Shadow in Tiger Country

Two months or so later, Caitlin was born. What a birth that was! It all started off badly because we hadn’t prepared at all, so when Louise woke me up one morning to tell me she’d gone into labour I could still hear in my head our ante-natal tutor telling us ‘Make sure you’ve packed your bags well in advance of the birth date, just in case.’ Well, it was a couple of weeks after our due date and we hadn’t even thought about the bag. So we ran around like blue-arsed flies trying to gather all the stuff we needed. As is my wont in times of need, I headed for the fridge. All I could remember was that it might take a long time and a packed lunch was recommended. Louise came into the kitchen as her second contraction hit her. ‘Oof, there’s another one. You know what though, it’s not too bad.’ Off she wandered to find something or other and I delved back into the fridge for the ingredients of a Scooby Snack size sandwich. I saw Louise coming towards me down the corridor when her next contraction struck, only this time it was somewhat more powerful. In fact, it was powerful enough to floor her. The thump was loud enough to spook our cat, who bolted out of the cat-flap.

‘I knew it was going to hurt,’ she screamed, ‘but not this fucking much.’

It was then I realized that we were in for a bumpy ride. Louise grew up in a family where swearing is considered to show a lack of vocabulary, while in my family swearing isn’t even considered, it’s just what we do. Not that much, you understand, I don’t want to give you the impression that my folks are foul-mouthed in any way, it’s just that we can swear if we have to, with marvellous aplomb and panache. The point is, if Louise was swearing, it meant it really hurt.

We rushed off to hospital and after driving the wrong way for twenty minutes I eventually worked out where we were meant to be going, turned the car round and arrived there just in time to be told to go home for a few hours.

‘You’re hardly dilated at all, go home, have a bath and take some paracetamol,’ the sadistic midwife said.

‘Will the paracetamol help?’ a desperate-looking Weeze asked.

‘No, not really.’ And on that happy note we headed off for home.

It was whilst back at home that I made one of the biggest mistakes of my marriage. I put Louise in the bath and phoned up my dad to tell him we were on our way. He then came over. It was at this point that I thought it might be nice for posterity’s sake to get a photographic record of the birth. In her writhing agony Louise didn’t put up any particular objection to this. However, when the photos came back from the chemist two weeks later she was somewhat stunned at quite how intimate these pictures were. She was particularly gobsmacked when she realized that I was actually in half the pictures, holding my naked wife’s hand. ‘But, Tim, if you’re in this picture, who took them?’ For some reason knowing that they’d been taken by the man who’d been responsible for me being in the world didn’t appease her at all.

Anyway, when we eventually got back into the hospital the contractions were coming thick and fast and Louise’s howling was getting worse with every one. It’s strange how horribly useless you feel at times like this, times of pain and desperation, but I kept reminding myself and her that this was a good pain. Something I would have given anything to be able to tell her four years later. Weeze had always said she fancied trying to have the baby naturally without any anaesthetic. A neighbour of ours, Dorothy, heard about this a few days before Louise went into labour and said, ‘Why on earth would you do that? You wouldn’t have your leg cut off without anaesthetic.’ As it turned out, she had a good point. Louise put up with the pain for eight heroic hours and then eventually screamed for an epidural. I reminded her of her previous convictions and she looked at me with dagger eyes. So I called in the nurse and we got her nicely drugged up.

After this it was all plain sailing, we put some mellow music on and she still managed to push the baby out on her own. By 9 p.m. in the evening I was holding my little girl. Holding her like a cracked egg I expected to break at any moment, but holding her nevertheless, and I fell in love. I fell in love with this warm, snuffling creature in my arms and I fell in love all over again with my exhausted, serene wife. I was and still am in awe of the sheer ordeal that childbirth is. It is amazing, frightening and unbelievably exhilarating. I was one of those men who was flipped upside down by the whole experience. Watching Weeze feed Caitlin for the first time is an image that is somehow seared on to my soul. It was one of those moments that moulds and forms you into the person you become after it. From that second onwards your life changes, you go from being a boy and girl into a mum and dad. It’s a big step, bigger than anything Neil Armstrong took. Well, it blew me away, anyway. And then we were three, and at that time I still thought we’d be three for ever. But that wasn’t to be. There were other events about to enter our lives which would shatter our world.

We faced everything, we got through the twelve-hour operation, we got through the numerous treatments, Weeze even managed to kick her addiction to the heroin-like painkiller she’d been put on, we got through it all. And what’s more, we’d laughed, danced, hugged, made love, watched our child grow up and start school, and then it came back. Only this time there was nothing we could do about it. Our surgeon, Professor Gleeson, one of the most lovely men I’ve ever met, had to tell us both that that was it, there was nothing more anyone could do. We walked out of his office, walked down the corridor, walked down to London Bridge station, sat in a bar, quickly knocked back a brandy, went on to the platform, held each other, sobbed, then got on the train home, back to our daughter, our family, with the kind of news that is as painful to pass on as it is to receive.

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