‘Five minutes’. ‘Five minutes’.‘Five minutes’.
The on-call obstetrician announced that my life - our lives - would be turned upside down in exactly five minutes. He made his announcement just once, but the two words echoed inside my head. How could he possibly know this with such accuracy and confidence? I could only assume that, given his current position (between Eileen's legs) and the fact that he had already introduced himself to everyone in the room as the on-call obstetrician, he was ideally placed to make his announcement. I guessed - rightly as it turned out - that he wasn’t just guessing.
Five minutes?
Five minutes!
I was suddenly acutely aware of time.
But at the same time I was acutely aware that I was unaware of the time.
I was acutely aware that it was passing.
And quickly.
Very quickly.
Too quickly.
In five minutes (less!) my whole life - our whole lives - would change forever. We were on the cusp of our own personal and, given Eileen’s lack of clothing and the current position of the on-call obstetrician, not-so-private revolution. And I wasn’t wearing a watch. I cursed my omission.
Right at that moment my desire to know the time - the precise time, the exact time – was overwhelming. If I was – if we were - about to experience anything remotely resembling a personal revolution, I wanted to know the exact time that it occurred, how long it lasted and when it finished. Unfortunately, I had stopped wearing a wristwatch in about 1995 when I had taken delivery of my very first brick-that-masqueraded-as-a-mobile-phone. Since then I had rarely, if ever, missed that sense of comfort and security that comes with knowing that the time was always right there at your fingertips, or just a few inches above them. Until now. Now I found myself yearning for those halcyon, pre-1995, pre-brick, pre-Blackberry, pre-iPhone, innocent wristwatch days. I missed the freedom. I missed the winding. I missed the ache in my thumb and forefinger that came when you had to wind the tiny little bezel for ten minutes to change the date in the little square window. I missed it all and I wanted it back. I wanted to turn back time. Now.
But I couldn’t.
It hardly seemed to be an appropriate moment for me to ask if anyone in the room had the right time. For one thing, I was afraid that someone might assume that I was bored, or that there was something on TV that I was a tad disappointed to be missing. Nor was it really an appropriate moment for me to attempt to fish my Blackberry from the front pocket of my jeans. The truth was that it wasn’t just my own, or anyone else’s, mother who might have pointed out that my jeans were a little on the tight side. If I was being completely honest with myself, I was of a similar view myself. They were rather tight – a little too tight for a forty-year-old to be wearing in any social situation, never mind in the middle of a delivery suite on the cusp of a personal and not-so-private revolution. Consequently, the process of extracting my Blackberry from my pocket was a little easier said, and far easier imagined, than done.
In any case, removing the Blackberry from my pocket was really only half the problem. I would then need to fiddle around with it to finally get to see the exact time. This, I feared, would look, at least to the non-aficionados of the Blackberry in the room, like I was either sending a text message or, worse still, checking my work emails. Both of which, I assumed, given the fast approaching personal revolution, would be universally frowned upon.
A quick glance around the room led me to conclude that the three nurses were probably not in the Blackberry-owner demographic. I’d never set eyes on the on-call obstetrician so I was forced to guess that he would have no idea what a Blackberry was or indeed what one did. This left only Eileen, and the truth was that it was Eileen that I feared the most.
As a long-standing - and increasingly evangelical - iPhone disciple, she is prone to looks of scorn and contempt whenever a Blackberry is produced in her presence. I dreaded to think of her reaction if she noticed me playing with mine in the middle of the delivery suite when the on-call obstetrician had recently announced that our much-anticipated revolution was just five minutes away. My desire to know the time was overwhelming, but Eileen was very clearly in no mood – or position – to be confronted by her nemesis.
So, my Blackberry remained firmly in my pocket, and I remained firmly in the dark about the exact time.
To pass the time, and to provide at least a degree of distraction from my overwhelming desire to know the time, I decided to take a quick look around the delivery suite. Time was ticking by and it had just dawned on me thatI hadn’t at any point since our arrival taken in my immediate surroundings. My – our – revolution was whizzing toward me (towards us) with a sense of ever-increasing inevitability, and I suddenly I felt that it might be appropriate to have a clear idea of exactly where this revolution would take place.
Stirrups! I expected to see stirrups, and I was a little disappointed when I didn’t. I had assumed that they would be dangling from the ceiling above the bed that Eileen was lying on. I had it firmly in my mind that stirrups were very much front and centre of the whole birthing ‘thing’. I felt sure that when I was growing up I had seen a movie with a scene involving a very pregnant lady on a bed with her feet in stirrups, pushing, whilst a very matronly looking lady, with an extraordinarily large bosom, was standing beside her, bellowing at her to push ‘just a little bit harder’.
The truth was that I had no idea if stirrups were a good thing or not; whether they aided the birthing process, or hindered it. My disappointment at the lack of stirrups certainly wasn’t based on what might these days be called ‘birthing outcomes’. It was based solely on an expectation of the familiar that hadn’t materialised. Stirrups, I concluded, were obviously either a thing of the past, or they had always only ever been a thing of old movies featuring matronly looking nurses with an ample bosom. Either way, they seemed to be completely absent from the modern-day birthing experience. An experience that I was now beginning to feel very much a part of. Stirrups, if they had ever existed, had been replaced by what might best be described as leg extensions. These protruded from the end of the birthing bed, and the two nurses who were strategically positioned down at her ankles had manoeuvred each of Eileen’s legs into them. Her feet were now placed firmly against the cushioned ends of the leg extensions. I guessed – correctly as it turned out - that this would allow her to push with maximum force whenever it was suggested that pushing was required. The leg extensions with the cushioned ends meant that Eileen’s legs were going nowhere.
Whilst this was true of her legs, the rest of Eileen was free to wriggle and writhe to her heart’s content. Whilst she was certainly wriggling and writhing, Eileen’s heart appeared to be a long way from of content. She was quite obviously in what can only be described as total, complete and utter agony. That said, I have never seen anyone look as completely and utterly focussed as Eileen looked right at that moment. The recent announcement - that our own personal revolution was due in just five minutes – looked to have inspired her to find an ounce of energy, determination and willpower from somewhere. In my time as an armchair football fan, I have seen plenty of footballers appear to slip into autopilot in the final five minutes of a match, as if they are happy to allow the game to simply peter out with little more than a whimper so that they can retire as quickly as possible to the nearest – and most expensive - bar. There was no such final-whistle-approaching comfort zone complacency from Eileen. She was focussed, determined. She was clearly a million miles from her comfort zone, but she was very firmly ‘in the zone’. Her eyes were fixed firmly - and somewhat metaphorically - on the prize.
My eyes, on the other hand, were fixed firmly on the large clock on the wall. There it was! Directly above Eileen’s head. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t noticed it before. In my defence, it was a very odd place to put a clock. It looked to me to have been placed entirely for the benefit of the bit players in the scene that was unfolding in the room beneath it, leaving it completely out of sight of the scene’s leading lady. Perhaps whoever had been responsible for the positioning of clocks around the hospital had assumed that she – they - would have other things on her – on their - mind. Perhaps the clock-responsible person felt that to her – to them - the right time was neither here nor there. Perhaps that was right, but I was certainly relieved to finally know the exact time. I suddenly felt liberated. If my freedom – our freedom – was about to end, if a lifetime of ‘do-as-you-choose’ non-parenthood was to be replaced by a lifetime of ‘do-as-your-kid-says’ parenthood, at least I would know the exact time that we crossed that threshold, that we entered that brave new world.
At least I would know the exact time that the two of us became the three of us.
We had been in the delivery suite, and at the hospital, for precisely 9 minutes. No more. Not 10 minutes. We hadn’t even made double digits. For a significant proportion of those nine minutes I had either been feeling superfluous or I had been desperately trying to pinpoint exactly how I was feeling. For the remainder of the time I had been fretting about my choice of clothing or I was preoccupied with a burning desire to know the time. Now I had my answer. What’s more, the past had well and truly passed. My all too fleeting superfluous moments were well and truly behind me. They were gone. Perhaps forever.
The nurse who was positioned at Eileen’s right shoulder invited me to stand opposite her at Eileen’s left shoulder.
Every single one of the previously announced five minutes had been. And gone.
The time for our very own personal, and not so private, revolution had finally arrived.
It was, according to the impractically positioned clock on the wall above the bed, 9.09pm on Sunday 4th July.
Right there, right at that moment, ably assisted by an on-call obstetrician who I had never seen in my life before, three perfectly positioned nurses and her once superfluous-feeling, oddly-dressed, significant other, Claudia Eileen Pich – the love of my life - pushed our first daughter into the world.
And into our lives.
Pearl Matisse was born.
