Wife in the North

by Judith O'Reilly

  Monday, 17 October 2005

  Tears for fears

  I read to the boys last night and then could not get off my bed for the next hour and a half. I kept trying different ways to roll on one side and then up, but it was all too excruciating. My ligaments have softened. The boys got so bored they wandered off and put themselves to bed. We are going down to London in a week’s time. I lay there, thinking: ‘I am sooooooooooooo looking forward to the journey.’ Clambering on the train, nearly nine months pregnant. Settling down with the snacks and colouring books. Only three and three-quarter hours to go before dear old London town. I am not entirely sure I can fit into a railway seat, or, for that matter, whether I will be able to get out of it if my back goes. Baby induction date: Friday, 4 November. The children were so good last night and I am utterly bad-tempered with them both. I am unhappy, and if I were not so damned busy I would be frightened about what we have just done and what might be yet to come. This morning, I sat on the bed and sobbed. The boys climbed on to the bed and held on to me. I had to do that ‘Mummy’s fine. Mummy’s just a bit tired’ thing you do to avoid them knowing that Mummy is a lunatic.

  Tuesday, 18 October 2005

  Womb with a view

  Feeling absurdly abandoned. My husband came back, flung out his arms and said: ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Then set off again for London. But two young rampaging hearts, all boy and breathless haste, beat along the corridor from me. I have them both and, though not yet born, I have the baby with me. At night, before I try to sleep, I breathe in and down, imagine myself sinking through my body to reach the life inside. I see the golden baby through the darkness, move closer to chalice the child in my arms, pouring my blood love into and through the light. I think: ‘If, by some dark chance, we never get to meet, if I never get to hear your voice or you never see me smile, know this: your mother loved you.’

  Wednesday, 19 October 2005

  Best-laid schemes

  I am hoping desperately I do not give birth when my husband is away in London. I have a very complicated table of arrangements designed to kick in if I go into labour. Courtesy of living remotely, I am advised the ambulance might never find me. And, if they did, it might be too late to move me. I need volunteers to look after the boys and others to take me into hospital.

  An accountant lives in the farmhouse along the road. He used to work in the City. I know him slightly from our holidays here. I asked him whether he would drive me the hour to hospital if I go into labour. The Accountant is not a complete stranger, but neither is he the father of my baby. He did not look keen. ‘I think I’m busy that day,’ he said. ‘You don’t know which day it will be,’ I replied. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I’m almost certainly busy.’ He finally agreed but later arranged some complicated swap on the A1 with the Dairy Farmer’s Wife. He would take the kids and I could go with her. He is divorced, does not have children of his own. He has no idea that a labouring woman would be much less trouble than my two boys, even if he ended up pulling into a lay-by, erecting a warning triangle behind the car and biting through the umbilical cord.

  Monday, 24 October 2005

  Straight down the line

  We have had to come down early on the instructions of the obstetrician. She said if I wanted to be sure the baby was born in London, I could not leave it up to the wire. But because I am living in Northumberland, I was required to book in locally in case of emergency. The two-year-old was amusing himself with the midwife’s toys while she filled out the paperwork. I do not know what they would do if I went into labour and they did not have a completed form – presumably drive me to the county border in an open pick-up truck. She was running through questions on her booking-in form when she casually enquired: ‘Are you and your baby’s father blood relatives?’ I thought: ‘You mean, is he my brother?’ I sat up straighter. ‘No. Why?’ I swallowed. ‘Does that happen often up here?’ ‘No,’ she said reassuringly, her head bent over my notes, ‘not now.’

  The Dairy Farmer’s Wife drove us to the railway station. She looked more relieved than I was to see me climb on to the train with the two boys, two cases and a buggy. I also carried a bin bag of toys wrapped in newspaper and a huge picnic lunch. This is not because I am a particularly good mother. It is because I was scared. Four hours on a train in my present state with two excitable children could well induce labour. My two-year-old abandoned me to sit on the floor of the luggage space. I decided that was all right. My four-year-old slithered underneath the table. I decided that was all right, too. At any given moment, one or other of us wanted to go to the toilet. I would brush aside the crumpled sheets of newspaper, cheap toys, sandwich remnants, apples, raisins and water bottles, not to mention the comics, pads and crayons, and ease myself out from the table. We rollocked along the corridor to the toilet, where I would propel the little one in to one side of the cubicle, push him under my belly and across to the other side, shuffle in myself, then reach out a hand and haul the four-year-old in after us. Remembering to lock the door.

  My fellow passengers watched from behind their books and laptops as first the food mountain and then the parcelled toys came out. When strangers disapprove of your parenting, you can virtually chew the air between you. Every time my eyes met those of another passenger, I would smile like a Madonna, like the sort of woman who thinks nothing of spending four hours on a train, nine months pregnant, with two small boys. I looked like the sort of woman who likes children. I do not like children. I make an exception for my own. I suspect my fellow passengers were thinking: ‘Those children are going to grow up obese’, ‘That woman spoils those children’ and my personal favourite: ‘She’s making a rod for her own back there.’ I did not care. I had given up caring when we reached Doncaster. By which time it was a question of survival. Would I get through the journey without losing my mind? I am not sure I made it. The journey lasted three and a half years.

  Tuesday, 1 November 2005

  Chim-chiminey

  In for a sweep. This is not a good thing. This is not: ‘Would you mind popping round and clearing out the bird nests?’ At least, I hope not. It is a grit your teeth while another woman does something to the neck of your cervix which, if not illegal, should be. The obstetrician said: ‘Try to relax.’ How can you relax when it feels like someone wearing costume jewellery is reaching for your lungs to pull them out through your vagina? The idea behind the sweep is to start things off ‘naturally’ and to avoid if possible an induction with pessaries and a drip when labour can build very quickly. A sweep is exquisitely uncomfortable and it is impossible to know if it will work. Infinitely better than the sweep was the frighteningly expensive haircut I just got. Amazing what a good haircut will do for you. I am hoping it will take people’s mind off my nether regions when I am having the baby. It can all get a bit: ‘Come in. Make yourself at home. Have you seen my fanny?’ This way, I stand a chance of: ‘Hello. How are you getting on, dear?’ She might pause long enough to say: ‘I like your hair.’ Back to business. ‘Would you mind if I had a look at your fanny?’

  Thursday, 3 November 2005

  Operation New Baby

  We have been staying in the London house since we got down. Anything personal was shipped up to the house I now pretend to consider home. The sofa, an armchair, an old TV and three beds are all that is left, along with four plates, four mismatched cups, four sets of knives and forks and enough bedding to see us through the birth.

  It was quarter to six in the morning when my waters broke. I was on my own. When I say ‘on my own’, that generally translates to ‘surrounded by small children’. My husband was working overnight on another deadline. I rang him in the office. I told him I thought it would be a good idea if he came home. It looked as if I was having the baby. He agreed. He tried saying: ‘I’ll just finish …’ Slowly and calmly, I said that sometimes you had to meet a deadline and sometimes you had to have a baby. He muttered something. It may have been: ‘Quite right, darling, I’ll be straight home.’ It may
have been: ‘It will only take twenty minutes.’ When I was pregnant with my four-year-old, things started to move during an episode of The Sopranos; my husband kept watching. He is a big fan. I shouted at him so loudly he decided he would buy the boxed DVD collection.

  There are logistical complications giving birth in London. My parents live in Yorkshire. Anyway, they are too old and frail to look after both boys, though my mother said ‘We can manage one of them.’ I am not sure what I was expected to do with the other. Up to now, I have always been able to buy myself out of a crisis with childcare. A crisis like going into hospital to have another baby. These days I have coping strategies to get me from one crisis to the next. I might as well be in the Territorial Army. Who is going to be at Foxhole A when I am at Dugout B? How will I get between A and B? Do I have adequate supplies for Operation New Baby? Who will rescue me when I am pinned down? How will the helicopter gunships get through?

  I had organized cover for the boys to sleep over with London Diva and her husband, the four-year-old’s godfather, if I went into premature labour at night. During the day, when I was due in for induction, I had arranged for one of my ex-nanny’s friends to take them. They knew her and liked her. The problem was I started labouring in a limbo time and a limbo place.

  After I made contact with my husband, I scrambled into my clothes – if a nine-month-pregnant woman can be said to move fast enough to merit the term ‘scramble’. I tiptoed down the staircase of the emptied house, trying not to wake the boys. The sitting room has wooden floors and shutters, and without any of our effects felt like a crate. I was calling in the gunships to take my two boys to safety. It was still dark outside and I waited for the minutes to move on from the ‘What fucking time do you call this?’ zone into the respectable ‘I know it’s a tad early’ zone.

  5.55 a.m. I rang London Diva. She was away on business in Washington. I immediately felt parochial. The Godfather was in charge. I explained the early shout. ‘Are you OK to take the boys till nineish when the nanny will take over?’ I asked – not so much asking a question as sounding the alert. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that would be difficult.’ I love my friend’s husband a lot. At that moment, I loved him slightly less. He had to take his own daughter to school. Dawn bleary, he could not compute. I did not try to persuade him. I thought cheerfully: ‘You are so going to get it in the neck when your wife gets home and you tell her what you just did.’

  5.57 a.m. I had a moment while I thought: ‘Oh my God. What do I do now?’

  5.58 a.m. I rang our old nanny’s friend. Her husband answered the phone. He seemed unaware that we were in the ‘respectable’ zone. He did not sound keen to hand the panting stranger over to his wife, but did. I burbled about waters breaking and being on my own, asking: ‘Would you mind?’ and ‘How soon could you possibly …?’ and ‘Would you say sorry to your husband?’ She was not my children’s nanny but she has a baby of her own and understood that another woman was in a fix. She said: ‘Fine. I’ll come over.’

  In hospital, we went straight from the ‘We’re having a baby right this minute’ crisis to zip. Nothing moved. Midwives said things like: ‘Let’s see how it goes … Maybe you should go home …? We don’t have a bed right now and nothing seems to be happening.’ I smiled and nodded at them agreeably. I thought: ‘If you think I am going home, letting my husband go back to work and unpicking my childcare arrangements, think again. This baby is coming out. Just watch.’ They sent me off for a walkabout and we went down to the coffee shop in the ground-floor foyer. We sat with our coffees; my husband tried to look as if he was not thinking about everything he could be doing back in the office. I had a colleague who filed a news story as his wife was giving birth. The journalist, not the labouring mother, in me could appreciate his professionalism. The labouring mother in me watched my husband and thought: ‘If you make a move for your mobile phone, I am drowning it in my cappuccino.’ Suddenly, I felt more waters gush out. I thought: ‘I have a choice between free Subway sandwiches for life or a long wet walk back to the ward.’ I am British. I do not like to look as if continence is an issue, but I liked the idea of giving birth next to a tuna baguette even less.

  Labour took an incredibly smug two hours. It never takes me two hours. It takes me aeons. I hate women who say it took them three minutes to have their baby and they never felt a thing. It was too fast even for drugs. I hate that too. Mind you, it is probably because my pelvic floor is not what it was. God, I will have to lie about how long it took in case everyone labels me a Slack Alice. Did manage the gas and air, which is like drinking gin and tonic very quickly. It made me sick. Which is also like drinking gin and tonic very quickly. Hurt like bejesus. That moment when the baby’s head crowns and that part of your mind which is still coherent asks the eminently rational question: ‘Can I manage the rest of my life in two pieces?’ When that ripping, burning scream between your legs goes on. You decide: ‘Yes, I can manage that.’ You think there will be little alternative. There is a moment of pain-soaked relief when the baby’s head makes it out. Then the thought: ‘Does the baby really need shoulders? Can’t it make do with a head? I will buy it shoulders on eBay.’

  I heard the baby cry. The midwife handed the slimy morsel across to my husband. He laid it warm and slippery on my breast. The child heat was enough to sear straight through my skin and mould the babe on to my ready heart. I held the warm skin bundle close. The tiny boned head and pink ribbed face. I thought: ‘Ah. Child of mine.’ Beauty in an instant. I never thought to ask. My husband whispered: ‘She’s a girl. She’s a girl.’ I have a daughter. My first, last and only daughter. My beloved.

  Friday, 4 November 2005

  Girl power

  My husband brought the boys in yesterday afternoon. ‘Daddy’, ga-ga with the thought of a daughter. The boys were desperate for a girl. I think they would have insisted I sent back a tiny, rival brother. Generous, they forgive a sister. My four-year-old looked at his sister – soft-smiled, enchanted, in love with her already. That is how long it took. A moment.

  We generally to and fro on names. It took us three weeks to decide on our four-year-old’s name. Not my baby girl. We are naming the baby after my Best Friend From School. My friend is always there for me in every way a friend can be. A business tycoon in the West Midlands, she is everything I am not: optimistic, positive, dynamic, efficient, organized, good with numbers, sporty, child-free. She did her own multi-million-pound management buyout and runs a company that makes car cleaning products. She visits. When she thinks my house smells bad, she delves in her car boot and pulls out large plastic bottles of bright blue liquids. She says: ‘I think you should use this.’ And I do. She never wanted a child of her own, preferred a career. In a name, she can have a little bit of one of mine. I regularly say to her: ‘Being a mother is bloody awful.’ I want to say to her: ‘Being a mother is bloody amazing.’ The warp and weft of motherhood, a cloth she will never feel. One time, I wanted to say: ‘Have a child. Have a child, do.’ But it is not my place. In a way, I feel the loss of her child more than she does herself. I would have watched her child grow and smile, would have looked into a cherub’s face for another her.

  Monday, 7 November 2005

  Tits oot for the lads

  My husband and boys are driving up to Northumberland while the baby and I catch a train back to the home which isn’t a home. The train journey was all right. Men with glazed expressions and lager cans swallowed down their belches to coo over the tiny newborn as I passed them in search of black coffee and chocolate bars.

  The hospital where I had her is directly opposite the Houses of Parliament, an old stomping ground when I reported on politics. While I was in there, I kept thinking: ‘I could call such and such an MP, they could come over and see me. We could talk politics.’ I realized they would perhaps be slightly reluctant to visit a maternity ward in case anyone thought the baby was theirs. The baby would want feeding while they were there. I would have to get at least one enormous wet breast
out. I do not think you should get your breasts out in front of Members of Parliament. Unless the story you are trying to obtain is a particularly good one. I felt the same way on the train. It is slightly complicated trying to feed a baby on a train and not reveal too much of your aged breasts to the men with the lager cans, although I am not convinced they could have focused on my breasts anyway. They probably thought I had twins and four breasts. In any event, none of them put aside their can and attempted to join the fray.

  Wednesday, 9 November 2005

  My unfeasibly large nipples

  Our cat has had the good sense to bugger off back to London. At least I am hoping that is where she has gone. I suppose she could have gone native. She could be chasing a fox and licking leek and potato soup from her whiskers as I pack away her plastic bowls. She was staying with the Dairy Farmer’s Wife while we were in London, and has disappeared. I do not want to tell the boys; I think she may have been eaten by a cow.