September 3, 1978 AD
Birth of Jessica Anne Jenkins
Jessica Anne Jenkins was born at 11:07 in the morning at Queen Victoria Hospital in Adelaide, the second child of Elizabeth and Thomas Jenkins, after a long and quiet labour. She was slow to cry. Thomas stayed in the room throughout and sat with his daughter once she was settled. No one visited that day; her brother Karl, not yet three, was in Norwood with their grandmother, Margaret Thompson.
Jessica Anne Jenkins was born at 11:07 in the morning at Queen Victoria Hospital in Adelaide, the second child of Elizabeth Anne Jenkins (née Thompson) and Thomas Michael Jenkins. The delivery was attended by the hospital's midwifery staff and passed without complication.
Elizabeth was twenty-six and teaching at Glenelg Primary School. Thomas was twenty-eight, a senior mechanic at Adelaide Motors. The couple had arrived at the hospital in the early hours, later than they might have, because Elizabeth would not have the midwives called on before they were needed.
The labour was long and quiet. Elizabeth worked through it with measured breathing and little complaint, and Thomas remained in the room for all of it. Jessica did not cry at first. She lay blinking until a midwife rubbed her back, and the sound that followed was thin but steady.
Once his daughter was settled in the cot beside the bed, Thomas sat and watched her for a long time. Elizabeth, spent, turned her face towards the window.
There were no visitors that day. Karl, not yet three, was in Norwood with Elizabeth's mother, Margaret Thompson, who had minded him on school days since he was three months old. Elizabeth and Thomas spent the rest of the day in the ward with their daughter, interrupted only by the routine checks of the nursing staff.
