I take Lawrence off again, and put him back on. He seems to be latched on correctly, so why the fuck is it still hurting so much? It’s excruciating, and there’s no way out.
Peter says: ‘D’you want me to give him a bottle?’
‘NO, BECAUSE IF I DON’T FEED HIM, MY BREASTS FILL UP AND GO ALL HARD AGAIN!’ I can’t win. I know because our friend Sarah invited us for supper and from 6 p.m. he slept.
‘Great!’ we said. ‘We can eat, drink and talk for six hours.’
But that was six hours he didn’t feed, obviously, and when I got up from the table my tits had solidified, like bricks. My left arm felt weird, and when I tried to move it, I couldn’t. Is she serious? Yes, my left side had seized up completely. So there you have it; you can go from only managing ten millilitres an hour to having so much it fills up your arm.
I need something to bite on: my mother. She is staying and ventures an opinion.
‘You’re expecting it to hurt. If you tense up and expect it to hurt, it will.’
Not tensing is her answer to everything. All you have to do is the Natural Childbirth breathing. Pain in childbirth – you were tensing. Pain at the doctor – injections, smear tests, having your leg off – you weren’t doing the breathing. There is no such thing as pain, in the objective, empirical sense. Run over? It wouldn’t have hurt if you’d been doing the breathing. Rwanda? You haven’t had your head cut off with a machete: you just weren’t doing the breathing. I put Lawrence back on again, and wince.
‘No, no, look: like this.’ She breathes v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. ‘You’re not doing it!’ She shrugs and walks off.
Shortly afterwards, when I am hoping for death as a merciful release, a nice man who works for Peter comes round with a present for Lawrence. He takes in the expression on my face – so unlike the one on the posters, and says: ‘We had some trouble with this, too. Would you like the number of our breastfeeding counsellor?’
I can no longer speak, so Peter says: ‘Yes, please.’
The breastfeeding counsellor, Maggie, is from the NCT. She comes round, takes one look at me and says: ‘Oh yes, there they are.’
‘There what are?’
‘White patches. Go to the doctor, get her to look in Lawrence’s mouth and they’ll probably be there too.’
‘What will? What is it?’
‘No wonder you were sore. You’ve both got thrush.’
And suddenly I don’t care about the pain any more, because this proves I’m not stupid or mad. We get some ointment and the pain starts to go away. And I know that not to have sore tits is all I will ever ask for in life, ever.
5 Chain Gang
After four weeks, Peter goes back to work.
‘Bye, Lawrence! Bye, darling! Have a good day!’
Oh, God …
‘You too! See you at – oh no – suppertime.’
Don’t go! Please, please don’t go! I don’t know what to do! It’s all been a mistake! Please, oh please!
I’ve been left alone in the house with a baby. Me. Wasn’t it just a short while ago I left a toothbrush at Peter’s flat for the first time, and thought, hey this isn’t too bad … Then we moved in together, didn’t we … and got married – uh-oh, that was quite grown-up – and then I let go of my flat … that was a really big deal … and then we bought this place, which was even more scary. And now—
Omigod, omigod, omigod. I got carried away, that’s what I did. I keep hearing my friend Alison’s answerphone message from when we first told her our news.
‘I bet you’re thinking: I’ve been and gone and done it now …’
It was the truest thing anyone said to me that whole nine months.
I can feel the panic rising in my throat, like sick.
There’s a person, who I don’t really know, in my house. And he’s completely dependent on me.
What do I DO? When Peter was here we could be confused together. But on my own … It’s like one of those dreams where you’re in a play and don’t know the lines. There’s plenty of advice on the shelves about supporting his head, or dipping your elbow in the water to check the temperature of a bath. But now, right now, alone in this room, what do I do? It’s slightly embarrassing. I mean, I don’t want to ignore him. And yet I don’t know what to say. This feeling reminds me of – God, it’s a blind date.
I’ve made a mistake. It’s like thinking I could perform at Wembley Arena when I’ve never even sung in public. Or go on the West End stage. Or fly. What ever possessed me to think I – I, of all people – could do this? Just because I went into Marks & Spencer’s a few times and wept over the tiny socks – I was allowed to be an actual mother? Because I was interested, because I was curious – does that make me qualified ? I’m interested in film-making; that doesn’t make me Ingmar Bloody Bergman. The sheer chutzpah, the affrontery of it, makes me gasp. I remember an old saying, Beware of what you want: you may get it. First, I wanted my independence and my father died. Now this. I feel like a mortal in one of those awful Greek myths who makes the wrong wish. We all know about Midas, but I’m thinking of Eos, the Dawn, who was tricked into asking Zeus for a wish. She asked that her husband should never die.
‘Is that your only wish?’ said Zeus, and she said. ‘Yes.’
The husband was young and beautiful for a few years, then started to get older – and older.
‘What’s happening?’ she cried. ‘You promised he would never die! ‘ And Zeus said: ‘You didn’t ask that he should remain forever young.’
Eventually he was a tiny, shrivelled thing, skittering down the palace corridors like a grasshopper.
I’ve got to CALM THE FUCK DOWN.
I sit on the sofa, clutching this – stranger. Maybe I should go to the lavatory. I always feel calm in there. No, I’d have to put him down. My whole body is so tensed, I’m barely sitting on the sofa at all. My arse is so high I’m nearer the ceiling.
Maybe I’ll wait. Only eight hours till Peter gets home.
I won’t ignore him. I may be a shit mother but I do have some manners.
‘Well! Here we are! I’m your mummy.’
This is pathetic. One thing at a time, come on, do something! People do this – thick people! I plump the cushions round us.
‘Why don’t we have a video?’ We’ve got loads. I have a look through some of the things we’ve taped over the months and indeed years. Waco: the Rise and Fall of David Koresh … Myra Hindley, Portrait of a Killer … The Unabom- ber. Or there are always the six episodes of Perpetual Motion: Great Transport Designs that Refused to Die, Classic Cars, Classic Trains and Classic Planes. Peter’s keeping all of them on the grounds that in a couple of years Lawrence will talk of little else. Well, while I’ve still got control of the remote: Hmm … Dr Strangelove – not quite. The Fly … Bonnie and Clyde … La Reine Margot – featuring the Technicolor massacre of the Protestants in sixteenth-century France. Homicide … Love Child – what was that? Oh, yes: unmarried women in the Sixties whose babies were taken away from them.
Hey, I could read a book! I’ve been meaning to do that since I left school. I take Lawrence over to the bookshelves. A friend’s given me a book of stories about Motherhood, inscribed: Just the right length to read between feeds! But I can’t face a load of essays where people stare into their baby’s cot and go all intense. Actually, books are too sort of – wordy. Maybe I’ll read one when I get in the swing of it more. When he starts crawling; I’ll read then. Or when he learns to walk.
‘I know! Let’s put on the TV.’ Daytime TV’s allowed if you’ve just had a baby, right? The Time, The Place is starting, but even that seems a bit challenging.
Noon. I need to wee. I put him down and get up. He sort of warbles. I sit down again and pick him up. What shall I do? We once gave a mobile to a friend who’d just had a baby. She sent us a photo of him in his cot, gazing up at it. On the back of it she’d written: Thank you – I have now been to the lavatory for the first time in
eight weeks. At the time I thought: How totally ridiculous! Why doesn’t she just GO? But that was before I discovered how hard it is to leave the room.
I try wedging him in with the cushions. He whimpers. I pick him up, then try to put him back down again, v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y so he won’t notice. I take a step or two. He cries. He doesn’t want me to go. I try again. As with trying to walk past spiders, I take small steps backwards and forwards for what seems hours before giving up in defeat. He cries. I pick him up and sit down with him again. The loo is only on the landing. Look! I can see it, twelve stairs away. I sit down again. I don’t need to go that badly. I’m sure I can wait until Peter comes home; it’s only another six hours.
With Lawrence on my chest facing me, the way he sometimes sleeps at night, we both fall asleep. The feeling of drifting away is like a fantastic drug.
I wake up with a terrible ache in my bladder, and an idea. I could bring him with me! We go upstairs together, and he lies on the carpeted landing two feet away from me, while I pee.
‘Wow! That was wonderful!’
We go back to the sofa again. I’m hungry, but the kitchen is downstairs. Come to think of it, this isn’t a good house to have a baby in. Everything is on another floor. Why didn’t we just move to a lighthouse? I pick him up, and go gingerly down the horribly steep staircase, at about one step a minute. It has definitely got steeper since we moved in. Now what? There’s a loaf of bread on the counter, but unsliced. I’ll need two hands to cut it.
Like the great explorers sailing through unchartered waters in the quest for El Dorado, I’m driven forward by the thought of Toast. Eventually, after about four false starts, I hold Lawrence very tightly against me with one arm, and use that hand to steady the bread while I cut it with the other.
‘Better have two slices,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t know when we’ll be able to make it back, do we?’ I have butter and Marmite on it. It is the best meal I have ever had.
After a week of this, I start to feel – as Withnail put it – unusual.
Shelley, my neighbour opposite, has also had a baby. She rings me and says: ‘Shall we push our prams down to the swings?’ To my fevered brain it sounds like: ‘Shall we cross the Arctic Circle in white stilettos and no tights?’ But it’s only September, and still sunny out there. The swings are in the little square at the end of the road. There are roses. I’ve had a lot of flowers in bunches recently; it would be amazing to see some growing in the ground.
We do even have a pram, from a friend of Peter’s. It’s a nice turquoise colour, but very low. I’m not tall, and I have to bend down to reach the handle. Semi-crouched, like a cartoon of a burglar, I follow Shelley down to the square. The colour of the flowers nearly sends my retinas into spasm.
YELLOW!
RED!
PINK!
Conversation is beyond me; I sink onto a bench and stare. She doesn’t say much either. But a thrilling new vista has opened up. We walk home in triumph.
‘Hello, sweetness. How was your day?’
‘I went to the square! With Shelley! It was brilliant!’
‘The square—’
At the end of the road!’
‘That’s – wonderful.’
‘Yeah! We just – took the prams and went! It was great!’
‘Well done!’
Looking back on it, I probably should have got out more.
That evening, I tell Peter about my adventures in the next postcode, while he gives Lawrence his SMA. Having forgotten to heat the first bottle, we’ve simply carried on with it at room temperature – breaking another of these so-called ‘rules’.
‘And now …’ he says, eyes gleaming, ‘I have a present for you.’
‘For me?!’
‘Well, kind of.’ He pours me a glass of wine and opens a flat cardboard box. Inside is a baby chair, made of cloth stretched over a wire frame, like a ‘V’ on its side. ‘I’ve heard of these!’
‘This,’ he says, ‘will give you your arms back. Lawrence, you are about to go in the Bouncy Chair!’
‘Not – the Bouncy Chair?’
‘Yes, the Bouncy Chair!’
It looks a bit as though, when we let go, it might catapault him across the room. We ease him in, do up the little seat belt, and slowly, ever so slowly, let go. The seat wobbles slightly, as it’s meant to, and Lawrence seems – if not ecstatic, at least not to mind. Peter raises his glass.
‘We’ve had a baby!’ And I think: OK. We’ve got everything we need. Please don’t ever leave the house again.
6 Baby à la Carte
On a noticeboard somewhere, I see an appeal for babies to help with research in the Eye Department of London University. I go along several times.
‘What’s it for?’ says Peter.
‘I dunno. They have chocolate biscuits. And people to talk to.’
‘Sounds good. Can you spin it out?’
‘Not too much. I have to pace myself.’
And indeed, the sheer thrill of putting Lawrence in the car and meeting other adult humans is enough to last me all week. What with that and going out for nappies, life is a whirl.
A friend brings round a sterilizer.
‘You’ll be needing this,’ she says. Peter and I look at each other. ‘That’s lovely!’ he says. ‘Thank you so much!’ After she’s gone, we put it away in a cupboard. One of the benefits of being stuck in the Neonatal Unit for two weeks was the opportunity to bother the staff with questions.
‘What about sterilizing?’ was one. ‘Do we need to do that?’ Along with his job of fetching me coffee and takeaways, Peter sees his role as editing the parental task load. He loves to seek out and eliminate bits of unnecessary procedure.
The nurse saids: ‘Actually, no. In fact, we don’t really recommend sterilizing.’
‘You don’t?! Great!’
‘What people don’t realize is, you still have to wash the things in any case. But because they’re sterilizing, they often don’t wash them properly. Have you got a dishwasher?’ We got one as a wedding present! ‘Well, our micro-biologist says just use that. Sixty degrees and you’ll be fine.’
‘Way-hey!’ says Peter. ‘No sterilizing!’
It’s the parental equivalent of being told you never have to shave your legs. We try to share the good news, but when we mention it to one or two friends, they clearly think we’ve gone mad. But that’s fine. We don’t mind the sterilizer in the cupboard. Everyone’s giving us their used baby gear, and it’s brilliant.
‘The house is turning into a jumble sale,’ says Peter. ‘I know! Isn’t it great?!’
So far we have a cot and cot bedding from Marie, a great pile of clothes from Claudia, a sling from Vicki, the pram from Sam – sounds like a Dr Seuss story – and a burgeoning store of smart winter coats and other worn-once chic stuff from mother of triplets Judith. My mum has got a second-hand cot for £20 to use when we come to her place, and a second-hand playpen (£10) ‘for the crawling stage – or you’ll have to watch him every minute.’ Peter has found a pushchair – for six months onwards – in a skip. There is, however, one item I do need to buy.
I go back to John Lewis – on my own with Lawrence – and buy myself a baby bag: a soft, black Fiorelli briefcase. It is made of that shinyish material, with a zip you can pull easily with one hand, a shoulder strap and a pocket on the outside for wipes. It does not have bunnies on it. Afterwards, I go for lunch and eat soup over Lawrence’s head; he is sleeping so nicely in the sling, and also if I take him out, I can’t always quite remember how to retie it. Even going to the loo is possible without unloading; I just lift him up slightly like a detachable beer gut. When I come back home and take him off, I feel cold and a bit naked.
After this I am ambitious for new horizons. Peter has passes to the Motor Show, so Lawrence can get his first view of the new TVRs, and we can experience the hell that is taking a pushchair on the tube. But it isn’t hell at all – it’s fine! All
you have to do is make sure you have a man with you at all times, to carry the whole lot up and down the stairs.
Olympia is bristling with ultra-blokes, most with cameras. We sit down for lunch on the Honda stand, and Lawrence immediately wakes up and cries.
‘Hungry,’ says Peter, perceptively.
I look round for a suitable place. I’ve seen the loos already, and they’re cold and concrete with no chairs. It’d be like breastfeeding in an underpass.
‘Come on,’ says Peter, ‘it’ll be fine.’
‘But …’ Then Lawrence ups the volume, and I get my next taste of that thing I thought only Proper Mothers had: instinct. I stick him on, and we continue to chat about this year’s models. No one from Honda tells me to put them away, or that in Japan, a woman doing this in public brings shame on her ancestors. A man shares our table. He has a notebook, a tape recorder and a huge backpack containing – a toddler. My God: we’re not unique! As we walk round, people on various stands – male and female – admire Lawrence and stop us to talk.
‘Ah, makes me miss my little boy,’ says a bloke from BMW.
‘Ooh, can I hold him? Here, you go and get yourselves a cup of tea,’ says a woman from Rolls-Royce. While Lawrence is passed round, Peter and I get in and out of the new TVR Cerbera, the new Ford Ka and the new Alfa 156 with concealed rear-door handles.
‘Hey, look at this!’
‘You think it’s only got two doors, but it’s actually got four.’
‘It doesn’t look child-friendly—’
‘But it is!’
We put our names down for one, and go home thrilled.
Then one morning, a funny thing happens. It’s been an average night. We got up about three times; I barked at Peter’s boss when he woke me by ringing at 10 p.m. Anyhow, I pick Lawrence up, shuffle downstairs to the kettle, and feel something is different. Not the room: it’s still littered with the same mess as the night before. When I look at him, there’s a new feeling, quite strong. It isn’t like the pain I felt in hospital, when that nurse wouldn’t take him out of the incubator, and it’s not like the guilt when he didn’t put on weight. All the other feelings I’ve felt so far – pride, triumph, outrage, contentedness – have had to break through an overweening layer of fear: fear that something bad is about to happen all the time, and fear that I have Made the Wrong Choice. But today, a normal day with nothing new to look forward to, no prospect of novelty – the fear has subsided a little. I am experiencing a sensation that is new. Yet it’s also strangely familiar. Is it merely the absence of fear? No, something more. Suddenly it clicks.
Confessions of a Bad Mother Page 6