Confessions of a Bad Mother

by Stephanie Calman

  Eventually Peter goes away. too, and I spend the night sitting amongst all the other mothers – with their babies – in the Postnatal ward. It isn’t at all traumatic, if you count listening to six babies crying as not traumatic. It’s intriguing, watching all these mothers looking after their babies, feeding and changing them, cuddling them and holding little, murmured conversations. Will I be able to do all this? Although I’ve had my baby, I’m still on a provisional licence.

  Not having my baby with me seems quite normal; it is, after all, my default mode. I don’t feel that we’ve been wrenched apart; I’m not used to the condition of motherhood, so it’ll give me time to break myself in. After all, he’s not in danger. It’s all part of the adventure. Besides, when you’re as nervous as I am, the full battery of medicine’s finest is a comfort. Being sent home in charge of a helpless infant: that’s scary.

  I’m looking at a week of staying with these nice people who won’t make me wash up or get my own tea. I have a bed up on the fifth floor, at the end by the windows, with a view over the rooftops. Peter, Claire and my mother bring in Danish pastries and coffee, the odd sandwich and other essentials such as chocolate and, later on, Indian takeaways and beer. I can receive friends arriving with treats and flowers then, like a Victorian mother, pop down to Neonatal twice a day for a spot of Heritage Parenting. I sit amongst my bouquets and cards and feel good. One fine afternoon, a friend and I go out on the balcony with tea and biscuits, and sit in the warm air like two colonial ladies on their veranda. It is, all in all, quite a holiday.

  My heart sinks, though, when I try to express milk. A grey, metal pump is wheeled in on a trolley, like an exhibit from the metereological display at the Science Museum: one of those early devices for measuring precipitation in the section that nobody looks at.

  I clamp on the glass trumpet and listen to the growling sound of the machine. After half an hour’s concerted pumping I have about ten millilitres, enough to fill the syringe at the top of Lawrence’s tiny feeding tube only once. They ask if I will allow him to be given formula. What if I say: ‘No, I’d rather he starved to death on ten millilitres, so long as it’s my own’? Will they go ahead and give it to him anyway? I appreciate their attempt to include me in the decision-making process. Every hour, I drop friends, tea and present-opening, and run down to the nursery to plug myself in. Despite the clearly inadequate nature of my offerings, no one says, ‘Blimey! You don’t think he’s going to survive on that, do you?!’ Instead, they solemnly take the tiny plastic pot, with its almost invisible liquid in the bottom, and pour it into the tube.

  At 7.30 on a Sunday morning, when Lawrence has been in Neonatal for all the four days of his life, I get up to go to the lavatory. In an hour or so Peter will arrive with my coffee and Danish and we’ll visit him together. I am just making my way across the ward when I’m intercepted by a breathless Filipina ancillary.

  ‘Have you heard the news?!’ she cries.

  The blood seems to drain from my head. This is it. All that stuff about a minor breathing problem was obviously a lie. Lawrence is all the way down in the basement. I can’t get there in time! And anyway, it’s clearly too late. They didn’t even say he was that ill. I think, what a way to tell me. They could have at least sent a doctor.

  In the two or three seconds before I can sputter out the word: ‘Lawrence!’ she says: ‘Princess Di-a-na!!’

  I shake her. ‘Lawrence? What’s happened to LAWRENCE?!!’

  ‘Princess Di-a-na has been killed!’

  Why can’t she stop babbling this rubbish and answer?

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I say, and start for the lift.

  Suddenly I realize that she isn’t talking about Lawrence at all. I turn back and slap her – luckily not very hard, on the arm.

  ‘I thought you meant my baby!! Oh, God – I’m sorry!’

  She shrugs and smiles, and goes off to repeat this silly hoax about the Princess.

  When I get down to the nursery, all the little radios are on as usual, but instead of pop music they’re playing the National Anthem. Weird! And some of the nurses are sort of standing to attention.

  ‘Lawrence! Lawrence!’

  ‘Ssssh!’ I reach the incubator. He is fine. I can’t believe they’re thinking about anything else.

  4 How Many Breastfeeding Women Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

  Visiting our baby is like gaining access to a safety deposit box. The Special Care Unit is down in the basement, like a vault. We have to ask, and – if the nurses are busy helping someone else – wait. Then he has to be held a bit carefully so as not to pull off his wires. But though he’s technically ours, the hospital has control. It’s like Monet’s Waterlilies; it belongs to the nation, but you just try putting it in your bag to take home. When the doctors do their rounds, we have to wait outside. Even though we understand this, Peter says afterwards: ‘It’s as if we shouldn’t be here.’

  A young midwife called Karen hands me a book called Kangaroo Care.

  ‘It’s about the benefits to babies of being held against the human body,’ she explains, ‘when they’re sick or premature or even just like Lawrence – nearly well.’

  I read it, and rush down to the Unit. With Karen at my side, I open my nightie and cuddle Lawrence and feel the first glimmerings of confidence. Hey, this is great! Peter has a go. We go back to the ward in triumph.

  The next day, I can’t wait to try again. Karen isn’t on, and Peter hasn’t arrived yet. So I go down alone. But instead of the nurses I know, there’s a different one. I ask to take him out of the incubator.

  ‘You’ll have to wait. I’ve got paperwork to do.’

  Her brisk, forbidding tone suggests I have no right.

  Paperwork? Paperwork?! Perhaps she’s right. What do I know? I wait. Then I wait some more. Altogether I stand in front of that plastic box for forty-five minutes. It feels like forty-five hours. I become aware of a mounting urge to grab the nurse and shove her head very hard against the wall. Instead, I keep asking politely while she finds more and yet more other things to do. She then goes on her break, leaving me standing in front of the incubator, tears streaming down my face.

  The next nurse comes on.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she says.

  Moments later I feel Lawrence in my arms. What was that? It wasn’t like love, it was like having my drink spiked. When I envisaged injuring the horrible nurse, the image bypassed the rational ‘Shall I do this?’ process, the little debate you have with yourself before you, for example, shout ‘Fuck Off’ at a policeman. I am not in control here. I’ve been taken over by some kind of – force – like with Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise when they were taken over by aliens who controlled them with invisible, low-budget telepathy. But by the end of the episode they were always in charge of themselves again. Am I always going to be like this? Can’t I switch it off? Uh-oh. This is what the fuss is about. This is Maternal Instinct.

  No wonder I didn’t recognize it! I expected it to be nice. And I’m stuck with it. Like a virus it’s now in my system and – whenever it chooses, can come back? I suddenly realize the bargain I’ve made. I haven’t just ‘had a baby’. I’ve created a hostage to fortune. I, of all people! Now I remember why I was so reluctant to do this.

  On the fifth day a woman who isn’t a nurse or doctor comes to my bedside with some paperwork and says rather briskly: ‘You do realize we need this bed, don’t you? You can’t stay here.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry.’

  We put my things into a bag and go down to the nursery.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be able to come back and get him quite soon,’ says the doctor on duty.

  ‘Er …’

  ‘Come back …?’

  ‘Fine,’ says Peter. ‘When?’

  ‘Ooh, shouldn’t be longer than a week.’

  ‘Right. So …’

  ‘We have to go home without him.’

  Peter is being even
nicer to me than usual, and watches me constantly, as if expecting me to be traumatized. But since I have never been at home with a baby in the first place, it doesn’t feel that bad – just weird. Have I had a baby? The cards say I have. Peter makes supper and we read them all.

  ‘And hey, what’s this?’

  ‘Chocolate cake!’

  The card says: Love from Patrick & Sheila. There are times when only chocolate cake will do.

  They’re right. We have two pieces each and go to bed in our new life, a limbo between being parents and not being parents. Then we get up and go to the hospital and sit by the incubator with the other regulars, all with our various offerings, like worshippers at a very high-tech shrine. When one of the others has extra family in, we all give them our chairs. The room is small, yet when a cot alarm goes off, the space expands to accommodate an entire trauma team, which descends in moments and then vanishes again.

  After a few days of this, one of the consultants says: ‘Lawrence is nearly ready to go home.’

  ‘Hooray! When?’

  ‘All you have to do is establish feeding, and when he’s put on enough weight …’

  ‘How much is enough?’

  ‘Ooh, don’t worry: it shouldn’t be a problem.’

  We should know by now that that is doctor talk for difficult, very difficult, excessively difficult or likely to cause you to scream.

  We are shown into a tiny room with a bed, cupboard and TV, next to the nurses’ coffee room. The furniture is in that orangey sort of wood.

  ‘Early Seventies Dolls’ House, would you say?’

  ‘Definitely style-free. And look: the window’s sealed shut.’

  I have sunk from my prime position on the fifth floor to a basement cell. At the top of the window we can see feet.

  ‘Go and ask them for a better room.’

  ‘A suite?’

  ‘Yeah. With minibar.’

  ‘What are we supposed to do?’

  We are supposed to sleep – hah – on the narrow single bed, then every two to four hours or so, they’ll bang on the door and get me up to feed Lawrence. Then, when they’ve weighed him and he’s heavy enough, we can take him home.

  After the third bang on the door and no sleep, Peter says: ‘This is like being in prison.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re not the one who’s just had a midwife grab your tit.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘That weird one with the Max Bygraves wig. She grabbed me!’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘I don’t think it was foreplay. She was supposedly showing me how to feed.’

  ‘Can we just hurry up and get out of here?’

  ‘All right! You’re not the one on trial with the weighing.’

  ‘I’m with you all the way, you know that.’

  ‘Yeah, but – Peter?’

  ‘Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.’

  The feeding is hard enough, but the weighing is horrendous.

  ‘How much? How much?’

  ‘Three grams.’

  ‘Shit …’

  Peter feeds me up with takeaways and shortbread biscuits, but after two nights I feel as though I’ve been there all my life. Tilly and Claudia, my two oldest friends, arrive together and behave as though this is completely normal. Peter goes into the corridor so we can sit together on the tiny bed.

  ‘I’ve never been a student,’ I say. ‘Is it very like this?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ says Claudia, ‘put up a Che Guevara poster and – you’re not writing any essays, are you? That’s it: you’re there.’

  By the end of the third day Lawrence is still refusing to put on weight.

  ‘This is hopeless. We’re never going to be able to take him home. What shall we do?!’

  ‘I dunno. Are we eligible for parole?’

  That evening one of the consultants sits us down and says: ‘Look. What I think you should do is—’

  ‘Oh, my God! What?’

  ‘Go out to dinner.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a very nice place just up there. Go on. You need a treat.’

  ‘Go out?! What if he wakes up?’

  ‘Don’t worry. Give yourself a couple of hours. He’ll be fine.’

  ‘You mean we can just go?’

  ‘Go on! I’m prescribing it!’

  We go and have green curry and beers.

  The next day they weigh Lawrence and say: ‘Yup, he’s fine. You can take him home.’

  ‘What, really?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Peter goes to get the car.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘It’s only got two doors.’

  ‘What d’you mean? Of course it – Ah …’

  To twist round and get this fragile, breakable heirloom into the new baby seat takes forty minutes. Also, the street looks different. It’s NOISY and DIRTY and full of DANGER, like CARS and LORRIES and people going to and from A&E who might be PSYCHOS. Peter holds him tightly and looks both ways before even crossing the pavement, like a Secret Service man. Then we get in and drive home, at four miles an hour.

  It’s exciting to have Lawrence in our own domain at last. But after a few days he starts to cry. A lot. More and more. He starts to feed, then snaps off, crying. He doesn’t seem hungry. Hopeless as I am, I can already tell that this is not usual. It goes on and on. Peter and I talk about it, stare at him, stare at him again, and conclude that we have no idea what’s going on.

  We try the dummy. As well as producing a pleasingly affronted expression on the faces of people who disapprove, it gives us some peace and quiet. You are stifling the natural cry of your baby, says a book I pick up in a shop somewhere. Isn’t that the point? As my dad used to say, ‘Can’t you go and express yourself somewhere else?’ Anyhow, Lawrence is expressing himself all right. And nothing, but nothing, gives him relief.

  ‘Maybe we should take him to the health visitor.’

  ‘Oh no! She’ll say it’s my fault.’

  So we continue to pace round him, pick him up, put him down and stare pointlessly.

  After three days of this I pluck up courage and go. Carol is not how I imagined a health visitor would be. She sounds like an academic, but much humbler, with an almost inaudible voice – quite a challenge when dispensing vital information about things like vaccines.

  ‘So, I’ll just pop him on the scale, shall I?’ She is being very gentle. Her voice, if that is possible, is even quieter than usual. Lawrence is put in the big white scoop, like an ingredient for some hideous recipe. But Carol is not witch-like. She breaks the news in a whisper.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What? What?!’

  ‘He hasn’t put on very much weight.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Well, only a few grams.’

  ‘In a WEEK?’

  ‘Yes … Don’t worry. He’s fine.’

  ‘Oh my God …’

  I sink into a chair. I Have Failed To Nourish My Child. He is crying because he is HUNGRY. That’s why he kept snapping off the nipple. He’s hungry, and it is my fault. I am STARVING him to DEATH. Well, that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? I would starve my child. I knew I should never have taken this on. ‘But you don’t like children,’ someone said when I was pregnant. Even when I say I like them, I don’t really. I harm them. I am a Bad Person. I don’t deserve this baby.

  Carol says: ‘It might be a good idea, if you don’t object’ – her voice drops even further – ‘to give him a bottle of formula.’ A BOTTLE? In Islington? I can see a Bateman cartoon: The Health Visitor Who Suggested a Bottle. Any minute now the Parenting Police will swarm in and take us both away. Relief sweeps over me. There is help for people like you. And failure: I am redundant – so soon. ‘You don’t have to stop breastfeeding, unless you want to. He can have both.’

  ‘And Peter can feed him as well!’

  She also tells me that she, h
er sister and her mother all had the same problem. All my life I’ve overeaten, except for now. Now, when I finally need to eat, I can’t. Ever since I came home from hospital without him, I’ve had no appetite. No wonder there’s no milk. What a time to diet! If it weren’t so tragic it would be funny. Carol is so quiet now I can’t hear her. Oh, she’s not talking: she’s listening.

  ‘Why don’t you put him on now, for a bit, while we talk?’

  I talk for an hour. Feeding him was something I could do. No one else. And now I can’t even do that. But just saying it makes me feel better. She listens for an hour. At the end of it, I am lighter in every respect.

  But this is the Beginning of the End. I’ve lost my exclusive contract. I’m not indispensable, and Lawrence is on his way to independence. First stop: SMA, then crossing the road by himself. Soon: college. I feel as though I’m giving him his freedom, not least by not starving him any more. I do so find it helps, don’t you, to start life on a full stomach?

  I go to Boots, to buy the dreaded tin. Back home, I check my two books on breastfeeding.

  ‘Some women worry about not having enough milk. Relax: this cannot happen!’

  We carry on with breast and bottle. Peter gets to do his bit and we both start to feel useful. But another few days on, it starts to hurt. A LOT. Each suck is suddenly like having my nipple shut in a serrated metal vice – if I knew what that was like, which thank God I don’t, but I imagine it feels very like this. I know if you get only the nipple in and not the surrounding area it hurts, but he has got the surrounding area. He has, he has, he HAS! On the other hand, what else can I do? The books don’t give me another strategy. I take him off and put him back on, pointlessly. Every time he goes back on, it feels like someone shutting my nipple in a door. I look down, just to check whether the hospital has given me a baby with metal teeth.

  Peter tiptoes round me like a man nostalgic for the good old days of PMT.

  ‘Is it …?’

  ‘It HURTS!’ I scream. My teeth are actually gritted.

  What was he going to ask me? How many breastfeeding women it takes to change a lightbulb? Just smash the bulb over my head: it has to feel better than this.