Confessions of a Bad Mother

by Stephanie Calman

  I grab a couple of nice ones to try on while I wait for the assistant. And that’s when I notice the old model, that I’ve been meaning to replace for a while. Bra years are definitely longer; this one I’ve had for – well, it doesn’t seem that long, and is no longer white and shapely but bizarrely stretched, thin and grey, like an elephant’s scrotum. I drop it on the seat and it seems to shrivel, like the witch’s feet in The Wizard of Oz.

  Mmm, though! The new one is WHITE and crisp and even, like mass-produced meringue. The cups are so firm my tits are now bashing my chin, but the lace makes me feel a bit gorgeous. I can imagine Peter murmuring speechlessly, perhaps coming into the bedroom behind me and saying, ‘Fuck! How much did that cost, then?’

  Anyway, I look at myself from all the angles in the mirrors, ring the bell and wait. Then, during the wait, I lose heart. My joie de vivre evaporates, and I become suffused with a mixture of shame and anxiety that gives way to foreboding. Standing half-clothed in a cubicle, under a merciless white light, makes me feel like the victim of something nameless and medical. This feeling gets such a grip on me that by the time the assistant comes in, I’m sure she’s going to tell me I’ve got six months to live.

  The sales floor is full of lovely, satiny, lacy things, in marvellous colours, but all the ones she’s brought are utilitarian and devoid of flounce – like how you’d imagine a government bra designed for prisons. Is it because I’m pregnant, or because I look as if I’ve had too much fun in my life? Does she think I need taking down a peg or two? I feel suddenly very small and vulnerable, like a refugee about to be deloused.

  ‘You won’t be able to wear that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You can’t wear underwired when you’re pregnant.’ Why? Does the wire transmit subversive messages to the fetus? There’s a conspiracy here to make me be ugly, I know it.

  ‘As you get bigger, it compresses the top of your tummy.’

  ‘Oh.’ My tummy’s not going to be up HERE! (It is, of course.) I put on one of the others. She stares at me, and with the expression surveyors adopt when confronted by subsidence, sinks into a morose silence. Eventually she says: ‘How’s that for you?’ in the tone a hangman might use about his rope. Two more, Amish-type bras are tried on.

  ‘And when do I get the – nursing one?’

  ‘Well, obviously not now!’

  ‘No, of course.’ How stupid.

  ‘You have to come back – when you’re bigger.’

  ‘Right. Right.’ How soon can I get out of here? I attempt to hide the scrotum under my bag, but she spots it and, like a health inspector, pronounces it condemned.

  ‘Well, that one’s totally gone.’

  ‘Oh, I know!’ Why do I want her approval?

  ‘Do you handwash your bras? You should, you know.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, I will, I promise,’ I babble, desperate to return to a society where I am no longer a number in a cubicle but a free woman. Somehow, I manage to display a bit of spine and take, along with the bra for offenders, one in black shiny satin. It’s in the sports range, but I fearlessly break the rules and demand they take my £21.

  I tell Peter: ‘I’m never going into another cubicle, I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘How are you going to vote?’ (It is May 1997.)

  ‘Do pregnant women have the vote?’

  ‘And anyway, won’t you have to go back again when your tits get really huge?’

  ‘Well! As you weren’t there to support me, you have to come and do the next stage.’

  ‘Er …’

  Things have improved hugely since, but not that many years ago maternity clothes were still like punishments devised by some extreme seventeenth-century sect. They seemed to symbolize the loss of not only your figure but your whole adult identity, managing to make you look like both a baby and an old maid at the same time, the sort of woman whose elderly parents still choose her clothes.

  The main style on offer is a kind of Midwestern Vernacular: huge smocks, drawstring skirts like shower curtains, and trousers with expanding panels in the front. Everything is checked. You can have white with blue checks, or blue with white checks. I haven’t worn any kind of pinafore since primary school, and they don’t bring back great memories. All I need to complete the ambience would be a bottle of scent made from disinfectant, overcooked cabbage and off milk. If I was going to play Anne of Green Gables on children’s television in Romania, I might, just might, wear this. But what’s this? All-in-one playsuits? I’m having a baby, not trying to dress like one.

  A few yards away Peter is making sicky faces.

  ‘Dungarees – yeuch! You know how I feel about dungarees.’

  ‘Well, move away from them, then.’ I’m not even a mother yet, and already our relationship has changed. ‘And stop being silly.’

  ‘You can’t wear any of these: you’ll look like a kangaroo. It’s lucky we’ve already had sex. Because there is no way …’

  ‘Yeah, all right. I’ve got to wear something.’

  These garments not only make you look as though you aren’t having sex now, but as if you never had any in the first place. It’s what you’d imagine might happen if the entire fashion business were taken over by Mormons. I can only assume there’s a chip in the software of maternity-wear designers that programmes them to consider you spent. You’ve been impregnated, therefore do not need to attract the opposite sex ever again. And there’s certainly no room for the crazy notion of wanting to look nice for yourself.

  Eventually we do find some semi-tolerable outfits, but they’re in the shops with the loudest music, staffed by girls who become baffled when confronted by numerals larger than 10. Ask for anything over a 12, and they just run away. I saw a pregnant Barbie once – the baby and tummy ‘casing’ snapped on and off – and these drainpipe trousers with slightly elasticated fronts were evidently designed for her. Either that, or for anorexics, the latter not being generally noted for their fertility. Perhaps we’ve missed a sign saying Maternity Dept – Age 9–12.

  We break for lunch. That I’m good at.

  ‘I could always try the catalogues. There’s one called Blooming Marvellous.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So British, isn’t it? I’m feeling Blooming Marvellous. I eat fifteen meals a day, and I wee all the time – sometimes even in a toilet – but I’m feeling Blooming Marvellous!’

  ‘Try Fucking Enormous,’ says Peter. He puts on an smarmy voice. ‘Fucking Enormous, can I help you?’

  ‘Yeah, you can: order me a glass of red wine.’

  Spring has sprung. We go for the twenty-week scan.

  ‘It’s got a Big Head,’ says the radiographer.

  ‘A big brain, you mean? Ha-ha!’

  ‘No, just a Big Head. And a short femur.’

  ‘Christ, it’s a Calman all right.’

  ‘It’s amazing the detail they can see by now.’

  ‘I know. Any hair on the legs?’

  After this, Julia rings up again, to recommend a chic French maternity shop near Bond Street.

  ‘It sounds expensive, but you’ll only need to get one or two things. I wore the same skirt for months. Also, with their stuff you won’t feel like such a lump.’

  ‘Thanks. No, really.’

  ‘Wait till you’re like a house,’ she says. ‘And you think I can’t get any bigger than this: it’s not possible. Then look at the calendar.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’ll have another two months to go.’

  Then a few weeks later, a friend of ours gets married. And I find this – gown. In Wallis. It’s stretchy, with a sort of bronzy-coloured snake-pattern. It feels all slinky and springy and not at all blob-like. I try it on, and severely fancy myself. It does bring to mind this book I had as a child, in which a snake swallows a live mongoose, but I don’t care. Besides no one else seems to have read it. I go to the wedding and everyone says, ‘Wow!’, I think in
a good way. When I get up to make my Best Woman speech, though, I have trouble squeezing between the tables.

  ‘I’ve got that condition that’s the opposite of anorexia.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You think you’re quite slim, but in fact you’re really fat.’

  ‘You’re not fat, you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, you started it.’

  3 Babies Do Come Out of Mummy’s Tummy

  Summer is approaching. I have to grasp, as it were, the birth nettle. We arrange to go and see Mr Silverstone.

  ‘He is completely wonderful,’ says Julia. ‘So nice you just want to go back and have more.’

  Mr S gives women the choice of natural delivery for subsequent babies following a C-section, which is rare. He also, I discover, departs from the conventional wisdom that women too frightened to give birth normally are vain, pathetic time-wasters who should be pelted with boiling vodka and wear a bib embroidered with a ‘C’ of shame.

  ‘Remember,’ says Peter, on our way in. ‘You don’t have to justify yourself.’

  ‘Four thousand pounds, remember?’

  ‘I think you should definitely justify yourself.’

  I put on my grooved orange top from the French shop that makes me look like a pumpkin. Mr Silverstone is a consultant, and consultants are protected by layers of nurses, house officers and registrars to keep the likes of us away. Yes, we have been referred to him, but as anyone who’s ever tried to see their consultant knows, they’re like celebrity chefs. Their names are on the menus, but when you go to their restaurants, they’re never the ones cooking the actual food.

  ‘I’ve got some – issues to discuss,’ I explain to each nurse, midwife and doctor. ‘And I’m only going to discuss them with him.’

  Mr Silverstone inhabits a small room at University College Hospital, London. Thin and smartly dressed, in a blue cotton shirt and tie, he exhibits the neat, modest movements of someone who doesn’t need to draw attention to himself. There’s none of the swagger traditionally associated with consultants. The nurses do not back away like geishas when he comes down the corridor. He talks to his staff quietly and courteously. He’s not unique in medicine by any means, but he stands out.

  The minute we sit down together, I feel more optimistic and I can tell Peter does too. After all, if I fall to bits or go off my trolley, he’s the one who’ll be left holding the offspring. The atmosphere is pleasantly civilized, as if we might be equals. Indeed, he gives the impression that rather than a whole person escaping from my nether regions, we could be discussing something more aesthetically enriching, like a new kitchen.

  I describe my fears, and wait for him to tell me to pull myself together.

  He clasps his hands together between his knees, and leans forward. He has been listening so intensely that for a moment the whole infrastructure – room, building, city – seems to fade away. There is nothing else there except – well, it feels a bit like love. Afterwards I remember that Sigmund Freud is said to have listened like that, in a way that caused his patients to proclaim that they had never been listened to so completely in their lives. He says: ‘Have you considered a Caesarean section?’

  I have gone in, not knowing how to face the biggest fear of my life, and come out feeling – allowed. I consider starting a cult to worship him.

  We have extra drinks that night to celebrate. We’re meeting Ray and Sarah, some old friends, who are going to have a baby at around the same time. We’ll have so much to talk about!

  We sit down in the restaurant, and as soon as we mention our triumphant visit to Mr S, we’re in trouble.

  ‘You do realize,’ says Ray, ‘that having an epidural harms the baby?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I say.

  ‘And so does pethidine. All pain relief, in fact.’

  This is our first experience of Men Who Don’t Believe in Relief For a Pain They Won’t Be Having – and it’s fascinating.

  ‘Would you have, say, a circumcision without an anaesthetic?’ I ask him.

  ‘That’s so bloody stupid!’ he snarls.

  Sarah and I look at each other.

  ‘What are you planning to do?’

  ‘I’ll just leave it to the doctors,’ she says.

  ‘Well … they don’t always know best,’ I venture. I am thinking of a friend who was told ‘Your baby’s dead’ after the lead of the fetal heart monitor had fallen off.

  ‘Are you saying you know better than doctors?’

  ‘Well, these days midwives are more—’

  ‘This is just stupid,’ says Ray again. Peter attempts to lighten the mood.

  ‘A bloke at work told me he was standing outside the delivery room listening to this terrible screaming, and he said to the bloke next to him, ‘Bloody hell! Listen to that!’ And the bloke said, ‘We’re not having pain relief.’

  We walk home in silence, which is particularly tricky because they’re staying with us.

  Over the next few months, we have extensive experience of the Moral Hierarchy of Birth Methods, with – naturally – No Pain Relief at the top. Before you read on, though – or email me – please just note one thing. I have nothing but admiration for women who give birth the way nature intended, and if I ever thought there was the slightest hope of my doing so, I would. But I know myself, and I’m not one of them. Even my mother, former press officer of the National Childbirth Trust and potentially the most annoying person I could possibly meet at this stage – upon hearing my absolute terror of childbirth, extends her sympathy and support. With that in mind, I must say, it is easier to go on. Still, I become a magnet for everyone’s Birth Politics.

  ‘I do personally favour a Caesarean,’ says a woman from Peter’s work. ‘But I wouldn’t have one, because if you don’t actually give birth, your body fails to release oxytocin and bonding doesn’t occur.’

  Which rather begs the question: if the Caesarean is an emergency, does bonding occur then?

  I could do what Kate Winslet subsequently did – and lie. But I’m not an actress and lie badly. Besides, I am intrigued by how the choice I – an individual – make about my method of delivery, is taken to mean that I am anti every other method and therefore have to be taken to task. My C-section doesn’t illustrate my attitude to natural births, any more than using a condom makes me anti-Pill. If you wear black to a party and I wear pink – does my pink automatically state that I believe black is wrong?

  ‘Is home-made bread better than shop bought?’ says Peter.

  ‘Usually, yes, it is.’

  ‘Ah, but is it morally superior?’

  Confident that he has had the Last Word on the matter, he opens his car magazine. Well, at least one of us is going to be in good shape for the birth. I, on the other hand, come home every other day in a state because someone or other has ‘picked on me’ about my choice.

  On top of which, I’m completely stressed at work. At thirty-seven weeks, I’m still on a project that should have finished by now, and am getting on so badly with one of the team that I keep thinking I’m going to have a heart attack and die.

  ‘Well, that’d solve your Caesarean problem,’ says Peter.

  ‘The weeks leading up to the birth are supposed to be CALM!’ I scream.

  Maybe if I’d been a man, I might now be writing: Week 37: I am continuing to produce excellent work. I am earning good money – and am soon to be a Mother as well!

  The day arrives. There are two surgeons, two anaesthetists, a couple of nurses and two more people as well. Are they training everyone in this theatre? Or am I so nervous I’m seeing double?

  ‘What do you do?’ I ask a bloke in theatre greens.

  ‘I’m a Medical Technician.’

  That makes eight. No wonder the NHS isn’t keen. I try not to look at the row of scalpels. As I bend forward for the epidural, they ask me about the CD we’ve brought. Peter’s choice of opera duets has won over mine of James Brown L
ive at the Apollo. Even though I know they’re trying to distract me, I feel flattered. It makes a pleasant change from: ‘Going on holiday this year?’ as they shove in a freezing speculum.

  ‘I feel as though I’m at a cocktail party,’ I say at one point.

  ‘Oh yes,’ says the anaesthetist, ‘we like to provide that atmosphere.’ Someone produces a bar, a bit like a huge loo-roll holder.

  ‘You’re not going to stick that in my back, are you?’

  They hang a cloth over it, screening off what my sister refers to as your ‘lower parts’.

  ‘I know it sounds silly, but I hate taking my pants off. Can I keep them on?’

  ‘Of course, darling,’ says the nurse.

  Julia has told me, ‘You’ll feel a sort of rummaging’, but I don’t feel even that. Suddenly two hands are holding a baby high in the air. It really was in there! Peter puts his hand to his mouth, tears in his eyes, and gasps: ‘It’s a boy!’

  ‘It’s Lawrence!’

  ‘Dignity?! You won’t have any of that,’ crowed a male friend, whose wife had a long, horrific labour.

  Well, Blah to you.

  I’ve got away with it! A whole little boy has come out of me, and despite all my imperfections, he is absolutely fine. Well, almost.

  Lawrence’s breathing doesn’t sound quite right. The paediatrician says he is ‘grunting’. He looks fine, or as fine as a newborn baby can look, resembling the usual red prune. His weight is fine. But his blood isn’t picking up enough oxygen.

  Peter takes him to meet my mother and my sister. Someone pushes a Polaroid into my hand: a picture of a baby. A chill goes through me as I realize it’s Lawrence. I shove it back at them; it makes it seem as though he is dead.

  Peter takes a proper picture of us together, then Lawrence goes off to the Neonatal Unit, and he and I go back to the fifth floor. Thankfully, Lawrence isn’t in the Intensive Care bit, which would be really scary, just the moderately scary Special Care Unit.