a bit? I think we can take his temperature a bit later,

  no one will mind.’

  One of the midwives was coarse. ‘They look like skinned

  rabbits when they’re born,’ she squawked. I clenched my jaw,

  desperate to put in a complaint or tell her off, but unwilling

  to risk becoming unpopular with any of the midwives,

  because I depended on them to take care of my babies.

  One morning I peered into Leo’s cot to find a shaved

  patch on the side of his head. It was bruised and cut.

  I gasped.

  ‘What’s happened to Leo?’

  ‘Oh,’ his midwife chuckled. ‘He looks funny, doesn’t

  he? His first haircut! We had to shave his head to try to

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  find a vein to put an IV line in . . . We couldn’t find one

  in his arms.’

  ‘Funny?! Oh my god, that’s awful—an IV line in his

  head?’

  ‘Well, it has to go in somewhere! Anyway, they didn’t

  have any luck. They’re going to try again later. Whoops!

  It’s half past . . . I have to do his obs . . .’

  ‘Can’t he just have a break from IV lines? I mean, just

  for a day?’ I was crying again—I no longer wore mascara.

  Usually the IV line was inserted into an arm, with a small

  piece of wood taped to the arm to keep it straight. I could

  not imagine the discomfort.

  ‘No, he has to have one all the time at this stage.’

  Although I knew no different, not being able to pick

  up my babies and hold them in my arms made me ache.

  Benny struggled too. We had to scrub and sterilise our

  hands before we could touch them, and then it was mostly

  with our fingers, nervously. We could not nuzzle into their

  necks, or bite their toes to make them gurgle. We couldn’t

  get close enough to smell their skin or feel the weight of

  their bodies, or pick them up on a whim and walk out into

  the sunlight. And as long as they were on ventilators, we

  could not hear their voices.

  Leaving them at nights made me feel guilty, even though

  there was nothing I could do about it. If I didn’t like the