Ramsay - Mongol

We dont see things as they are,

we see them as we are.

Anas Nin

K ISS ME AGAIN , I said to my father, who was about to go through the Departure gate at Glasgow Airport. Why arent you kissing me on my forehead like you used to? I was looking for the comfort his kisses had been bringing me ever since I was a child. But he had thought the loose and awkward hug hed given me earlier was what you do here.

It was only March and already it was the second time hed left Scotland this year. The middle of March in Glasgow is still winter dark, wet and windy. We were both desperately trying hard not to sob. It is considered bad luck to cry when you say goodbye in Mongolia. I can hold on to my emotions when I say my goodbyes, even if it is to my parents, my sister or my husband. This time it was different. I was fragile and feeling vulnerable, ready to shed tears in gallons. I knew my dad was feeling the same when he quickly kissed my forehead then turned away before our tears started rolling down. As he walked away I saw him drying his eyes before turning round for a final wave.

Three months earlier, after Billy had been born, I had said to Dad over the phone, You have to come here. I will never forgive you if you dont. So he had dropped everything and come from the other side of the world, from one of the remotest places on Earth Outer Mongolia, the country where I had been raised and had lived for the first twenty-odd years of my life. My sister told me later that he had said, My girl doesnt cry that easily, but she sobbed on the phone. I need to go.

At that point Id been on my own in a room at the maternity hospital. I had asked for a single room while they were deciding where to move me from the Labour ward. I couldnt bear to look at other happy mums with their newborns , showing off their perfect babies.

When I had gone routinely to see the midwife on Friday 13th November, I had been checked by a student who suggested the baby was in a breech position. Lynne, the midwife, had looked surprised and had checked my bump herself. Yes, it is a breech. As soon as you feel any contractions, phone the hospital immediately and go there. The baby was due two weeks later and I didnt really think it was a big issue, knowing that I had been breech myself at birth, stuck with one leg out and giving my mum a hard time. That was in rural Mongolia in the 1970s. Now, here in Britain in 2009, I obviously had nothing to fear. They have all that they need medical equipment and experts in this field. This should be routine, I thought.

Later that night, after having a Chinese takeaway, the contractions started to come. My husband Richard picked up the car key. Come on, well go to the hospital. You give them a call; Ill get the car ready. We rushed to the maternity hospital leaving our other children Sara and Simon with my mum, who had arrived on her own from Mongolia just the week before. My mum was holding some milk in a bowl; she drizzled some of it on the car wheels and sprinkled some in the air after wishing us all the best, and hoping all would go well. That was her way, the Mongolian way, of wishing you the best for the future. My dear little mum in her green deel (the traditional Mongolian tunic, similar in length to a coat), looking worried, was trying not to offend anyone in a strange new culture, making an awful lot of effort to learn English, feeling vulnerable and powerless. Yet she is a smart, educated woman who works in a secondary school in Uliastai, a small rural town in the western part of Mongolia.

After waiting for eight hours, at about 2am the next morning it was my turn to have a C-section. I was excited; the operation was going to be nothing compared to seeing my baby. Oh, the sensation was so good when the spinal anaesthetic kicked in. Pain-free, I was ready to see my baby with my husband beside me holding my hand, both of us excited, although I could tell that he was worried, seeing me on an operating table surrounded by surgeons, nurses and an anaesthetist.

Soon after that, Billy was born, my tiny little boy, 2.5 kilos, a kilo smaller than his brother and sister had been at birth. The doctors started to check Billy immediately just like any other baby. Richard tried to look at him from where he was sitting and gasped, He is blonde! with disbelief. Does he have the Mongolian blue spots? I smiled. Mongolians are proud of this birthmark. Usually these blue spots appear on Asian babies when they are born and then disappear after a few months. They were still stitching me up. I then noticed a worried look on Richards face. They seemed to be just too busy checking if Billy was all right. Then they decided to take him to the Neonatal unit. I asked, Please, can I see my baby before he goes? They showed him to me from a distance as if they were hiding something and rushed him out of the room. We were worried. Whats going on? Why are they not saying anything? I had a shaky feeling inside, thinking: he has abnormally big eyes; normally the vertical skin folds between the upper eyelids and inner corner of the eyes appear later in our kids.

After two, or maybe three, hours of agonised waiting and asking any passing nurse what was happening, finally a doctor and a nurse came to talk to us. I was preparing myself for the worst, scared to hear why it was and what it was that was taking them so long to come and talk to us. I heard the doctor saying, There are some signs of syndrome in your baby. I missed the main name of the syndrome. Richard was sitting beside me and I noticed his head going down between his hands, reaching his knees before he fell silent. I was trying to understand exactly what it meant, trying to know what the syndrome was.

I still had no feeling below my waist. I was high up on a bed, confused about the situation, alarmed and feeling annoyed. When I discovered they had mentioned symptoms of Downs syndrome, hundreds of questions raced through my mind: How long do they live? What does it mean? The doctor and the nurse were looking at us with poor you eyes and the doctors hand was on Richards knee trying to comfort him. They said, Nothing is definite yet, we are just keeping you informed of the situation. We felt angry with them for bringing that news; we could not believe our ears.

Later we went to see our Billy in the Neonatal unit. He was in an incubator, and looked so tiny and wrinkly, just like any other baby. He looked like his brother, Simon, immediately after he had been born; only, Billy had ginger hair and Simon had black hair. They both had the Mongolian blue spots on their bottoms. Billy also had a feeding tube in his mouth, which looked uncomfortable.

Richard and I were feeling anxious. The hospital had a bedside internet service for patients, and I was fervently reading about Downs syndrome, searching online to find out what it meant to have a child with a disability and how that would impact on everything. I knew very little about Downs syndrome. I had no idea that it affects the person in many different ways. The more I found out, the more I could not believe it was happening to us. I did not want it for anyone. There are things that you can change in life, like money problems and unemployment. But there was no escape in this situation. We had to accept it and get on with things. I felt like shaking my body to get rid of this hurt from myself and my family. There was nothing to do but accept it and deal with it. It wasnt easy to come to terms with the situation though.