Leah Francis : Finding the Way contents

My Three Sons

CHILDBIRTH

Three caesars. Within a year of our marriage I was pregnant.

"Lead a normal life," advised the obstetrician. So on Christmas night we traveled by train to Melbourne and flew to Hobart for the Australian Jazz Convention.

It was easy and fun.

Afterward we went to Mount Field National Park for some bush walking. On our second day there I had a miscarriage. We hired a car and a driver to take us to the nearest doctor, and what he described as the "tram ambulance" to Hobart General Hospital.

Next morning I lay sobbing for the loss of our baby, while the single girl in the next bed cried over the miscarriage she did not have.

At first sight of me, bleeding and crying, the doctor at Mount Field asked what had happened to my eyes.

"That's not why I'm here," I snapped. Leo insisted I write him an apology for my rudeness. The doctor did not reply.

In October that year, 1968, while I was deep in research for my honours thesis, I miscarried again.

I was devastated by our second miscarriage after almost five months of pregnancy.

By my graduation day in May 1969, my next pregnancy was certain and the doctor was taking precautions to avoid another disaster.

It was a good, safe pregnancy, though I visited the doctor every week and worried constantly that our baby would be blind. My blood pressure rose dangerously so the pregnancy terminated in a Caesarian section.

I had arranged for an ophthalmologist to see our new son soon after he was born.

His eyes were excellent, pronounced the expert. "But yours don't look too good!"

MATTHEW

Matthew small, pale. difficult to feed. failed to thrive. projectile vomiting. Kay Campbell. many doctors. stress. Dr said malnourished. starved. "labile".

Write more including conversation. Why might it be blind?

Expand on some things: what is really like.

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