Birth of Oscar James Lahey

Oscar James Lahey was born at 9:42 pm at the Royal Hobart Hospital, the first child of Gregory Thomas Lahey and Philippa Rose "Pip" Lahey. He arrived after nearly seven years of marriage, three years of trying, and two miscarriages. The pregnancy that produced him had been watched closely from the start, and none of the people waiting for him had been allowed to take it for granted.

Pip had spent the last ten weeks of it on bed rest at the couple's cottage in Glenorchy, ordered off her feet when her blood pressure began to climb. She was a child protection worker accustomed to being out of the house before eight, and she did not take well to lying still. When the readings rose again in the final fortnight, she was admitted to the maternity ward for monitoring, and it was there, in the early hours of the morning, that her labour began.

It was slow. Through the morning and the long afternoon the contractions built without the labour making the progress the midwives wanted to see. Greg stayed with her throughout, leaving the room only when he was sent to eat. He had read the textbooks, and he followed the readings on the monitor with an engineer's attention, which helped him less than he expected.

Jane Lahey was in the building for most of it. She had retrained as a nurse at fifty-four and was working an afternoon shift on another floor of the hospital that day, and she spent each of her breaks on the maternity ward, standing at the end of her daughter's bed in uniform. She kept her questions to the midwives short and took the answers back to her own ward without comment.

Late in the evening the baby's heart rate began to drop with each contraction. The registrar judged that the second stage could not be allowed to run on, and Oscar was delivered by forceps. He was bruised, slow to pink up, and quiet for longer than his parents could bear, but he breathed on his own and cried within the minute. As a precaution he was taken to the special care nursery for overnight observation. Pip, exhausted and stitched, saw him for a few seconds before he was wheeled away.

Jane's shift ended a little over an hour later. She went up to the nursery still in uniform and was let in by a nurse she knew. She stood beside his cot for some time and then went to tell her daughter that he was fine. Pip held her son properly for the first time the next morning, when he was brought back to her on the ward. Patrick Lahey came in shortly afterwards, and the four of them spent the morning together in a room meant for two.