What!?

Well, it’s an advantage if you are trying to hone your skills as a photographer.

I’ve been heading of at dawn with the baby strapped to my chest, and a camera in hand.  The light at this time of day is wonderful.

Scarlett is doing so much better. She was injured quite badly during the birth – and though the bumps and bruises have disappeared, the nerves that control her right arm were badly damaged.

At first, her right arm and hand did not move at all. But then, slowly, the fingers begin curling, and her arm became less and less limp. We do physiotherapy with her every day, and after a month, there are many signs of recovery. But we won’t know the true extent of the damage for another two months.

This condition is called Erbs Palsey – a type of paralysis caused by the stretching or tearing of the nerves that go through the shoulder and the neck. It was the force of the ventous delivery which hurt her so much. There seems to be a real lack of information about the injury – so much so that one mother, Karen Hillyer, whose child had Erbs decided to found a support group, the Erbs Palsey Group.

Karen was fantastic when I spoke to her after the birth. She told us what we could expect, sent us a physiotherapy DVD, and even had a list of the centres of excellence dealing with Erbs. She recommended that we see Professor Kay in Leeds, where they have a very experienced clinic for kids with the injury.

The crunch point will be at three months of age, when they will do a observational test to see how much movement Scarlett has. Called the Toronto test, the score that she gets on this will determine whether or not she will need nerve surgery.

Scarlett in the hospital, an hour after she was born.

We had hoped, and planned for, a home birth in our cottage. But Sarah was already 12 days overdue when she went into labour – right on the  borderline for being induced in hospital. If it hadn’t been a weekend, we would probably have already had to go in to the maternity unit at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, a grim but functional place.

We’d tried all the old-wives tale tricks to get the labour started – eating pineapples galore, curries, raspberry leaf tea.

So when the labour started that night, we were excited and happy. We were already in bed, and we knew we might be in for a long haul, so we tried to rest, but Sarah’s contractions were coming in thick and fast after just a few hours – less than a minute apart, and strong. Which meant it was time to call in the mid-wife.

It was the middle of the night, and being hard to find, I had to put some candles out on the steps to guide her to us. The front door was already blocked by an enormous birthing pool that I had rapidly pumped up and filled once Sarah’s contractions began. It took hours to fill and and get the temperature right – I had two kettles on the stove, and two pans on the kitchen cooker going all night. I don’t mind telling you that I was glad to have a focus and a job, rather than just having to watch Sarah’s contractions get worse and worse.

But when the mid-wife did arrive, it was a shock to find out that Sarah had barely dilated. Why were the contractions so strong and frequent?

It went on like this until the morning, with Sarah really beginning to struggle. By now she was in the pool, and sucking on the gas and air canister with grim determination. But she had only dilated a couple of centimetres in nearly ten hours.  We were going to have to make a difficult decision, of whether to stay, or go into hospital – a journey that Sarah was terrified of making.

Matters weren’t helped by the fact that at this crucial moment our midwifes shift ended. It is the frankly bizarre policy of the NHS that midwives only stay on for their eight hour shift, and no more. In a long labour like ours, this means you may have two or three different midwives. Just when you’ve built up trust and confidence in on, they have to go.

We decided to go into hospital at about 10:00, but it would have to be in an ambulance. Sarah’s great fear was that, from that point on, she would lose control over the birth – it would become medicalised, and she would end up having a caesarian. I was more sanguine about the move – it was clear that  she needed more pain relief, she hadn’t slept, and things were obviously not going to plan.

But in many ways her fears were to be played out to the letter.

Once we arrived in the hospital, Sarah was quickly hooked up to various monitors, a drip to encourage her to dilate, and examinations – although it took several hours before the anethetist came to give her an epidural. We found ourselves in a strange limbo, where little was explained. The only changes were additional drugs, or additional procedures. We were fine with all of this, although I did ask, understandably, what each different thing was for.

One thing that Sarah really did not want to happen was for them to use an internal monitor to measure the baby’s heartbeat. We already had an external monitor which was working fine, but which would sometimes lose signal if Sarah had to move, or if the baby moved. Our consultant, the chief doctor, wanted to insert a wired monitor up her vagina, and clip it onto the scalp of the baby – a procedure that Sarah had read about, and had already told me that she absolutely did not want to have done.

I explained this, but instead of respecting this choice, our consultant became fixated on it. We were told that we were endangering the baby – that a caesarian would be more likely if we didn’t agree to the procedure – and that the current monitor was not safe. My own position was difficult – I needed Sarah to stay strong in herself, and I feared that forcing her into this would add emotional exhaustion to her physical exhaustion. Once, twice, three times I patiently explained this to the consultant. Sarah became distressed by his continued insistence. It went on for hours – during which there was no clear plan or path for the birth.

Seeing that she wasn’t being listened to, Sarah’s fear that the consultant was simply preparing for a caesarian grew.

In the end, I could see that we would have to aquiesce. The procedure was getting in the way, preventing everyone – Sarah, the midwife, the consultant – from focusing on the task in hand. So I gently convinced Sarah that we would have to give way.

The result was laughable. Infuriating. The consultant’s magic bullet, this amazing piece of technology, failed to work at all. It would not hook up to the hearth monitor machine. Ten minutes passed with no monitor at all. Another machine was clunked into the room. It had the right connections – but no ink to print. It was deemed fit for purpose. But for it to work, Sarah was told that she would have to stay on her back for the remainder of the labour, and not move. Not only was this the most painful position, but it was also a signal that the birth was out of her hands. Drips, drugs, invasive monitors, and a mother who is told to lie back and wait…for what?

Angry, I asked to see the consultant. “He’s finished his shift and gone” our midwife told me. She left five minutes later. It was 11:00pm.

By now, it was night. Sarah was exhausted, dehydrated, and had not eaten for twenty four hours. We had been wrongly told that because of the epidural, she would not be able to eat, and could only drink sips of water, which I rationed. (In hindsight, this was actually needed in the event of an operation.)

And after 24 hours of labour, she was still only six centimetres dilated – only two thirds of the way there.

I apologize if this story feels long. But the details still feel fresh, even many weeks later. The smells, the tiredness, the emotions – fear, anxiety, frustration, anger. At this point in the story, we felt at our lowest ebb. Sarah seemed broken. We had been left in limbo, with another night of unknown outcome looming before us. It felt dark and ill omened.

But our luck was to change. Some lovely people took over – a midwife who listened and helped Sarah regain control – and a consultant who didn’t ignore her. The useless monitor (it had stopped moving again) was removed immediately.  Elaine, the midwife, said that yes, Sarah could move, change positions – she went on all fours, and the contractions grew in strength and frequency. She began to dilate more rapidly. Perhaps it was partly physical, and partly phsychological – Sarah now felt safe, with people she trusted.

One hour, two hours passed. The surgeon had given us a deadline of 1:00am for Sarah to become fully dilated, or we would have to consider an operation. It felt like a race against time…and she made it! Shit, we’re going to have a baby! Action stations!

Suddenly, after a whole day and night, what we all think of as labour – pushing, panting breaths, shouts of encouragement – all began. It was happenening. But Sarah was also tired, and running out of strength. And there was another problem too.

In the run up to the birth, there had been no indication that there was anything unusual about our baby. Sarah had been fit and healthy, though she had had a lot of hip pain and trouble walking at one stage. The scans had been normal, and her weight was considered average.

But the baby that was coming out of her was large – very large for a small girl like Sarah.

She wasn’t coming out.

Her head was cresting, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

By now, Sarah was spent. She was begging for help. And there was a sense of urgency in the room.

Suddenly we went from one midwife, to a team – a young female doctor, two more midwives, and a nurse with a rescusitation unit.

They were going to do a ventous delivery – to pull the baby out using a suction cup.

It was brutal. The air had a metallic taste – the smell of blood and excrement. Incisions were made, but Sarah was tearing anyway.

The nurse was using her full body weight to pull at the baby’s head, but it was stuck. It was blue and purple, and mottled. It was just a confused mass.

It did not look like a head.

“Call the surgeon!”

The tone had changed from urgency to panic.

I say one of the midwives twist the baby’s head, first one way, then the other, 360 degrees.  At that point, I knew that it was dead. I thought “they are just trying to get the pieces out, so that they can save Sarah.

But suddenly, out she came. She.

She was blue and rubbery and lifeless as the seconds passed.

I turned my attention to Sarah. She was being stitched up, her blood was flowing freely onto the bed.

And the baby started to turn pink, to breathe, to cry….

There’s a lot more to tell about the story that that. Bruised, battered, and with a badly damaged arm, baby Scarlett would spend two days in the neo-natal unit being cared for by some wonderful nurses, before we were all re-united. But that can wait for another day. I’ve told this story a few times, to my father, my friends. And it’s exhausting everytime.

Scarlett Moon was born on the 25th of April.

Bodmin is both dark and light in equal measure

I spent the day hiking Bodmin Moor, and getting lost in wonderful isolation. I saw no-one else in six hours of hiking.

I haven’t felt that sense of being so free and alone for many years – not since some distant mountains in the Highlands of Scotland.

Hiking like that has a curious telescopic effect upon time and space.

Time slows down, and distances are curiously altered – the journey back took twice as long as the journey up to the top of Brown Willy.

Bodmin itself feels like a special, almost sacred place. I passed circles of standing stones, deserted farmhouses with trees robed in lycan. Birds and animals are rare or hidden. Like many moors, it has the feeling of a place without life, but full of a life of it’s own.

The coast in Cornwall is a place of striking beauty, rich in human activity, flora and fauna. But I can see myself coming back to Bodmin agan and again over this summer, to escape from the crowds, to clear my mind of clutter, and to walk alone.

A typical Cornish gig. I'm in the yellow jacket.

I had my first experience of Cornish gig rowing this weekend.

For those of you who don’t know this small corner of the British Isles, let me explain gig rowings origins.

Cornwall juts out into the Atlantic sea like a crooked branch, a long and beautiful coastline of cliffs and beaches. But it’s also a treacherous shore, and many ships have been wrecked here over the centuries.

Pilots with expert knowledge of the reefs and rocks were often needed to guide ships in danger. Such was the competition for the business, that different boats would race out to the ships with their pilot.

These were the gigs.

A Cornish gig is long, 32 feet  of narrow leaf elm. Six oarsmen power her through the water, with a cox to guide them.

They are things of beauty, and my first gig was no exception.

The port town of Falmouth sports Cornwall’s best gig rowing side – though I’m went out with the novices. Once aboard, the white painted bow made the water around it a rich green, even on a dull winters day.

My colleagues raised the long and sturdy oars high above their heads, before lowering them into position, ready to cut into the water.

Each man has one oar, and they are simple tools.

They are held in place by simple wooden pegs hammered through the gunwale.  The blonde varnished wooden oar has nothing but a leather sleeve to stop it wearing away. It creaked as we leapt away from the harbour wall.

I just watched at first, trying to learn something from the words of the cox that reached me through the wind. I watched the rythmn and strokes of the experienced rowers, who keep good time.

It looked simple enough.

But when my turn came, I was embarrasingly clumsy.

My strokes were too short, too high above the water, or too deep in it. I clashed with the man in front. I was seated in the wrong place. My wrist began to ache.

Had we been racing to a distressed ship, it would have been doomed…

But I was lucky. I got two chances to row from my seat in the bow. We even tried some racing starts, explosive sets of triple strokes that feel like the low gears on a sports car.

By the end, I think I was getting the hang of it – I’m was even twisting the oar through the air to free it from the wind.

I’m ready for the storms…

My beautiful pregnant girlfriend, Sarah!

I’m having a baby in April. It’s one of my new years resolutions.

Though to be honest, I kind of committed myself to it last year.

So one of the biggest parts to my Cornish adventure is the whole pregnancy thing. Since it was unplanned (not very fashionable these days) we’ve been adapting to it slowly, letting the whole concept, er, grow on us.

The bump, as I call it, has become very much a part of the family.

So, this week I had my first pre-natal class with Sarah. Having opted for a homebirth, I will be expected to massage and coax Sarah whilst she thrashes about in a pool of water in our living room.

At twenty eight years old, we were the youngest couple by a mile, which seemed strange.

I guess we fall between the must-have-succesful-career-first categories, and the got-drunk-and-pregnant-at-sixteen categories (the latter probably don’t have home births, unless they haven’t realised they’re pregnant.)

So we went to a little hall in Budock Waters near Falmouth for the class. A very centred couple were teaching us. He had the air of a wise yoga master; she that of an earth mother.

“I had a great time giving birth” she assured the swollen ladies. She told us how she had gone for a stroll and a cup of tea round a friends house after the contractions had begun.

I suggested to Sarah we could pop out for fish and chips after her waters broke.

Giving the massages was surprisingly tough – I wasn’t the only man complaining about sore wrists. “Harder!” shouted the irate partners. “Remember to conserve your strength during the labour, said the wise yoga master.

It was nice to see that a lot of the other men were terrified/in denial/embarrased. I felt like I was doing pretty well.

Except for at the beginning, when we had to do a little couple speech. The unit sitting opposite us were a tough act to follow.

“We’re at week 38. I feel like it’s Christmas, and I can’t wait for it to come!” gushed the guy.

Our turn. I leant over to Sarah’s. “How many for us?” I whispered.

“Twenty eight” she mouthed back.

“Twenty eight in, or twenty eight to go? I said.

Oops.

Courage...

My new years resolutions are many and challenging.

There’s the usual health and fitness promises. I’ve given up alcohol and coffee for January, and smoking for life.

There’s the promise to spend time in the sea. I came to Cornwall to learn to surf, to sail, and to row.

There’s the realisation that you need courage and passion to be a great journalist.

There’s the promise of a baby on it’s way. I shall be a father in the wet months of spring.

This photo was taken by a good friend who understands the power of dreamers.

It tells me to jump – and have faith that you will land on your feet.

The whitewashed walls, the cobbled side street, and the glowing stove….

the flame of amor....

But be warned – the downside to all this cuteness is considerable. It’s bloody freezing, for one.

Since we moved into our little Cornish theme park a few months ago, an epic battle has been engaged with those testy warriors, cold and damp. The hasty erection of winter curtains was followed by the master stroke of a wood burning stove, and loft insulation.

Have at you foul winter!

Alas, no sooner had we created a warm and snug womb in the living room, than we were taught a basic meterological lesson within the confines of our home. As the warm air rose from the ground floor of our 2 up 2 down palace, it met a front of cold air coming in from the top floor. Result – rivers of water running down the walls.

Luckily, I found the final solution quite by chance over the course of our New Years festivities.

Sex.

Not supplied, I should quickly add, by my girlfriend and I, but by the house guests I had staying. Ten friends decended on this small corner of the British Isles from India, Germany, London and Scotland, and proceeded to get jiggy in one of the smallest and most un-private settings imaginable.

Logistical and audiophonic challenges aside, the bordello style atmosphere had one great advantage – the cottage was truly warm and cosy for the first time since we moved in.

With everyone now having returned to their distant lands and cities, I’m trying to think of a way – a legal way – to keep the place warm over the coming months. Maybe some of my friends from college will be able to help.

“The other day I did fucking hit my old lady…”

The Christmas light were up this week in the centre of Plymouth. There was even a carousel, all gold and horses and bright mechanical music. People were rushing about, trying to grab a bit of shopping, and heading home from work.

Christmas is not a happy time for everyone

“Excuse me sir, do you have time for a quick interview?”

I was on Cornwall street, trying to interview a few passers by for a radio piece I was making. Most people just kept walking – this man was the first person to stop.

“I’m asking people about domestic violence.” I said, as he flicked unwanted elements out of his Chinese takeaway. His voice was a little slurred.

“What do you mean, domestic violence?”

I wasn’t expecting that. “When there’s violence between a couple” I explained.

“Yeah, it is quite a problem, yeah…they shouldn’t do it really, should they?” he said. He paused.

“The other day I did fucking hit my old lady…but that’s cos I was drinking…”

“Why did you hit her?” I asked.

“Because I wanted money.”

Silent March

Ten minutes later I was sitting with the Council Leader, Vivien Pengelly. I was there to ask her about a protest, a silent march against domestic abuse, that’s taking place in Plymouth on the 24th of November. We talked about the nature of the problem, and how the city was trying to deal with it.

“A woman will put up with 35, 36, 37 instances of abuse before she will do anything about it.” Vivien tell me. “It’s not easy to just get up and walk away with your children.”

Plymouth’s former police chief, Maurice Watts, has been appointed by Council to be their “domestic abuse manager.” And they recently awarded 1.2 million pounds to the charity Carr-Gomm, for a pilot project that will provide thirteen new homes and a refuge for families affected by domestic abuse.

It all sounds very positive. Mrs.Pengelly is passionate about the subject, there’s extra funding, and a ex-police chief driving it forward. The message is, this is a crime, and a serious one.

But somehow, writing this now, I just feel a bit sick. I keep coming back to what Mark (I got his name after the interview) had said. The way he blamed it on the bottle of vodka he had drunk. Then on the fact that his wife had been shouting at him. And how he had talked her round afterwards.
“I kissed her straight backand apologised. Soon as I’d done it, I sort of went like that to say I was sorry.”

I don’t know her name – I didn’t ask Mark what it was. So she’s Mrs.X. I don’t know much about her. I only know that her husband hit her last week – and that she didn’t leave.

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