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Life Inside | Jun 15, 2007 00:00
Jennifer has been in hospital for a week now, and we are both gradually becoming institutionalized. Our daily highlights include: Jennifer's breakfast at 8 am; Jennifer's lunch at 12.30 pm; and Jennifer's dinner at 5.30 pm.
Each day the doctors explain that the baby may have to be induced prematurely. Each day the doctors decide that they can hang on for one more day. Which suits us fine -- the longer the baby can stay growing inside the better.
Twice daily, Jennifer is hooked up to the cardiotocography (CTG) machine. This has made me fully understand the derivation of the word 'alarm' in the context of "an electronic device which produces a noise in order to attract attention". The alarm on the CTG machine's has two possible meanings:
- your baby is dead; or
- your baby is perfectly healthy (but it has moved by a few nanometres so that the machine is no longer able to pick up its heartbeat).
As you can imagine, it's quite the cliff-hanger while the mid-wife ascertains which of A or B has actually occurred.
Hospital, like war, can best be described as long periods of boredom -- interrupted by short periods when you realize that boredom wasn't such a bad thing. The dull patches are beginning to annoy Jennifer, who is especially frustrated that she can't find a wireless network in the vicinity of the hospital.
"No wireless," she announces when I arrive in the morning. "Still no wireless," she says mournfully, as I prepare to make my departure at night. Yesterday there was a brief moment of hope when her laptop suddenly found a connection. But, alas, it had only discovered the wireless card in my laptop.
On the bright side, however, Jennifer's new room-mate (or "cell-mate" as Jennifer prefers to call her) has provided us with endless hours of diversion. Saly [sic] (pronounced "Sally") doesn't believe in vegetables, preferring to provide for her unborn child's nutritional needs with a diet that consists solely of meat and cigarettes. Her reaction to hospital food is quite gratifying:
Saly: Oh my God! Oh my God! I've never seen anything so disgusting in my life! What on earth is it?
Nurse-Aide: It's broccoli.
Saly: I've never even heard of that!
Saly's oft-stated opinions about health are a triumph of anecdote over medical statistics. My favourite Saly quote so far: "Well, my granddad didn't eat vegetables either, and he smoked all his life as well, and he lived to be 73 -- so vegetables and not-smoking can't be all that healthy for you." She's a veritable Deborah Coddington of nutritional science.
Her partner is clearly of the opinion that Saly's hospitalization is due to laziness more than any other factor. This leads to long and heated arguments about his lack of sympathy. Jennifer and I cower on our side of the room, while Saly and her partner hurl insults at one another:
Him: You're stupid!
Saly: [with devastating logic] Well, you're going to marry me. So you're marrying a stupid person. So that makes you stupid too!
One-nil to her, in my opinion. And then, of course, there are three or four telephone 're-plays' of each argument to Saly's friends and family.
Saly: [on the phone to a friend or relative] So I told Gary, I told him right out: "Well, you're going to marry me... so that makes you stupid too!" And he couldn't say much to that, could he?
But happily, like squalls at sea, Saly's disputes are quickly over. Gary arrived with a peace-offering the next morning. "I've brought you a decent breakfast," he announced cheerily.
Saly was all smiles. "Ooh," she said, opening the paper bag. "I love Burger King."
Perhaps Saly's only flaw is a propensity to spurn her headphones, and watch television at full volume. And then to leave it blaring away while she pops outside for a ciggie. We're both too privacy-conscious to mess with her TV remote, so we often end up hearing Days of Our Lives at maximum loudness. And, frankly, we don't need Days of Our Lives when we've got Saly.
A slight (but lingering) sense of journalistic ethics prevents me from giving a detailed description of this morning's dramatic events -- but here is a hypothetical scenario that you may wish to contemplate. Imagine being in hospital, and having two of your fiancé's ex-girlfriends turn up to visit you at the same time. What question would you consider suitable for an impromptu debate? (Hint: which of the two ex-girlfriends gave your fiancé genital warts?)
Saly is likeable, perplexing, brave, kind-hearted, and slightly outrageous. It's sometimes hard to remember that she's not in hospital to provide us with light entertainment; but, rather, because she's dangerously ill. And that she, like everyone else in here, is homesick, lonely, frightened, and just wants to leave as soon as possible -- with a healthy baby.
NOTE: Some names have been changed in this account, and certain events have been slightly altered in order to conceal the identity of the individuals involved.
A Bit of a Worry | Jun 12, 2007 00:37
When spending time with my nieces or nephew, I am often frustrated in my attempts to point out interesting or educational features of the landscape. A typical encounter might go like this:
Me: Oh look, a three-legged dog!
Niece or Nephew: [excitedly] Where?
Me: Just there, where I'm pointing.
Niece or Nephew: [looking in completely the wrong place] I don't see it!
Me: Just right there, on the other side of the road -- right where I'm pointing.
Niece or Nephew: [looking everywhere but where I'm pointing] I still don't see it!
[Dog hobbles out of sight]
Me: It's gone now.
Niece or Nephew: [disappointed] Oh, I missed it...
But I find myself on the other side of the conversation when it comes to sightings of my own offspring:
Jennifer: Oh, the baby's kicking...
Me: [excitedly] Where?
Jennifer: Just put your hand there -- do you feel it?
Me: No.
Jennifer: What about there -- you must feel that! I can even see it moving.
Me: [neither seeing nor feeling any movement at all] Er...
Jennifer: Oh, it's stopped now...
And the ultrasound scans of our unborn child are, if anything, even more frustrating:
Technician: As you can see, this is the baby's head...
Me: Where?
Technician: And here's an even better view of its nose and lips. Clear as day.
Me: The bit at the top left?
Technician: [exasperated] No, that's just a smudge on the screen -- the nose and lips are at the bottom right. [Turns to Jennifer] Surely you can see the nose and lips?
Jennifer: Well, maybe a hint of a lip.
[Technician leaves the room to print the image]
Me: Could you really see the baby's lip?
Jennifer: I only said it because I felt sorry for the technician.
Despite the invisibility of our baby (except, of course, for the enormous bump protruding from Jennifer's midriff) it still manages to make its presence felt. In the manner of a dysfunctional ex-couple who communicate through their lawyer, the baby and I exchange information via Jennifer. For example:
Jennifer: The baby wants fish and chips for dinner.
Me: Can the baby wait until I've finished watching Top Gear?
Jennifer: The baby says no.
Over the past few months the baby's demands have become increasingly forceful, and have included requests to:
- Straighten pictures which are annoying the baby because they're crooked.
- Make midnight visits to the 24-hour petrol station to procure salt & vinegar crisps for the baby.
- Cook a "delicious pudding" for the baby.
- Buy the baby a 10 megapixel camera with 6X optical zoom.
Despite the baby's expensive taste in camera equipment -- and obvious megalomaniac tendencies -- I find that I have become rather fond of it. Somewhere along the line we seem to have become a family. When we go to sleep at night, I give Jennifer a kiss, and say: "Goodnight, Jennifer". And then I give the bump on her stomach a little pat, and say: "Goodnight, baby".
Which is why recent developments have been rather distressing. Last week the midwife took Jennifer's blood pressure, and said: "Hmm... it's probably nothing, but I'll just send you for some medical tests".
Then she looked at the test results, and said: "It's probably nothing, but I'll just send you to a specialist". The specialist took some more blood, and said: "Well, it's probably nothing, but I'll just put you in hospital for 24 hours of observation."
And at the end of the 24 hours, when I was ready to take Jennifer home, the hospital registrar gave a merry laugh, and said: "Don't be silly -- you can't take her home. Not in her condition." And so, for the past few days, I've been turning up at the maternity ward first thing in the morning.
Jennifer is instantly recognizable as the only patient sitting up in bed and doing statistical analysis on a laptop. I'm always very pleased to see her, and she always looks pleased to see me too -- which cheers me up no end. At ten o'clock in the evening the midwife commandant turfs me out, and I go home to bed.
The idea of hospitalization is to keep the baby in the womb for as long as possible. Sometimes it looks as though it will stay inside, and sometimes not. It changes from hour to hour. Of course, a premature delivery wouldn't really be a serious concern at our stage in proceedings, as the baby would require only the mildest level of neonatal care.
But still, I must confess, it's all a bit of a worry...
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