Labour

Although I'm not a fan of the royal family whose deeds and misdeeds are more likely to provoke my derision or contempt  than admiration and respect, I felt a small measure of empathy this morning when I heard on CBC news that Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, has gone into hospital in the early stages of labour, accompanied by her husband Prince William. She is a week or so overdue. They are in their early 30s - at least he is, and as they were university students together, she must be approximately the same age as he. It's all reminiscent of Wendy's experience and mine: early 30s, a week or so overdue, high summer hot weather teetering on the edge of a heat wave. I've mentioned our firstborn's birth in several previous posts. Here are a few more details. Like the royal couple, Wendy and I drove to the hospital together in the very early morning of a hot day, New Year's Eve to be exact. I stayed by her side almost constantly until our first baby was born, holding her hand, feeding her sips of water, wiping sweat from her brow, offering words of comfort. She had no severe pain until the baby's head was distending her perineum, when a few whiffs of anaesthetic clouded her consciousness enough to take the edge off; but she was wide awake a few minutes later when our baby daughter slid into this world, bellowing loudly - I remember thinking that being born must be a painful experience for the baby as well as for the mother: our baby daughter was bellowing with pain, and despite the heat of the labour room, she began to shiver with cold, until swaddled in a cosy blanket. She had been living at 37 C In the snug comfort of the womb, and the outside world was much cooler despite the summer heat of the Memorial Hospital in Adelaide. Wendy was in labour until late afternoon, 10-12 hours. At her birth our daughter had an almost uncanny resemblance to my mother and her brothers, with traces also of Wendy's father.  That helped us to decide on her name, Rebecca, after her paternal great grandmother. We had considered this name, among others, before she was born, and the family resemblance settled the matter. I can just dimly remember the little old black-clad lady for whom we named our daughter, can remember a perfume that didn't quite disguise her body odour, can remember a very hot black and white striped peppermint that she gave me, that I spat out as soon as I could. Rebecca lost that extraordinary resemblance within hours of her birth, as did her two brothers in due course. A scholarly obstetrician, Melville Kerr who was my colleague and friend at the University of Edinburgh, said it's caused by labour's effect on the baby's facial tissues and is a reliable test of paternity, but he could not explain why it's the facial appearance of ancestors on the father's side of the family that most often appear ephemerally in this way. I feel privileged to have seen it.