Shopping for Wedding Shoes
Rachel Barr
Sleep was a stranger to me that night as the sounds and smells of the hospital filtered through my thoughts. Princes Street's shops felt an eternity away. That morning was three weeks before our wedding day. The sun was shining for the first time in weeks despite it being June. The backdrop to Edinburgh's famous skyline was a crispy blue. The kind of sky that tasted fresh on your tongue. The hair trial was the next day and I was desperate to find some shoes to match my dress. For someone who never wore high heels, never thought she'd bother with marriage let alone the big event it was spiralling into, this was no mean feat. I still felt my body react with a wee jolt of shock when each night I tried on the white 'meringue' that I had succumbed to.
So there I was with my Mum and six month daughter doing the length of Princes Street until the perfect shoes were found. It had started to dawn on me in the last few months why people had children after they married. Why on earth would anyone want to put themselves through the nightmare of dealing with a windy newborn as well as organising a wedding? As they say, hindsight is all very well. After the St James' Centre it was already time for a nappy change, lunch and with any luck a relaxing cup of tea. The British Home Stores café in Rose Street was on route, cheap and easy for negotiating buggies. Halfway through the mandatory bright orange baby food and the half drunk cooling tea, Isla started screaming. This was not unusual. We took her clammy little body out of the sticky high chair and did the usual patting her on the back, reluctantly trying all the tips for wind that the wee wifies force on you as a new Mum. We eventually abandoned lunch and carried Isla screaming from the café. We strapped her firmly in the buggy and determinedly continued down to Princes Street on our mission. I can be very single minded when I want to be despite greetin bairn in tow! However, the screaming continued all way through the first shoe shop leaving it impossible to concentrate on colours and styles even though the match should have been quite straight forward. White meringue, what's complicated about that?
Princes Street to Hanover Street - I said to Mum, "This isn't working lets just get a bus home". The screaming intensified. Up Hanover to Rose Street we started having the "Do you think she's alright?" conversation and then the reassuring "I'm sure it's just wind". Rose Street to George we decided a taxi would be better. We hailed a cab, jumped in and gave my address. Hanover Street to Charlotte Square we changed the address to the doctors surgery. By the Dean Bridge we were turned round heading to the Sick Kids and then the hell begun.
Isla was slipping in and out of consciousness. I passed her to my Mum while I phoned my fiancé trying to calmly tell him he needed to meet us at the hospital without my panic screaming down the phone and wrapping itself around his throat. My Mum passed my white floppy child back to me saying "I think you should hold her". The fear tightened my stomach even more as I thought, Oh my God. She thinks she's going to die! I kept shaking Isla to wake her up but I was scared to shake her too hard. So I was shouting her name loudly trying to wake her up. I saw the fear of the taxi driver when I caught his eye in the mirror willing him to get my baby there in time. I could smell my own fear in the dampness on my body and feel it in the tightening of my bowels.
After an eternity we were there. I ran inside shouting "Something's wrong with my baby!" Immediately someone reassuring who was going to save my baby was there. Through the blur I was told she had intersussception of the bowel. A part of their intestine twists in on itself like a telescope cutting off their blood and oxygen supply. They had put a line in her straight away pumping morphine into her chubby little body; they said she would have been in an enormous amount of pain. The morphine helped her gain consciousness. I stroked her head looking into her glazed eyes. My world shrunk then. Right down to her size. Thoughts of wedding shoes and hair trials vaporised in a millisecond.
They were to perform an enema which entailed blowing air into her bottom to try and straighten the bowel. I was told, "No we can't wait until her Dad is here, we have to perform the procedure straight away". A heavy leaded jacket was put on me where I stood numb. The greasy chips I'd eaten earlier hardened in my stomach. Isla looked tiny on the operating table in the room crowded with featureless people. My eyes only able to see Isla. The next minute the whole room was clapping and cheering. Relief flooded through my body like warm urine seeping onto the bed. It had worked! Her bowel was straightened. After twenty four hours observation we were allowed home and slowly thoughts returned to the imminent wedding though not fully. You're never quite the same after an experience like that.
And was my wedding day the best day of my life? It was pretty damn good but the best day of my life was Wednesday 2nd June 2004 when I knew my little girl was going to be alright.
