As a percussionist, singer and songwriter, Ingrid Laguna
has toured Europe, Asia and Australia, recorded several
albums, and run percussion and songwriting workshops.
With performance group Ruby Fruit Jungle, she supported
Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, playing at
Australia’s biggest entertainment venues. In the Australian
film industry, Ingrid worked as a crew member on
numerous television commercials, a telemovie and a short
film. She has held senior positions in arts administration.
While in Central Australia, she directed the Northern
Territory Youth Film Festival and was integral to the
Kunka Career Conference for Aboriginal Women, the
Indigenous Music Awards, and music programs for
Aboriginal youths. She is currently studying media and
communications at Swinburne University in Melbourne.
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Sere fo n r a ade
Small Family
I N G R I D L A G U N A
First published in 2010
Copyright © Ingrid Laguna 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever
is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational
purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has
given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
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(61 2) 8425 0100
Fax:
(61 2) 9906 2218
Email:
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ISBN 978 1 74237 245 7
Illustration on page 227 and chapter detail by Madeleine Meyer
Text design by Lisa White
Set in 12/18 pt Bembo by Bookhouse, Sydney
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper in this book is FSC certified.
FSC promotes environmentally responsible,
socially beneficial and economically viable
management of the world’s forests.
These are my memories.
Some names have been changed to protect the
privacy of others.
‘We never know how high we are
Till we are cal ed to rise . . .’
Emily Dickinson, 1830–1886
Part One
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1
Mum, Benny and I were having dinner on yet another hot
December night in Alice Springs when I felt a tightening
squeeze around my abdomen and lower back, way too
early in my pregnancy. My fork clinked as I half dropped
it onto my plate.
‘I think I’ll go and sit on the couch for a minute.’
Mum and Benny turned to me, and the candle flickered.
I bit the corner of my lip until it stung.
‘What’s happening, Inky?’ asked Benny. ‘You okay?’
The tightening was starting again. ‘Umm . . . not sure . . .
actually I think I’m going to call the hospital.’
Two rings and a woman answered. ‘It’s probably nothing,’
she said. ‘But best to come in and get it checked out.’
3
While Benny drove, I lay along the back seat with my
knees up and my hands splayed over my tightly pregnant
belly. He was beside me when the obstetrician spoke: ‘I’m
sorry . . . you’re two centimetres dilated.’
Ben and I had been through hell to get me pregnant.
I wailed long and loud from deep deep down, my eyes
squeezed shut. Not this, not this.
‘Shhhh, Inky . . . Shhhh!’ Ben leant over me and turned
my face towards his. ‘Inky . . . Inky!’ His tone was firm.
‘There’s still a chance but you have to stay calm . . .’
I was given pills to delay labour, and I didn’t give birth
that night. Contractions were further apart for a while, but
by morning they were close together again.
‘Will the babies be alive when they are born?’ I asked
the midwife.
She looked into my eyes and for a couple of beats said
nothing. ‘They will probably gasp for air and then they will
stop breathing.’ They wil stop breathing because they are coming
out too soon, I thought, filled with panic. If they stayed in,
they would not stop breathing. This is my fault.
A social worker was sent in to talk to us. ‘Will we see
the babies?’ I asked.
‘It’s up to you,’ she said. ‘Some people like to hold their
babies and others don’t.’ I tried to picture them, but I didn’t
know what they would look like. I should want to hold them
but I don’t know.
4
Serenade for a Small Family
When the social worker left the room, Benny put his
head and hand on my stomach and cried. I felt a ropey
twisting in my chest.
‘We have had a taste of being parents only to have it
taken away,’ he said. ‘I love you very much, my boys.’
Our doctor was an Indian woman who swished around
the cool, white hospital corridors in colourful saris. That
night she stood by my bed in shimmering red and green.
‘At this gestation your babies are barely viable,’ she said.
‘Another twenty-four hours could mean they have a chance
of survival.’ She adjusted the sari over her shoulder and
pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose. ‘There
is a hospital in Adelaide with an excellent neonatal intensive
care unit,’ she said. ‘They will take you if you make it
through to tomorrow morning . . . twenty-three weeks and
one day.’ Another contraction gripped my lower body and
I rolled onto my side with a groan. The doctor placed her
warm hand on my hip.
‘There’s still some hope,’ she said.
Here are two things I have learnt: with hope, we are able
to endure far more than we can ever imagine, and having
babies in the world is the all-time greatest heavenly delight.
I’m telling this story because it’s the only way I can quite
5
I N G R I D L A G U N A
believe it myself. Because this was not the motherhood I
had planned.
Like most women, I’ve always been pretty confident I’d
be a mum one day, and I assumed the role would come
; naturally to me. I saw my knotty-haired, knee-grazed
children and me at beaches or camping or at markets, eating
exotic food among racks of sarongs and baskets of strange
fruits. I pictured dressing them like Mum dressed us kids—in
bohemian knitted vests and beanies, suede miniskirts and
boots. Their dad and I would throw them in the car to visit
friends, or pour them out at Mum’s so we could go for wine
and drawn-out Indian dinners. We would laugh out loud
as they ran nude around the backyard, and take them on
planes to Holland, Poland and Vietnam. They would fall
asleep in our laps at parties, and chase each other around
the table, eating toast with appelstroop at breakfast. My kids
would not be fussy eaters or allergic to anything, or have
hay fever or asthma. They would be bright and beautiful
and I would be easy with them. So when Benny and I got
together, I imagined all of this was on the cards.
On the day we met, in March 2002, I was sitting
outside my girlfriend’s house in a narrow, treeless street
in Brunswick, Melbourne, waiting for her to come home.
one of the cold beers in my bag, but I didn’t have a bottle
opener. A guy on an old black motorbike turned into the
6
Serenade for a Small Family
street and pulled up on the other side. When he took off
his helmet, I saw he had thick, dark, curly hair. (‘ Mooi haar,’
Mum said later, which is Dutch for ‘nice hair’.) He crossed
the road towards the house two doors down.
‘Excuse me!’ I called out. ‘I was just wondering if you
have a bottle opener I could use?’
As he passed the opener into my hand, he stood close
enough for me to see his brown eyes and the dark stubble
covering his jaw. There was an intensity about him. When
my friend Nic came home, I suggested we invite him to join
us. She agreed (she had already told me about ‘motorbike
boy’ who lived two doors down) and courageously knocked
on his door.
‘I’m making veggie burgers on the barbie,’ he said. ‘Do
you want to bring your beers over here?’
Moody acoustic music played as we walked through to
his backyard; the familiar singer’s voice rose and fell in a
melody I knew. I was impressed by the ambient lighting in
the living room; only later did I learn that it was a choice
based on energy efficiency rather than aesthetics.
We sat around a card table laden with our dirty plates
and beer bottles in his tiny concrete backyard late into the
night. He told us he worked in renewable energy, and was
keen to get involved in a program that was installing solar
systems in small, remote Aboriginal communities in the
Northern Territory. To me, he was gorgeous.
7
I N G R I D L A G U N A
As Nic and I walked down his corridor towards the front
door, I stopped and turned to him.
‘I should give you my phone number,’ I said boldly, past
the fluttering in my stomach.
He finally called me the following Sunday, inviting me to
go with him on his motorbike to the Mornington Peninsula.
‘Really? Wow! When did you want to leave?’ I asked.
‘In about . . . ah . . . twenty minutes?’
‘Right . . . umm . . .’ (As if I had to think about it.)
‘Okay!’
I hung up the phone and yelled in the direction of
my housemate’s room. ‘Shit! I’ve got twenty minutes!
That guy Ben rang!’ Carrie watched from her bedroom
window as he came up the path to the front door, then
she turned to me and indicated with a thumbs-up that he
was alright. He had brought me a leather jacket as well as
a helmet that I was relieved to be able to squeeze over my
size large Polish head. As we rode, I held onto Ben and
sang in my helmet. That afternoon we swam in the ocean
and walked along the rocks. At his dad’s beach house he
made me Balinese fish curry with lemongrass, and we sat
outside, talking, with a blanket wrapped around us. Later
that night I pulled the plug from the kitchen sink of soapy
water and flicked off the rubber gloves. (I can’t believe I
did the dishes on our first date!) When I turned around,
Ben kissed me, then manoeuvred me towards the couch
8
Serenade for a Small Family
with his mouth on mine, at the same time expertly, single-
handedly, unhooking my bra.
The Royal Flying Doctors flew Benny and me from Alice
Springs to Adelaide on a tiny plane that buzzed like a
lawnmower. Pethidine kept me woozy, and I lay on my side
with my face close to the wall. Benny sat beside the pilot
and reached back to stroke my hair. The young Sri Lankan
registrar smiled politely in my direction, then looked back
down at the folded hands in her lap.
The midwife beside her was rough and friendly: ‘Hi,
sweetie . . . can you let me know every time you feel a
contraction starting?’ The pethidine felt good and took
away some of the worry. There was another patient on the
plane—sitting upright, sprouting wires and leads, with his
back to me.
‘It’s a good thing you couldn’t see his face,’ Mum said
later. ‘He didn’t look too good.’ Mum hardly ever cries,
but she cried when I was slid on a stretcher into that plane
to Adelaide.
When we landed, the ambulance wasn’t there to take
us to the hospital, so we waited in the hangar, and I kept
having contractions in the cool outside air. I was relieved to
have made the flight without giving birth, but I didn’t want
to have the babies in an aeroplane hangar either. Finally,
9
I N G R I D L A G U N A
the ambulance arrived, and two men in green overalls and
gumboots manoeuvred my stretcher into the back and drove
us to the hospital.
As I was ferried along a corridor, a wheel on my trolley
bed scraped the f loor amid the sound of feet shuff ling.
‘Take her to the delivery suite . . . Room 12,’ someone said,
which struck me as sounding luxurious. We turned into a
starchy, odourless room. A small crowd of doctors, nurses
and registrars followed, tripping over each other to deliver
scary facts and statistics about premature babies to Benny
and me. Bewildered, we looked from one to the next,
until Benny tilted his head back and angrily punctuated
the room: ‘Excuse me!’
Heads turned towards him. ‘Could we all just move out
into the corridor please!’ He herded them out and firmly
reminded them how important it was for me to stay calm.
‘And only come in one at a time, if you have to come in
at al !’
Through the night and into the next day the contractions
kept coming, only minutes apart. I was exhausted. Dad flew
over from Sydney. He brought me books and a bag of ripe
purple cherries. He and Benny sat beside my bed while
we talked and ate the fruit. When a contraction came, we
stopped talking. Benny rubbed my lower back and timed it.
I blew out quick puffs of air to help me through the pain
because I’d seen people do that on TV.
10
Serenade for a Small Family
‘Knock knock?’ A man’s face appeared from behind the
beige curtain by my bed.
‘Hi . . . come in.’
I adjusted my pillows and sat up. Benny looked up from
his newspaper. A labouring woman groaned somewhere on
the ward, and the fug of potato and leek soup lingered from
lunch. Two doctors—an obstetrician and a neonatologist—
came in and said they needed to talk to us. They had
likeable, intelligent faces.
‘We need to know how much you want us to intervene . . .’
said the neonatologist. ‘At this gestation—twenty-three and
a half weeks—their chances are slim.’ We’re going to discuss
this? Benny sat forward with his elbows on his knees and his
hands clasped. ‘And of those who survive, there can be long-
term health issues . . . sometimes disabilities.’ I swallowed.
‘Some people want us to do everything in our power for
their babies. You need to be involved in this decision.’
I recalled a conversation with a midwife earlier that day.
‘About fifty per cent of babies born at twenty-four weeks’
gestation survive,’ she had said, with a warning tone in
her voice and a stark determination to kill any false hope.
‘Even then they may well have learning difficulties, or be
deaf or vision-impaired. Sometimes there may be severe
disability . . .’ I had suddenly badly wanted to lie down to
hold onto my pregnancy. I wil not deliver early, I had vowed.
‘Before twenty-four weeks . . .’ she had said. ‘Well . . . their
11
I N G R I D L A G U N A
chances are significantly less. Before then—the baby’s lungs
are not yet fully developed.’
Now Benny and I exchanged looks. I was lost for words—
not exactly typical for me. Ben spoke up: ‘They have to have
good quality of life,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing . . . quality of
life.’ Benny—my rock. Calm and clear. The neonatologist
looked down at his folder and nodded slowly.
‘Yes,’ I added, awkwardly. ‘A good life . . .’ What does
intervention mean? I wondered. And how will these doctors
interpret what we mean by quality of life?