Tony's birthday in The View from the Terrace

Yesterday was Tony’s birthday, he is 32; he is my youngest, my baby; I can’t believe it’s 32 years since that June morning when he was born. At that time they had just introduced birth plans; you could write on it anything you particularly wanted or didn’t want. Louise had been born at 10 o’clock in the evening and, as soon as we were taken to the ward after her birth, she was taken to the nursery. She cried almost continuously all that night. I could hear her but they wouldn’t allow me to have her with me in case she woke the other mothers. I tried to explain that I wouldn’t let her, I would stay awake all night if necessary, but to no avail. I have often wondered if that, her first experience in this world, contributed to Louise’s fear of letting me out of her sight.

So on my birth plan for Tony I wrote that I didn’t want the baby to be taken away from me. I was very lucky as they happened to have a private room empty and they put me in there so that I could keep Tony in a cot beside my bed. As it happened he was born at 11 o’clock in the morning and was a very easy going baby. That night I fell asleep at about 11 pm after feeding him and didn’t wake all night. When I woke in the morning I looked at my watch; it was 7 am. I was terrified, why had the baby not cried in the night? I leaned over the cot, his eyes were closed and he was very still: then he opened his eyes and looked at me. He had slept through the whole night, he was fine.

It is strange how some memories never fade. I remember when we took him home my mother-in-law came out of the house with the two children. I can still see in my mind Louise running down the path in a blue gingham summer dress to meet her new little brother. He didn’t sleep through the night again for 6 weeks, but he was a very easy baby, he almost never cried. This was just as well as Louise was difficult after he was born. I couldn’t leave him alone with her and had to carry him around from room to room in a baby seat. I was doing a part time college course a few months later and we had to write an essay on child development. I told of this time and how Louise used to throw lego bricks at him, only I just wrote that she threw bricks at him. We read our essays out in class and, when it was my turn, the tutor asked me if I meant lego bricks and I said yes. He said that was a relief as he had been very worried about my baby!

Tony was such an easy, happy child that we used to say that God had made a mistake and sent us an angel instead of a baby. Then when he hit adolescence we knew we were wrong about that! I hope he had a good day. He hasn’t seen his fiancee since lockdown began apart from occasional socially distanced visits, we live in strange times.