I was 21 when Mum called me from her home in London to tell me she was pregnant.
The news didn’t come as a complete surprise – she’d been married to my stepdad for eight years, and I knew they wanted a child. But it still took Mum’s cautious whisper “Sarah, are you there?” for me to express delight at the news.
She returned to New Zealand six months pregnant, to prepare for the baby boy’s arrival. At the time, she was 40 years old. I remember asking her how risky childbirth was at her age. Mum seemed taken aback by my question – I think she felt young and healthy, and that she hadn’t really thought that the birth would be the dangerous part of having a child at her age. She reassured me that everything would be OK.
Sarah Finnigan-Walsh, right, and her mother Photo: Supplied
Though her pregnancy went to 41 weeks, both Mum and baby were doing well, and neither doctor nor midwife had concerns. But eventually, it was decided to break Mum’s waters – and the baby did not cooperate.
My younger sister and my aunt, who had travelled from Dunedin and Hong Kong respectively to be present for the big day, flew home without baby pictures to show off. The rest of us waited on the doctor’s word, shuttling back and forth between home and the hospital, my stepdad buying the newspaper every morning in case that day would turn out to be my little brother’s birthday.
Finally, we were given the green light for the birth to get underway. Since it had been some time since her waters had broken, Mum was injected with a drug used to speed up her labour. My stepdad and I sat with her as we waited for it to kick in, and those of us still waiting with Mum passed the time by making the most of the room’s paper towel dispenser and doodling. Earlier in the week, my sister had announced that she liked horses, “just not enough to draw one” – and so a challenge had been set to see who could draw the best.
'I like horses, just not enough to draw one' Photo: Illustration: Henrietta Harris
When it finally happened, it happened fast. Without our even really noticing it, things escalated in the room. Mum seemed to be having contractions, and people took turns holding her hand. At one point I hid in the adjoining bathroom, overwhelmed. Seeing your mother in pain like that is really quite harrowing – but hiding in a bathroom while others help her through it felt worse, and I re-entered the room.
After hours of labour, Mum started to throw up. The midwife examined her. She was still only one centimetres dilated, and it became obvious the baby was in distress.
The midwife hit the emergency call button.
Suddenly, the room was full of people. The orderly took charge with his steely quiet way, cutting a swathe through the masses to transfer her to the operating theatre. My stepdad followed them. I stayed put and cried.
Theo was born very quickly after. I met him in the waiting room, with my stepdad, the three of us waited for an update. A doctor came and told us Mum was bleeding a lot, and that she needed an emergency hysterectomy. He asked what her wishes were. I looked to my stepdad for an answer, and he looked scared.
Your parents are meant to be a source of strength and support, the one constant in the wavering times. But whatever Mum was going through in the operating room, she was going through it without us by her side – and the joy my stepdad felt at holding his first child in his arms was offset by being confronted with his wife’s mortality. I felt alone and afraid in a way I had never before.
I didn’t sleep much – none of us did. We took turns holding a very hungry baby, speaking only in response to admirers of this beautiful newborn or to poke fun at the weird late-night TV, playing to the otherwise nearly silent room.
The doctor came back into the waiting room. As relieved as I was to see him, the thought of what he might say seeped through my mind with a chill. Mum was alive, after having had an anmniotic fluid embolism, but it was unclear if she had escaped severe brain damage.
I still see things that trigger that icy feeling I had in the waiting room. It reminds me that my mum isn’t invincible – that all my parents will eventually, inevitably die
The look in my stepdad’s eyes terrified me, but tears were not an option, nor was grief. Somehow I had to try to be optimistic. Mum was a huge believer in “getting up and getting on”, and had passed this matter-of-factness onto her children; if she’d been in the waiting room, I knew that’s what she would have told me to do.
In the small hours of the morning, we were told Mum hadn’t suffered any permanent brain damage. I fell asleep where I sat almost instantly. When I woke up, I went and found Mum. She looked frail but happy. I sat down in silence on a chair across the room. She beckoned me to her and I sat on the bed facing away from her, looking out the window.
“What are you thinking, Sarah?”
I finally cried. I needed to tell her how scared I was when she wasn’t there, how much I loved her, and how she wasn’t to scare me like that again, that I wouldn’t allow it.
Six years on, I still see things – movies, news articles – that trigger that icy feeling I had in the waiting room. It reminds me that my mum isn’t invincible – that all my parents will eventually, inevitably die. Once, watching Mother and Child at the cinema, I started crying uncontrollably; Mum remained unmoved. She often says of Theo’s birth she “wasn’t really there for the whole thing”, but I was. Today, and for however long, I still get to go to her and be comforted like I wished she could have that night at the hospital.
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