Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [136]
Peter Jackson, my tour manager, had arranged the dates so that I could stay with Melia during the day in Columbus and then commute to the shows in the evening by plane. Though it was a bit grueling overall, it was a good arrangement in that it meant I could provide support and attend prebirth counseling sessions. Then one day we went to see the doctor to finalize Melia’s hospital schedule, and she said she thought Melia ought to go in right away. I panicked. I wasn’t ready now that it was actually about to happen. I got scared. Ridiculous, really, because there would be very little expected of me. I would be on the sidelines, but I just couldn’t handle the unknown of it all.
We went straight into the hospital, and our daughter, Julie, was born that night, June 15, 2001, around ten o’clock. The bliss we felt on her arrival was slightly marred by some minor difficulties that we weren’t really prepared for. It has always been my understanding that babies feed on their mother’s breast on impulse, straightaway, without any coaching, just pure instinct. That wasn’t the case with Julie. She seemed confused and didn’t want to feed at all. We later found out when we got back to England that, just having entered the world from the womb, the bones in her head hadn’t completely decompressed, which made it difficult for her to swallow when she tried to feed, and she would gag. It was nothing serious, just an alignment issue with some of her bone joints, but we didn’t know that then and were really worried.
After getting some advice from a friend, we quickly got her to a sacro-cranial therapist, who, after some fairly traumatic realignment sessions, managed to get her back on track. But for the first three months of her life she suffered from dreadful colic, which, unbeknownst to us, was directly linked to this problem, and it was fairly normal for one of us to be carrying her around screaming in agony without thinking there was anything unusual about it. Gradually, in fact quite quickly after getting her treatment, she turned the corner and became the joy of our lives, and I wondered how I could have ever envisioned my life without this divine creature in it.
Once Julie arrived, we had to start arranging our lives to fit this new reality. We had no doubt that Hurtwood was the best place to begin raising children, but we hadn’t really decided on how to approach the family help situation. Melia began interviewing nannies, because although we wanted as much direct involvement as possible we would clearly need to have someone standing by if one of us got sick or if I had to go off to work. We had no idea how difficult this was going to be, or how complicated. We learned during one interview, for instance, that in an emergency, probably because of insurance requirements, a properly trained nanny would have responsibility priorities over both parents. A ridiculous scenario, and totally unacceptable even if legally, I suppose, understandable. We finally found a wonderful lady named Annie, who has been with us ever since, and to supplement the situation when necessary, Melia’s sister Maile has occasionally stepped in. In addition, we had one other source of help—a great book given to us by Lili Zanuck entitled The Baby Whisperer. Written by British child-care expert Tracy Hogg, it was really invaluable and helped us in every department, especially with sleep patterns, and I thoroughly recommend it to anybody who’s starting a family.
I had to work out the rest of the year on the road, coming back to Columbus when I could, and on one visit to New York, I went into a jeweler’s and bought a ring, a modern design by the Roman jewelery designers Buccellati. It was a spontaneous action, but I had obviously been subconsciously working up to it. When I got back to Columbus, I went round to see Melia’s dad and asked for her hand in marriage. It was an emotional scene, and he was very gracious, making me feel like I really belonged in his family.