The Baby and the Bathwater

Our youngest turned three last week and, as they invariably do on the birthdays of our offspring, my thoughts returned to that cold February day in 2006. It went like this;

Monday after half term. I wake up and know this is the day. It feels like it did the day our second child was born so I do a quick calculation, tell my husband the baby will be arriving between three and four in the afternoon, that he is welcome to go to work but I’d like him back by lunchtime.

Our au pair takes the children to school and I sit down to wait. My Lovely Neighbour comes to keep me company but there is nothing very obvious going on and I’m not sure she believes me when I say I’m having a baby so in the end she wanders off.

In time the Domestic God reappears and we go for a stroll down the Lower Richmond Road where we pick up some light bulbs. I feel a twinge and we call the midwife. Walking back is quite uncomfortable.

When the midwife arrives the air is full of anti-climax. I have one contraction that makes my eyes water. The midwife exchanges a knowing look with her assistant and suggests I have a bath. I am feeling cold so I agree. She pours in the bubble bath and makes it really hot.

Comfortably submerged I feel the advent of a second contraction and cry out. My husband, who is making his way up the stairs, mobile to ear on a business call, diverts to bathroom just in time. The midwife is calling for a torch. She uses her hand to push aside the bubbles. It is 3.37pm.

The baby is flopped quickly onto my chest. I suspect the water is far too hot for a newborn.
Congratulations! says the midwife, You have a beautiful daughter. I feel certain she’s missed the vital clue.

My eyes are tight shut. I have no desire to wake from this dream. All along I’ve known it would be another boy. It’s what we do. I never allowed myself to hope otherwise and laughed when the boys spotted three magpies as we walked on Barnes Common the day before, declaring it must be a girl. I open one eye and see my husband perched on the loo seat, tears streaming down his face. I look down at my new slippery, purple bubble baby for the first time, our daughter, our little girl.

Our Lovely Neighbour has collected the two older boys from school and taken them home via the sweet shop. Our youngest son has returned from a walk with the au pair. He has slept right through the unexpected water birth of his little sister parked in his buggy downstairs. When he wakes he is not very pleased. Daddy goes and tells the older boys they have a sister. They don’t quite believe it either but bounce back over the road with their sweets, to come and see us both, still in the bath, cord still intact. They offer me Maltesers.

I am brought a cup of tea and climb in to our big bed with my new nameless daughter. We had a boy’s name all ready to go. Now we shall have to think again. So she is Baby to begin with and it sticks, right up until she is old enough to protest, I not a baby!

In the meantime we hang pink balloons on the railings outside our house to flutter forth the glad tidings. I bought both, blue and pink ones, just in case, a chink of hope remaining despite the odds stacked so firmly against us. I can hardly believe my luck.