Tuesday, June 15, 2004

16.00.  Waters broken & labour proper started. 4:00:20 PM    Mmm? [] 11.10.  Contractions slightly stronger now.  Diane's back & various rites are being administered.  My presence is tolerated, provided my questions aren't too witless & I make coffee.  Later, when the discomfort intensifies, I shall be a required presence to receive the ritual cursing & to have the fingers in my right hand pulped in a preternaturally strong grip.  I am ready for this role & am practising typing exclusively with my left hand.   With Reuben, Emma took only gas & air & used a TENS machine, which left me weak with admiration.  May she feel able to be that forbearing again.     1:41:35 PM    Mmm? [] 06.05. As the sun rises into a cloudless blue sky on another beautiful day, Diane slips away home for some sleep, I struggle off the camp bed & Em sits eating cereal in the kitchen.  And the baby remains resolutely in place, clearly more happy, comfortable & fulfilled within her amniotic world than ready to join us in our world of light.  Contractions continue to occur with the same level of intensity at the same intervals. Reuben was equally reluctant to emerge. What do they know that we don't? (As if I need to ask...) Diane returns in a couple of hours & hopefully Sue will hang on to Reuben for the day. I shall go into school because hanging about here I'm about as much use to the two workers as the proverbial pork pie at a bar mitzvah. And the process of watching & waiting will continue. So dramatic an entrance preceded by so prosaic a first scene... 6:44:01 AM    Mmm? [] 03.02.  This is going to be a long haul.  The three of us are staring disconsolately at a 10-year-old medical soap on cable while the slow tide of contractions - still every 2 minutes or so - ebbs & flows.  Poor Emma... What a dismal hour is 03.00 - the world seems to have fallen away into the dark & there is only this lighted room floating in space & three people waiting.  Script by Samuel Beckett. I shall try for a sleep again.  3:07:22 AM    Mmm? []

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