Sex and Death by Sarah Hall

solved the problem. In his consulting rooms, she had asked the specialist what the side effects of such an operation might be, and he’d paused and gazed out the windows at his view spreading all the way to the line of blue water at Bondi. There were helium balloons – ‘It’s a girl!’ – weighted down on his desk with a bag of fluorescent lollies. His own daughter had been born a few days previously, and he had enthusiastically told Selene that his wife wanted another baby ‘immediately’. This was right before he’d looked at the rack and ruin of her bum.
    â€˜Well,’ he said, ‘it might mean that later in life, when you go through menopause, and there are some hormonal changes, you are left partially incontinent.’
    â€˜Sort of like it is now?’ she asked. She had made a map of all the public toilets on the coastal walk near her flat, marking them like pirate’s treasure with a large X, and timing the walk between them, just in case.
    â€˜Probably worse,’ he said.
    â€˜What exactly does partially incontinent mean?’
    â€˜Ah – you know, skidmarks in your undies every now and again,’ he said, and grinned.
    As if ageing wasn’t going to be undignified enough.
    But she had decided, if it came to it, that she’d have the operation, take that chance, and hope that her menopausal self didn’t live to regret it, and hate the younger version of herself who had ruined her ability to enjoy her retirement.
    Selene had to return to the hospital a few days later, baby in tow, for the six-week post-birth appointment with the midwives. A nice little routine check-up, no need to discuss her problem, she hoped. The focus, for once, would be on her baby’s health. She was actually looking forward to it. She parked in the cavernous lot beneath the hospital and took the lift up to the birthing centre. It was the first time she’d been back since the birth, and she could hear somebody labouring in the same room where she’d had her son in the bath. She felt elated to think of the lukewarm water, the feel of the edges of the tub beneath her hands.
    The midwife was not from Eucalyptus Group. Selene had never met her before, and she seemed harried, uninterested in making chitchat about her water birth. Old-school Aussie, middle-aged, not one of the young women fresh from midwifery school sent out to face the onslaught of Sydney’s raging baby boom. The midwife handled Selene’s baby for his weighing and measuring as ifhe were a choice leg of lamb, expertly palpated his still slightly swollen ballsack to check if his testicles had descended, and then re-swaddled him so tightly it looked as if he’d spun his own cocoon.
    â€˜Your turn. On your back, legs up,’ the midwife said without preamble, and next thing Selene was getting her stitches checked.
    â€˜There’s a small polyp, I’ll have to burn it off.’ The midwife lit something that looked like a long silver sparkler.
    â€˜Where, exactly?’ Selene said nervously.
    The midwife didn’t respond. She was frowning in concentration.
    It was quick, relatively painless, but still. Hot metal on raw flesh. She had the dizzy feeling once again that she had disintegrated into nothing but a collection of limbs held together by failing viscera. She looked at her son, who was transfixed by a black-and-white wall map, and repeated her mantra of sanity: He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay . She was quietly fascinated by how much she could endure, but if anything had gone wrong with his body, she would have broken apart. She thought of something she’d read in one of the birthing books. It troubled her for being both true and not true. You have amazing reserves of self . You will bring these reserves to your birth experience just as you bring them to every challenging experience you have in your life. The ‘you’ who births your baby does not