After breakfast, in what turns out to be a converted brewery with quite a history, it’s time to get onto the motorway again. More news from Donald – the medics are worried that the baby is too small. Maybe need to section... We drive and drive, alternating, through more rain and buffeting wind. A text – she’s in labour. Then two hours later racing through the Lake District, another text - she’s half way there! And at last, as we approach Glasgow – ‘Rosalind has arrived – 6lb. 2oz!’. We arrive in the car park, I jump out of Catriona’s car and into ours, and off to Shawlands to collect Ryall. He comes down the school stairs, looking confused. ‘You’ve got a baby sister!’ Even more confused. Then slowly, pleased. ‘It’s good it’s a girl, Granny’. More driving, to Dundee. More rain, more wind. Never realised how huge Ninewells hospital is. We wait outside the ward. Very clean – clinical. Covered in notices telling you what you are not allowed to do. Donald emerges, looking as if he’s been hit by a bus – dazed and spaced out. He leads Ryall away through the glass doors. ‘You were right daddy, it’s better it’s a sister!’ Time passes. Then they appear – Ryall, Donald, Hannah looking tired, relieved, happy, snuggled in a warm red dressing gown.
And there, in her little transparent cot, is Rosalind. Tiny, perfect, dark eyes like little berries, miniature hands with long fingers, nails like tiny shells. She’s wearing the little red hat I crocheted. Then Donald and Ryall come with us for a meal. Donald is starving, hasn’t eaten all day. Back in the car to Glasgow – when you’ve spent a whole day in a moving metal box you’re apt to get a bit fed up. But it was all worth it. A baby and a child, both much valued.
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