My Mother was the First one to Touch my Baby
Thursday 11 October 2001 I fell pregnant when I was 20 after returning from a hitchhiking session through Europe with my younger sister, Kate. I came back home to pack up and move to Ireland to study drama but when I realised the constant nausea was morning sickness, I made plans to move to a nearby farm community. I wanted my child to be born into the world in a natural setting. I had grown up on a farm North West of Ceres and my mother while not trained to, had fallen into the role of being the farm labourers’ midwife. When I was expecting my first baby, I saw no reason why my mother should not be the person to support and assist me. I wrote the following two years later when I was expecting my second child. * I woke up with a desperate urge to shit at about one in the morning. I went to the toilet, came back to bed again and lay down again. I tried to sleep. Again, I wanted to poo, so again I went to the toilet, relieved myself and came back to bed. I tried to snuggle up to Nolan but my boep* was in the way, so I turned around and tried to sleep. Again, I needed to poo, so off I went, but this time only dribbles of shit came out. My abdomen cramped. I went back to bed. The cramps kept on coming. Building up…building up…building up…ebbing away…ebbing away…ebbing away… I sat up. I put on the bedside light. I sat and felt the pains come and go…not sure. Scared to wake Nolan up. Eventually I did. He sat up immediately… I phoned my mother. She was at a friend’s house. She told me to time the contractions. If they were less than a minute apart, she said, I would have to go into hospital because she wouldn’t able to get to me on time. My mother was going to go and fetch my sister Kate and then would be on her way. I timed the contractions. 1 minute and 35 seconds apart. 1 minute and 20 seconds apart. 1 minute and 40 seconds apart. They felt fast and hard. I panicked. I didn’t want to go into hospital. I was set on a home birth. The night before I had read (funnily enough) that to relax and slow down labour, a warm bath would help. Nolan ran a bath while I tried desperately to breathe through the rushes of pain. Breathing was impossible and painful, unbearable. Easier to grit my teeth, not breathe and bear it. Once in the bath, great relief flooded my body. I relaxed in the pink hue of the candlelight. I could begin to breathe with the pain. I phoned my best friend Nikki (who was studying in Jo´burg) from the bath. Nikki phoned me back from her dad’s cell phone. So good to speak to her, wished she was there, so far away. Nolan had been instructed by my mother to line the bed with black bags. To get all our towels and sheets together. To put a pot of water, with a pair of scissors and a string in it, on to boil I ate a paw-paw in the bath. After an hour in the bath, I got out, wrapped in a white towelling bathrobe. The starkness of the light in the kitchen brought on the pain tenfold. It slammed into me. At that moment, my mother arrived in a rented car. I hung on her. Hello Mom. Back in the...
Read MoreAn’ Nooi’s Birth Story
Before my mother began attending the births of the local women on our farm, a woman in labour would be driven to Ceres Provincial hospital to give birth. This is the story of a birth which took place one year on Christmas Eve. I must warn you that this is not a happy birth story. * It was the night before Christmas and the house was dark. There was a soft tap tap tapping on the window. Chaka the dog jumped up from his designated place at the foot of the bed and growled. Baas (my stepfather and a paranoid sleeper) sat bolt upright and jerked towards the window behind him. There was a candle burning softly on the window sill. Oom (Uncle) Jiems was peering in through the window, his face pressed right against it, his breath, steaming it up. My mother, Carol, with my sleeping sister Gypsy at her breast, lay still. My mother was awake now but she did not stir, not wanting to wake her baby. Baas, irritated, opened the latch and tried to swing open the window but the drunken man outside continued to press his face against the window, looking in; not seeing Baas. Baas quietly motioned for Jiems to move, waving his hand. Jiems noticed him and stumbled from the window, falling over. Poepdronk (literal translation: fart-drunk; meaning: incredibly drunk). Baas pushed the window open and peered through the window at the man sitting drunk in a bed of African marigolds. “Wat issit?” (“What is it?”) Baas hissed. “Baas, Nooi is besig om the kraam. Die baba kom vanaand,” (“Baas, Nooi is in labour. The baby is coming tonight.”) Jiems mumbled. Jiems looked dizzy and confused, his large bottom lip protruding. This was not the confusion of a first-time father though. This man was well into his fifties and already had three teenage daughters and one grandchild. This was the confusion of someone who was hopelessly and helplessly inebriated. Baas sighed, closed the window and dragged himself out of the comfort of the king-size bed. He pulled on a T-shirt (he always slept in his jeans) and slipped his feet into his mud-caked Dakotas. He fumbled for his cigarettes (Gunston, extra strong ) and lit one, then coughed. He was awake now and wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. He looked at my mother who was watching him, her head propped up on one arm. He could see in her eyes that she was wondering what he was going to do. Baas coughed and left the room, his cigarette cupped in his left hand, gangster-style. My mother gently lifted Gypsy’s head from her arm and turned my baby sister onto her tummy and covered her well. My mother gave the little girl child’s face a little stroke. Then Carol buttoned up the front of her nightie and got out of bed. She pulled on her brown striped towelling dressing gown. My mother lifted the candle from the windowsill, yawned and then made her way to the kitchen. The kitchen door was open. Baas was outside talking to Jiems. She could hear their low mumbling. Men’s voices. My mother filled the aluminium kettle with water and lit the gas stove. Then she took three cups from the cupboard and filled each one with two teaspoons of Ricoffy and sugar and milk. Then she stood next to the gas stove and waited for the kettle to begin steaming and rattling. Baas came back inside, rubbing his hands. Jiems was gone. Jiems was gone. The coffee was not ready yet. Baas walked past my mother and through to...
Read MoreCarol Catches Twins
My mother, Carol, was a ‘lay’ midwife (ie she never received any formal training as a midwife) but accidentally ‘fell’ into the catching of the babies on our farm Droëland. This is the story of the birth of the first set of twins she attended. They were undiagnosed twins (i.e unexpected): Willie and Sannie had been on Droëland for about a month when Sannie went into labour. They arrived one Sunday morning on foot with their two children, a boy and a girl, and settled into the labourer’s cottage next door to Dappie and Marie up at the Barracks (this was what the labourer’s cottages were unofficially called). Sannie was heavily pregnant at the time and my mother joked that Sannie was carrying a rugbyspan (a rugby team). Two weeks after Sannie and Willie’s arrival, the farm labourers were being driven into Ceres for their bi-weekly shopping trip on nat naweek. (Literal translation of ‘nat naweek’: ‘wet weekend.’ This refers to the weekends when the farm labourers were paid. They were paid every other Saturday. Unpaid weekends were referred to as ‘droë naweek’, ie. ‘dry weekend.’ ‘Nat naweek’ also refers to the fact that most of the farm labourer’s wages were spent on wine.) Two vehicles, the truck and the bakkie (pick up truck), drove the 60km dirt road in convoy into town. It was about eight in the morning on a beautiful spring day in October. At the turn at Witklippies (one of the neighbouring farms), the truck overtook the bakkie. Willie was sitting in the back of the bakkie and eager to get to the bottle store before anyone else, decided to jump from the bakkie on to the back of the truck. He missed and landed on his head. He was never quite the same again after that. Smell the freshness of the air. The farm only smells like this in spring. Fresh and warm. My mother was in the kitchen with my younger sister Gypsy. “Mami! Mami!” Jasmin (my younger sister)’s voice called from outside. Jasmin had been up at the Barracks and had heard Sannie screaming from the labourer’s cottage. Jasmin had nervously poked her head around the corner of Sannie’s bedroom and seen Sannie crouched on a thin sponge mattress on the cold cement floor in strong labour; the usually shy and quiet woman behaving like an enraged wild animal. Births on the farm had by now become routine for our mother. She now had a well stocked birthing kit. Our mother took her time in getting ready (much to the irritation of my two youngest sisters). She chopped some wood and washed the dishes and put some food on to cook on the wood burning cast iron Defy Dover stove, before heading up to the young woman in labour. Our mother walked up to the Barracks with Gypsy and Jasmin, who rushed ahead burning with curiosity. My sisters ran up and down, rushing our mother along but our mother refused to be rushed and ambled slowly up to the Barracks. Our mother was ushered into the bedroom by An’ Ragel and An’ Christine. Gypsy and Jasmin joined the other curious bystanders in the kitchen (mostly children). Jasmin had been instructed to boil a pot of water with some cotton yarn (to tie off the umbilical cord) and a pair of little scissors. Jasmin did this, feeling useful and proud at having been given this job. The labour went quickly and smoothly and soon a little boy slid out of his mother. Our mother wrapped him in a towel she had brought with her (there was absolutely nothing in the house for a baby). The new mother pressed her breast to the baby’s little face and he began to eagerly suckle it....
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