Adri van der Heijden - Tonio - a requiem memoir

Before unleashing a wonder, a woman first has to prove she is capable of abandoning all dignity.

Back when Miriam was still on the bed, the women whispered among themselves about the dilation, which with a crinkling rubber glove was established to be eight centimetres. ‘At ten, we start pushing.’

Now, even more soft-spokenly, they measured eight-and-a-half, which apparently was enough to give the green light for pushing. There must be a reason for their haste. Miriam once again was lying on her back on the floor, her legs spread wide.

‘You’re going great, honey. We can already see a bit of its scalp … and some hair …’

I didn’t 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: ‘the other bed’.

8

‘Don’t be alarmed if a few people come in,’ the obstetrician said to Miriam. ‘Obstetrics interns. We’ll be sure they keep to themselves.’

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 couldn’t 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.

‘Yea-a-a-ah …!’ 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 Tonio’s birth:

‘With 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 butcher’s. For half a second, there was the panic: stillborn. But as she turned around, the midwife jabbed the little nipper in his side — a routine, almost malicious whap that got our son bawling. The piercing cries also brought on my own tears — finally. I prodded an index finger against the miniature fist. The fingers wound themselves viscidly around it. It was the little boy’s very first grip on life.’

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 she’d ever really recover. Visions of the Kanadreuffe’s mother in the novel Karakter — as a schoolboy I’d read the first few pages — 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 years during delivery.

The afterbirth still had to be removed, but the umbilical cord came, twisted and gaudy, into view. The doctor handed me a pair of episiotomy scissors. ‘It’s a tradition here that the father cuts the umbilical cord. Things didn’t go that smoothly today. We had to hurry.’ She fastened two clamps next to each other on the cord. ‘Can you do it like this?’ Just clip it between the clamps … yes, that’s right.’

It made a creepy, crunching sound.

‘We’ll give you a piece of the umbilical cord to take with you. Sealed in plastic. As a memento.’

I watched as the baby was washed, dried off (more like patted dry) and weighed. He was three-and-a-half weeks premature, and underweight. The scale’s reading was given to the white-coated man, who was still writing everything down. Weight, length, the various times of the entire process. In the six months between high school and university, I had a job as ‘timekeeper’ at a machine factory in Eindhoven. Maybe that’s what this man’s job was called, too. He entered the time of birth as 10:16.

9

‘Have a name for him yet?’ asked the midwife.

‘Ach, all those pretty girl’s names …’ I answered. ‘Yesterday we were sure it would be a girl. Tonio. That’s his name now. Not Esmée. Tonio. Hello, Tonio.’

His cries, as he was trussed into a nappy, were high-pitched and yet hoarse. Miriam’s weakly beckoning voice nearly got drowned out. I went over to her.

‘I’ve just unveiled the monument,’ I said. ‘Well done, babe … beautiful job.’

I kissed her wet cheek. The women removed the afterbirth. As though identifying a flower, the midwife began picking through it in front our very eyes, offering icily sober commentary about how the foetus lived in the uterus. I had rather preferred to preserve the myth of the afterbirth. An aunt who had worked as a maternity ward nurse once told me how some of her colleagues smuggled placentas home with them to feed to the dog (like they also stirred breast milk into their tea). For a moment, I was afraid the doctor would suggest we all munch down the afterbirth for lunch — which would perhaps have meant a return to the myth.

Miriam bravely endured being stitched up where she’d been torn during delivery. Later, she was taken by wheelchair, in which a sort of blotting paper had been laid, to the shower. The doctor took me aside.

‘The baby’s underweight, so we’d like to keep him for the time being … in an incubator … for observation. You can go have a look in a moment.’

10

The blonde nurse came to ask if we needed anything. No, there was enough water in the carafe, and I avoided the coffee after Miriam reminded me how the stuff could stink at inopportune moments.

‘A tranquiliser, maybe?’

Yes, Miriam thought that was a good idea. A little while later the nurse returned, keyed up, with a handful of individually wrapped pills. ‘The head of the trauma team will be here any minute.’

11

‘As I understand it,’ said Dr G., the traumatologist, ‘the accident occurred on the Stadhouderskade just as it curves past the Vondelpark. It’s a nasty spot. Notorious, I’m afraid: we see a relatively high proportion of accidents at that intersection.’

Dr G. was a tall, slender professor of surgery. He appeared self-assured by nature, but with us he had an slight air of diffidence. His expression betrayed sympathy for the parents: unlike us, he had seen Tonio’s injuries, both the external and internal ones. He was in a position to assess the boy’s chance of survival.