Mama Mia

by Mia Freedman

  Strangely, stupidly, I had breastfeeding blindness which allowed me to ignore the fact it was making me terribly ill and taking a toll on my whole family. Not to mention the glaringly obvious: I was repeatedly subjecting Coco to the antibiotics via my breast milk. Doctors swore it was safe but they admitted that some of the medication was indeed being ingested by her. Why was I being so wilfully ignorant about the fact that this was surely doing more harm to her than any good that could come from the breast milk itself?

  When Coco was six months old, I went back to work several days a week, expressing in my office so I didn’t have to wean. Within a week, it happened again. This time, bed wasn’t an option because I had to go to an important client dinner and sit through eighty-seven or so courses of a degustation banquet with my breast on fire and my fever raging as I popped Panadols and antibiotics between courses. This was getting boring.

  Still I refused to entertain the idea of weaning. Especially now that I was back at work and feeling terribly disconnected from my baby. Guilt, guilt and guilt. How could I throw formula into the mix?

  It finally took Alice, my friend who also happens to be a GP, to smack some sense into me. One day over tea and cake she said to me, ‘You know, Mia, you’ve been on antibiotics for seventy days so far this year and it’s only June. It’s time to wean.’

  Okay, she had a point.

  During my two most recent bouts, I’d given Coco formula for ten days while I expressed at every feed and tipped my radioactive milk down the sink. This was a Big Deal for me. Luca had never had formula and I had an irrational fear of it. I didn’t judge other women for using formula but I’d drawn a mental line in the sand for myself. I may be a hopeless mother who abandoned my baby to go to work—taunted my internal guilty voice—but at least she was exclusively breastfed!

  Alice helped me finally realise it was time to bed my fantasy of feeding Coco for a year. Or even another month. Within days, I started dropping feeds, dealing with my guilt and fighting my fear that letting my milk accumulate would trigger yet more mastitis.

  I don’t remember the last breastfeed. I don’t with Luca either. So often in life, you don’t realise you’re having a Significant Moment until it’s behind you. What I do remember is this: a week or so after weaning, I looked at my breasts in the mirror and I froze.

  My inflated fun bags were now deflated windsocks. I burst into tears. Not because of how they looked so much but because of what they represented. That intense, magical period of being pregnant and breastfeeding was over. Conveniently, the massive amounts of pain, frustration and discomfort that had been my breastfeeding experience this time were forgotten and I just mourned the good stuff. In many ways, the fantasy. And then I got over it and enjoyed not being on antibiotics and not feeling like a failure at every feed. Getting into the mojitos again was pretty good too.

  GOODBYE MAGAZINES, HELLO PUNISHMENT

  SMS to all my girlfriends from me:

  ‘Looking for a nanny. Three days. Help? M x’

  I’d known it in my heart for a while. I was finished with magazines. By the time it registered as a conscious thought and I began to say it out loud to Jason and my closest girlfriends, Coco was a few months old.

  The past couple of years as Editor-in-Chief of Cosmo, Cleo and Dolly had been good and bad in equal measure. I’d liked reducing the number of staff who reported directly to me from twenty-five to five. I was adamant from the start that each of the editors be responsible for their own staff. This was crucial for their authority and for my sanity. I helped out with any major staff issues they ran into, but the day-to-day dramas of seventy women? I’d rather eat bark.

  I loved nurturing my editors, guiding them through the editing process and passing on all the wisdom I’d accumulated from working with great editors myself and making my own mistakes.

  I also liked having a job that was easy for me to do so I could focus my energy on falling pregnant. Had this not been my top priority during this time, I would have left ACP much sooner. The boredom that had caused me to step down as editor of Cosmo was still lingering.

  If anything, it was exacerbated by producing three to four magazines every month. Triple the sealed sections was enough to do anyone’s head in. In theory, I left to go on maternity leave for six months. In reality, I knew as I waddled out the door a few weeks before having Coco that I was leaving the building for the last time.

  Nothing had happened in the months after giving birth to change my mind. My love affair with magazines was winding up. I still loved them, but I wasn’t IN LOVE with them any more. They no longer made my heart race. I had a new media crush: the internet. It appealed to my impatience, my need for speed. How could magazines for young women possibly hope to compete as entertainment or sources of information when they were published monthly? It may as well be annually. We were all measuring our lives in increments of hours and minutes and text messages, not months. Mags just felt frustratingly slow.

  There were other challenges, too, which seemed to me insurmountable. How could any kind of sex content stay relevant—let alone titillating—when with two clicks you could be looking at a knicker-free Britney Spears or reading unlimited amounts of salacious and educational material? For free. Cosmo and Cleo couldn’t hope to compete and I felt that a circulation dive was inevitable.

  I wanted out. I wanted something different. And then came a job offer from Channel Nine.

  Channel Nine was the sister company to ACP, and since I was still under contract, going there was one of my few work options if I wanted to quit magazines. I was also extremely keen for a change. I’d done my time in a cosy, oestrogen-soaked working environment; perhaps working among men would be easier. Sleep deprived and full of antibiotics, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Was I ready to leave Coco? No. Not full time. But I also knew that I wanted to work. I wouldn’t be happy full time at home either. That hadn’t changed. I negotiated working a day or two from home and started to put out feelers for a nanny.

  There’s massive luxury in having someone look after your child in your own home, I know. It eliminates the scramble to and from childcare and all the stresses inherent in dressing and feeding and coercing and cajoling and bribing your child to get out the door. Not to mention the planning all of that requires. It’s no wonder working mothers are frazzled before they’ve even begun their day jobs.

  Having someone come into your home to look after your child eases that load considerably. You can walk out the door while your kids are still in their pyjamas, playing with their breakfast in that way they invariably do when you’re in a mad rush. You can still go to work when they’re sick. There are a hundred wonderful things about having a nanny, and, mindful that I’m extremely fortunate to be able to afford this type of childcare, I’ve always appreciated every one of them.

  It seems pampered and churlish to complain of any downside, but, like every compromise you make as a working mother, it exists. Of course there’s the cost, which is, for a lot of people, prohibitive. But you also pay in other more subtle ways. It’s a very intimate thing having someone come and work inside your house—inside your family. They don’t just have the keys to the front door but also the keys to your life and a window into your privacy.

  It’s a lot like starting a new relationship, because that’s exactly what it is. A nanny sees everything that goes on in your family, at all hours. They see you when you’re tired, stressed, vulnerable and when you have your guard down—which is often. They hear you on the phone. They see close up how you interact with your children and your partner and it’s not always pretty.

  I’d only ever had one proper nanny—Anna the lingerie model—and I was daunted by the idea of hiring another one.

  In the process of hiring a nanny, you usually meet them once for an interview. And then, after checking some references from people you’ve never met, you have to decide. It’s a lot like going on one date—a short date, say, for a coffee—and then deciding t
o move in together. The stakes are that high, as is the potential to make a bad call.

  When it’s good, having a nanny is a blessing. When it’s bad, it’s a disaster. It’s not dissimilar to having an emotional bomb explode inside your home, but with an added layer of guilt and self-recrimination. The betrayal is absolute.

  You can’t beat a personal referral when it comes to hiring a babysitter or a nanny, someone connected to someone you know. But this time around, when I put the word out among friends that I was looking, I didn’t have any luck.

  Reluctantly, nervously, I called an agency, and they said they’d send a couple of girls over for interviews.

  The first one I met was Francesca. I warmed to her immediately. She was youngish, about twenty-three. Nice, open, friendly face. Big smile. We walked around the block with Coco. I sussed her out. She’d worked in childcare centres and for a few families privately. Her last job had ended after a year when the family moved overseas. I called her references. They were glowing.

  I arranged for Francesca to do a trial day the following week. It went well. Coco seemed to like her as much as a six-month-old can take a view on these things.

  I offered Fran the job with a huge sense of relief and without interviewing anyone else. Huge mistake. Gigantic.

  THE SLEEP WHISPERER

  Voicemail to Elizabeth from me:

  ‘Um, hi there, it’s Mia Freedman calling. I got your number from Karen and I wanted to see if you were available to come and help me teach my daughter to sleep. It’s quite urgent…because, well, I’m losing my mind…so…um, could you give me a call as soon as possible?’

  Before I started work, I had to get some bloody sleep. I was exhausted.

  For the first few weeks after Coco had come home, I’d run on a heady mix of hormones and adrenaline, with a generous splash of gratitude that my longed-for baby had arrived safely.

  Night feeds were almost a novelty. I felt womanly and invincible, filled with love for my little girl and the world. I willingly slept on a crappy mattress on the floor of her room so that Jason could sleep undisturbed in our bed. I was so grateful to him for helping create this beautiful creature, it was the least I could do. I was a happy martyr. And hey, since I was breastfeeding and he didn’t have breasts, what was the point of him getting up at 2 am? Let alone three, four and 5 am.

  But after more than a month of waking up to eight times every night to feed and soothe Coco back to sleep, I began to lose my sense of humour. The novelty had worn off, replaced by an overwhelming fatigue that was systematically crushing the life out of me.

  Most mornings I couldn’t recall what had transpired the night before. I was always certain it had been a train wreck but the details were hazy. Did she wake at 1.15 for a feed, 2.25 for the dummy, another feed at 3.10 and then dummy again at 3.40? Or was it 1.50 for a feed, 3.20 for the dummy and a feed again at 4.15 and dummy at 4.35? Or was that the night before? Or maybe last week? What’s my name again? And who is that scary-looking person in the mirror?

  Despair is the evil twin of sleep deprivation. Despair that your baby will never sleep more than a few hours in a row. Despair that you’ll never feel human again. Despair that nobody will ever understand how pitifully exhausted you are.

  At 3 am, no one can hear you scream. That’s how it feels when you’re up in the middle of the night with a baby who doesn’t sleep. I could hear Coco screaming clearly enough. Several times each night. But my own screams? My screams of exhaustion, despair, frustration and loneliness? They were silent, confined to the inside of my head.

  Eventually, the despair makes way for a kind of acceptance, where you become institutionalised in your fatigue. You give up. You surrender the fantasy of having a baby who will ever sleep through the night. That’s for other people. The mere thought of unbroken sleep feels as likely as winning Lotto. And as much in your control.

  It’s easier to just stick in the dummy or the bottle or the boob or bring your baby into your bed—whatever it takes to get them, and you, back to sleep quickly. After months of broken sleep, the quick fix will win over the hard yards of a proper solution every time. You’re just too exhausted to find a way out of your exhaustion.

  I’d made this mistake before, with Luca. Jason and I attempted controlled crying half-heartedly a few times but I refused to persevere because I was worried it might damage our baby psychologically. So we waved the white flag and surrendered to the child who doesn’t sleep through the night. In hindsight, this was such false emotional economy. Luca didn’t sleep properly until he was four and it caused huge stress in our relationship that first year, which was hard enough because Jason was sick. We vowed we’d do it differently next time.

  I should note at this point that dads also do it tough, although not nearly as tough as mums, who usually bear the brunt of night waking, especially if they’re breastfeeding. After a long night walking the floor with a crying baby, it’s funny how hearing your husband say ‘I’m tired’ when he wakes at 7 am makes you want to pick up a heavy object and harm him with it.

  Every morning, I needed an enormous dose of cheerleading and validation along the lines of: ‘You are amazing! You are a hero! You are incredible! I don’t know how you do it!’ Frequently, even this was not enough to prevent the resentment from building inside me.

  I often felt I deserved nothing less than a ticker-tape parade every morning to celebrate my heroism in getting through yet another night. Or possibly a commemorative stamp could be issued with a picture of me wearing a halo and some medals.

  Invariably, if your baby doesn’t sleep, every other baby you know, and many you don’t, will have begun sleeping through the night from two weeks of age. This will make you feel fantastic. ‘People lie,’ an early childhood nurse once reassured me when I asked in desperation why I had the only non-sleeping baby in Australia. ‘Some people’s definition of sleeping through the night is 11 pm to 4 am. Don’t listen to them.’

  Jo’s and Karen’s babies were both genuinely sleeping well and I never once resented them for that. Okay, maybe once. But they were still the first people I’d want to unload to, the only ones who could empathise enough. Sometimes, they went through rough patches with their babies too.

  After particularly bad nights, when one of us would be in the depths of despair, emergency food supplies would be silently left at the front door. Muffins, strawberries, a barbecued chook. Meal preparation is one of the first domestic casualties of sleep deprivation and new motherhood. This food was a godsend. So was the friendship.

  It was from Karen that I first heard about The Sleep Whisperer. Her name was Elizabeth and she had magic powers to make babies sleep through the night. Or so it seemed. Karen had used her a few years earlier with her first baby and she’d also worked miracles for other mums we knew. I’ve since learned there are women like Elizabeth working all over Australia and their phone numbers are passed urgently between desperate new mothers who haven’t slept in months, sometimes years.

  My first conversation with Elizabeth was when Coco was four months old. At that stage, she was waking up to eight times a night for feeds and to have her dummy plugged back in. I was beside myself. The feeling of dread began every evening as the sun went down and the inevitability of yet another appalling night hit. I felt trapped, helpless, hopeless.

  Over the phone, Elizabeth was a fountain of empathy. Even her voice was soothing. But she was adamant that she wouldn’t do a ‘sleep program’, as she called it, before a baby was six months old. Her belief was that younger babies couldn’t really learn to sleep through the night and it was not good for them emotionally. As disappointed as I was that my parole had been revoked for two more months, this made me trust Elizabeth even more. The last thing I wanted was to damage my daughter. I just wanted to SLEEP.

  Still, I may have lied about Coco’s age just a wee bit so Elizabeth would book me in earlier. Which she did, at five and a half months. The day before she was due to arrive, she texted me. ‘Just check
ing you still want me to come for the sleep program tomorrow night.’ I texted back so fast I nearly broke my thumbs. ‘YES! YES! YES!’

  The next morning, she called to talk me through what she would be doing. ‘Tonight I’ll be there at 6 pm so I can meet Coco before we get started. That first night can be pretty intense, so be prepared for that.’

  Gulp.

  ‘On the other nights, I’ll come at 10 pm, and each morning I’ll leave at 6 am. Before I go, I’ll leave you a report detailing how she went. You can read it when you wake up. I usually crack it in three nights but I’ll pencil in a couple more, just in case.’

  That evening, after her bath, I dressed Coco in her PJs with a mix of apprehension and hope. It felt like taking your baby for immunisations. You know it’s for their greater good but your heart is still heavy with guilt and fear for the pain your baby will have to experience.

  I liked Elizabeth immediately. With three small boys of her own and a kind yet no-nonsense attitude, she arrived in tracksuit pants and ugg boots, dressed for the wintry night ahead. Straight away, she busied herself in Coco’s room as Jason and I sat nervously watching. She modified the bedding, removed the mobile from the cot—‘beds are for sleeping not entertainment’—and made sure the room temperature was correct. She was very sweet with Coco and patiently answered my endless angsty questions.

  All sleep ‘crutches’ were to be banished, including dummies, music, bottles, rocking and patting. And boobs.

  The key to success, Elizabeth told us, was that we had to trust her and not crack under the pressure of our baby’s cries. Elizabeth believed that by teaching Coco to put herself to sleep, we were giving her a valuable lifelong gift. This was certainly much more palatable to me than the idea I was doing it for my own selfish benefit. Lifelong gift? Sold.