“Steven. His name is Steven,” I replied, without the slightest clue where that had come from. Steven. Of course, Steven. He wasn’t Ethan at all. He was Steven – you could tell that just by looking at him.

Steven lay on my chest, quiet, not crying, his big eyes open and absorbing everything around him. Even then, he was so aware. Oh, I was overcome by how lucky I was. Surely nobody else in the world had ever felt this amazing. The pain was forgotten, vanished in an instant (another thing I hadn’t believed possible), and what was left was invincibility and joy. In those moments, I knew what it was all about. I knew what it had all been for. I knew that it had all been worth it.

Is there something else out there for me? Now I knew, and here it was.

When they took him to be cleaned up, I cried, half thinking I’d never get him back. But that’s just silly, I guess.

Then came the stitching up of the episiotomy cut, which took longer than the delivery and wasn’t half as much fun. I kept asking the midwife whether she was finished, and she kept laughing and saying she’d only just started. My toes still curl at the mere thought of those damn stirrups.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. I was still high and woozy from the gas, and it had knocked me out completely. They wheeled me back to the Recovery Ward and I slept all the way, waking only briefly to scream when they mashed my fingers between the wheely-bed and the door as they were moving me into the ward.

While I was being stitched up and resting, the nurse had found my mother and asked whether she wanted to hold Steven. And she did. Mom stood alone with him in a tiny room, the two of them together, getting to know each other. That’s when my mother realised everything would be okay. She understood that she loved him; she really did, even though she had been worried that she wouldn’t. She realised he was part of our family, he belonged. With us. Not an outsider, not a burden, not a constant reminder of pain or disappointment. Just a special little person with a place in our home. Our boy.

I always get a lump in my throat when Mom talks about the time she spent with Steven on his first day in the world. It sounds so special, so private.

I had so much to be grateful for that day.

But the first night was truly awful. I’d never felt worse in my life. The pain, the tiredness, the absolute yuckiness of all these unfamiliar bodily functions. I came around at about nine, and I heard a TV in the background somewhere. Some big debate was going on between Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk. Frankly, at that point I couldn’t have cared less. All I wanted was to be clean, warm and not so damn oozy. And to sleep, of course. I wanted to go home.

When I needed the loo, I was too exhausted to get out of bed and got all panicked. I tried to ring for the nurse but couldn’t remember which button to press. I pressed them all and nothing happened, except for my bed jerking up and down a few times, causing further panic and adding seasickness to the mix. Either the buttons were out of order, or the nurses were simply ignoring me. I looked at a little white buzzer marked “Chaplain” and reflected on the horribleness, yet comforting practicality of that idea. Eventually, a nurse came around and helped me to the loo. She helped me get cleaned up and changed, and twice caught me as I fainted. Something to do with blood loss and anaemia – damn, I wished I’d eaten more liver.

The nurses fed Steven that night. Earlier, they’d given me instructions about collecting formula and bottles and timing of feeds, but I admit I didn’t catch any of it. I was just so tired, so very out of it – in no state to look after Steven. I was in no state to look after myself, either. I was a wreck, crying (of course), leaking and aching all over the place. Perhaps it was a reaction to the gas, but my age probably also had something to do with how messed up I was.

It was a good thing that Steven was kept in the nursery that night, because he wasn’t keeping any of his feeds down. They told me this the next morning, when I’d eventually woken up and they brought him to me. Obviously I panicked.

“Why? What’s wrong? Is he sick?” I asked, terrified.

No, no, they assured me. They’d just change the formula and he’d be fine.

But he wasn’t fine. He didn’t keep any feeds down at all over the next day and a half, and eventually they moved him to Paediatric ICU and put him on a drip. You can imagine what that did to my fragile nerves. The sight of my helpless baby with a nasty-looking drip attached to his little shaved head just broke my heart. I felt completely powerless. I couldn’t do anything to help him and it was probably somehow my fault that he was sick, too. The nurses and doctors didn’t do much to make me feel better. They seemed vague and nonchalant about the whole thing. They certainly didn’t keep me informed about what they were doing, or why they were doing it. Perhaps they thought I wouldn’t understand their fancy medical terms, or maybe they thought I didn’t care. It’s my fault too, though. I just accepted things and was too intimidated to ask questions. Another symptom of the Grown-Ups Know Best disease, which had plagued me all my life. I’m cured these days, of course, but only because I’m a grown-up myself and realise I don’t know shit.