Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Bundles of hope and joy
By Aditha Dissanayake
In Garcia Lorca's play, Yerma, the barren girl protagonist asks her friend, "What is it like to have a baby growing inside you?" Her friend says, "Have you ever held a little bird cupped in your hands and felt it wriggle? That is what it feels like to carry a baby in your tummy".

Staring at the huge, pear shaped stomach of the girl seated at the OPD of the Castle Street Hospital for Women, I ask her the same question Yerma had asked. But the girl, unlike Yerma's friend, simply shrugs her shoulders, keeps her hands on her hips and smiles. "This is her seventh month. We hope it will be a normal birth," says her husband. Tall, dark, and sporting an Omar Sharif moustache, he continues without any prompting. "I want her to give birth to our baby in the normal way. When babies are taken out through operations, mothers don't experience the agonies of childbirth, so, I feel they don't love their children as much as they ought to."

Could this be true? I ask his wife. She smiles again but says nothing.

Inside Ward Number 1, I come across Nihal Amarasooriya from Lunawa, unwilling to part from his wife and baby, even though the wife insists it's time he left for home. "I'll be going then," he says several times, but remains where he is. "Remember what the doctor said. Feed him all the time," he keeps telling her.

When he finally leaves the ward, I fall in step with him. "Yes," he says. "This is my first baby." Touching his shirt collar, he grins rather sheepishly. "I got married a bit late. We have been trying for a baby for almost five years. But now we have a son. We have called him Lahiru Malinda."

I part from Nihal and walk past the operating theatre. To my dismay, I realise the gray metal doors are not sound proof. The wails of a woman in labour echo down the corridor. But no one seems bothered. Certainly not the dark-skinned over-weight lady, dressed in a printed cotton dress, with a very low cut neck, leaning against a wall outside the theatre. When she catches my eye, she waves her hand and asks me to come over. "That's my daughter-in-law, wailing inside. We just brought her in," she says in a conspiratorial voice. "She was supposed to have the baby yesterday. But I knew we could wait till today. I hope they will discharge her tomorrow. I don't have time to waste hanging around hospitals." She confides in me, a total stranger, perhaps to break the monotony of the long wait. "Her people are in Bibile. Sitha, my leli (daughter - in -law) was boarded close to our place in Mabole, Wattala. That's how my son, Susantha, met her.

"They fell in love and got married last year. Shhhhhh" she says bringing a finger to her lips. "Did you hear a baby cry?" I listen. At first there is only silence. Then, the slow, long wail of a woman. The lady besides me relaxes, scratches the back of her ear impatiently and says, "No, her time hasn't come yet."

Then she becomes nostalgic. "Twenty seven years ago, I had my son in this same hospital. In Ward Five. Now I am waiting for his baby to be born in the same hospital. Unlike other hospitals, this place is good."

Violet Logos from Negombo, carrying her third granddaughter and waiting for a three-wheeler to go home, thinks the same. She tries to persuade me to hold little Sandanima Monali in my arms. I gaze at the baby who is only three days old, but looks as old as Time itself, and give the best excuse I can think of. "I might drop her, I'm so clumsy." "Nonsense," Violet dismisses me with a shake of her head. "Look at him, now," she says pointing towards the young man besides her. "This is his second baby. He was shy too, at first, but now you should see how well he looks after the first baby."

She has nothing but praise for the doctors and staff at the hospital.

"Everyone has been good to us," she says beaming from ear to ear.

Conclusion: After spending an hour with the would-be-parents, new parents and grandparents at Castle Street Hospital, I realise, having a baby means having complete responsibility for another human being. And that a baby gives you the opportunity to love and bond with another human being, in the deepest way possible.

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