Take a Peep by Mrs Valerie Waters
I climbed the two flights of stairs and checked the piece of paper I was anxiously clutching in my hand. Yes, these were the right swing doors. I pushed them open.
The corridor was long, spotlessly clean, polished and shining. On one side, doors opened into small rooms and I could see a lady in white moving about inside the nearest one; on the other side, there were no doors, just plate glass from floor to ceiling. Behind the glass, there seemed to be individual partitions entered only from behind.
I had thought the corridor empty: I now saw there was a group of women clustered around one partition, talking volubly and pointing through the glass. Curious, I moved nearer.
"Guck mal! Take a peep!" I heard one woman say; "Ach, wie süss! Oh, how sweet!" another. "Hast Du gesehen? Solche Augen!" "Have you seen this? Such eyes," said a third, "das arme Puppchen! The poor poppet!" A small English woman, I stood at the back of the group, craning to see over the shoulders of these large German women. At last, I caught sight of a little baby girl; she had curly auburn hair and the largest saddest eyes I had ever seen - eyes that gave her pale thin face a bewitching beauty.
About eight months old, the infant was sitting motionless in a cot: only her eyes moved, slowly searching one by one the faces of the women on the other side of the glass. I will never forget the moment those questing eyes met mine: they stopped quite still and large tears gradually formed in each eye, for das anne Püppchen was my baby! The silent tears on that passive face were not baby tears, more a bewilderment of soul. One of the women looked at me, herself tearful. The boisterous chattering of the women ceased as they edged uneasily away to their own infants.
A week since, my baby had suckled contentedly at my breast. Fever had required urgent hospitalisation in this West German town; I had brought her here at night, lying limply against my chest inside my coat. Instantly, nurses had taken charge of her, asking me to wait.
An hour later, a Doctor had appeared: "I don't usually allow it, but as you are a calm, vemunftige Mutter, a sensible mother, you may see your child". No time to wonder what it meant not to be a vernünftige Mutter, I was led straight into his own room. There, my baby, tubed, taped and pink with fever, was asleep in a glass case. It was nearly midnight.
"Will she live?" I asked timidly. "Well", he said slowly, "She is solch em kleines Wesen... such a small being". Such a tiny being, I repeated to myself. "And she has such a high fever!" Understanding, I nodded. "Take courage!" he said, taking my hand. "I'll keep her with me and do what I can. Come back in a week. Meantime, you can ring daily for news."
The suspense lasted for three days; then, after three different antibiotics, the fever broke and she took the path towards life. Come again in a week, he had said, and here I was back in that same corridor but on the glass side. I was alone.
During the night I had been up with our two-year-old. "Where's Nana?" she had asked. "Your sister is poorly. Nana is staying in a big house and nice ladies are looking after her", I had replied, giving her a cuddle. "I want Nana", she insisted. "Nana is all right. I'll see her in the morning. Go to sleep now." I had put her gently back to bed, a process repeated every two hours until morning: first the whimpering, then the crying, the cuddles, the questions and the answers. But I couldn't bring her with me today to see Nana: to avoid cross infection child visitors were not allowed.
So here I was in the corridor, the sad eyes of my infant and mine riveted together. She raised her little arms to be picked up. I raised mine instinctively, but there was all that plate glass between us. A nurse came up to me. "She's doing well", she said, "We are giving her just mashed carrots and fennel tea." "Can I hold her?" I asked. "We don't permit it. We cannot risk further infection for any of our babies." It was not an isolation unit, just an ordinary baby ward. I respected the rule, but thought of the children's hospital in England where, when my baby was six weeks old, I had fed, changed and played with her and, but for needing to give time to her sister, could have stayed over. However, that was different as no infection had been present.
"She's not responding to us yet", the nurse was continuing, "just sits there, calling Bob-ba." "That's my name", I said quietly. The nurse looked at me doubtfully, but I knew my infant's early sounds. "The babes usually forget their mothers in a week or so, and then accept us quite happily. Visiting is one hour twice a week, plus weekends." I was left to spend the rest of my hour to communicate as best I could through that great wall of glass, which divided us so profoundly and denied any meaningful comfort I could give to my tiny child. I left with the plaintive cry of Bob-Ba in my ears.
After two months, I could not tell if my baby even recognised me. It took her a long time to recover from this experience, but recover she eventually did, growing up with a love of wide, open spaces. ‘Nana' and her sister have stayed close. Today my baby has a child of her own, his curly hair more blonde than auburn and, behind my grandson's large, thoughtful and often jovial eyes, sometimes I still glimpse those never-to-be-forgotten large, forlorn eyes of his own mother all those years ago.
