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“How many will be breast-feeding?” asks the Australian nurse with the hefty shoulders.
All hands but one shoot up. A modern group, the new generation, and the one lone bottle-feeder, who might have (who knows?) something wrong with her breasts, is ashamed of herself. The others look politely away from her. What they want most to discuss, it seems, are the differences between one kind of disposable diaper and another. Sometimes they lie on mats and squeeze each other’s hands, simulating contractions and counting breaths. It’s all very hopeful. The Australian nurse tells them not to get in and out of the bathtub by themselves. At the end of an hour they are each given a glass of apple juice.
There is only one woman in the class who has already given birth. She’s there, she says, to make sure they give her a shot this time. They delayed it last time and she went through hell. The others look at her with mild disapproval. They are not clamouring for shots, they do not intend to go through hell. Hell comes from the wrong attitude, they feel. The books talk about discomfort.
“It’s not discomfort, it’s pain, baby,” the woman says.
The others smile uneasily and the conversation slides back to disposable diapers.
Vitaminized, conscientious, well-read Jea
As Jea
When they reach the hospital, the woman gets out of the car and is through the door by the time A. has come around to help Jea
There has been an epidemic of babies during the night and the maternity ward is overcrowded. Jea
A. arrives and they sit uneasily, listening to the screams. Finally Jea
Jea
“I think I have back labour,” she says to A. They get out the handbook and look up the instructions for this. It’s useful that everything has a name. Jea
When the nurse comes back, she has a wheelchair. It’s time to go down to the labour room, she says. Jea
As they go by the check-in desk a woman is wheeled past on a table, covered by a sheet. Her eyes are closed and there’s a bottle feeding into her arm through a tube. Something is wrong. Jea
In the dim labour room Jea
There is something else in her bag that she doesn’t remove. It’s a talisman, given to her several years ago as a souvenir by a travelling friend of hers. It’s a rounded oblong of opaque blue glass, with four yellow and white eye shapes on it. In Turkey, her friend has told her, they hang them on mules to protect against the Evil Eye. Jea