was lying on her back on the floor, her legs spread wide.
âYouâre going great, honey. We can already see a bit of its scalp ⦠and some hair â¦â
I didnât like the looks of it. The women, Miriam excepted, carried on a continual consultation in a way that was meant to be inconspicuous but was betrayed by worried glances and hurried whispering. The only words I understood were: âthe other bedâ.
8
âDonât be alarmed if a few people come in,â the obstetrician said to Miriam. âObstetrics interns. Weâll be sure they keep to themselves.â
That took us by surprise. Of course I was too weak-kneed to protest. The room filled up with a few young women dressed in white nylon who couldnât have kept less to themselves. They crowded around Miriam. The doctor got up and instructed two of the obstetricians-in-training to wheel the bed out into the passage. Then a different, better-equipped one was brought in.
Maybe because the group of trainees had thinned out for the time being, I suddenly caught sight of a young man in a white coat, his back to me, sitting at a shelf unit attached to the wall. Judging from his posture, he was writing furiously. Miriam was lifted onto the new bed by six pairs of arms at once, and was commanded to resume pushing with redoubled pressure. From time to time, the white-coated man twirled around on his swivel stool to observe the birthing arena and continued penning his notes on the clipboard supported on his knee.
Perhaps it was lack of sleep that weakened (or obscured) my attention. The room was in the grip of the kind of panic that did not paralyse those present, but rather drove them to serious and purposeful action.
âYea-a-a-ah ⦠!â emerged from several throats simultaneously. All these years later, I harbour the tenacious recollection of how the unwashed infant was lobbed into my lap by the flick of a blood-covered wrist. I shall never forget the gooey splash with which the baby landed on my thigh. It was more like it had been flung, because the child appeared so lifeless and blue.
Nobody cried out that it was a boy. I had to determine this myself. The consternation continued. There were so many women crowded around the bed that I lost sight of Miriam.
The following observations are taken directly from my diary entry on 15 June 1988, because this is as close as I can come to Tonioâs birth:
âWith all those swollen, passively dangling limbs, the little sprog made me think of a bunch of carrots, or rather a string of pale blue sausages you saw hanging at the butcherâs. For half a second, there was the panic: stillborn. But as she turned around, the midwife jabbed the little nipper in his side â a routine, almost malicious whap that got our son bawling. The piercing cries also brought on my own tears â finally. I prodded an index finger against the miniature fist. The fingers wound themselves viscidly around it. It was the little boyâs very first grip on life.â
The baby was taken from me to be washed. I was finally allowed to give Miriam a kiss and to compliment her on the most beautiful delivery of all time. The interns now at a respectful distance, the doctor offered her apologies for the chaotic scene. Now she dared to confess that the last time she had listened with the stethoscope she could hardly pick up a heartbeat, so despite only partial dilation they had decided to get Miriam to start pushing. Since induced birth could not be ruled out, she had had the special bed brought in.
The way Miriam lay there, utterly exhausted, wan and looking like a wrung-out dishrag, I wondered if sheâd ever really recover. Visions of the Kanadreuffeâs mother in the novel Karakter â as a schoolboy Iâd read the first few pages â who withered incurably in her childbed from one minute to the next, had forever plagued me: become a new father and see your wife age twenty
âYouâre going great, honey. We can already see a bit of its scalp ⦠and some hair â¦â
I didnât like the looks of it. The women, Miriam excepted, carried on a continual consultation in a way that was meant to be inconspicuous but was betrayed by worried glances and hurried whispering. The only words I understood were: âthe other bedâ.
8
âDonât be alarmed if a few people come in,â the obstetrician said to Miriam. âObstetrics interns. Weâll be sure they keep to themselves.â
That took us by surprise. Of course I was too weak-kneed to protest. The room filled up with a few young women dressed in white nylon who couldnât have kept less to themselves. They crowded around Miriam. The doctor got up and instructed two of the obstetricians-in-training to wheel the bed out into the passage. Then a different, better-equipped one was brought in.
Maybe because the group of trainees had thinned out for the time being, I suddenly caught sight of a young man in a white coat, his back to me, sitting at a shelf unit attached to the wall. Judging from his posture, he was writing furiously. Miriam was lifted onto the new bed by six pairs of arms at once, and was commanded to resume pushing with redoubled pressure. From time to time, the white-coated man twirled around on his swivel stool to observe the birthing arena and continued penning his notes on the clipboard supported on his knee.
Perhaps it was lack of sleep that weakened (or obscured) my attention. The room was in the grip of the kind of panic that did not paralyse those present, but rather drove them to serious and purposeful action.
âYea-a-a-ah ⦠!â emerged from several throats simultaneously. All these years later, I harbour the tenacious recollection of how the unwashed infant was lobbed into my lap by the flick of a blood-covered wrist. I shall never forget the gooey splash with which the baby landed on my thigh. It was more like it had been flung, because the child appeared so lifeless and blue.
Nobody cried out that it was a boy. I had to determine this myself. The consternation continued. There were so many women crowded around the bed that I lost sight of Miriam.
The following observations are taken directly from my diary entry on 15 June 1988, because this is as close as I can come to Tonioâs birth:
âWith all those swollen, passively dangling limbs, the little sprog made me think of a bunch of carrots, or rather a string of pale blue sausages you saw hanging at the butcherâs. For half a second, there was the panic: stillborn. But as she turned around, the midwife jabbed the little nipper in his side â a routine, almost malicious whap that got our son bawling. The piercing cries also brought on my own tears â finally. I prodded an index finger against the miniature fist. The fingers wound themselves viscidly around it. It was the little boyâs very first grip on life.â
The baby was taken from me to be washed. I was finally allowed to give Miriam a kiss and to compliment her on the most beautiful delivery of all time. The interns now at a respectful distance, the doctor offered her apologies for the chaotic scene. Now she dared to confess that the last time she had listened with the stethoscope she could hardly pick up a heartbeat, so despite only partial dilation they had decided to get Miriam to start pushing. Since induced birth could not be ruled out, she had had the special bed brought in.
The way Miriam lay there, utterly exhausted, wan and looking like a wrung-out dishrag, I wondered if sheâd ever really recover. Visions of the Kanadreuffeâs mother in the novel Karakter â as a schoolboy Iâd read the first few pages â who withered incurably in her childbed from one minute to the next, had forever plagued me: become a new father and see your wife age twenty
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