Can you nail down the single greatest moment in your life? Maybe you’ve never truly thought about it.

Hi, for those who don’t know me, my name is Paul, and today signals the publication of my 500th column in this mighty fine weekly mag. Regular readers know I’m not in danger of ever winning the Walkley award for journalism, but Bob (the fab owner of the mag) has kept me on for over ten years, so I’m guessing maybe I fit in somewhere between the New York Times and the NT News (J).  

I’ve been mulling it over for a while as to what the content of the 500th column would be, but the answer was pretty easy when it came down to it. Over the years, I’ve written about Turkish Delight chocolates, my extreme dislike of people who use their phones whilst driving, how much fun Christmas is, working in a school (in a heap of different jobs), my love of music and doing a community radio show, getting electrocuted during the Tough Mudder challenge, and a heap of other random things. But on the big occasion of my 500th, rather than hit another random topic and try to be witty or clever again, I thought I’d retell the best 45 mins of my entire life.

I spent it in total silence. I’ll elaborate. Back in ’96, our first born was a ‘vacuum extraction’ birth. Hectic. Heart rate dropped at the crucial time (it was 3am, too) and Dr grabbed the plunger from the wall, attached it to the little blokes head and yanked him out. Stress. Noise. Frantic. All good in the end except for the big purple bruise on his forehead. Jump to number three, he was induced. Mrs waltzed into the hospital 9 days overdue and announced she wasn’t leaving until he was out. Nobody argued. An induction is pretty intense, with things going from zero to 100 in the blink of an eye once the chemicals takes effect. Again, noisy, extreme, but very exciting.

Back to baby number 2. The hyperactive one. The third trimester check-up revealed she was wrong way round, so they edged her back the right way by pushing on my wife’s tummy … only to have the little bugger wriggle her way back to a wrong-way position over the course of the next 12 hours. Hmmm – ‘elective’ Caesarean time.

A Caesar like that was done in Dudley back in those days, and what a surreal experience it was. You just arrive at the desk and say “Hi, were having a baby today”, and they take you through like it’s the same as having your blood pressure taken. Total silence in the theatre, apart from the orchestral music playing. The husband scrubs up, puts on a gown and gets to be present while they operate. They kept me up the ‘good’ end, whilst they were working down at the business end. After what seemed like an eternity, Doc says “You’re about to have a baby if you want to come and watch”. And with that he grabbed onto her feet and she slid out. The fizzzzz of the umbilical cord is still clear in my ears. All good. Big first breath, then a wail. No mushed up face from a conventional birth, just beautiful baby skin and a little puff of red hair on top. Then, they took her over to the heat lamp for a couple of minutes, wrapped her up and basically gave her to me. Mrs needed to be stitched up.

So … they sent me and this perfect ball of newness to a ward. By ourselves. No-one else there. Just us. Her sound asleep. Me holding her in my arms gently, just looking, for the greatest 45 minutes of ‘alone time’ of my life. At about the 20 minute mark, curiosity got the better of me and I poked her a little bit. She looked at me for just a second then went back to sleep. Not exactly a sign of things to come though – because for the next 21 years she hasn’t been able to sit still for more than 5 minutes! Nobody can ever take that most special 45 minutes away from me. I can’t believe it’s taken me 500 columns to tell that story.