Birth of Daniel James Jenkins

Daniel James Jenkins was born at 11:52 in the morning at Queen Victoria Hospital in Adelaide, the third and last child of Elizabeth Anne Jenkins (née Thompson) and Thomas Michael Jenkins. The delivery was attended by a midwife named Yvonne and passed without complication.

Elizabeth was twenty-nine and a Year Level Coordinator at Glenelg Primary School. Thomas was thirty-one, a senior mechanic at Adelaide Motors. Their two older children were in Norwood with Elizabeth's mother, Margaret Thompson: Karl, six, who had packed his own overnight bag, and Jessica, three.

Elizabeth laboured with the same restraint she had shown twice before, and Yvonne, long experienced on the ward, read her silences without needing them explained. Thomas sat beside the bed throughout. When Daniel arrived, his first cry was low and unhurried.

Elizabeth looked first at Thomas rather than at the baby, waiting on his response before allowing her own. He was slow to move. When he did, he reached for his son and took him in his arms, steadily and without ceremony. It was the first time he had held one of his children on the day of their birth.

That afternoon, after Elizabeth had fed the baby and fallen asleep, Thomas telephoned Margaret Thompson in Norwood to tell her the name. He and Elizabeth had settled on Daniel some weeks earlier.