Dear Sophia
Posted on Feb 11, 11:24 pm by Dad
10 things you may not have known about your birth:
Your mum started having contractions in the middle of watching a show on TV called The Iron Chef, which is a Japanese cooking contest. Your mum and dad have a bit of a soft spot for anything Japanese, because they lived in the country for a few years. Anything except natto, that is. Nowadays, when she watches this TV show, she thinks fondly back to the night you were born.
Once contractions got too painful for your mum to bear, your dad made several trips back and forth to pack some bags into the boot while your mum gingerly made her way out to the car. Your dad confesses that, when he came back for the last couple of bags, he very nearly turned on the computer to write a blog post—something along the lines of, “Hey everyone, we’re heading into the hospital now…” while your mother was screaming in agony waiting for him out the front of the house. He didn’t, but he definitely thought about it. When it comes to web publishing, it’s important to pander to your readers.
For at least part of the trip to your hospital, the disc in the CD player of your parents’ Daewoo Nubira was Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief. CD players are how people listened to music before iPods were invented. Radiohead were one of the most exciting and original rock bands of your parents’ generation. However, your mum was (understandably) a bit cranky at the time and turned it off.
The day you were born was the hottest day of Summer 2006 in Melbourne (43 degrees). However, you and your parents did not venture outside of the hospital’s air conditioning for the entire day, so all of us were oblivious to this heat. The only indication was later that evening when the power failed across the entire hospital, and the air conditioning cut out for a couple of hours. Your parents crossed their fingers in the hope that no emergency operations were being performed at the time the blackout occurred.
You were delivered naturally, and your mum used very little in the way of pain relief. In the early 2000s, the height of medical technology for childbirth pain relief was a procedure called an epidural, but there were also other methods of pain relief available, such as drugs like pethidine. However, your parents were firm believers in you being born in the most natural way possible, and so your mum (bravely) forewent any of these. At home she used this thing called a TENS machine which passes electrical pulses through the lower back to distract you from the pain, and later in the Family Birth Centre she took a large number of mouthfuls of nitrous oxide gas during contractions to take the edge off, but that was it. In hindsight, she didn’t expect the whole process to be quite as painful as it actually was. Many mothers say that you forget the pain immediately after you see your baby for the first time. She hasn’t forgotten it yet.
As a result of the fact that she inhaled so much nitrous oxide, your mum threw up about a litre of green liquid about 5 minutes after you popped out. I waited to see if her head would spin around, but it didn’t. Oh, and by the way: that was a reference to a movie that was made before you were born. In fact, it was made before your dad was even born (but not your mum—she was two). Your mum watched that movie about 100 times when doing her university thesis. That may explain some things for you, I don’t know.
For several months leading up to your birth, your mum ran a baby tipping competition, to see who could guess your gender, the day you would arrive, and your birth weight. Your great-aunt Claire, who is a talented artist living in Cairns, was closest and won the competition. Your parents haven’t sent her a prize yet, even though they promised. They’ll get around to it one day.
The name of the midwife who delivered you was Julie. She was a very down-to-earth and friendly woman who may have been a football coach in a former life. She encouraged and coaxed your mum with a ferocity not unlike that witnessed on the sidelines at an AFL game—when your mum was exhausted and declared with the utmost finality, “I can’t push any more, I just want to sleep, I can’t do it!!!” she responded with “Yes you can! You’re a legend! Now give me one more push!!” and it obviously worked. Your dad started to get in on the act too—his younger years spent playing and watching a lot of basketball served him well in this regard.
When you were on the way down the birth canal, you played a little game of hide and seek with your parents: your head surfaced briefly, then you slid back in again. You repeated this about 5 or 6 times, before finally popping out. Soon after your birth, your father was heard to remark to your mother, “It was like the miniature fox terrier I had as a kid—Toby—when he jumped up on the couch: he would jump up and down for a few times before he finally made it all the way up”. Your mum’s response was “Can I sleep now?” In hindsight, your dad feels a bit guilty about likening you to a dog after only knowing you for a couple of minutes.
In the first few days of your life at the hospital, your mum had some problems breastfeeding you (largely because you had taken a big chomp on both of her nipples on the first day and they were excruciatingly sore). As a result, you were constantly hungry and didn’t sleep very well. The only way your dad could get you to go to sleep was to rock you in front of the TV while the Australian Open tennis tournament was playing. Roger Federer won, and it was his 7th grand slam title. He was 24 years old.
Process of Deduction Things that go bump in the night... or oink...