Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

Or very close to.

I both didn’t want to post and I desperately wanted to post to tell you that you’re on my mind tonight. It’s only a couple of weeks from being five years since you died, but I wanted you to know that I don’t only think about you three times a year. I miss you often.

Someone on IRC said something and Sawako, one of my IRC bots came up with a weird response that incorporated a quote from a friend from IRC who died not long ago and I thought it was intriguing the way in the bots’ mind, people don’t fade away and their memories are just as fresh as ever, and I thought how amusing it would be if I had a bot that quoted funny things you’d said. But of course I never hung out with you on IRC or on forums so I just don’t know what funny things you said online.

I’m sitting on the beach. It’s 1am in the morning and I am across from my house on the beachfront on the esplanade. Less than 1km along the beachfront from the last place I ever saw you in fact. I can see the lights of the pier beside me to remind me of that fact. I was supposed to go visit the family, but I didn’t because I couldn’t sleep and I was tired and not feeling the best, so I just hung out at home and cleaned the house and listened to all my Vietnamese CD’s that I’d bought overseas.

I’m hoping to do something special to mark the 5 years since you died. I want to do two things but I might not accomplish both. I want to go out to the spot where you died, where dad has a cross for you and I want to put a little tiny plaque on it. I have no idea what it will say yet, I just know that in 5 years, despite driving past it, I have no idea where you died and I have never seen that cross. It’s always been too much for me to go out there, but I have wanted to and this year I think is the year.

I’ll of course drink Bundy for you as well. That goes without saying. I’ve done it every year no matter where I am on Earth. Even if I was in Egypt or Iran I would smuggle in some Bundy rum for the purpose. But I do want to do something else. Tonez and I have been talking about it for nearly 5 solid years. We wanna get matching tattoos for you. I’m not sure it’ll happen this year, but we’re working on it. It depends on cost and time and how much money I’ve saved to get back to Asia. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t begrudge me prioritising my Asian journey over your tattoo would you ? We’ll see. If not this year then the next.

I thought I had philosophical things to say about this moment but they seem to have dispersed on the cool night air that I’m enjoying sitting down here on the beach. But with the waves crashing against the shore I’m sure I’ll think of something. Let me just tell you about stuff instead, because that tends to feel good. I know I normally do this on YOUR blog, but I prefer to keep that blog to three times a year unless something special happens, although to be honest, maybe it has.

I went to a Kpop concert and saw SNSD. I know you don’t know who they are, but you would have, if you had been alive when they came about. Kpop is having a huge surge in popularity around the world right now, far more than Jpop for some reason, although I suspect that it’s because it’s a fewer number of groups that are popular. Jpop is fragmented over many, many popular groups, while Kpop currently has a very focused set of groups who are immensely popular. I heard that SNSD made 35 million dollars on their latest single in one month in Japan alone, and they’re not even Japanese !

Anyway, I saw them in concert, and even got backstage to photograph them. I won’t go on and on because that’s another story to tell, but honestly… it felt like the penultimate experience in my life, other than having Suki. I used to watch amazing Jpop concerts in Japan on TV and think “fuck that looks like the most amazing thing on earth. I wonder what it’s like to go to a concert like that and be surrounded by so many crazy obsessed fans”. Well apparently now I know. I even know what they look like up close because I got press access coz I’m just THAT fucking cool.

I had this weird chat tonight. Not sure if it was for realz or not though. Amber called up. You know Amber, right ? She was that young girl I dated during my first year of university while she was in her first year of senior college. I hadn’t seen her in years and I only caught up with her a few years ago very briefly right after Jo and I split up, and for whatever reason (I probably talked about Jo too much) she stopped talking to me and we lost contact.

Anyway she rings me up out of the blue because Tonez is at her house and they’re getting drunk and very quickly the conversation gets onto kids and how much she wants one and I jokingly say “I told you years ago that I had sperm frozen. You are welcome to that if you want, but I stopped paying for the storage so I guess I’ll have to produce more if you want it. But you know I produce great kids. I have a track record of it”. Next thing you know we’re making some weird arrangement to sleep together so that she can have a kid, LOL. I don’t think it was very serious hehe, though it’s not the first time she’s talked about it.

Anyway I’m sure Amber’s offer was just a drunken joke. It went a little bit too extreme for me to believe and to be honest, if I didn’t know her better I would seriously think that she was taking the piss out of me for lulz, but I’m sure that’s not the case. I was talking to someone today about how hard mum worked to have you and how many miscarriages she had before she finally had you. You were sort of a miracle baby too, just like Suki.

Anyway, look, you’re far from forgotten mate. Tones remembers you. Even Peta and all our friends from West Australia remember you. Everyone does. You will live on forever in our memories, if not the parroted phrases of an IRC bot. Someone tonight told me to “let go”, and sure, I get that. But wtf does that mean ? Does that mean not being sad close to the anniversary of your death when I’m sitting so close to the last place I saw you, or not having a Bundy in your honour ? Coz if that’s what “letting go” means, I don’t want to do it. Your memory isn’t holding me back. If anything, it’s spurring me to new hights to make you proud of me, just as I hope Suki and all my future children will be.

So here I am, sitting on the beach at 1:30am, with a bottle of red wine beside me, my laptop in my hand, and my phone up on the top of the concrete wall, hoping desperately for a decent signal. Sure, I’m sad you’re gone, but as long as I can share the things I’m into with you, that’s at least half of the equation. I only wonder… what would you be into today if you were alive ?

I wrote this shortly after Suki was born. I sent it to Jo with the message “Please archive this for Suki”. I had completely forgotten about it until today when I was searching for some old emails and I found it by accident. I know now that the chances of her ever showing you this are slim so I’ve decided to post it here, warts and all. This was written on the 12th of February 2009 when you were about 11 weeks old. I hope you read it one day and it explains some things for you.

Suki at Easter 2011

I had a vivid dream last night about your Mum. I was wandering around an old dusty house picking up items and trying to work out where I was. Then I opened a cupboard and pulled out an old photo album and it had a photo of a broken coffee mug in it, with a nearly illegible note scratched beside it saying that Jo had had something of hers taken away from her as punishment by auntie Susan until 2003.

The hardest part of this dream is that I can’t email Mum and tell her about it because Mum has a protection order on me because she thinks it’ll make our break-up easier. I just want you to know Suki, I was never angry at your Mum for breaking my heart and I never will be. She had her reasons for cutting me out of her life and she felt she had no other choice. We were so worried about you when you were little Suki. One of the nurses told me that because you were more than three months premature that it would take until after your third birthday before you catch up to other kids your age.

I know that by the time you read this, you’ll be much so much older than you are today, but I just want you to know how much I love you and how much I loved your Mum. Mum and I never fought at all. Maybe that was the problem. She says now that she had to turn her back on me because she couldn’t talk to me about her feelings because she was afraid of how I would react. In truth the way I would have reacted was with surprise. I had no idea that Mum was considering leaving me. She never told me she was unhappy with our life, she just walked out one day and said it was over.

But I loved your Mum so much. When she was sick in the hospital, which was often, I went and visited her every single day. When she wanted something, I made sure she got it. Whenever she wanted my attention and affection, she had it. And whenever she spoke, I thought I listened. But maybe I didn’t see the signs, if there were any signs. I wasn’t always the perfect husband. I made some mistakes that affected Mum’s life. I got in trouble with the law a few times because I was confused about my place in the world. I never quite knew what to do with myself when Mum was around, and I made some errors in judgement.

I told your Mum things deepest in my heart. Things that I should not have even thought to myself. But I trusted her like noone I’d ever met before. I felt that she could heal me. I went to her because I had problems and I thought she could fix them, but she didn’t fix them. In some ways she made them worse. But your Mum didn’t always look upon me as a problem. She loved me once with all her heart and I realise that’s why she wasn’t able to deal with my problems. Instead we ignored them and didn’t try and understand each other and as a result we drifted further apart until finally something snapped inside your Mum and she decided she could take it no longer, and then she had to stop loving me because she didn’t have enough love to share between you and I.

I know this was a hard decision for her. She came from a home without a father as well, and she always said she wanted a better life for you. And so do I, Suki. But sadly your Mum has wounds that won’t heal overnight. She’s had to harden her heart in order to turn her back on me. I know she still loves me, but she thinks that this way is better for everyone. I just want you to know that it wasn’t my choice to leave you. I wanted to be there for you during those first two years. I wanted to see you take your first steps, and speak your first words, but now I’m certain to miss out on those wonderful things because Mum and I have to live apart and it breaks my heart to think that she gets to see all those things and I only get to hear about them.

But I don’t blame your mother for what she’s done. She thinks she made the right decision at the time, even though I know she’s very confused and lots of people are telling her what the right thing to do is. She felt that leaving me was her only option. I don’t know why she couldn’t talk to me. We always talked. We talked about everything. So it’s hard to accept that she could not have talked to me about her feelings. She says she was afraid, but she wasn’t afraid of me. She was afraid of what might happen between us and how it might hurt her, which is why she chose to run away from the problem and take out a protection order to stop me contacting her. Because it’s easier to hate someone when the court is on your side so that you feel like you’ve done the right thing.

But I loved your Mum, and I always will. She was the light of my life, the lighthouse in a sea of fog and clouds of doubt. She always made me want to be a better person, even if I didn’t always manage to do so and if she’d just talked to me, I know we could have found some common ground and found a way to move forward together. But what’s done is done now and I don’t think she’s ever going to give me a second chance, which is heartbreaking because I know we could have resolved this if only we’d talked about it.

Suki, before I became a father I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I was happy, but lost. I lacked direction and I lacked boundaries and guidance. Until you were born and then everything changed for me. Now I have purpose. I have the motivation I need to be a better person. In the few short months that you’ve been alive I’ve already changed so much. I’ve stopped doing things I did in the past and I’ve started looking towards the future and what I need to do to ensure you have a happy, trouble-free life. I hope my new business is successful. It’s a business your Mum and I first started together, and it’s very hard to bring myself to do it on my own because I constantly think of her doing it with me, but I have to move forward with my own life even if it’s not joined to your mothers anymore.

I don’t want you to ever think that Mum and I didn’t love each other. It’s because your mum loves you so much that she thinks it’s best that we separated. I know in time she’ll come to realise that we didn’t need to separate, we just needed to talk. Hopefully that day comes before I’ve missed out on too much of your life. I so much want to be there when you speak your first word, and I’m sure it’ll be “dadda” because it always is with kids. I’m going to keep visiting you and reading to you even when I can’t be there to see you in person and I hope that you’ll recognise my voice when I visit.

I’ve made many mistakes in life Suki, but having you was the greatest achievement I ever accomplished. It lit up my life and gave me hope for the future. It turned me from just a man into a father and I thank your Mum so much for giving me this wonderful gift. I would love to say that we didn’t break up over you, but sadly it’s the truth. But even so, it was still done out of love for you. I love you so much that I have to let you go for a while, at least until Mum thinks that she can handle being around me. I want you to know that giving in and giving Mum her protection order was the most heart-wrenching thing I’ve ever done in my life. To not even say goodbye to the wife I loved for more than eight years and watch her walk out of the courtroom without even a glance at me made me want to tear my eyeballs out of their sockets and jump up and down screaming “No, don’t walk away. I love you” but I have to do what she wants for her to heal, and what she wants is for me to leave her alone so that she can deal with things in her own time.

Suki, it’s just before 5 am in the morning and I took the advice of one of your nurses and gave them a call to talk about you because I couldn’t sleep. They told me you put on a whole 28 grams between your last weigh in, which is about 14 grams per day ! I can’t imagine how you can grow so fast but I guess you are eating a lot – over 50 grams every two hours. That means you’re 2.594 kg today, which is almost three times your birth weight. When I look at the first photos of you, of when I held you in my arms you looked so tiny and already you look so much bigger in recent photos.

I won’t embarrass you by telling you how smelly it was changing your nappy yesterday except to say that the nurse said I was a natural at it. He was really nice and he gave me a lot of really great advice. I think his name was Connor. He suggested that I record myself reading to you and that he would put it in your crib on an MP3 player which is a fantastic idea and I’m going to start recording it tomorrow. My flatmate has some Dr Seuss books which I know you’ll love, and I’m going to get some Roald Dahl from the library because he wrote one of my favourite books as a child – The Big Friendly Giant. Hopefully I can find the Berenstein Bears as well, because I loved that one too. I wish I could see you every night. The nurse I spoke to tonight asked if they’d see me there in the morning and I cried as I said “no”.

Suki, you mean everything in the world to me right now. You are my light, my love and my passion and not being there all the time kills me inside, but those times when I do see you make up for it all. I can’t really afford it but maybe I could come to Brisbane today to see you. It’s only about $20, but I’m behind on the mortgage due to a bit of a failure in my work life the other day. I travelled all the way to Bundaberg to see a client who turned out to have gone home and not worked that day. But it was a nice drive anyway and afterwards I got to see your grandma and grandpa.

I’m going to try and get back to sleep now as the sun’s coming up. There’s a chill breeze blowing through the east windows and I have put the blanket back on the bed for the first time in weeks. I bet Mum wishes she was back in mild Toowoomba instead of being stuck in sticky, hot Brisbane. I just want you to know that I’m thinking of you, even at four o’clock in the morning.

I love you Suki and I love your Mum too so please don’t ever forget that even if I’m not around. We’ll get our chance to see each other, don’t you worry.

Love,

your father, David.

I have added a small note for today to complement this older letter.

As it turns out it looks like it may be a lot longer than 2 years before I see you. You’re turning 3 in just over a month and Jo is running away to a foreign city with Michael and won’t tell me where you’re going. I have all these gifts for you that she refuses to let me send you so instead I’m just going to keep them all here for you. One day when you are older you are going to have all these cute little girl’s dresses that you never got to wear but I dunno.. maybe if they’re not too out of fashion you can keep them for your daughter. Anyway, I’m still buying you gifts all the time because I think of you so often. I was in Singapore on the weekend and I spent my last $10 on a gift for you instead of food for myself even though I know it may be many years before I get to give it to you and by then you may not even want it. But at least you’ll know that I cared and that I was thinking about you for all these years.

I hope something changes and I see you before you’re all grown up but it doesn’t look good right now with Jo and Michael running off into the outback and not telling us where and me going back to Vietnam soon. I had hoped to give your Mum a laptop so we could talk on Skype but she said no. We’ll see. Maybe she’ll change her mind eventually. I hear you have a little brother now too ! Just born a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know his name but I’d love to meet him too one day as I’m sure he’ll be a very special part of your life. You’re his big sister so you’re going to have to look out for him and make sure he doesn’t get into any trouble.

Cya Suki,

Dad.

So I told you I’m not doing this daily “everything in the life of pawz” shit right ? Well I’m not. I will still write, but it’s going to be on a new, private site that only a few chosen friends will have access to. Personally this pains because I love my writing being public. I love how people from as many as 100 countries read my writing, but one or two people always manage to fuck it up by using things I say against me by taking them out of context or making ridiculous inferences so fuck you. You don’t get to read it.

But this is still my personal blog and for the few people I care about I will still tell you certain things about what I’m doing so that you know what happens in my life because I know someone of you genuinely care. And there’s some things I need to get out in the open for everyone to see. I know some of you think this should be private but I think making this shit private just brushes it under the rug. I want it to be right out in the open so everyone knows how I feel and what I’m going through.

Yesterday Merry and I sat on the roof taking photos and drinking rice wine and talking about how much we miss our children. She has two, a girl named Mai who’s 10 and a boy named Nimh who’s 6. While Merry’s father lives in Cambodia, her mother and Merry’s children live in Da Lat in Vietnam. She hasn’t seen her children in 4 years due to some complicated circumstances and she’s just as sad about it as I am about not seeing Suki. But she can at least go back and visit even though there is much tension within her family and her visiting causes a lot of fighting.

We’ve talked about bringing Nimh to come and live with us. We cannot bring Mai at the moment because a good school for her in Saigon is incredibly expensive and far beyond our means right now so she will have to stay in Da Lat until I get a better job. But Nimh is sick right now. Merry doesn’t know the details because her mother and her aren’t on very good terms but we talked to her family a bit yesterday and I talked to Mai both yesterday and today. She sounds so adorable and she speaks such clearly enunciated English which surprises Merry because her own mother cannot speak English at all and when I talked to her mum I had to speak to her in Vietnamese which basically meant that all I could say was hello and introduce myself and tell her she had a beautiful daughter. But speaking to Mai was pretty cool.

Merry wants to go see Nimh. We’re not sure why he’s sick but it’s not a just a cold and she hasn’t seen him for years and she wants me to meet her family and I want to meet them too, so by Monday I should have been paid a little money from a client of mine and as soon as I have the money we’re catching a bus up to Da Lat to see her family so that I can meet her mother and Nimh and Mai.

I’m going to take a job teaching. It’s not something I really wanted to do because the pay is low and the hours are shithouse but if I want to support Merry and her kids then that’s just what I have to do. It’s only part time anyway so I can still pursue other jobs. So when my rent is due next week we’re going to give my landlord the required one month’s notice and we’re going to move out. We’re going to rent a small furnished apartment at the resort in District 11 near the airport that Neil runs. Something small, but hopefully with a kitchen and if possible a balcony and an extra bed so that Nimh can come and live with us.

Suki is as good as dead to me now that Jo is running away interstate with her and won’t talk to my family despite everything they’ve done for her and all the money we’ve given her. For the last four months I’ve spent every day thinking about her and buying her clothes and gifts all the time thinking “I’m going to see you soon Suki… soon and these are all going to be for you”. But that’s not going to happen. Joanna made that very clear. In one breath she said “The child support you send me isn’t enough. I want you to send me $1000 now instead of running around spending money in Saigon”.

And in the next breath she said “No. I’m not sending you any photos and you cannot visit or see Suki”. She said she would never let me see Suki until she was legally old enough to make the decision herself and Jo couldn’t stop her. What a lovely person. She insists I send her money but then says I can’t get so much as a fucking photograph of my daughter let alone see her in person. I hope she fucking dies in a horrific road accident.

Well, I look forward to the day when Suki is legally able to decide for herself to see me and I live in anticipation of whenever that finally happens but I think in the meantime, I have to accept that Suki is not and will not be a part of my life as long as Jo is alive and I should just concentrate on the family that I can have. And now I have two kids who I haven’t yet met. Mai and Nimh. And next week I’m going to meet my new mother-in-law and my two new step-children and hopefully Nimh’s sickness is nothing serious and when we get back to Saigon and move house to District 11, he can come and move in with us and I will finally have a family to care for again like I have wanted for so many years.

All I have wanted, ever since Jo and I started trying to have a child back in 2004 was to have a family to love and care for, but unfortunately Jo just used me, led me on, made me support her and give her a child so that she could run off with my child to live with someone else and never even give me a photo of my child let alone see her. I’m not even going to talk about how immoral or illegal that is because everyone knows. Noone I tell it to can even comprehend how someone could do something so disgustingly abhorrent and cruel.

Since Jo won’t even give me her address so that I can send Suki her gifts I guess I just can’t give them to her. As someone suggested to me recently, I will just continue buying her gifts and then one day when she’s 18 years old and comes to see me I can give her 18 years worth of gifts that I’ve bought and say “Here’s everything I bought for you to show you how much I love you but that your mother wouldn’t let me give you”.

But in the meantime, I guess I’m going to be buying cute clothes for Nimh and Mai instead. I can’t wait to meet them. Maybe if you’re lucky, I might even share some photos with you if I’m not sick of all the bullshit and grief that you people reading this shit give me. I finally have some good work coming up worth real money and I’m going to take a part time job teaching as well so that I can support my family so that I don’t have to rely on my own parents who neither understand me nor give a flying fuck about the situation with my daughter and spend all their time kissing my ex-wife’s ass so that they can see my daughter even when I can’t.

So maybe I’ll post a little from time to time, just so you know I’m not dead. But my true thoughts and feelings ? Fuck you, they’re private now. And my stories ? Well, they’re being written somewhere else now. And if you’re invited to read them, then lucky you. And if you’re not, suck shit.

Now, there’s a 3 Litre bottle of $2.30 rice wine sitting here waiting to be poured into my tiny china goblets that we drink it from. It’s miserable and raining today and I can’t afford to go out anywhere because the tiny amount of money I had in the bank just got gobbled up by bank fees and recurring bills so we’re going to be eating packet noodles and drinking cheap wine all weekend until I get paid next or until my parents get off their arse and help me sell the rest of my shit that I have back home instead of pretending to sell it and claiming it all as theirs instead.

Oh and to my mum and dad, if you think you’re doing some sort of weird fucked up favour by not selling my shit and keeping it and then borrowing money on credit to give to me and then bitching about how you owe all this money on your credit card, you’re not. All you’re doing is disrespecting me by condescendingly thinking that I’m so fucking stupid that I couldn’t possibly know what I’m doing with my life and that I’m going to come running home tomorrow and say “Bawww I want my TV and stereo back”. Well I’m fucking not. In fact, I’m so fucking insulted that you treat me like I’m 13 fucking years old that frankly I don’t want to come back now.

Just do what I fucking asked you to do and stop lying to me. Photograph all my shit so that I can sell it. I gave your phone number to Brad today who wants to come and buy my stereo. He has already messaged you and you haven’t even responded to him. Don’t fuck him around. Just sell it to him and have him put it straight into my Bendigo account OVER THE COUNTER on Friday please and no I won’t be using it to buy your retardedly expensive $750 ticket home. If I wanted to get home I could get there for half that price but you think you’re so fucking smart and I’m so fucking stupid that I couldn’t possibly organise a cheap plane ticket home. Well now I don’t want to after the way you’ve been treating me like a fucking child and lying to me.

You’re not helping me see Suki because you’re too fucking busy kissing Jo’s ass and going off at me for saying bad things about her while she fucking runs around saying “Fuck you. I won’t tell you my address and I won’t send you photos and you’re never going to see Suki” and you don’t give a fuck and don’t do anything about it. You only care about seeing Suki yourself. You’ve seen her time and time again and you don’t even fucking TELL me about it let alone send me photos.

You fucking get what I’m saying ? I don’t want your fucking money I want you to be honest and to fucking help me do simple things like see Suki but you act totally two-faced. You kiss Jo’s ass and then you lie to me and you don’t even tell me when you see my daughter or give me the photos that I’ve asked you to send me. I’ve asked you time and fucking time again to get a CD of all Suki’s photos from Jo and send it to me, or at least send me high-resolution copies of the photos that you’ve taken yourself and you’ve NEVER FUCKING DONE IT. You just fucking ignore me, lie to me, act condescending and insulting and try and tell me what to do. Fuck you. If that’s your idea of “helping” then I don’t want it. Just sell off my fucking shit and I’ll be out of your life and you won’t see me again.

At least I have some people who understand. Cyrille, the owner of the Rhum House just got back from France and he’s very eager to see me. He said “Please, I want to meet your new wife, come see me at the bar tonight. All the drinks are on me. I will pay for everything” and I said “I can’t. I have no money. My clients always pay me so late and I have so little work. I cannot even get there” and he responded “I understand. I spent all my money opening this bar and now I can barely eat. I am lucky to have a wife who supports me and loves me and she works to feed us while my bar is not making much money”.

I said “That is good. I am glad you understand me. But I am so angry right now because my ex-wife is running away, kidnapping my child and taking her somewhere else and will not tell me where she lives or ever let me see her again”. And he said “You know ? I understand that too. I had a wife in Thailand and we broke up and she will not let me see my 6 year old daughter for the last 4 years. She ran away with her and I don’t know where she is or how to contact her. Just like you with your daughter’s tattoo, I carry my daughter’s photo with my everywhere because I am so crazy about her even though I haven’t seen her in 4 years and don’t even know what she looks like now so we are just the same. Tomorrow when you come I will show you her photo and we can talk. I understand so well what you are going through”.

Well, thank fuck someone does. My wife is this heartless cold bitch who won’t even let her daughter see her own father, send him photos or let him send her gifts. My parents are too concerned with seeing their granddaughter themselves to give a fuck whether I get to see her or not. Noone else understands. Cyrille understands because he has had his daughter stolen from him too, and Merry at least understands why I am sad because she hasn’t seen her children either but at least she can visit them if she wants to. Hell, even Lil lives apart from her children but still gets to see them. But Cyrille and I are the only ones in the situation where we loved some woman and gave her everything only for her to turn around and say “Fuck you. I’m going away now and you will never see your child again”.

Unless you’ve had that happen to you, then FUCK YOU and don’t even you TRY and tell me you understand what I’m going through because you fucking don’t and you NEVER FUCKING WILL and I don’t even want to talk to ANY of you about it.

Anyway this 3 litre bottle of rice wine isn’t going to drink itself so it’s time to drink, so … Khang Li. In fact…..

Mot Hai Ba YOOOO !

I really want to see Suki. It’s coming on almost two years now since I’ve seen her and I just talk about her day in and day out, but other than the photos my parents send me on the rare occasion they see her, I don’t even know what she looks like. Despite me buying Jo a new digital camera and video camera so that she could photograph and video Suki, she doesn’t send me a single photo or video. I get nothing. Of course I have to pay child support, but I don’t even get so much as a photo of my own child from her.

Well, yesterday was Father’s day. I didn’t even realise until I noticed a Father’s day comment from my friend in my email. It’s celebrated at different time in each country so it’s easy to forget about it, but in Australia it’s the first Sunday in September, so I sent off an email to my dad.

But I don’t get an email from Suki unfortunately. If her mum wasn’t such a piece of shit, fuckwit bitch she’d have the decency to take just one single photo, even if it was on her iPhone and send it to me and say “Happy Father’s Day, here’s a photo of your daughter”, but no. I don’t get that.

So I was sitting here looking at old photos of her that I took when she was in hospital. Merry caught me crying and asked me what was wrong and I explained that today was Father’s Day, but I don’t think she understood what it was. I guess they don’t have it in Cambodia. She just knew that I was very sad and I was crying because I couldn’t see my daughter. She didn’t say much and she didn’t even try and hug me. She knew it was personal and she didn’t really understand so she just asked a few times if I was ok.

Well, my dad got a Father’s Day greeting, and I’m sure his dad did too, but sadly I didn’t get one. Oh well. It’ll only be a few years before Suki can write and she can send me one then. Maybe by 2014 I can expect an email on Father’s Day. Hopefully when I give her this laptop her mother will stop being a cunt for two seconds and say “Suki, your father wants to speak to you” and she’ll put her in front of the camera for me. But I don’t hold out a lot of hope for that considering she couldn’t even be fucked sending me a photo of her.

Fuck you’re a piece of shit Joanna. You are the scummiest, most vile, reprehensible human being I know. I loved you and cared for you, I supported you and did everything for you when you were too fucking lazy to get a job or learn to drive a car or anything and went through fucking hell to give you the child that you so desperately wanted only for you to walk out on me, make up lies about me, take everything I had, sue my parents for even more money, and now refuse to even talk civilly to me or send me a photo of my daughter on Father’s Day.

I’ve really tried not to hate you. I’ve wished for you to be happy ever since you left. I’ve never been angry about your decision to leave me for someone else, just hurt and disappointed that I did so much for you and you repay me by saying “Fuck you. You will never see your child until she’s an adult and can legally decide for herself”. Yeah ? Well fuck you too you ungrateful bitch.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s see the real reason for this post. My daughter, Suki.

I didn’t make it to the rave party as planned. Partly because noone wanted to go with me and partly because I was already having enough fun anyway. There was one young British guy who was interested, but he said “I can’t man. My wife is at home waiting for me and I have to work tomorrow. It sounds like great fun, but I can’t go out to dance party until 3am sorry”.

But I had a great night anyway. I went to Number 5 at the start of happy hour and sat down beside two other blokes and ordered a beer. Van came up to me and said “You are all Australian !” and I went “Huh ?” and she point to each of us in turn and said “Australian. Australian. Australian”. So I turned to the other blokes and said “Where are you from ?” and they told me. Don was from Melbourne and Mark was from Perth. We talked for ages. They both lived in Da Nang and they were just in Saigon for a holiday because apparently Da Nang is a bit boring. I don’t even remember what the hell we talked about. We just talked about shit. Don was such a player. He was in his 40′s and he was fat and balding, but he had CHARM. He knew a decent bit of Vietnamese (he is married to a VN girl) and he would say “Em Moooooooooi !” to the girls. He had this funny drawling accent where he would draw out the Vietnamese vowels while grinning at them. Every sentence he spoke ended in “ooooooooi” for reasons I couldn’t be bothered explaining. If you spoke Vietnamese you would get it.

We did talk about music a bit. We were just chatting about being Australian and I said “One second” and ran off to the computer to put “Khe Sanh” on the bar’s stereo and turned it up loud. I came back and Don said “Can you do that ?” and I said “You can’t, but I can because I’m special”. He said “Yeah. Good song about Vietnam”. I said “You know Redgum ?” and he goes “Of course I do ! I have a copy of ‘Caught in the Act’ on my laptop at home. They’re great. So political. You know that song from Caught In the Act about Malcolm Fraser ?” and I said I did and sung the relevant lines in my croaky, cold-affected voice.

I voted for Mal Fraser.
It was the decent thing to do.
It was a vote against the communists.
And I hope that you did.
Hope that you did too !

He LOL’d and said “That’s the shit man”. I said “I was going to go to the computer and download some Redgum to play, but I don’t really want to bring the mood down” and he said “Yeah, I don’t think playing ‘A walk in the light green’ would go down so well here, you know ?” I said “Yeah, good point, but I was actually thinking of something happier. Maybe ‘I’ve Been to Bali too’ would be appropriate” and he said “Yeah. They’d like that I reckon. You should download it for them” and I said “Yeah, maybe tomorrow”.

I was starting to think Chris wasn’t coming and I was wondering if I should go to this seminar on my own, but he turned up a bit after 5pm and sat down and we shared a meal and had a heap of drinks, and then got ready to take off to the seminar. Les was nearby and I went up to him and said “Les. You have a UK pension right ? Chris and I are going to an investment seminar. Free food and drinks. You wanna come ?” and he didn’t look overly enthusiastic but he said “Yeah ok. I’ll come. Why not”. I was talking about it with Chris and a nearby British guy (the young guy who wanted to come to the dance party) said “It’s not hosted by ‘Ethical Investments’ is it ?” and I said “As a matter of fact, it is” and he laughed and said “Say hello to Roger for me”.

So the three of us jumped into a taxi (because it was pissing down raining) and headed off to the Duxton Hotel. We were a little late, but it didn’t matter because it was just meet and greet time. We went in and registered and I grabbed a glass of wine and Les grabbed a beer in a massive glass that must have held 700ml. We drank and chatted. Christopher came by and said “Nice clothes Dave. You look like you’re ready for the beach” and I said “Hey man, gimme a break. I didn’t come to Vietnam for business” and he says “I’m just joking. There’s bugger all people here tonight because of the rain. Maybe 20 people at most. I’m glad you brought friends. By the way, this is Roger, he’s hosting the seminar”. I said “Hi Roger. I’m David. This is Chris and Les and my mate Nick said to say hello” and he said “Hahaha. Nick’s a dickhead” and I said “Funny, he said something similar about you” and he laughed.

We drank for a while and then went in and listened to the seminar. It wasn’t really as boring as I expected. It was basically about secure investments with guaranteed returns, oldwood forests in Brazil and carbon credits and stuff. He talked about the economy and mentioned how Australia had done very well and hadn’t suffered from the GFC and I whooped and he said “And Dave here will tell you all about Australia whether you want to hear it or not” and everyone laughed. Who would have thought an investment seminar would be so funny ?

After the seminar we went and ate. The food was bloody brilliant. Lovely smorgasboard of French breads and Italian pasta and New Zealand lamb. The lamb and the beef was especially excellent and Chris said at one point “This beef is bloody amazing. Have you tried it ?” and I said “No, I’ve just had the lamb mainly. Let me go get some beef” and I ran off and got some beef. It was indeed divine. Roger said “White wine David ?” and I said “I’d prefer red” and he said “No problem !” and called to some Vietnamese guy who went scurrying off and came back and opened a bottle of red wine and poured me a glass. Fuck yeah. That’s service.

We all met up in the bathroom to pee and I said “So what did you think ?” and Chris said “They’re good. They’re going to help release my UK pension early so that I can invest it, because if I die, the government keeps it, so I want to get it out so that I can invest it and if I die it can go to my family instead”. Les said “I reckon it was all bullshit. How about you ?” and I said “Look. I don’t understand all that investment bullshit, but there was two things I liked that they talked about. Carbon credits and biofuels. That’s the future man. In a few years, carbon credits are going to be the new economic boom. When the world starts dealing in carbon credits, they’re going to be more valuable than gold. Literally” and he said “Yeah. You’re probably right there”.

We all left. Les went home, and Chris and I went to Voodoo bar because I had to drink a Bundy in Josh’s honour. We went in and it’s pretty busy. Chris doesn’t really like it. It’s just Number 5 but smaller, and the girls aren’t that good looking. So we are drinking our Bundy and cokes and I ask the waitress “How much are these ?” and she says “70,000″. “Ok good”. Not that it matters because Chris is buying again, but I just wanted to know how much a Bundy costs in Saigon. But then after we finish, the bill comes and I look at it and we’ve been charged 170,000… and I say “Hey. You said they were 70,000. You’ve charged us 85,000″ she says “No. I said ‘About 70,000′” and I said “Bullshit. You did not. You said 70,000. Now you want 85,000″. We argue about it for a bit and I say “Fine. But we won’t come back here” and we walk out. Assholes. It’s not like 30,000 dong matters… but it’s the principle. I asked how much the drink costs, and she told me, and then charges us like $1.50 more at the end of the night. Fuck that shit. That’s not cool. I’ve been told by Joe that Secret Bar does that to some people who aren’t regulars too. If you look particularly drunk and they don’t know you, they’ll just slap a few extra dollars on your bill.

But they won’t do that to me or my friends that’s for sure. Quite the opposite. I take my friends there and they get free drinks. Chris and I go to Secret Bar and find a quiet table up the back and he rings his girlfriend and tells he to meet us and he orders us a couple of beers. Thy comes over and says “You brought your friend again. Thank you”. They appreciate that. You bring a new customer who looks like they might become a regular and they will treat you very well. Secret Bar is a quiet place. It has no big neon sign outside and most nights there are more waitresses than there are customers, so they appreciate their regular customers.

Chris and his girlfriend wander off for a bit and I’m sitting there on my own thinking about Josh and Thy comes over and says “David. You look sad. What’s wrong ?” and I say “It’s my brother’s birthday” and she says “Is he here ?” and I say “No. He died 5 years ago” and she says “I’m so sorry David” and she gives me a big hug. She disappears and comes back a minute later with another beer and says “David. This drink is for your brother. Enjoy and don’t be sad”. I’m just like “Thanks Thy. You’re awesome”. She says “Anything I can do. You tell me. Is there anything we can do better ?” and I say “Yeah. The beer isn’t cold enough. We always get a Tiger Crystal and it’s never cold enough” and she says “Ok, I’ll look into that. Maybe the fridge isn’t cold enough. Anything else ?” and I say “The music sucks. Tam plays the shittiest American music and noone likes it”.

She says “You can ask for something” and I say “Yeah but we can’t sit there asking for songs all night. We just want to hear some good rock music. Not this American rap music. You play young black American rap music. Look around. Do you see any young black Americans drinking here ? It’s old British and American white guys. We don’t want to listen to Dr Dre. We want to listen to Pink Floyd and The Eagles”. She nods and says “Ok. I’ll tell Tam. Do you want to program the music ? Tomorrow. You choose the music for us” and I’m like “Ok. Give me one hour tomorrow night. I’ll be the DJ” and she goes “Ok. No problem”. She goes and taps Tam on the shoulder and says something to him. Instantly the Eminem is pulled off the stereo and The Eagles get put on and of the rest of the night we listen to rock music. THAT’S service. You say “I don’t like this music. Play something else”, and instantly, they fix it. And apparently, I get to be the DJ tomorrow night.

Why ? Well because I bring people here. I go there every night. I tell lots of people at Number 5 “Go to Secret Bar. It’s around the corner. It’s really good. The waitresses are cute. The bar is quiet. It’s open until 2am. The owner is very friendly”. Case in point ? Christopher and Roger walk in and I’m like “Hey guys ! Good to see you here !”. I already have two nearly full beers in front of me and Chris has one and a waitress walks up with two more beers and I’m like “Why ?” and she just points at Roger. I look over and he’s giving me a thumbs up. Ok, awesome. So apparently him giving us a free dinner and free wine isn’t enough. Now he’s buying us our favourite beer as well. Good bloke. I wander up to the bar and thank him and we talk for a bit. Not really sure what about. I’m pretty pissed by this point. I’ve been drinking at Number 5. I’ve been drinking at the seminar. I’ve been drinking at Voodoo. And now I’m drinking at Secret Bar.

When I leave, I’m walking down the street on my way to get a motorbike and this guy comes up to me and goes “Hello. How are you ?” and I just shrug and say “Good thanks. You ?” and he’s like “Yes. Very good. Where are you from ?” and I tell him and we chat a bit. Next thing he insists on giving me his phone number. I’m thinking “WTF ? Why does this strange Vietnamese guy I just met on the street want me to have his phone number ?” I guess he was pissed or something. I dunno. But for whatever reason, I now have the number for a Vietnamese guy named Hoang in my phone. Why ? No fucking idea.

How much have I spent on drinks tonight ? About $8.50. I had happy hour at Number 5 for $4.50 and drank at least a dozen pints, and Nhi was really depressed last night so I bought her a $4 Swiss chocolate liqueur to cheer her up. All my other drinks have been paid for by other people tonight. I’m a bit tired and I’m very drunk, so I decide to leave at about 1:30am and I kiss Hoa goodnight and wish Chris and Christopher and Roger a good night and head off on a motorbike. I stumble outside and a guy is like “Motorbike sir ?” and I say “Yeah. Pham Hung. Quan 8″ and he holds up 5 fingers. I’m sick of arguing with guys over the 45 cent different between 40,000 and 50,000 dong so I just go “ok” and get on and we go home. I’m thinking of going to the restaurant again but it just seems a bit far and I couldn’t be bothered and all I really want is a couple more beers.

So I stop at some little beer joint and pull up a tiny plastic stool and sit down on it. And it smashes to pieces under my fat arse. Oops. The guys nearby drinking crack up laughing. They are just pissing themselves with laughter. The owner runs up with a proper chair for me. I knock back a few beers pretty quickly, and I notice there’s this buff (but tiny) Vietnamese guy with no shirt on at the next table giving me this death stare. I’m like “What ? What’s your problem ?” and he just points at me. I’m like “What ? You wanna fight me ? You look very strong”. I know he doesn’t understand a thing I’m saying of course, so I mime it for him. I point to him and then to me, then I mime boxing. Then I point to him again and then mime having big arm muscles. He’s still glaring at me though. So I bought him a beer. All of a sudden he was my friend and he was grinning at me. I finished up after about beers and paid my bill (I think it was about $3.50) and he came up and shook my hand.

I didn’t take my camera and laptop out with me last night because I thought I was going to that rave party. Glad I didn’t go to be honest. I really just wanted to go to see what it was like and brag that I’d been to a mad rave party on the docks of District 4 with over 5,000 people. I didn’t really want to actually go there and dance, though if I’d gone, I probably would have. But noone wanted to come with me, and it was a fair way from anywhere so I just didn’t bother. It was more fun drinking with Roger and Christopher and Chris. I did take two photos with my phone though of the drinks that I was bought for Josh. Chris bought the rum and coke, and Thy bought the tiger. There you go Josh, you got bought two drinks last night. I drank them for you. They were delicious ! :”)

My parents saw Suki recently on the Sunshine Coast. They went to a park with her. As usual she looks like she’s just bursting with happiness. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid who looks as happy as she does. Nhi and I were talking earlier about stuff and she asked how long I’d been in Vietnam so far and I told her it was 8 weeks. She asked “You miss your family ? You miss Suki ?” and I went “Awwww”. She had actually forgotten what country I came from and had to ask me again tonight where I came from, but she remembers my daughter’s name. That’s so touching.

Later Lam and Hue both wanted to see photos of Suki. I showed her the ones I had, but I only had recent ones. Hue said she wanted to see baby photos of her but all of those are stored on Amazon and I get really, really miserable speeds to Amazon from the bar here so it would have taken me all night to download them. I promise I’ll download them tonight and show her tomorrow. Hue spent hours sitting beside me looking through every photo I had. Longreach, Brisbane, New Zealand, Vietnam. She was really interested in my wedding photos and said it looked like I’d have a beautiful wedding. She thought the cake was amazing and she kept saying that Jo was really beautiful and asked if I still missed her. I said “Not anymore. She doesn’t love me anymore and she is happy with someone else, so I don’t miss her anymore”.

Anyway, here’s a photo of Suki with my parents that my cousin sent to me.

Josh’s birthday is on Thursday and I know where I’ll be spending it.

Voodoo Bar.

Why ?

Because they sell Bundaberg rum there ! I saw it advertised on their blackboard and said to the manager “Wow, you sell Bundaberg rum ?” and she said “Yes, Australian” and I said “Yes. It’s very good. My favourite rum. I will come drink it soon”. So there you go. Thursday night I’ll be at Voodoo Bar drinking Bundy in Josh’s honour. And amusingly, it’ll be half the price it would be if I was drinking it back in Australia. I will have drunk Bundy on your birthday for five years running now even though I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it here in Vietnam, but fortunately now I know where to get a cheap Bundy, so I’m going to be drinking that on Thursday. I still want to try and get a small birthday cake to eat.

If I can’t get a small one, I’ll just get a full sized one and share it with everyone at the bar, what the hell. I’ve never done that before on your birthday because I’ve never been that into cakes but after I ate cake with Thy on her birthday when she shared it with everyone at the bar I just sorta thought it was a cool thing to do, to buy a cake and share it with a bunch of strangers.

Anyway, I can’t talk about it anymore right now because it makes me very emotional to talk about it. Hope I don’t get too sad on Thursday. Since Hue and I were looking through my wedding album tonight I came across this photo and she asked who everyone was. I realised that this was probably one of the last times that my entire family had been together. Me, Josh, Mum, Dad, and Grandma and Grandpa. So here it is. The Robinson clan.

I was listening to some of my old music that I’d written with Tony back in 1995… 16 years ago. In the verse of “Yellow Crayon” it says “I’ll be 20 till I’m dead”. Which was amusing because we weren’t 20 yet anyway, we were only 18. In “Stuck in First” the lyrics say “We’ll be together till two thousand and three”. Wow how time moves on, It’s now 2011. Funny how when you’re imagining the future you can only imagine a few years ahead, and then twice that far in the future you look back and go “Wow, that was a long ago. And I imagined we would only be together until then ? That’s a little sad”.

Things change. Things move on. Funny how music doesn’t though. Not just other’s music, which always feels timeless, but even your own music. Apart from the fact that it’s horribly amateurish and sounds like I had just picked up a guitar the previous year (which I had), it doesn’t feel dated. Even to me, those songs feel like I wrote them yesterday. I remember like it was yesterday, running into my bedroom when Tony and I were studying after stealing Josh’s yellow crayon to use as a highlighter and highlighting passages in my textbook with it, and raving on about how good it was and Tony saying “Jesus Dave, why don’t you write a bloody song about it” and I said “Fine, I will”. And now, 15 years later, Josh has been gone for many years, but I’m still listening to that song I wrote that day about his yellow crayon.

Time passes, things change. Music is forever.

My Yellow Crayon

It was a Sunday when it happened, the happiest moment of my life. Jo had a cervical infection, causing Chorioamnionitis which is a life threatening situation for both mother and child. We spoke to the doctors and they said they wanted to take Suki out immediately. At first I was pleased and I asked “So that means you think she has a chance of making it then ?”, but the expression on the doctor’s face told me before his words did that that was not what they expected at all. My hopes almost crashed, but I know that most of my mind was already hardened and wouldn’t believe in such an outcome. Only a small part of me was terrified. The rest just said to myself “No. That’s not what’s going to happen”.

The birth was a whirlwind. You see on TV that labour takes hours, but Jo was having a cesarean and I didn’t know much about them other than what the doctors had told us, which was that due to the presence of Placenta Previa, Jo might not have a classic cesarean and might have a vertical one which was much more likely to cause problems and necessitate that all future births be the same type of cesarean. Not being able to have more children in the future was something that weighed very heavily on my mind. Jo had been bleeding for weeks and there was the very real possibility that a historectomy might need to be performed. I had really no idea what that meant except that it was terrible and meant no more children. The only thing that scared me more than losing our child was losing the chance to have more children in the future, and in the hour leading up to the delivery I was shaking inside and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

I’d previously been told by one of our specialists that I would be allowed to be present for the operation, but when the time came I was told that I’d have to wait outside in the hallway with the rest of the family. The only person other than the doctors who went in was the chaplain of the church. It was important to Jo and I that if Suki didn’t make it that she be baptised as soon as she was born.

After Jo, the chaplain was the last person I saw go into the theatre. I’m not sure if time flew by or dragged, but I do remember that it was only a bit over 25 minutes before the chaplain came back out again, and as we hurried down the corridor towards each other I watched his lips and his face like they were bearing the most important message in the history of the world.

“She’s alive. Your daughter is alive” he said, and my heart leaped into my mouth.

“Did she cry ?” I asked, wanting to know if there had been that magical moment that parents always wait on.

“No,” he replied. “But I saw her lungs move and she’s breathing”

Then the doctors appeared again, pushing a huge humidicrib with bottles and tanks attached to it. One of the doctors motioned for me and I followed along close beside them as we went into the elevator and up to the nursery. All I could see was Suki’s cheeks as they wheeled her into the ICN for the first time. I got a second to look at her before the doctor guided me around the floor and showed me location of the room and the entrance and explained the security system. It all went over my head because I was so full of emotion and amazement at what I’d just seen, and I got totally lost on my way out and thought I was still on the 5th floor.

Then I met up with Mum and Susan and we were taken to the recovery room where Jo was waking up. I’d been told by the doctors that she’d be awake and alert pretty much straight after the surgery, which was true, but the anaesthetic was strong and Jo was so groggy that she was like a sleepy child. It made me smile so much and i put my hand on her forehead and brushed away her fringe. I kept on stroking her hair as she woke up and looked around at us.

Jo looked up at me smiling at her and spoke. “How is she ?”

Tears ran down my face as I smiled the biggest smile and said “She’s breathing Jo, she’s alive! Our daughter’s alive!”

Jo just nodded and said “That’s good news”. I felt like jumping for joy beside her, but she was still under the effect of the anaesthetic and still in a large amount of pain, so it was a while before she was going to be able to do any jumping. I filled in the time while her morphine kicked in by just repeating myself stupidly over and over. “She’s alive. She’s breathing. I saw our baby !”

I can imagine the joy the chaplain must have felt, bringing that news to me but I don’t think it compares to the two-fold joy of being able to speak those happy words to the woman, the mother that I loved, and feel their effect on myself at the same time. That was the happiest moment in my life, when I looked down at Joanna’s drowsy face and said “She’s breathing”. Nothing will ever compare to that moment and I will treasure it all the days of my life and it will keep me strong through all the troubles to come in the future.

Jo, seeing your face after that surgery was the biggest high I’ve ever felt in my life. The thrill that no chemical or life experience could compare to. The thrill of telling my wife that she’d become a mother. I’ll never forget it.

Our first child and daughter, Suki Mae

At 3:22pm on the 23rd of November 2008, Joanna gave birth via emergency caesarean to a miraculous baby girl, Suki Mae, weighing in at a tiny 795 grams (1lb 12 oz) and measuring just under 30 centimeters.

The pregnancy was a long and troubled journey of emotion for all of us due to many complications. Jo’s water broke at around 12 weeks which is called PPROM, or Pre-viable Premature Rupture Of Membranes. This resulted in a condition known as Oligohydramnios (also read here) which means that there was no amniotic fluid around Suki to cushion her and for her to breathe and help her lungs develop.

After this she grew much slower than normal, maintaining a growth rate about two weeks behind her actual fetal age. Lacking this amniotic cushion, Suki faced a high risk of Pulmonary Hypoplasia (Incomplete lung development), Potter’s Syndrome (where the kidneys do not develop) and Fetal Compression Syndrome, which was likely to result in muscular, skeletal, digital or facial deformity due to the lack of space.

Then at around 25 weeks, Jo suffered Placenta Previa which caused her to begin bleeding. She was immediately rushed to the Mater Mothers’ Hospital in Brisbane for observation and precautionary measures because Toowoomba was not equipped to handle such a premature complicated birth and Suki’s only hope for survival was to be close to the Mater’s NICU if infection got into the uterus causing Chorioamnionitis and necessitating an immediate caesarean. Jo was treated as an inpatient for a couple of weeks before being discharged on the understanding that she stay as close to the hospital as possible.

She underwent twice-weekly blood tests and twice-weekly observation at the Mater’s Centre for Fetal Medicine. She passed several clots during that time which required her to spend more time as an inpatient, and then at 27 weeks she began getting a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) and was again admitted as an inpatient for treatment with IV antibiotics. At 27 weeks and 4 days, the doctors decided that the UTI was masking the existence of Chorioamnionitis and that the only option was for an emergency Caesarean Section (as Jo cannot give birth naturally due to a Spinal Fusion). We were warned that she may require a Classical Caesarean which involves a vertical incision into the uterus instead of a horizontal one and would greatly increase the chance of PROM in the future. There was also some very scary talk of the need for a Hysterectomy if the bleeding could not be controlled or if the placenta could not be separated from the uterus, which would have been totally devastating as it would mean that we could have no children in the future.

We were given widely varying predictions on Suki’s survival that ranged from “single figure percentages” up to a 75% chance of survival based on anecdotal statistics provided by the Mater. Fortunately we didn’t have too long to dwell on this as the entire procedure took less than half an hour from preparation to delivery.

AND SHE WAS PERFECT !!!!

Suki Mae in her humidi-crib in the NICU

Suki was born just 20 minutes after Jo entered theatre by regular lower uterine cesarean, and immediately placed on a respirator. I went to the NICU and saw her while Jo was waking up from the general anaesthetic and she was absolutely perfectly formed and more beautiful than I could have imagined. Less than 48 hours later, her breathing tube was removed and she was put onto Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) which means that she is that much closer to being able to breathe on her own. After the surgery, one of the doctors said to me “All those things we warned you about. None of them happened”.

While there’s still a long road ahread and her breathing will be assisted for some time to come, Suki has beaten the odds time and time again and we’re sure that she’s going to come through this with flying colours.

I’d like to give my sincerest thanks to all the amazing staff at the Mater Mothers’ Hospital, without whom we would not be blessed with our tiny precious child. Especially Dr Gardener who treated Jo during her pregnancy and Christian and the other two doctors (names forthcoming I hope) who brought Suki into the world. You are all angels and we cannot possibly express our gratitude enough. You changed our lives last Sunday and Suki has you all to thank for her very existence.