Dear Olivia [Long!]

Prologue: This is shameful - Oliviais turning 3 in a month's time! But Lily's birth has inspired me to finish Olivia's birth story, so here you go. Hopefully Lily's to follow in a much shorter time frame than Olivia's... ;)

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Dear Olivia,

By now, you have probably already read Molly's birth story. You might even be wondering why your own story has been written so far after the fact. Let it be known that our first year with you, my darling daughter, was very different to our first year with Molly...

I started out to write a birth story; when I wrote Molly's, it was a story about the pregnancy and birth of our first child, an all-encompassing experience that picked up and mixed about our entire life and put it back together in strange and exciting new ways. I set out to write the same kind of story about Olivia's birth.

I was a quarter of the way through before I realised I wasn't writing a story about Olivia's birth - I was writing a story about our lives, in which Olivia's birth featured, near the end.

What was the difference? I think that the main difference is that Molly's birth, in many ways, defined our life - we would never be the same again afterwards; the rite of passage that is pregnancy and birth left its mark indelibly on us both. Olivia's birth, however, although a major event, in many ways influenced, and was influenced by the many other events occurring simultaneously in our life.

What does that mean? In some ways, I feel sorry that it was like that; that because of life circumstances we could not enjoy the experience in the same way that we enjoyed our pregnancy and Molly's birth. In hindsight, I rue the timing of Olivia's birth; we had intended to have a longer gap between Molly and Olivia, and changed our minds, and I regret the toll that two pregnancies so close together took on Victoria's health. But in many ways, I think that the difference between the two pregnancies is part of a natural progression, a part of the "circle of life". In many ways, you never do step into the same river twice - having done it before, a second pregnancy and birth will always feel different due to our prior experience. As well as the significant investment of time and energy that goes into raising a toddler!

A lot of the subtext of the story that follows arises out of this feeling of regret; the fear that one day Olivia might feel less valued than Molly, simply because she arrived at a time when our lives were in a very different state.

I wrote Molly's birth story when she was five weeks old. That seems a pretty fair standard; five weeks means that the events surrounding the pregnancy and birth are still quite fresh in our minds. By that reckoning, this birth story is only 145 weeks late.

The weeks, and months, following Olivia's birth were among the most hectic and difficult of our lives. Despite the best of intentions, Olivia is almost three years old as I write this and try to cast the eye of my memory back over two years to recapture the experience of our second pregnancy, and birth.

In the months after Molly's birth, we found that our newly expanded family had outgrown our house in Sydney's west. We had previously been renting a house from friends who had moved to Perth; this was the house where Molly was born. And so, as sad as we were to leave Molly's birthplace, we knew we would have to move to something larger. Who would ever have guessed that a new baby would bring with it so much extra equipment?

I had returned to work at the Children's Hospital at Westmead by this stage, and so much of the work of finding a new home fell onto Victoria's shoulders. We had adjusted to our new lifestyle by this time; Victoria woke up to Molly at night, breastfeeding her, while I slept; then, in the morning, I would get up with Molly while Victoria slept, often rocking Molly for more than an hour to get her to sleep. She loved being on the move, and to this day, we still believe that the best purchase we made in the lead-up to Molly's birth was the bassinet stand on castors that we slept her in during the day; I must have almost dislocated my shoulder as I clicked away at my computer each morning, one-handed, rocking her with the other, until Victoria woke up, when I would give Molly back for some cuddle-time while I made the bed, got dressed, cleaned up, and cooked some dinner ready for the evening.

Eventually, Victoria found our new home; a brand new estate only ten minutes way from our current house; four bedrooms, two stories, and even a small back yard. Moving was a less-than-pleasant experience, but it passed smoothly enough, and within a month, we had settled into what we thought would be our home for a few more years while we enjoyed our new family and began scraping together the money for a deposit so that we could someday own our own home.

Little did we know that things were going to change so significantly over the coming eighteen months.

Within six weeks of moving into the new house, we were contacted by our real estate agent to inform us that the owner had encountered financial difficulties and was selling. We were warned that we could be given short notice to move at any time.

We were devastated! We had hoped to settle in this house for a few years. It was new, clean and comfortable, and within our price range. We had only just spent a small fortune moving house here, and now we were under the sword of Damocles, waiting to be evicted at any time.

Victoria's mother was staying with us at the time, and watching the anguish we were going through, must finally have come to a decision.

"What if I could lend you the money for a deposit. Would you buy a house? Would you move back to Port Macquarie?"

Of course we would! It had always been our plan to move back closer to our families; Sydney had been a one year work opportunity that stretched on into six. Port's two hospitals were both private, and any kind of permanent work was difficult to find. But only a month earlier, the base hospital in Port Macquarie had been returned to public ownership, and their children's ward there was hiring again. The time was right, but we had no idea that Victoria's mother had the capacity to help us out in that way. We were in for a major surprise.

Within 48 hours, the decision had been made, and plans were afoot. Victoria's mother had some money saved we didn't know about. If we were willing to use it to move back to Port Macquarie, then she would be willing to loan it to us.

Over the next five months, we slowly packed up our house and began finalising our lives in Sydney. I gave my notice at work, and felt more than a little pang of sadness to be leaving a job I truly loved for the great unknown of Port Macquarie Base Hospital, especially as I had not secured full-time work there yet! We had six years worth of friendships that we would be bidding a sad goodbye to, but at the same time, I felt the stirrings of excitement. It had been six years since I had been able to go to the beach regularly; six years of sweltering through Western Sydney summers with the nearest sea breeze a three-hour drive away. And I treasured my memories of growing up in and around the water, in a quiet river-side village. My parents had made the same decision we were making, when I was at a similar age to the age Molly was now. They, too, had left the city to ensure their children could grow up in a place free of violent crime, of smoke and smog and pollution.

I received word that I had scored an interview for a full-time position in the children's ward at Port Macquarie Base Hospital. The only drawback: it was scheduled for only a few days after my brother-in-law's twenty-first birthday party, and we would still be staying in an apartment on the Gold Coast! After some careful negotiating, the hospital agreed to a phone interview. It was the first - and most probably the last - time I have ever sat an interview for a job in my pyjamas. And they must have been good-looking pyjamas as well, because by the end of the day, I had been offered the opportunity I had been waiting for for six years - full time work in Port Macquarie.

Our plans were cemented. We were moving, and earlier than we had anticipated.

We had our leaving celebrations late in October; they coincided with Victoria and Molly's birthdays. And with a final wave, we left Sydney, and began the long drive back to a place that we had always planned to call home. I think it was on this drive we really began discussing, for the first time, when we planned to have our second child. That we would have more children was a foregone conclusion. Victoria wanted six children. I myself didn't have a specific number picked out; I have always thought, and still do, that the birth of a child is such an enormous event and has such a spectacular impact on a family that it is quite trite to aim for a specific number. It had always been my intention to take each child as they came, to re-evaluate after each was born, and as long as it felt right, to keep adding to our little family. And the many hours of rocking Molly notwithstanding, it did feel right to have another baby. Molly was one year old already, and she was a model child - beautiful, intelligent, mostly a good sleeper. I was ready. But we knew that falling pregnant and building a house at the same time was probably something of a disastrous combination, so we decided that we would wait until we were in our new house - our first home - before we would conceive again.

Our beginnings in Port Macquarie were a tumultuous time - the pressures of building a new house, reuniting with family, starting a new job, all combined in a heady ****tail of stress and pressure. But our desire to grow our family cut through all of these emotions, and sooner than we had planned, we found ourselves trying to conceive in our rented house, as our new house slowly took shape.

Although we didn't plan the timing, it was almost exactly the same time of year we had fallen pregnant with Molly - January, just after the new year. By the end of the month, Victoria was already starting to experience pregnancy symptoms - sore, heavy breasts and the vague, nagging nausea and fatigue that she remembered so well. We tested a few days before her period was due - and it was negative. It was our first ever negative pregnancy test, and we were disappointed, but her pregnancy symptoms continued, and I think deep-down we both knew that, test notwithstanding, this was the real thing. And when her period was several days late, we re-tested - and got the positive test we were waiting for.

We were thrilled, but also apprehensive; Victoria's parents had been so disappointed when we announced our first pregnancy, and as far as they were aware, we had planned to delay conceiving until after we moved into our new house. We were braced for another wave of disapproval, and had decided not to tell them until the end of the first trimester, but we had not counted on "mother's intuition". Not a fortnight after our positive pregnancy test, with morning sickness in full-swing, Victoria went out to lunch with her mother, and by the end of their meal, she had guessed that Victoria was once more expecting. This time, I am glad to say, the reaction was a much more positive one.

Sadly, the pressures of morning sickness, pregnancy-induced fatigue, building a new house, finding our feet in new jobs took their toll as the weeks drew on. Molly was such a good little girl but even she had her bad days - I remember getting a call from Victoria one afternoon, in floods of tears, sobbing on the phone that Molly couldn't sleep and that she couldn't cope anymore. I left work early, called a taxi, and raced home as fast as I could to find the house empty, the breakfast dishes piled on the sink, flies buzzing around the bin. I withered inside, knowing how house-proud Victoria was, and how much of a toll her pregnancy must have been taking on her to leave the house in such a state. I found her next door, being comforted by a neighbour who had heard her crying and invited her over, Molly asleep in their bedroom.

I couldn't thank that neighbour enough.

It was unfortunate that all of the people around us could not be so generous. As the date of completion of our house drew closer, we contacted the family that we were house-sitting for to let them know that building was ahead of schedule and that we would be moving out early. We offered to continue to take care of the house, to visit daily to feed their cat and make sure the house was okay, but they were upset and decided to cut their holiday short and come home early. The final weeks leading up to their return were a whirlwind of packing, ferrying boxes to our new house, and cleaning our rented home madly. The family arrived back the day after our final clean, but unfortunately not before I had removed a few items from their garage; when I returned for those items several days later, they refused to release them until we had paid them an extra sum of money that we disputed. More stress - in the end, I ended up giving in and paying the money. I hated being extorted, and I still resent it. We have never seen them or spoken to them since.

I think it was all of this anguish that planted the first seeds of doubt in Victoria's mind about your health. She was so sick, vomiting all of the time, and she had started to take medication for her reflux symptoms. She became convinced that there was something wrong with Olivia. So when the time for the ultrasound came, she turned to me as we drove to the medical imaging offices.

"Do you want to find out the sex?"

I didn't; we hadn't with Molly and it felt like part of the surprise, part of the anticipation would be ruined. We agreed not to find out, and we had our ultrasound. But Olivia was bashful! Despite their best efforts, they could not get some of the views they needed to get, so they sent us home, with instructions for Victoria to present the next day, while I was at work.

The next day, when I got home, Victoria approached me with a solemn look on her face. "There's something I need to tell you," she said, and I sat down with her, worried.

"What is it?" I asked.

"...I've found out the sex of the baby," she said, in a quite voice, looking away from me. I laughed out loud.

She had felt she needed something to look forward to, something special that would reinforce her bond with the baby, and so she had found out. It didn't worry me in the slightest that she knew, and after asking again whether I wanted to know (I didn't) she promised that she would keep it a secret. And she did - until just two weeks before Olivia's birth, when she inadvertently showed me a pink baby album that she had bought. She didn't even know that I was in the room and had seen it, but by that time, I already had my own suspicions.

I still bought a boy card and a girl card, just in case.

One of Victoria's midwife friends, Olivia, was training to become a Calmbirth instructor. We had attended a hypnobirthing course during our pregnancy with Molly, but the circumstances of her labour and birth had left us feeling regretful that we did not have the opportunity to apply what we had learned. When Olivia offered to give us Calmbirth instruction for free, we jumped at the opportunity, and our Calmbirth nights soon became a highlight of our preparation for Olivia's birth.

In the lead-up to the impending birth, and with so many problems put behind us, my excitement began to grow that soon we would be meeting our new baby, and when I compared my feelings then to my feelings immediately before Molly was born, I was happy to feel so relaxed about the upcoming birth - after all, we'd done it all once before, and I knew what to expect. Unlike Victoria, who had been unable to shake her feelings of impending doom throughout the pregnancy, I felt confident that our new baby's birth into this world would be uneventful. Right up until the last minute, we had been unable to settle on a name - we were undecided as far as girl's names were concerned, and for a boy, I wanted Samuel, and Victoria wanted Harrison.

Finally, my leave arrived, with no sign yet of a baby. I relished those days just before the birth - ample time to relax, and make final preparations for the new arrival, and some time, at last, after two years of constant stress, to relax, to enjoy our new house, and to spend time with my family.

Uncle and aunty-to-be, Matthew and Bec, came - and went - without seeing a baby, on a visit timed to hopefully coincide with the birth. Little did they, and we, know that bub had other plans - it was quite comfortable where it was. The due date passed with no signs of labour other than occasional Braxton Hicks contractions. Victoria followed many old wives tales that as a midwife she might have scoffed at - at one stage even resorting to gin and seven laps up and down the Shelley Beach stairs! We fast grew impatient waiting for our new baby to arrive, not the least because of what happened with our midwife.

Myra, our favourite midwife from when Molly was born, had to our dismay double-booked herself - she had committed to coming to us in Port Macquarie, and another client in Sydney, in the hopes that her Sydney client would go into labour early, and that we would be late. Unfortunately, as bad luck would have it, we were both late, and this was yet another source of stress. Victoria agonised over our dilemma, until finally she came to a decision - we confronted Myra, asked for our money back, and arranged for one of Victoria's friends - Olivia, our Calmbirth midwife - to be present at the birth instead. Myra left, and it was only later that we heard that she had missed her other client's birth by several hours, en route back to Sydney.

With that final disappointment behind us, the 42 week mark was looming. The hospital had already advised that we consider having an induction of labour, and they were quite flummoxed when we decided against it, even asking us to sign a statement in our own antenatal file that we would not hold the hospital responsible for any misadventures arising from your birth. I laughed inwardly as we signed it; of course we wouldn't hold the hospital responsible. We wouldn't be at the hospital.

With Molly there had been a long build-up to labour - a gradual increase in the frequency and intensity of the Braxton hicks contractions. This time, however, there were only a couple of episodes of mild contractions, that fizzled away to nothing, before, shortly before 1:00 am on the 11th of October, Victoria awoke to a "popping" sound, and a sudden sensation of wetness. I slept on blissfully unaware as she leapt out of bed and shuffled to the toilet, knees together. Her waters had broken.

I awoke very soon after to her soft moaning. No build-up this time - with the waters broken, labour began straight away, and without even asking I could tell this was different to her other episodes. I knew that Victoria was finally in labour. A quick check in the diary confirmed that it was good timing - Olivia was not working today.

Initially, we laboured in the lounge room, music playing softly and candles lit, Victoria on her hands and knees, leaning into the lounge, breathing and humming through each contraction, and me, holding her quietly, rubbing her back, and pressing down on a warm wheat pack. In due course, I telephoned Victoria's mother, and shortly after that, midwife Olivia.

By the time Victoria's mother arrived, we had moved to the bathroom, where Victoria was labouring on the toilet. The contractions were getting more intense, and I remember reflecting that this labour seemed to be moving a bit quicker than our labour with Molly. With Ann there to help out, I was free to go out of the bathroom for a moment, unpack Victoria's labour kit in the kitchen, connect the oxygen cylinder, and generally do those things that are really not that necessary, but that make an expectant father feel little bit more in control.

Shortly after, Olivia arrived, as calm and serene as she always had been as our Calmbirth instructor. She assisted Victoria into the shower, but this helped little with her pain; only a bit over two hours into her labour, and Victoria was already beginning to call out with each contraction. A good sign, I felt; with Molly, Victoria had laboured most effectively when she was shouting. Victoria's mother was assisting, and between the three of us we managed to manoeuvre Victoria into the spa bath.

Once in the bath, Victoria seemed able to settle into her labour and really started working hard to birth this baby. I was manning the cameras - video and still - and in hindsight, I regret that I felt distanced from the experience, through the lens of a camera, but at the time I didn't notice it and the video and photographs that we have of the birth are mementos of the day that I will treasure forever.

Even though I knew that labour was progressing faster than Molly, I could hardly believe it when I heard Victoria say "I can feel the head". Under the water, visibility was limited, but I watched enrapt as Ann put her hand under the water to feel - a tiny, hard head, covered with a slicked mop of dark hair, slowly emerging and retreating as Victoria laboured. I released a long sigh, a pent-up breath that I didn't even realise I had been holding. It was as if two years of tension was released from me in that one moment.

Several contractions - and some choice words - later, and your head slipped out. Another, and your tiny body. Victoria scooped you up out of the water, and held onto you desperately, fiercely, gasping and crying, as we all looked on. Your midwife, your father, your grandmother, all of us watched in awe, and I think we all knew that in that moment that despite being the three most important people in your life, there was no way we, or any other force in the universe that could have loosened Victoria's grip.

We had a new daughter.

Victoria thought I didn't know that we were going to be dressing our new baby up in pink blankets; she didn't realise that, just a few weeks before your birth she had given the game away by pulling out a pink baby album she had bought while she thought I wasn't in the room. But she had done so well, keeping it a secret for so long and respecting my wish not to know the sex of the baby, that I could not be angry - and I had bought both a pink and a blue outfit for the baby, just in case. At the first appropriate juncture after your birth, I sneaked out into the study, printed out one of the digital photographs I had taken, placed it in the new baby card I had bought weeks earlier, and packed the pink outfit into a gift bag.

Our daughter got her first present before she was an hour old.

I got the second hold of our new daughter, and Ann the third; between us, we cuddled her and warmed her while Victoria birthed the placenta and showered. The benefit of prior experience, as well as a ready-made birth pool (the corner spa in our ensuite that we had installed especially for waterbirth) meant that the clean up from this birth was so much quicker than the aftermath of Molly's. By the time the sun was well up, we were all three of us tucked warm into bed, Victoria, our new daughter, and myself, for a quick nap, before Molly, a newly-crowned big sister, woke up.

Oblivious to the entire goings on of the early morning, Molly woke, was lifted from her cot, and stumbled, bleary-eyed, out into the lounge, to be greeted by Gran, Mummy, Daddy - and a new baby. Despite the months of anticipation, she seemed rather nonplussed at first - I guess new babies don't do anything much exciting. Molly's love for her sister would blossom over the weeks to follow, as she came to know her and love her, and granted her the nickname that she would keep for the next two years, and I suspect will stay with her for the rest of her life - "Gibby".

Of course, nine months notice was clearly not enough for us to decide on a name - it took us nearly another week to decide what we would call our baby girl. Victoria liked Jessica, but I didn't. After some debate, we realised that the obvious solution was staring us in the face. One of the names on our shortlist had a particular bearing on the circumstances surrounding your birth.

Olivia.
And that is how, on the 11th of October, 2006, at 4:15 am, Olivia Rose Jones was born into this world. There is, of course, more to the story. There are many more chapters to be told - stories both happy - your first steps, your first birthday, the fun and mischief and misadventures you have had with your big sister - and some bittersweet - sleepless nights, your eventual diagnosis with gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, the terrible illnesses that left your mother's health ravaged and robbed you of the breast you loved so dearly, your first broken bone, at the tender age of nine months. But this seems as good a place as any to rest for a while. As I finish writing this story, you are nearly three years old. Soon, you will be talking. Soon after that, you will follow your big sister to school.

Soon enough, we will be able to write your story, the two of us, together.

And so it was, against this background of upheaval, struggles and strife, that you came into this world.

I want you to understand, my darling, because I am afraid; I am afraid that, in the future, you might sense some of the sad times that you were born into; that you might feel that the circumstances surrounding your journey into this world must somehow influence your future, or the way we feel about you. Our life had become very different in the months between your sister's birth and your own. But this was not your doing, my darling; and it is important that you know that even though things were different when you were born, we loved you no less than we loved Molly; that is, fully and completely. And no matter how difficult things were for us, you should know this; that nothing good comes without sacrifice.

All my love,

Daddy xxx