Love... And Sleepless Nights MAY 2012 (20 page)

‘Wake up Poppy! Wake up now!’ she virtually screamed.

I started to cry. ‘Please Laura. Please calm down baby. She can’t hear you.’

‘For God sakes
Poppy,
wake up!’ Laura cried and hammered on the incubator. Poppy didn’t stir.

Then she said something that shattered what was left of my heart.

‘Don’t die, honey. Please don’t die, Poppy.’

Jesus Christ, this is hard to write.

‘Stay with me Poppy.’ Laura’s voice had dropped to barely a whisper. She turned to look at me. ‘What are we going to do Jamie? What are we going to do?’

I had no words.

Do you know how exquisitely painful that is? To not have any words of comfort for your distraught wife? The person you love more than anything else in the world?

All I could do was put my arms around her and hope that would be enough.

She cried then. For the first time since the diagnosis she cried in my arms.

In long, ragged hitching breaths she let out the pain that had built inside her over the past few days.

I cried too, as I have never cried before.

With our dear, sweet baby lying next to us, we cried for her, feared for her… and hoped for her.

Looking back on it now I know it was a cathartic experience and a necessary one.

But dear God, if you are up there, please never make me go through anything like that again.

Twenty four hours later Poppy started to show signs of improvement. The fever was down, her breathing was becoming more regular and there was a better flush of pink to her complexion.

People say a week is a long time in politics. These people have no
fucking idea
what they are talking about. They should try twenty four hours with a sick baby.

With Poppy’s recovery came the recovery of her parents as well.

We both managed to sleep properly for the first time in days. I was out for a full twelve hours – and awoke to be told that Poppy was also awake - and really not bloody happy about being imprisoned in a big plastic box.

The turn around was quite remarkable. From a listless grey shape, to a vibrating pink ball of anger, my daughter was proving the effectiveness of modern antibiotics in no uncertain terms.

Have you ever sat round with a bunch of friends and completed one of those personality quizzes?

You know the type: What’s your favourite place in the world? What’s your favourite time of day? What’s your favourite swear word? That kind of crap.

Well, I can safely say that if I ever have to answer the question: What’s your favourite sound? I will be able to answer very easily, by simply stating ‘my daughter crying after a bout of pneumonia’.

By Monday it was like she’d never had an infection at all.

‘It’s quite incredible,’ Doctor Abbotson said to us after a routine examination. ‘Poppy’s recovery has been lightning fast. You have a very special little girl here.’

…and that’s when the ‘dad gene’ kicked in for the first time.

This is the part of a man’s genetic make-up that convinces him his child is leagues above anyone else’s.

If the child in question is male, this sense of over-weaning pride usually kicks in when the little sod starts playing football (if he’s any good at it of course). If the kid is female it can be a little harder for a man to judge his daughter’s worth against other girls, considering he has no idea what the rules of netball are.

Therefore, a father must grasp any indication of his daughter’s brilliance whenever he can find it – at whatever age.

Well yeah! Of course she recovered quickly. She’s
my
daughter!

Chest puffed out with ridiculous pride I looked in at Poppy… who gave me the finger.

I kid you not.

I looked at one podgy little hand and I could swear that just for a second she curled her fingers up bar the middle one and flipped her father the bird.

It appears that from now on I will have not one, but two, women ready, willing and able to deflate my pomposity at a moment’s notice.

‘Did she just flip you off?’ Laura said incredulously, before erupting into laughter.

…which it turns out is the second best sound in the world.

So here I sit, a few hours after Poppy gave me the finger, having recovered from what could have been a fatal bout of pneumonia. Life is never
ever
predictable, no matter what the movies try to tell you.

I really should be asleep again. The twelve hours obviously weren’t enough and I’m finding it very hard to type, but I knew I had to get all this down as quickly as possible while it’s raw. I have a tendency to sugar coat the hard stuff if I’m given enough time to think about it and the past week deserves to be re-told in all its unvarnished glory. Otherwise I’d feel like I was somehow cheating my daughter.

Does that make any sense at all, or am I just so messed up at the moment I’m coming out with complete rubbish?

That’s how I feel though.

Poppy went through hell in the past few days, so the least I can do is pour out my pain on the page properly.

Now that horrible job is done, I have a warm, soft wife sleeping peacefully by my side, so I’m ending this post with a hearty thank you to whatever gods may be out there for sparing Poppy. I would have been beyond devastated to lose her.

…even if she does like flipping me the bird.

***

Judith Searle.

That was the on-call doctor’s name who saved my daughter’s life. I asked Laura this morning.

I can safely say that I owe her my life. She is one of the most important people in the world and I thank her from the bottom of my heart.

Laura’s Diary

Monday, January 13th

Dear Mum,

There are times - not very often, but every once in a while - when I despair for the future of the human race.

With Poppy now in my life, I wonder why I took the decision to bring a child into this world, which is so choc-a-block with complete idiots it’s hard to see how anything gets done.

My latest chance to revel in the stupidity of my fellow man came a couple of days ago, when I opened a letter that had just dropped onto the doormat.

Jamie was still fast asleep upstairs, thanks to the Saturday morning lie-in he’d been promising himself all week, and I was preparing to give Poppy her first feed after dawn when the letterbox rattled. I was quite startled as the Saturday morning post has been coming later and later recently, as if the postman was seeing how annoyed he could make his customers without getting a complaint levelled against him.

Shuffling down the hall yawning my head off, I pick up the long brown envelope and look at the back.

It’s from the Registrar of Births & Deaths, so either a distant relative has fallen off this mortal coil and left me a load of cash (highly unlikely) or Poppy’s birth certificate has finally arrived.

Jamie was meant to sort this out weeks ago, but as ever his sieve-like memory let him down time and time again. I was forced to hide his Playstation 3 controller until he got off his arse and drove down to the registry office.

With another huge yawn I open the letter, and with bleary eyes begin to read the certificate.

Ten seconds later I’m storming up the stairs, waving the certificate in front of me and shouting my gormless husband’s name at the top of my voice.

‘What? What?’ he exclaims in a sluggish voice as I sit myself down on the bed, ready to sally forth with a ticking off of no uncertain proportions.

I suddenly remember I have a newborn baby in the house and look over to where Poppy is blissfully unaware of her mother’s new found apocalyptic rage and is sleeping like a log.

I throw back the bed clothes and grab Jamie under one arm.

‘Downstairs… now!’ I hiss in his ear.

Giving him no time to reply – or scratch his balls, a morning ritual I will never get used to seeing – I heave him out of the bedroom and down into the lounge.

‘Read!’ I command, thrusting the certificate at his puffy face.

‘What?’ he repeats, brain not entirely caught up with his body yet. I stand and tap my foot while he stretches, yawns and scratches his balls. This appears to kick start his cerebral cortex. ‘Why do you want me to read this now woman? I need a piss.’

‘Just read it Jamie,’ I seethe.

‘Alright, alright.’ He takes the certificate and scans down it. ‘Seems fine to me.’

‘Read it again,’ I say in clipped, even tones.

He does so, brow knitted in concentration. Getting to the end he shrugs his shoulders. ‘Nothing wrong with it as far as I can see. What’s your problem?’

I let out a huff of exasperated air. ‘For a guy who writes for a living you’re not great at proof reading are you?’ I stab the part where our daughter’s name is recorded. ‘Read
that
bit
again.’

Jamie does so and I am rewarded with his face turning ashen.

‘You see the bloody problem now, Captain Observant?’

He looks up with wide eyes and nods slowly.

The reason for Jamie’s shock and my towering rage is quite simple. Where Poppy Helen Newman’s name should be written in clear, legible font it instead reads:

POOPY HELEN NEWMAN.

A small mistake in terms of lettering – an enormous one for my daughter’s future if we can’t get it rectified.

‘They got the name wrong,’ Jamie says.

‘You fucking think so?!’ I rage. ‘I give you one simple task Jamie Newman, and you still messed that up!’

‘It’s not my fault!’

‘The kid’s at school will call her Shitty Newman, you know that don’t you?’

‘I said it’s not my fault!’

‘Or Poo-head. They’ll call her Poo-head.’ I point a finger. ‘Is that what you want Jamie? Our daughter to be called Poo-head until she reaches sixth form?’

‘I filled the form in right Laura!’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes!’ Jamie pantomimes writing something down. ‘Poppy Helen Newman, I wrote. I even double-checked it.’

‘And yet Jamie, we now appear to have a daughter named after the act of taking a dump.’