Countless

by Karen Gregory

  The baby pushes against my ribs, and I lean to one side, bracing my hand on the empty seat next to me.

  The antenatal class is possibly one of the most terrifying things I’ve experienced. The midwife passes round tools they might use for an ‘assisted delivery’ and the forceps look like something they used in the Dark Ages. For torture. One woman goes white. Her partner helps her from the room.

  Another asks about natural birth. I stare at her like she’s mad, but everyone else is nodding intently. One of them is taking notes, like squeezing a humongous baby out of an impossible space is an exam and she’s determined to get an A*.

  The woman who nearly passed out waddles back in and I stare at her. I mean, I’m assuming the rest of the people in here (if we discount the girl with her mum) actually planned this. You’ve gotta wonder why they’re looking so shell-shocked now.

  I tune out during the breastfeeding talk; there’s no way I’m doing that.

  On the way out, there’s another group coming in, all trying to manoeuvre their shiny new buggies around each other and causing a pile-up. One woman sits cross-legged on the floor, pulls her top down to reveal a massive, veiny boob and shoves her baby on to it. It’s like a car crash you can’t stop watching.

  ‘Hello again!’ It takes me a second to place the woman with curly hair, because she looks like she’s aged about ten years, but then I remember Lois from the doctor’s waiting room. I’d meant to text her but didn’t really know what to say. She’s holding a tiny scrunched-up baby in one arm like she’s been doing it forever.

  ‘This is Ethan,’ she says and her face softens and seems at once even older and kind of luminous as she looks down at him.

  ‘He’s lovely,’ I say, although this is not, precisely, the truth. He’s sort of squished together, with his legs folded up and a bright red face.

  Before I can say anything, another woman, with perfectly straightened hair, manicured nails and an ugly-as-hell baby, has said hello to Lois.

  Lois smiles back, but it looks forced to me.

  ‘Is he good for you? Sleeping much yet?’ the woman says.

  Lois makes a non-committal noise.

  The woman goes on. ‘Chloe did ten to seven last night, didn’t you, darling?’ She smiles at her baldy baby.

  Lois hangs on to her own smile, barely, and I see the tiniest of smug looks flick over the other woman’s face. She hasn’t bothered to even glance in my direction.

  ‘I really need the loo. Could you hold him for me?’ Lois says in my ear and, before I can think of an excuse, she shoves Ethan into my arms and disappears.

  I freeze. Ethan wriggles, and I tighten my grip, trying to work out what to do. He opens up his eyes and they’re really bright, like he knows stuff. He definitely knows I’m not his mum because his little face squashes up and he opens his mouth to reveal very pink gums – and yells.

  Oh no.

  ‘Shh-shh,’ I say and try and rock him a bit, but that seems to annoy him even more. He’s wriggling now, arms flung to the side. I’m convinced I’m about to drop him.

  ‘Oh dear, what’s all this fuss now?’ Lois reappears, scoops Ethan up and holds him high on her shoulder, patting him on the back. He quietens down.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m not really that good with … I never held one before. A baby, I mean.’

  I’ve flushed a deep red, but I’m also itching to get out of there, to run far away. One of those Star Wars spaceship thingies would be nice.

  Why did I think I could look after a baby? I can’t even hold one properly.

  The women all start to file into the new class.

  Lois gives me a half-wave and says, ‘Good luck! See you on the other side.’ Then she drops her voice and comes right up to me. ‘I know it’s a pain when people give you advice, but if you want some from me: take the epidural.’

  After the antenatal class, having a gigantic needle shoved in your back doesn’t sound all that bad to me, if it means you don’t have to feel anything afterwards.

  ‘I was planning to,’ I say faintly as she disappears.

  Shame you don’t get an epidural for life.

  Unless you count Nia, I suppose.

  Crap Things about the Unit, Number Eleven:

  Leaving

  In hospital, you pretty much live on a day-to-day basis. You spend your time moaning about your portion being too big, your target weight too high. Gossiping about how annoying the staff are, or which one fancies which. You go to Group and school. You see your shrink once a week and gripe about Family Therapy. You pull tricks to rig the system and pretend your weight is higher than it is. It’s a whole world, one you know.

  And then you hit your target weight and it’s time to leave and suddenly there’s a different world out there and you’re supposed to be in it and have plans and stuff, when really all you can think about is how to get safe again. How to go back, to where there are clear rules. Sucky rules, sure, rules you bitch about, but rules you’ve also, weirdly, come to love.

  Maybe Molly was right. Perhaps I did like it there.

  Sometimes.

  Chapter 14

  4 WEEKS TO GO

  I don’t see Robin for a couple of days after the antenatal class. I lock myself in my flat and sort of just let the terror take over. I don’t eat much. One night I dream I’m bingeing on a giant chocolate figure, like the snowmen you get in a Christmas stocking, except I realise with a sickening feeling that it’s a baby. But even though I try and try, I can’t stop eating it. In the corner, Molly watches, her face completely white, the way it was that day in the bathroom.

  ‘You have to choose,’ she says.

  I wake up shaking and sweating, with a horrible squeezing pain down one side, and can’t get back to sleep. I’ve read about this, Braxton Hicks contractions, and it reminds me the birth is getting stupidly close.

  All of a sudden, I’m really tired and bizarrely I want Mum. I want her to come and say it’s all right like she did when I was little. I want her to look after me, tell me what to do.

  I get dressed and start walking, even though it’s only six in the morning, and don’t stop until I get home. To Mum and Dad and Tammy’s house, that is.

  I knock on the door. It takes a while for it to open and then it’s not Mum standing there, but Tammy in fluffy slippers and a dressing gown. Her usually perfect shiny hair is sticking out a bit and she has three spots on her chin. This, perversely, cheers me up.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. Hello,’ she says and peers at me through her fringe, which I suspect she’s had cut to hide the sprinkling of acne I see peeping out from underneath it.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  We go and sit in the living room.

  ‘Do you want me to get Mum?’ Tammy says and her voice is polite, like I’m a snake that’s about to bite.

  She can’t stop looking at my bump, especially when the baby rolls over and one side of it goes up. Which hurts. I never really thought about pregnant stomachs before, and it’s still a shock to feel how hard and tight my skin is. Plus, the baby does not stop moving, ever. And I can’t lie on my front because it’s physically impossible, or my back because then I feel like the bump is flattening my lungs, so I have to sleep on my side, like a beached whale. The baby pushes hard against my hand on my bump, like she’s trying to chuck me off. Or planning to exit directly through the skin. She feels strong enough. For the millionth time, I try not to think about the birth or what might come after.

  ‘Do you want to feel it?’ I say to Tammy.

  She comes over with a shy look, and hesitates.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘Put your hand there.’

  Tammy presses one hand to my bump and the baby kicks it. Tammy jumps about a mile and then laughs. She puts her hand back and leans down so her mouth is up close.

  ‘Hello! I’m your Aunt Tammy!’ she says.

  I well up. Tammy realises I’ve gone quiet and looks up at me through those long lashes of hers, questioning. A moment later
, whatever spell the baby cast over us is broken by Mum coming into the living room.

  ‘Hedda!’ she says. It’s hard to tell whether she’s pleased to see me or not.

  Tammy gets up and goes off to the kitchen.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Mum says.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ I say. ‘I just wanted to see you, I suppose.’

  Something in Mum’s face softens. She looks at the bump.

  ‘You want a feel too?’ I say.

  Mum presses a hand there and her eyes go really distant. There’s a trace of a smile on her face.

  I want a time machine or something. I want the past five years never to have happened, to take it all back.

  ‘I remember when I was pregnant with you, you were such a little wriggler,’ Mum says. ‘I can still feel your feet right up here under my ribs.’

  ‘Yeah, I feel like I’m getting crushed sometimes,’ I say.

  ‘Children do that to you,’ Mum says, and I go cold again.

  ‘Have you come to a decision yet?’ she says. ‘You can’t have long left to go.’

  I thought I’d decided on the way here, but now I’m actually in the room with her, I don’t think I can say it. I can’t ask if I can come back.

  Tammy calls out from the kitchen, ‘Anyone want toast?’

  ‘I’ve already eaten,’ I call back. The lies come back so smoothly, I almost don’t register this one.

  Mum looks at me harder. ‘You seem different.’

  ‘Yeah, carrying a whole human kind of does that to you,’ I can’t help saying, but we both know that isn’t what she means.

  We give each other a long look and I wonder what she felt when she was carrying me. What her hopes and dreams were for me, for herself. It’s possibly the closest we’ve been in a long time, even though we’re not saying anything. Mum’s eyes have a bright sheen to them, a look that seems to reach through time and stir memories, hazy and indistinct because they’re layered over with all the things that came later.

  Tammy comes in with some peanut butter on toast and is about to start eating when Mum recovers herself and says, ‘Tamara, crumbs!’

  It’s like someone’s flicked a switch and the moment is gone. I feel myself shut down.

  I heave myself up to follow Tammy into the dining room and that’s when it happens: a strong squeezing sensation in my back, like the worst kind of cramp, and then my waters break, all over Mum’s new carpet.

  PART THREE

  COUNT UP

  Chapter 15

  Anorexia hurts. Starving yourself ain’t pretty. When your weight gets low enough, everything aches, all the time. You get so cold, like your bones are pure winter. Your hair falls out and your skin dries into a million little cracks. You grow hair on your back. Your joints feel rusted. It gets so your brain is iced over. Even cushions are too hard to sit on, it hurts that much.

  Giving birth hurts more.

  I scream through a contraction, suck in gas and air through the mouthpiece, but it is doing zero for the pain. It dies away after an eternity and I pant, ‘Where the fuck is my epidural?’

  Mum doesn’t even tell me off for swearing, which means things must be bad.

  The midwife makes soothing noises. ‘Not long now. The anaesthetist is on his way –’

  I scream again as another contraction comes. I was wrong – those forcep things aren’t the torture. This is. They’re like the sea, waves of contractions, coming without any pauses now. I’m up on my knees, gripping the sides of the bed, my eyes blank with terror. It’s all happening too fast, I’m not ready, and I try and say this, but I can’t seem to get out proper words.

  ‘Take a drink, sweetie,’ Mum says and pushes a straw into my mouth.

  I gulp water, then more gas and air as another contraction comes and I think I might lose my mind with the pain; maybe I’m already dead. I’m pulling at the gown they’ve put me in, grabbing at my hair, totally out of control.

  Suddenly, I feel an unbearable urge, like I’ve taken about a hundred laxatives, except it’s not in my bum.

  ‘I think I’m pushing!’ I gasp.

  Mum is somewhere near my head. I can hear her voice from far away, soothing, scared.

  She rubs my back, but I shrug my shoulders violently. ‘Don’t touch me!’

  She moves her hand, but when I turn my head sideways she’s still there. I squeeze my eyes shut as another huge contraction comes and I feel the worst kind of grinding sensation in my pelvis. I throw my head back and howl, like I’m an animal.

  I lose count of how long I push. Time belongs to another planet. There’s nothing but me and the pain and the only thread holding me to any sort of sanity is Mum’s voice, telling me it’s OK, that I’m doing really well.

  But I’m not doing well. I’m so tired now. It feels like I’ve been in this room forever. The midwife turns me on my side and I cry between pushes, sucking on the gas and air.

  I hear Mum say from far away, ‘Can’t you give her something?’

  ‘It’s too late for the epidural,’ replies the midwife.

  ‘Just. Knock. Me. Out,’ I grind through my teeth. Then I open my mouth and this sound comes out, a low animal roar, louder than any noise I’ve ever made in my life, and then I feel the worst burning sensation down below.

  ‘That’s it – the head is out. Now I need you to stop pushing for a moment. That’s it. Just pant for me. Well done. Good girl,’ the midwife says.

  ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I can’t do it,’ I sob.

  ‘Yes you can. Here, feel this.’ She pulls my hand down between my legs and there’s this astonishing thing there, all hot and squishy.

  Oh my God, I think, but then another contraction comes.

  ‘Push!’ the midwife says.

  And I do, everything popping, Mum’s face, wet with tears, above me.

  ‘Come on, Hedda,’ she says.

  I look into Mum’s eyes and I push and I push, screaming out, and then suddenly there’s a rush and release and the pain goes. I slump back on the pillows.

  The midwife is holding something tiny and grey and I just register this, and the fact that I somehow seem to be wearing no clothes, and then she puts it on to my chest. The baby is very warm and she fits right on my ribcage, like she was always meant to be there.

  But she isn’t crying.

  ‘She’s not crying. Why isn’t she crying? Is she OK?’ I say. I crane my head back, trying to get a proper look at her.

  The midwife rubs the baby’s back with a towel and after a moment that lasts forever, the baby turns her head to one side, takes a big breath and opens her eyes.

  There’s the softest click inside.

  ‘Hello,’ I say.

  She looks at me. Her eyes are full of secrets, like she’s been on some long journey. There’s a strange hush in the room, like some ancient magic has infused it.

  The midwife asks if I want to cut the umbilical cord, but I shake my head. I can’t move my arms from the position they’ve found by themselves, cradling the baby automatically. I think Mum does it.

  Then the midwife says something about the placenta, and some more contractions come, but I barely notice them because me and the baby are still looking at each other.

  When the midwife takes her away to weigh her, the space left behind feels cold. I begin to shiver all over. Once she’s been weighed and checked over, they put her back on me. She’s small – five pounds, eleven ounces – but fine considering she came so early.

  ‘Do you want to try breastfeeding?’ the midwife says.

  To my surprise, I agree.

  The baby doesn’t seem so good at it though. She sort of sticks her tongue out and slides on and off. It’s a bit of a shock, truthfully.

  ‘She’ll get the hang of it,’ the midwife says.

  ‘I’m so proud of you,’ Mum says, and she leans over and kisses me on the cheek, the feeling of it so familiar and distant at the same time, like an echo.

  Mum cuddles
the baby while the midwife helps me to the en suite and puts me in a shower to clean me off. Then she tucks me up in bed and puts the baby back on my chest.

  This time, she cries. Her mouth opens and shuts like a little fish.

  I try again and again to feed her, but nothing is coming.

  * * *

  A while after, Dad and Tammy arrive. I’m on the ward now, surrounded by crying babies and the long beeps of call bells. I’m exhausted. The baby is in a little tub by the side of my bed. She still hasn’t had a proper feed.

  I’ve had half a slice of toast and a cup of tea, which Mum has insisted on putting two sugars in. I drink it to keep her happy, but the window at the far end of the ward is open and through it, a long way away, I think I hear Nia rustling through a sky that is packed with layers of white clouds. We had a deal, she seems to say.

  I turn my head from the clouds to look again at the baby.

  ‘She’s a little cracker,’ Dad says and he looks all proud.

  ‘Can I touch her?’ Tammy says, and I nod.

  Tammy reaches for the baby’s hand and the baby opens her eyes and closes her tiny fist around Tammy’s finger.

  ‘Does she have a name?’ Tammy says.

  ‘Not yet,’ I say.

  I don’t know if I’m meant to name this baby or not.

  I sleep through dinner, conveniently, but have a small bowl of cereal Mum’s rustled up from the ward. She watches me like a hawk as I eat it. It’s almost like old times.

  The baby sleeps on. I suppose being born is pretty tiring.

  Just before visiting hours are up, Robin arrives. When I got Mum to call him I could see her dying to ask if he was the father, but I didn’t have the energy for that conversation.

  ‘Hi,’ Robin says when he gets to my side. He’s shown up with flowers, a small bunch of white roses. ‘My grammy told me they’re for new beginnings.’

  ‘Trust you to know that,’ I say with a smile.

  Mum puts them in a vase and I’m about to ask if he’ll water my window box when he leans over the cot and there’s this look in his eyes, like he’s been smacked in the stomach.