Just one more
One last post about one last addition to our family...
Note: If this is the first time you have come across my story, please do start at the beginning. You can find information about My Son Seb here, and part 1 here.
It is just gone four a.m. on the 18th of July 2023 — Mandela Day in South Africa, for what it’s worth. It wasn’t the reason I picked the date; not really. The date was convenient because it was exactly a week after Levi’s sixth birthday and the day that schools reopened. The fact that it is also Nelson Mandela’s birthday was a nice bonus, as was the fact that the number 18 is a nice, even round number and I am all too aware that Dr Everett likes to deliver babies on days that are even numbers.
I pose in a spot that I’ve taken photos for the past few weeks. In all of them, I am turned to the side and my belly has grown incrementally in each subsequent shot. In this morning’s photo, I am wearing shoes and my hand is resting on the retractable handle of my trusty wheeled luggage bag — the one I bought just after Sebastian died for our trip to China, the one that is cabin luggage approved.
For the first time since I started making babies in 2015, I have made it to my scheduled C-section date. I am finally going to have a calm and planned birth.
This baby was a surprise. A really, really big surprise.
In fact, I am slightly abashed to admit that I stared at the positive pregnancy test in shock while recovering from a vicious hangover after a late night with friends at a Kirstenbosch Summer Concert and the joviality that came after it.
I had even joked with my friends that I could be pregnant because my period was a bit late, but then laughed it off and chalked up to hormones. Who among us women has not had a late period? Doesn’t always mean one is pregnant, right?
We had considered a third child. In fact, we had even tried for one for over a year. But life and age and stress, perhaps, had put paid to those plans. My health had also taken strain after a particularly bad bout of Covid-19, and it had been a months-long recovery to get my full strength and energy levels back to (semi)normal.
And, then here we were: I was staring at a positive pregnancy test the day before our eighth wedding anniversary. Which meant that it had been seven years since my very first positive pregnancy test and six years since Sebastian had died.
I called Warren and, when he answered, I immediately burst into tears. I remember nothing from that conversation but I do remember that Warren laughed as soon as I told him.
“Here we go again,” he said.
The pregnancy passed in a blur, particularly the early stages. Or, at least, it seems that way now looking back on it. At the time, it probably seemed interminable.
There are flashes of memories that stick out for me:
The morning sickness that started at Week 9 and didn’t abate until Week 17.
My belly developing and growing, until finally I looked cute in certain dresses and tops.
The first time someone mentioned my pregnancy without me telling them I was pregnant (brave of them, I’ll admit, but also validating that I looked pregnant and not simply rotund).
The ache in my inner thighs and lower belly towards the end.
Being told it was a girl at the 13-week scan, and the joy this news brought my husband.
Being told that it was actually a boy at the 20-week scan.
My sons rubbing my belly during our nightly bedtime story ritual.
My sons saying their little brother’s name for the first time when we told them what it would be (and then proceeding to tell everyone who would listen what his name would be).
Even though the pregnancy was difficult because of my age, and because it was the longest I have ever been pregnant, I will always remember it with fondness. I loved being pregnant with my last baby. Probably because I fully appreciated the gravity of this being the last time I would ever have the opportunity to grow a person cell by cell, toe by toe, hair by hair.
By 8:50 a.m., we were ready to rock and roll. I was in my hospital gown — the kind that opens at the back, affording one zero dignity — and Warren was suited up in his too-large scrubs. He was looking nervous as we waited to be summoned to the operating room.
The mood was jovial and relaxed. I cannot overstate how excited my team was to be doing a scheduled birth for once.
Let me skip over the first fifteen minutes of the operation. Over the part where I get the epidural and immediately begin to feel panicked, hot, and very sick. Over the part where I go as pale as a sheet and genuinely feel that I might die. And over the part where finally — finally — the brilliant anaesthetist brought me back to myself with a clever cocktail of drugs in my IV line.
The cutting open part seemed to be quicker this time, even though there were two other babies’ worth of scar tissue to get through. And then, finally, my littlest boy was born.
We called him Remi.
And, immediately, there was an issue. Too much water on the lungs. ‘It’s normal,’ they assured me. ‘He’s so big. The cord was so plump and juicy. This big boy was going nowhere for at least another two weeks. He just wasn’t quite ready. He’ll be okay in a sec, you’ll see.’
Finally, after draining the amniotic fluid out of his breathing passages as best she could, they placed Remi on my chest in the recovery area. Even then, we could hear his grunting. His laboured breaths.
And, just like Felix, he was whisked away to be dried out in an incubator. I thought that — like Felix — he would be gone from me for a few hours.
It turned out to be a full week.
I’m writing this more than a year later and, yet, I can still remember the sheer panic and devastation I felt when I saw Remi in the NICU that evening. I was terrified. I’d chanced fate by bringing him into the world and a part of me was convinced that he’d leave the same way his brother did.
Even now, with so much time and distance, I struggle to talk about it, think about it. Possibly because, having known and smelled and cuddled and lived with Remi for close on 14 months, I cannot imagine a world without him in it.
That week feels like a foggy nightmare. He’s happy, joyful, calm, clever, and a bright and beautiful light in our lives. Thinking of him with that feeding tube down his nose, the monitors beeping, the O2 number sitting in the high 80s, feels like a different life.
Sometimes I think, ‘Was that Sebastian or Remi?’ when I think about the NICU. Two intense weeks, two very different results.
And, well, to be honest, I feel cheated.
The night that Felix was born was one of the most beautiful nights of my life. I held his tiny little body close to my chest, nursing him whenever he stirred, and marvelling at his perfect features, his ten tiny fingers, his ten tiny toes. I had been expecting to do the same with this baby.
Instead, Felix is now the only child of mine - living and dead - that I was able to hold during the first week of their lives.
It seems to have had no negative impact on Remi, though. He is charming and attached to me. His little hand waves at me when he wants me to pick him up, his mouth attempting to form the word ‘Mama’. If he cries and wants comfort, I can simply pick him up and hold him and he will immediately stop crying. He is comforted by me and soothes me; he loves me and is loved by me; he giggles at my funny faces and I delight in his antics, the beginnings of a sense of humour appearing as if by magic; he clutches my shirt to tether himself to me if a stranger smiles or speaks to him in the store, and I hold him tighter to let him know I’ll never let him go; he obliges requests for cuddles with open arms and an open heart.
He laughs at his brothers constantly. When he was smaller, his eyes would follow them. Then, he would turn his head like a little homing beacon to find them. Eventually, his whole body would turn towards the sound of their voices. Now, he follows them all over the house - speeding and slapping the floor with his hands, unable to crawl to them fast enough. I look forward to and dread the day in equal measure when he will be able to run towards them. Life will become even busier then… How wonderful. How exhausting.
Remi has come into this world a little brother. He has never, for one second, been alone in this life. Instead, his family has been a soft landing place and he will never know what it is like to feel like there is no one there for you, no one around, no one to love you.
Four pairs of arms, four pairs of eyes, four hearts, all completely in love with this new little person.
In turn, he has brought lightness and calm to our lives. He is the person that all of us did not know we needed until he was here.
He completes us.
Oh friend. Having spent some time with your 3 boys, I can picture this happy family so well. Sending all the love