yes yes

Yes yes, you've probably guessed
there's a new baby on the way.
Due one day in February
Near the beginning of the month
Maybe a boy this time, or a girl
We're excited very much.

A sudden nostalgia.

As Zap was being born I had a sudden nostalgia that I wouldn’t get to play with her ever again through Sicily’s stomach. That thrill of seeing movement in response to my touch and voice was going to be over.

Bridget's hands

Because they are worthy of their own post and I don't want to embarrass her by make grand claims about her abilities and because, so they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so this is my tribute to our Midwife.

On the origin, meaning and uses of the name ZAP

Some people have asked where the name Zap came from. After thinking about it a while I came to the conclusion that’s not the right question. A better question might be, what does the name Zap relate to?

The name Zap came to me, as I said, while we were sick. As I held Zap in my arms, after she had feed and been clothed, Bridget asked me what we were going to call her so I said Zap. Of course not for a real name but, unlike my dream, when Zap was born it wasn’t obvious what her name would be. It took us a month but we eventually fixed her name but in the meantime she has been Zap.

I got to thinking about why ‘Zap’ and the first thing that came to mind is of a game, one of the few D & D games I’ve played. I never got into gaming as a teenager. In fact, at school I don’t recall anyone being involved in games, and even if I had got involved in gaming it would have been deemed as against the religion and heavily censored.

I do, however, like playing computer games and so inevitably I played a couple of D & D games that T. use to bring over when we lived in the same neighbourhood in Dunedin. One game I particularly enjoyed was Dungeon Siege (which T. would no doubt point out is not proper D&D). In the game, one of the early spells for the nature mage (if you develop one of those characters) is Zap. While they generally use healing spells they do get caught in melee and combat and sometimes need an offensive spell like Zap. The thing with the Zap spell is that, as simple as it is, it gets more powerful as yr character does.

Several days after I made that connection I also realised it was that spell I had used when I was first learning to play the game, all my party was knocked unconscious except my nature mage and T. was watching me play. It was the story I had used at his funeral.
I quote that part here:
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Most of you will be aware that T. liked to play computer games, particularly Dungeons and Dragons whereby a small band of adventurers with various skills and abilities set out on a mission to rid the world of evil, much like the story of the Lord of the rings.

I had never played these games until I met T. One of the first games of this nature I played was a game he had lent me. He came over to visit when I was in the early stages of this game. At that stage I had two fighters and one healer in my party. As he watched over my shoulder, occasionally muttering things about my playing, I got myself into a perilous position. I was deep in a dungeon, and due to inexperience my two fighters had been knocked unconscious and my healer was about to go the same way while all around were monsters both terrible and deadly. I was about to give up and go back to a saved game from earlier when T. said “Don’t do that.”

I pointed out that my situation was hopeless but he would have none of this. Apparently it was unheroic to give up like that. T. then proceeded to talk me through this situation. I remember it well because I thought the situation was hopeless and had to place all my trust in T. guiding me through this. Within half ‘n hour T. had not only helped me get my fighters up and all the monsters defeated but he had also lifted my understanding of the game from a base ignorant level to one more sophisticated and competent.
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This is an interesting connection I think, considering Sicily was quite likely pregnant while I spoke those words at his funeral. So that’s my association with the name Zap. The original idea though, as with most original ideas, appeared out of nothing.

As to Zap’s “proper name” it is:

Lorenza Joy LeDuc.

The LeDuc comes from Zap’s maternal grandmother. The Joy is Zap’s auntie and great-aunties middle name.

Lorenza was part of a list and was actually a name we had carried for while during the pregnancy, it sort of hung round but without much conviction. It refers to the laurel tree.

Zap sticks out her head

Tuesday 04/04/06

At 00:40 Sharon arrived as a second midwife to take notes, which was great as we had Bridget’s full attention. By that stage the epidural had worn off again and Sicily was trying to find I comfortable position. By 1 o’clock she was starting to push.

The pushing went on. I stood by Sicily’s head feeding her ice chips between pushes. By 1:45 Sharon notes, “we can almost see a peep with contractions.”

Throughout the pushing part. which looked like incredibly hard work, I stood by Sicily’s head and feed her ice cubes. After the intensity of breathing together at home the pushing made me feel slightly redundant. I, even at the time, suspected part of it was my own tiredness, exhaustion and the labouring kicks.

There was one particular pushing contraction that is still clear. After a long session of pushing, Sicily who is all grim determination, sweat and something else again, lets out a short sharp and single, “Fuck” to which Bridget replied “fair enough”.

By 2:10 the head remained visible and at 2:12 Zaps head was birthed. She had a headful of dark hair like I had dreamed and posted to this blog.

There’s this story, T. told me it once sitting round his fireplace, probably after a breather, talking stuff, not so much a story as a folklore, that the first sound a baby makes contains all the names of G_d.

When Zap stuck her head out she started to talk. Not cry or anything but talk. I swear it was the most unearthly sound I had ever heard. If ever the name of G_d was spoken I swear I heard it then. A minute later she was born, caught by Sunita. By 2:30 Zap had latched on and was feeding. Strange. Strange experience.

being vigilent

As I stated earlier, when I got up on Sunday morning and realised I had slept through Sicily’s waters broking I had felt guilty, and the story of the disciples sleeping, after Christ had asked them to watch over Him while He prayed, flashed through my mind.

When we left to go to the Hospital I grabbed a couple of books figuring that if Sicily slept with the Epidural I would have something to read while I waited with her. I grabbed Thomas Mann’s ‘The Magic Mountain’ which I had been reading and I also grabbed a little Pocket addition of the Gospel According to Mark (KJV) to check the story of the disciples sleeping. Now I have several versions of the bible from simple Good News editions to more scholarly Hebrew and Greek editions with a line by line translation to English under the original text. But for some reason I grabbed this little book not even sure if the story is in Mark or one of the other gospels. Sure enough I found the story in Chapter 14.

The reason I had brought this version of Mark originally was for it’s introduction essay by Nick Cave. In the essay Cave talks about the transition from the Old Testament to the New and how he had avoided the New Testament and how the Old spoke to that part of him that “railed and hissed and spat at the world. Evil seemed to live so close to the surface of existence within it, you could smell its mad breath, see the yellow smoke curl from its many pages, hear the blood-curdling moans of despair.”

Then he goes on to state, in a passage I really like,

“But you grow up. You do. You mellow out. Buds of compassion push through the cracks in the black and bitter soil. Your rage ceases to need a name. You no longer find comfort watching a whacked-out God tormenting a wretched humanity as you learn to forgive yourself and the world. That God of Old begins to transmute in your heart, base metals become silver and gold, and you warm to the world.”

All this I read as I sat watching over Sicily while she slept under the epidural (as an interesting aside to this aside, it was over this weekend that the existence of the Gospel of Judas was released to the mainstream media).

The next morning I arrived home first before Sicily and Zap came home from the hospital and there was parcel from S & C in Cambridge UK. Among other things was Nick Caves last album, a double album affair. When Sicily and Zap got home I was playing The Lyre of Orpheus. This became our soundtrack for the first three days after the birth.


The soundtrack was replaced after Linda, Sicily’s mother, dropt off an old german seven-stringed Lyre made out of pear wood. It is the most amazing instrument I have ever played and is both easy to play for the non-musician but is incredibly complex for a musician to play. Now I mesmerise Zap (and Sicily) with it, calmed by the sound of the seven spheres.

Utilising the Facilities

After one excursion I pushed the buzzer and Bridget came and let me into the Maternity ward. As we walked down the corridor I asked her if I could use the shower in the suite while Sicily slept. Which was fine as long as no one knew.

It was by all accounts an unusual request and it would have been interested to know if they have anything in their policy and procedures about that. None the less I went to have a shower. At first I couldn’t find the light switch and I pulled a cord thinking it might be the switch. Bridget turned up.
“What’s the problem?”
Seems I had pulled an emergency cord. She switched off the alarm and on the lights and then I had a shower. Apparently one of the hospital midwives turned up because the alarm wasn’t switched off properly.

It was a good idea though and in practice proved to be so. I felt much better and much closer to godliness.

The Sikh

(Bit Proustian but something about the way that Madeleine bread tasted reminded me.)

OK, so I brought a packet of cigarettes and I went out side for a cigarette. Several cigarettes actually. This involved leaving the delivery area through locking red doors (aware that you were going to have to buzz to get back in which requires some inside pushing a button to open the doors). Then you can descend by elevators or stairs. I take the elevator. This time when an elevator appeared I stepped in and found myself sharing it with a Sikh. A doctor, in his forties I’ld guess, he looked like the smoothest most noble operator with his turban covering his Kesh,, I could see his Karra, the golden bracelet on his wrist. I couldn’t see if he had his Kirpan, the small dagger that make up part of the five K,s of those who practice that religion.

The whole Sikh thing intrigues me and I think they have a great religion. I took it as a good sign I saw a Sikh and so would Sicily, she doesn’t know I saw one and she’ll read this and go, “Oh, a Sikh. Cool.”

As I walked outside I found myself thinking back to a period in Dunedin when several of us had engaged what might be a classed a type of urban frontierism. This basically involved drunken late night theoretical dares we would then see if we could put into practice. The best one we pulled off was finding a big old 3 story empty house (in the infamous devils triangle) and taking it over, which we did, and successfully ran a hot water squat for five years. Another one was a group exhibition which we held in the Dunedin Community Gallery. It’s still talked about to this day in certain Council and business owners circles I’m told. And there are probably people in Dunedin who believe we killed animals and put them in jars for the exhibition.

I had gathered together a collection of dead animals, pet rats, aborted puppies, cat’s that died of old age, all preserved in jars of felmeldahyde (along with a variety of paintings, sculptures and short films). I can vouch that none of the animals were killed, let alone killed for the exhibition, but if people came in thinking we had done this I wasn’t gonna convince them otherwise. As we also regularly had musicians playing music on everything from electric bike wheels, to nylon sleeping bags, this turned into a rumour that we were killing animals during the exhibition. Torturing them infact.

One particular incident was a so called heavyweight radio journalist turning up and doing an interview and live on air saying that the exhibition and the Lunatic Fringe Solution (the name the exhibition was held under) were fascists. I’m still not sure how he was classifying us thusly but to say it live on air and to be so missing the point,was a bit too much. I don’t remember what I said, but five minutes after the interview several people showed up claiming they had heard the interview, enjoyed the exhibition, thanks a lot.

It’s a peculiar trait though in New Zealand and I am inclined to think it is done on an international level. That is, to compare someone to Hitler. For example those who, after the Orewa speech referred to Brash as being like Hitler. Now Don Brash is a lot of things but he’s not at all like Hitler (he has an asian wife and is a fifth generation New Zealander). Same with Tamaki. I mean sure, their big march was scary and everything, but for me, the enduring image was of them being stood down by the solitary figure of Georgina Byer who righteously berated them.

Anyway, one of the other stunts we pulled off was having tea and biscuits with Sukhi Turner, then mayor of Dunedin. Can’t remember how we did, but several of us met up with her for a chat in her office. Someone asked her if she believed in true love and this got her talking about, of course, Glen Turner and how there was difficulty when they wanted to get married because she was a Sikh. I asked her something about this and we had an interesting conversation about Sikh militants which I wont go into here.

I liked Sukhi Turner, a good conversationalist, I thought, as I had a cigarette outside, and it was a good thing to see a Sikh. There, my very own little eastern fetish.

time in the waiting room and elsewhere

By this stage, Sicily’s Linda, Anna and Glennis were in the waiting room. They had brought some burgers from Wisconsin. Mine was BBQ which had a very runny sauce in it, which spilled down the front of me. I realised I felt quite dirty. I hadn’t had a shower in the past three days incase we needed to fill the pool and then for three days before that I was bed bound.

By 21:00 “B.P.s satisfactory. Sicily is resting comfortably now. FH baseline 125-130 bpms. Good accels no decels present. Contras 1-2:10 x 60secs.”

Sicily slept for about two hours before having another epidural top up at 22:15 and went back to sleep.

There are several things that occurred during this sleeping period and I will go into them separately.

the epidural

When we arrived at the Hospital I parked in a space I shouldn’t have, so after we got Sicily settled in the room, I went back to move the car. I went out the toll bar and it opened without me needing to pay. As it was after five pm I figured it must now be free to park in the hospital grounds so I turned round to go back in. I pushed for a ticket but nothing happened. I pushed and pushed and nothing came out so I gave up and parked on the road. As I walked past the little toll booth I saw a guy in their taking the exiting cars tickets. I walked over to him and asked why I couldn’t get in. He shrugged his shoulders and said it played up sometimes and said he could open it for me but he was charging people to exit. I said I had exited not more than three minutes ago and it was free. He shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m charging people now.”
I shrugged my shoulders as well and left it as it was.

When I got back into the room Sicily was propped up in bed, looking quite pale, and holding the nitrous oxide sucky thing. She was still contracting at a regular stage but it had become harder because Bridget had to hook her up to the CTG machine that monitors both contractions and the heartbeat of the baby and looks like something developed with neither the midwife or the contracting woman in mind. It’s the sort of device that works if the woman is flat on her back.

This made things very difficult for Sicily to deal with her contractions, and by her indifference to the gas, it obviously wasn’t helping. For someone who was using her awareness of her body as a tool to deal with the contractions, disembodiment was a distraction.

The next couple of hours are a blur. I remember Sicily hooked up to the CTG and something about it’s impracticability combined with its somehow inherent functional need made me think it was made in the Soviet (Kruschev era) Union. She couldn’t stay on her side without it falling off and on her back was too uncomfortable. There was strange contusions of arms and leads and shuffling bodies against the white of the hospital bed. Bridget's notes read,

“1900: Sicily is requesting an epidural. We have discussed other pain relief options but she is keen to continue with this option.”

Bridget went and organised the epidural. I’ll admit I didn’t want Sicily to have an epidural, but I believe I didn’t want her to for the same reasons she hadn’t wanted an epidural, until now.

Firstly cos yr screwing with the spine and there’s all sorts of stuff going on with the spine, stuff medical science hasn’t figured out yet.

But Sicily needed to rest. I took a few deep breaths (of the nitrous oxide) and sat down on the chair in the delivery suit (a type of lazy boy on wheels) and realised that Sicily knew what she was doing, and that Bridget would keep the potential of a cascade to c section or forceps at bay (unless deemed necessary). That I had nothing to worry about.

The anaesthetist showed at 19:45.

She asked Sicily a whole lot of questions while Sicily was contracting. Sicily asked me to leave the room. I must admit I would have liked to see an epidural be inserted, just not on Sicily, so I left.

contracting

Monday the 3rd of April:

After waking and having some breakfast I rang Bridget. Bridget came around at about 9am on the monday morning and did some more assessing. Sicily’s contractions still weren’t consistent and according to Bridget’s notes “Cx is posterior, 75% effaced, 2-3 cms dilated. Contractions currently 1-2:10x60+hrs, intensifying.”

Bridget left and said she would be back later that morning. Things continued how they had been going. I set up the lounge so it was dimly lit and womblike to help ensure the labour didn’t stall. Bridget came back at 12:15pm. Sunita had suggested we give Sicily some I.V. fluids for dehydration which we did and that helped. Sicily realised she hadn’t eaten anything for two days and what she had eaten she had thrown up. We got a couple of protein shakes down her and then I set up the birthing pool.

I had most of the pool set up but it was quite hard going so I decided to have a bit of a rest and read over the instructions. I saw that I had it pretty well under control but then noticed a very strange imperative in the instructions. It told how to set up the frame and the main pool bit then said, “This should take less than five minutes.”
“Why would they state that?” I thought to myself. “Are they trying to undermine my competency?” I asked Bridget.
“I’m so glad you didn’t say manhood then” She replied, and added “It always takes me longer than five minutes.”
I went back and finished off setting up the pool by which time my mother had arrived and she took over boiling the big pots to fill it up.

By this stage Sicily’s contractions were getting more intense so we started breathing together. I really can’t emphasis enough how important a good breathing routine is. It’s worth doing some research on and also well worth practising a good breath.

At about 3pm Sicily had a big vomit and then came back into the lounge and said she had had enough. She was dealing with the contractions fine but was nearly exhausted. She hadn’t slept for two nights and, as a normal side effect of labouring, had vomited any food she ate. We all decided to try the pool and hooked the hose up to fill it the rest of the way with hot water tank hot water. At 4:15pm the pool was 36 degrees, Sicily’s body temperature. Sicily was by now having a very hard time of it, she was managing the contractions extremely well but she was completely exhausted. I was never worried about Sicily’s ability to deal with the pain but was aware that if the labour was long stamina could become an issue, which I stated to Bridget.

Sicily was in the pool for 15 minutes when she requested a transfer to the hospital for an epidermal so she could rest. We had a big discussion about this and in the end decided a internal should be done to check how dilated she was to make sure she wasn’t in the final stages of labour. She wasn’t. She was still only 5 cms dilated. At 4:45pm we began preparing to go to hospital. As I packed a bag for Sicily Bridget asked me if I was disappointed.
“No.” I said, “We had always stated we would start at home and see what happened. Besides, “I added. “I was the one who defined a “normal” birth as one where no one dies.”
Still, I was pretty nervous. I knew epidurals can be used as a respite but I also knew that a large percentage of woman who had epidurals went on to have, if not a C section, at least a forceps delivery, simply because of a snowball, the facts-must-fit-the- theory approach to childbirth, an approach that midwifery as practised by Bridget doesn’t subscribe to. It was this, let’s change-the-facts-to-fit-the-the approach that had given us a due date earlier than the one all the midwives had given us.

At five pm on Monday the 3rd of April we left for Hutt Hospital.

the issue of 18 hours and how it was resolved

After I got back from my mission my mother rang so I told her Sicily’s waters had broken and she said she would drive down. Then Sunita turned up and went out again to patch the holes in my supply missions. Sicily still hadn’t gone into labour but her cough had developed to quite a degree. In fact she was now wracked by coughing fits that left her eyes watering. I wondered if it was a coughing fit that had broken her waters. Possible.


Dan turned up to pick up Quentin and asked if I got a big pot. I showed him, he agreed it was big.

Sunita got back and made some tea then Bridget turned up. We brought in the birthing pool and then had a discussion about what to do. When a woman's waters break but they don’t go into active labour there is a window of 18 hours before something has to happen. As we were still intent on having a home birth the best option was for Sicily to take oral antibiotics to ensure there was no infection. We also poured through a New Ethical looking for a suitable cough suppressant. Bridget also did a few checks and apart from the cough Sicily’s blood pressure and temp were all good and Zaps heartbeat was a steady as an electrical current. Bridget left saying if she hadn’t heard from us overnight she would come round in the morning. Then Sunita went to get the antibiotics and something for Sicily’s cough from the pharmacy. She came back with the antibiotics and some durotuss regular with Pholcodine in it, which is suppose to be non-drowsy. Eventually we went to bed at about midnight and as soon as we did Sicily had to get up and vomit and then she started to have contractions. Good ones. I started timing them (which actually made me feel incredibly useful) and I still have the times on my cellphone stopwatch. The contractions were between 4 minutes and 13 minutes apart and lasted for about 2 minutes. They were intense but not so intense that we had to use the breathing technique we had worked on. Unfortunately the durotuss had made Sicily “powerfully drowsy” which wasn’t helping the situation, but at least her cough had been suppressed. Most importantly tho, we were in active labour so we didn’t have to worry about infection anymore or going into hospital to get I.V. antibiotics.

At about four in the morning Sicily woke up Sunita to get her to take over the timing contractions and give me a couple of hours sleep. I woke up at 6:30 after about two hours sleep but just before I did I had this very strange sequence of dreams that climaxed in me having to figure out how to generate enough sunlight to melt a little chocolate man who was wrecking havoc on a night time wellington. Somewhere in the dream I also had a conversation with Philip Clairmont about fatherhood on top of bails of hay on trailer being towed by a tractor around Wellington.

strange times in Aglionby

When I left the house on Sunday, I was aware the baby was going to come soon and I noticed, aside from the state I was in from the evil demon in my stomach mixing bad elixirs out of KFC, that other things were going on. I was feeling, I have to admit, quite tearful and emotional and my normal ability to think logically was tenuous to say the least. I first went to the party hire place and picked up the tea urn, then I went to the Warehouse in Petone and tracked down the big cheap pot made in China. As I did so Bridget rang on the cell phone. We had a quick conversation and she said she would be around early evening to check on Sicily and drop off the birthing pool.

After that I drove to Lower Hutt, passing through Alicetown. I have driven through Alicetown many a time but for some reason, this time as I drove through, I felt like I was seeing Alicetown like I had never seen it before. There was an odd light about and I felt like neither I nor Alicetown existed in time. It was an odd feeling and still retains that oddness in my memory. I figured at the time it was a combination of sleep deprivation, bad stomach elixirs and the straight dope of the baby coming.

Several days after Zap was born I took a book off our shelf called “The Hunt Family - 150 years in New Zealand, 1840-1990” about my maternal side of the family. Charles Hunt, my ancestor came to New Zealand on the Adelaide which left London on the 18th September 1839 and arrived in Pito-one in March 1840. According to the book,
“...the Hunt family moved to Aglionby (pronounced Allenby) now Alicetown.” after the Cornish Row fire in may of 1840.

I did know the family had been active in the Petone settlement and and in setting up the Methodist church but I didn’t know they had settled in Alicetown. Now this is pure speculation and hardly something we can test with litmus paper, but what if, during that period of birthing, these chemicals, this straight dope the body releases in such quantities, have the effect of activating one’s ancestor consciousness and those ancient blood songs begin singing in the brain? All they require is some trigger. Which is what was happening to me as I drove through Alicetown, I was responding, almost atavistically to my ancestors who had also given lived, breathed, died and given birth in that area. Maybe. Interesting thought. Move on.

the big pot

Sunday the 2nd of April:

I felt much better so resolved to get the rest of the supplies, including some way to heat water for the pool as an alternative to using the hot water tank hot water.

As it was sunday no hire places were open. Eventually I tracked down a guy who ran a party hire place who agreed to open up and hire out a tea urn. I rang Dan and asked him to pick up Quentin so we didn’t have a crotchety old dog underfoot and I asked Dan if he had any big pots, he said he didn’t.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. It was Dan and a conversation something like this occurred.

Dan -- Hey, what did you mean by “big pot”?
LHB -- You know, like a big pot.
Dan -- yeah but like what?
LHB -- A pot that’s big.
Dan -- but what do you mean by big pot?
LHB -- I mean a big pot, you know, a big pot.
Dan -- yeah but what’s a big pot?
LHB -- it’s like a pot and it’s big.

We eventually ascertained that Dan did have a big pot but didn’t, in this context, have a big pot. I rang the warehouse and they did. Made in China. Very cheap. Very big.

Saturday, the day the waters broke

On Saturday afternoon I summoned some will power to get out of bed and get some supplies as we both felt the birth could come at anytime, yet as we had both been bed bound with respective illness’s, we had no supplies. I did some internet transfers of money before I left home and on leaving the first thing I did was get petrol. I grabbed a paper as well. But the card declined (having worked with Schizophrenics who have such a hard time with Eftpos I am convinced they use the wrong word. It should say ‘mistake’, not ‘declined’). I checked the card at the ATM, it said the money was there but it wasn’t available. I told the bored underpaid teenager I’ld be back and I’ld leave the car there. I walked back home and checked again on the computer and it said everything was right so I walked back to the petrol station and tried again and it said “mistake”. I knew there was enough in there to cover the petrol minus the paper so I did that. Then I drove into Lower Hutt and went to the post shop (it’s a Kiwibank account - one of Jim Andertons decent ideas). I spoke to a young Indian man who got his manager, also a young Indian man - both had wedding rings I noticed - and we went into his little office and he looked up the account on his computer.
“The money’s there” He said, “But you wont be able to access it until Tuesday because of a glitch.”
“Gentlemen,’ I said, “My wife’s probably going to have a baby tonight and I need to get that money out.”
They both kinda jumped to and said, “Right.” in unison and before I knew it they had the cash in my hand.

In Woolworths I started to feel decidedly wobbly. I got the supplies we needed and went through the check out. As I went to pay I realised I didn’t have my wallet. Another underpaid teenager looked blankly at me over my food. I walked back to the car hoping and sure enough it was there. I walked back to the check out and the girl pointed vaguely to another check out where my stuff was. I got it, got in the car and drove home.

Later that night I couldn’t sleep and found myself trying to recall everything I knew about the birthing process. To my horror I found I couldn’t remember anything. Indeed I couldn’t even recall if meconium was a pregnancy term or whether it was a nut flavoured ice cream (it seemed perfectly logical that if it were a nut, meconium would come from South America). Eventually I got up, checked the meconium thing and went off course it’s the first poo, he black one, and then watched another DVD. After I had watched Hotel Rwanda, I went to bed and fell asleep. Sicily got up and couldn’t sleep, her waters broke at 7 am on the 2nd. I woke up at about 8 and sicily was lying on the couch awake with a towel wrapped around.

I knew what this meant and felt terrible for sleeping through it. I was suddenly reminded of the gospel story where the three disciples slept when Christ asked them to watch while He prayed.

We rang the pager and left a message for Bridget. I rang Sunita who said she would drive down from Hawkes Bay. She also reminded us that once the waters were broken there was no protection for the baby. Which means none of the normal procedures for bringing on active labour.

There wasn’t much else to do. Sicily wasn’t in labour.

some films for the bedridden

As an aside to this, while bed bound, Sicily and I watched several DVDs. ‘Garden State” which I recommend and so would Sicily. It was written and directed by Zach Braf, ‘that guy from Scrubs’. We watched ‘The Aviator’ which wasn’t too bad, mainly because for once Di Caprio didn’t do that crying whining bit done to it’s worse in ‘The Basketball Diaries’ where he de-hipsterfies Jim ‘I’ll be a good boy mama’ Carroll. It was good to see for one reason, which was a conspiracy theory I had come across that Onassis kidnapped Hughs which made no bloody sense to me, and still doesn’t, except now I know who Howard Hughs is. We watched Kinsey which was an interesting story but did nothing for the biopic genre. We watched ‘Startup Dot Come’ which was morbidly fascinating and I was so fascinated I watched in again. We started to watch Hotel Rwanda on Saturday but Sicily didn’t want to watch it. She was getting twinges. That evening she feel asleep but I couldn’t. I got up and watched Hotel Rwanda until 3 am sunday morning. I guess I would recommend the film but based as it is on recent factual events it’s quite depressing. One bunch of people hack another bunch to pieces with machetes because they identify themselves by different words. Millions are killed.

by way of a prelude

“...for stories, as histories, must be past, and the further past, one might say, the better for them as stories and for the storyteller, that conjurer who murmurs in past tenses. But the problem with our story, as also with many people nowadays and, indeed, not the least with those who tell stories, is this: it is much older than its years, its datedness is not to be measured in days, nor the burden of age weighing upon it to be counted by orbits around the sun; in a word, it does not actually owe its pastness to time -- an assertion that is itself intended as a passing reference, an allusion, to the problematic and uniquely double nature of that mysterious element.”
---- Thomas Mann
‘The Magic Mountain’




I imagine everyone has a lead in. A period leading up that is full of signs and wonders. It has been discussed widely that many chemicals are released during pregnancy, and especially with birth, and I’m happy to testify that they all work and make for an intense experience. Point of fact is I’ve never experienced consciousness in a state like I did in the week leading up to, during, and after the birth of Zap. It was straight dope.

Partly I blame Daniel Campion for this state of consciousness.

On Wednesday the 29th of march I travelled to Masterton with Dan as he was delivering one of his paintings to a buyer. I went with him, partly for a drive and partly to see off a painting I had much admired of two horses called Night Becomes. As a tangent on the painting I had visited Mr Campion in his studio as he was painting the outside parts of the panels and he roped me into painting the black panel. Which I did but painted in the right hand bottom underside “LHB waz hair”. Dan painted over it, grumbling.



Having dropt off the painting, to a thoroughly nice guy, we went to leave Masterton when Dan decided to get some KFC. I went along with him and got a burger. Now I havn’t eaten KFC since this time three years ago when I went into Gore after milking with James and neither of us could be bothered to cook tea so we got some of that stuff.

As I ate this burger it tasted like something bad. I had caught a glimpse of teenagers working in KFC as we went through the drivethrew. As I ate my burger and tasted how wrong it tasted I soundly realised getting underpaid teenagers to cook your chicken is probably a bad idea. At the same time this made me reflect on the work of the Unite! union under the leadership of Matt McCarten. They had recently made some news with the high school students going on strike and blocking off Queen St. Interestingly Unite! won their negations with Restaurant Brands, the company that runs most of the major fast food joints here and in Australia. At the same time I was aware of the protests in France of the new youth employment bill and that millions of students and Unions members had taken to the streets. It looked like the French were having a few good old ‘Night of the Barricades’ like they had in ‘68 and 1936 and 1871 and 1848 and 1830 &c...

That night, Wednesday night, I was struck by a terrible nausea and vomited at 40 minute episodes throughout the night. By morning I was devastated and felt like I had been hit by a truck. Friday I was still bed bound and couldn’t eat solids.

As all of this went on Sicily also was bed bound with a bad cold. At this point I told our unborn child that if she came when we were both sick I would call her Zap and she would have to wait until she’s 18 to change her name by deed poll.

Friday the 31st was the due date all the midwives had put forward (and I really do think pregnancy is a midwives gig). Both Sicily and I were still bed bound with DVDs and the paper. I noticed in it a picture of the French situation. A young student is on the ground being set upon by another bunch of youths who all seem to be of North African decent. The same set who were supposedly behind the riots where all the cars got set on fire.

One interesting thing is that all the youths are dressed in urban gear influence by American street wear. Further these “hooded youths” stole cell phones and cameras while beating up the protesters. Interesting state of affairs. The new face of the grand old French tradition of the night of the barricades, perhaps.

At some stage I went on line to look for a bit of information on the French situation and as the net operates I came across this article.


http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21820

It’s weird how having a baby can so easily be used as propaganda for something that at it’s core is grossly sublime. One of the last things Sicily and I did while she was still pregnant was attend the multi ethnic day in Lower Hutt. At some point a man gave me a rolled poster of the Treaty of Waitangi which I tapped Sicily on the belly with and Zap leapt to life. While sick in bed I had read the Hutt News and there was a reporter claiming that at the Ethnic day muslims were not visibly present. Which struck me as odd when it was a ethnicity day not a religious day. I guess that’s the difference; the hooded youths are described elsewhere as Muslim youths but the French student is never described as Catholic (which I would presume him to be, in that french anticlerical way). This reminded me of the time Sicily and I were invited into the Dunedin Mosque by members of the Otago University Islamic society. I talked with several of the young men and found them to be patient, thoughtful and gentle. It was working for them. At one stage I apologised to one of the young men for the crusades.
“What crusades?” He asked politely.
This was August 2001.
Shortly after that Sicily and I along with T. attended a public meeting in the Student Union in response to the Towers coming down. I don’t recall much of it except the president of the University Islamic society, one of the ernest young men I had chatted with, did a short speech which he ended by saying “God have mercy on us all.” and it was said with the most powerful pathos. It made me realise that the symbolic issue is, as it has always been, how to resolve the crescent with the cross.

When our child was born and we were all juiced up on oxytocin we had to fill in forms saying whether Zap is a European New Zealander or what? Such statistics can then get picked up to say New Zealanders of European descent need to have 6.8 children each to reproduce the workforce to be able to allow them to retire. Yet on average they have 2.5, and Immigrant families breed more, enabling fearmongerers to spark off that fear in unassuming citizens. I recall a passage by Jung:

“Since everybody is blindly convinced that he is nothing more than his extremely unassuming and insignificant conscious self, which performs its duties decently and earns a moderate living, nobody is aware that his whole rationalistically organised conglomeration we call a state or a nation is driven on by seemingly impersonal, invisible but terrifying power which nobody and nothing can check. This ghastly power is mostly explained as fear of the neighbouring nation, which is supposed to be possessed by a malevolent fiend. Since nobody is capable of recognising just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbour, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas. The worst of it is that he is quite right. All one’s neighbours are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear, just like oneself. In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.”

The point of this story, and maybe not that absurd, is that if KFC paid better wages the world might not be so crook.

Our filius solis et lunae is an anima media natura

This is just one of those, "Did-you-know?" posts. We are at about 30 weeks now, and according to a study by H.P. Roffwarg et al, published in 'Science" (1966) called 'Ontogenetic development of the human sleep-dream cycle', the authors claim that at 30 weeks a baby spends it's entire sleeping time in REM sleep. The authors of the study think this helps develop the nervous system. This means the little monster goes straight into dreaming when it's asleep. What sort of dreams does a little monster have?

Johannes Fabricius writes, "With it's well developed brain and fully developed sensory apparatus, the fetus, at this stage, is submerged in a state of primal or prenatal 'consciousness' governed by dreams of a collective and archetypal nature. Alternating between dreaming sleep and waking dreaming, the fetal psyche may be described as an undifferentiated unity between conscious and unconscious states of mind." (Alchemy: the Medieval Alchemists and their Royal Art.)

Capitalism's gift to our child: a pacifier

As I mentioned, the little monster is doing nothing but growing now, and so room for frolicking is getting to be prime realty; so much so that the said frolicking is quite visible from the outside. It’s like watching one of those inflatable castles at the carnival when it’s full of kids in their socks bouncing off every surface. Sometimes I think this puts a bit of a strain on Sicily and I have found a way to make the little monster quieten down. I simply lean in close, so my lips are almost touching Sicily’s belly, and I say:
“Listen kiddo, time to start thinking about a career. It’s a competitive job market out there.”

the gap inside the space

Xmas and all that, it's been a while since I've said anything here. We are in the third trimester now and all the baby seems to be doing is growing. There's billions of neurons firing apparently and from experience there's plenty of movement. Sicily is tired and hungry and a bit Demeter-like all at the same time it seems these days.

I must admit I found the second trimester quite percolating. Like I was getting diffused. It was the rapidly dawning sense of responsibility - I guess. Now it's dawned on me and that's reflected in a certain level of being organised for this baby to come. Now we're getting to the stage of waiting for the show to begin.

Dream

The other morning I had a dream that Sicily and I were taking our seats in an auditorium/theater.