Lauren
Nicki’s practically blended into the mountain of opened presents around her. Only her face sticks out from the pyramid of pastels and duck-adorned thingymajigs . She’s been very polite about the fact she’s unwrapped four hand-knitted blankets and artfully reacted to each like she’s never seen one before. I’m not sure why anyone gives you baby blankets. I counted seven by the time Woody was one week old, and they were mostly used to mop up milky reflux or stuffed around myself to try and concoct a comfortable breastfeeding position. (Note: Comfortable breastfeeding positions do not exist – embrace the inevitable calcifying into a Quasimodo-esque hunchback).
It’s hard not to remember my own shower of presents – sitting here, watching her coo over a tiny sunhat that will make her baby have a sunflower head. Since that awful birth conversation, I feel like I’m only half here. The other half of me is trapped in the memories of everything that came next and I can’t press pause . . . No , think of the good times. Think of that lovely spa day you had with the Little Women. Little did I know – blobbing around a hydrotherapy pool – that it was more a goodbye to my friends before I was wiped from the face of my own life, like chalk being blown off an eraser. A goodbye to the person I was before the bad things happened . . . the birth . . . so awful . . . then . . .
The movie is determined to play. I’m yanked, once more, from this party and into the hell pit of those days. My hands grip on the baby monitor in a failed attempt to combat the PTSD, but I’m lost again.
Lost.
Again.
I was so lost.
I thought the birth was the end of the nightmare. Woody didn’t even need to go to NICU in the end. We had our delayed ‘golden hour’ as I came to in the recovery room, machines gently pumping my legs, Tristan taking off his top and gazing down at his son. Modern man. Skin to skin. I watched it with this detached peculiarity I felt towards the baby. Did I love this squirming thing? Were they sure it was mine? Sun streamed in through the window as a midwife came in and plopped Woody onto my breast, latching him without asking permission first. My baby glubbed down his colostrum greedily.
‘He’s a natural,’ she told me, smiling, like everything she’d just done was OK. ‘Well done.’
I hadn’t planned to breastfeed. But now, I guess I was breastfeeding. It was my sixth morning in hospital. They brought me marmalade on toast. I hoovered it up, was allowed more. Maybe the worst was over. Maybe I would be OK. Maybe, with some rest, I could recover, and . . . .
‘Right, come on .’ The midwife took the last piece of toast away. ‘We need to get you walking.’
‘What?’
‘We need the room. You’re to join the ward.’
They heaved me up roughly. The epidural was wearing off and sharp pain sliced through my torso. ‘No,’ I whimpered. ‘Ow . . . OWW.’
‘Into the wheelchair.’
Two of them manhandled me as I screamed out. ‘Come on. You need to take a few steps before we can move you.’
My feet stumbled all over the place. The pain. The pain. ‘One step, two step.’ The midwives hoisted me across the lino with my feet half dragging. ‘There you go. Right, let’s take you to the ward. I’m sorry, but visiting hours are over so your husband needs to leave.’
‘Excuse me?’ Tristan and I both said.
‘He can come back later. And then tomorrow morning. You’ll probably need to stay two nights, so we can keep an eye on you.’
I was wheeled away, Woody wheeled in a Perspex cot next to me, waving in shock as my husband, my life raft, was left behind. I was heaved onto a hard thin bed and left alone.
The ward was worse than the birth . . .
I can’t.
I don’t want to remember. I can’t remember most of it.
There’s the sound of ripping wrapping paper. Women all around me gasp. Jeanie’s kid, bored, starts yelling to the right of me. Nicki’s holding up a present. Everyone coos. The air is too thick in this room – it’s all mass-recycled breath. I’ve not been around this many women since those days and nights on the ward.
So many babies crying. All the time. My baby crying in his plastic thingymajiggy. I knew I needed to get to Woody, feed him, comfort him, but the thing is, I was sort of paralysed. You know, from the major fucking operation, and all.
I needed Tristan.
I needed painkillers.
I needed the medication they’d promised would stop my skin itching from the epidural.
I needed someone to help me feed this creature that wouldn’t stop crying. He wouldn’t latch well again. I couldn’t lift him. I needed someone to help me change him as black oil-like shit spouted from him, getting all over me, all over him. I tried to bend over to clean him but I cried in agony. I’d been sawn open only hours ago and now I had to look after this thing, all alone? In chaos? In agony?
Pushing the red button for painkillers. Button down. Wait for help. Help will come . . .
Too understaffed. Help not coming.
Ringing Tristan, begging him to bring ibuprofen when he came. ‘They keep forgetting to give me my pain medication.’
Ringing him again, telling him to come and get me. I can’t do it. Can’t stay here. Everything hurts. So much. Why does nobody care about how much it hurts?
No sleep. I hadn’t slept for six days now. I was in agony. Baby kept clamping onto my nipple. That hurt too.
The BreatheItOut account said breastfeeding doesn’t hurt if you do it properly.
Nighttime.
No sleep. Babies crying. Sometimes it was mine, sometimes others.
The sting of them taking the catheter out.
The laugh of a woman when I pissed myself getting out of bed.
That laugh.
I’ve never known shame like it.
If I had the chance to stab her to death – whoever laughed at me on that dark first night – I would stab her until she was mush. I imagine doing it often. Finding her. Killing her.
They came to clear up my urine from the floor, but they wouldn’t give me a painkiller. They weren’t allowed to do that. Some other midwife had the authority and she’d come when she could but they were very busy because it’s September, and a full moon, and the NHS maternity crisis and, can you please tend to your baby, his crying is keeping the other mothers awake.
Should I have used my brAIN then, fucking hypnobirthing lady? Does brAIN work against a staffing crisis? Yes, feminism! And advocate for yourself! But how does that work when you’re begging for painkillers, and they won’t come, and someone has laughed at you for pissing yourself, and you think you almost died, and your baby almost died, and now it’s alive and won’t stop shitting itself, or attacking your nipple with gums as hard as cement, and your husband isn’t allowed to be here and advocate on your behalf, and how is this legal? To do this to women? To leave them alone, behind a flimsy curtain, with a creature that needs 24-hour care, when the woman hasn’t slept in six days, and just had seven layers of fat and tissue and muscle ripped into, and her bladder is fucked, and she’s scratched her skin off, and she has no idea how to look after a newborn baby. None. Because fucking hypnobirthing lady never told you about looking after your baby. They only lied and said that you can sneeze your baby out as long as you use your brAIN and secrete enough oxytocin.
Tristan rescued me before the second night.
‘She can’t be discharged without her papers.’
‘Yes, she can. This isn’t prison. In prison, they give them medication.’
He told them he’d complain to PALS. He cried when I told him about the woman who laughed. On the drive home, he gripped the steering wheel so hard that I thought it would snap off. Woody, so tiny in his car seat. I thought every slight jolt in the road might cause him brain damage. Every jolt had me gasp in further pain.
Then we were back in our house with this tiny thing to keep alive. Even though I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t get out of bed without wincing and holding my stomach so my guts wouldn’t spill out. And Woody wouldn’t sleep. At all. He screamed and screamed and wouldn’t sleep. Tristan and I watched him in incompetent horror – clueless, useless, broken beyond repair.
I was hollowed out. I wanted to rest. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to run away. I wanted to scream. I wanted to sue. I wanted to kill myself.
What had happened to me?
I needed to go to some kind of Priory-like facility, with a spa, and have two weeks, at least, to recover and process from whatever the fuck had just happened to me. Someone to cook me food, and change my dressing, and hoist me out of bed, and let me sleep, and have intensive EMDR to stop the horrors of my past week dancing behind my eyelids in the rare moments Woody allowed us to sleep for more than 40 minutes.
People kept sending cards, and presents, like something good had happened to our lives.
I didn’t want to see anyone, but people came anyway. Pretending they cared about me, but only really caring about holding my baby, and getting their picture taken with it, and telling me ‘ oh, but it’s worth it ’ if I dared mention the hell I’d just endured.
Tristan and I almost divorced about his parents coming to visit us.
‘They can’t come,’ I told him, sobbing on the bathroom floor for the fortieth time that day, while the other NCT mums made jokes about my tears on the group chat. ‘Sounds like your milk has come in .’ ‘They can’t come,’ I repeated. ‘Nobody can come. You’ve got to stop guests coming around. I need to be alone. I don’t have the strength. No. No. ’
‘, they’ve flown from Australia. These flights have been booked for months. You wanted them to come. You told them to book those tickets.’
‘That was before.’
‘, they’re coming. They’re even staying in a hotel, please.’
‘No. Everyone needs to leave us the fuck alone.’
‘?’
‘Nobody. No visitors. I mean it, Tristan. I can’t . . .’
Except, of course, I could and I did, because I didn’t matter anymore. That’s what the last week had taught me. I am a mother now and mothers don’t matter. I’m no longer a human because I created a human. Rather than reward for this, there is only punishment.
I haven ’ t mattered for nine months now.
Woody is what matters. Woody is what people care about. I am just the inconvenient, fat, frumpy, mess with a greasy bun lugging the precious thing about.
Tristan’s parents came and didn’t even bring me anything. Only presents for Woody, who could still only see in fucking black and white. He, of course, needed the presents. Treat the baby. Give the baby special things. Not me. Not that inconvenient mother. And I was bleeding and bleeding, and my scar hurt, and my womb was contracting back in on itself, and I was dripping milk through my clothes, and I couldn’t stop sobbing, but still, somehow, I was making cups of tea for guests, and, oh are you hungry? I guess I could make you some sandwiches, yes you must be jet-lagged, how very awful.
Shut the fuck up , that’s all I realise people want me to do.
Be a mother and shut the fuck up.
You chose to do this to yourself so shut the fuck up.
You’re lucky you were able to have children so shut the fuck up.
And, if your baby is crying, make sure it shuts the fuck up too.
Cope better, cope better, cope better.
Nicki’s almost come to the end of her giant pile of stuff. She’s practically dwarfed by the ocean of pastel presents surrounding her chair, despite Charlotte doing her best to organise them into piles at her feet. What was it Charlotte told me and Phoebe? Earlier in the kitchen? Today is a gender reveal, as well as a baby shower? I vaguely remember that I’m supposed to be in charge of some kind of firework but I’m so tired. I hope Phoebe listened more earnestly . . . I can’t stop looking at all the piles of all the stuff. The endless, endless, stuff. Like Nicki, I’d also received an overwhelming amount of well-meaning crap. After I discharged myself and took Woody home, staggering through the door, bleeding into my adult nappy, crying with relief I was finally out of that horrific building, the doorbell wouldn’t stop buzzing from parcel deliveries. Flowers, more flowers – all of which withered to death, still wrapped in cellophane, on the counter, while we tried to cope with Woody screaming and never sleeping. More knitted blankets. Countless numbers of soft toys – all made from that achingly soft material, but, nevertheless, likely to cot death the fuck out of him, so we had to find room for it all. I hardly had time to shower daily to keep the stitches that were holding my insides together clean, and I remember feeling actual rage as the door buzzed and more crap accumulated. Where does one put six blankets? Two Sophie the Giraffes? Where should I store all the baby clothes my baby does not yet fit into because people were thoughtful enough to size up?
None of it was what I really needed. Which was a night nurse, an emergency pelvic floor examination, months of intensive trauma therapy with childcare so I could attend the sessions, or advice about baby sleep that actually worked. Wrapped in none of those hand-knitted blankets was a hand on my shoulder, and a caring, ‘Are you really OK, ? Your birth sounded awful and you’ve not slept since. I’m so sorry you’ve gone through this. What can I do to help you feel human again? I don’t care about Woody right now, I care about you. ’ But, you know, baths toys are great too.
Cool Mum’s so grateful for the beautiful baby gifts she receives. She takes a professional quality shot of her perfect newborn wearing each outfit and gets it printed onto postcards. She handwrites thank yous on the back and posts them all within two weeks of her baby being born. Even though she can ’ t walk as far as the post box after her C-section, she still manages this, around a puking, screaming, insomniac newborn, when you have no idea what the time is, or day, or sometimes even year . . . Oh, hang on, I forgot. Cool Mum would never need a C-section – she did hypnobirthing – plus her baby slept through from three days old. Even when the baby wakes, Cool Mum doesn ’ t mind. She loves the cuddles, she knows it will go so quickly. She swaddles the baby up in six home-knitted blankets and makes artwork out of all the useless soft toys . . .
I was so sleep-deprived that I hardly have any memories of those first few months. Only a trauma deep in my guts of this desperate, relentless helplessness and trying not to scream with each painful latch, panic about jaundice, projectile vomits and poonamis splattered across our wall, begging for more painkillers, worrying about how much I was still bleeding. Hardly able to blink with the shock of what had happened to me. My pulse throbs in my neck as I remind myself of what Nicki has coming her way. Of what she needs to get through and survive. I finish my second glass of punch and allow myself to feel a sliver of smugness that my newborn hell is in the past while hers still awaits. Nothing can be worse than the last nine months of my life, surely? It can only improve from here. It must do. It already has. I’m here, at a party, drinking my second glass of punch. God, it’s great, Woody being asleep, I think, letting my shoulders unhitch as I glance down at him in the monitor. It’s so nice to be around people and to be me – rather than stopping him crawling into every available danger, or ripping down my top to try and breastfeed, or grabbing everything off the table to chuck onto the floor. Nicki’s friend, Phoebe, is really funny, too. We had a chat in the kitchen and she had me in stitches talking about gender roles in childcare.
‘How terrible is your husband then, on a scale of one to ten?’ she’d asked, outright. Her blatancy made me blatant in response.
‘He’s the least worst,’ I replied, that second glass of punch making itself known. ‘But the bar is basically so low it’s underground.’
Wow, I really have missed alcohol. How it softens the edges, gives life a glow, blunts reality. I’m two cups down, probably over the limit to drive, which I’m sure is the worst parenting ever. I won’t have a third, and I’ll have to stay a bit later to sober up, but, for now, it’s worth it. I’m smiling. I’m relaxed. I’m back in the present, nestling into this ludicrously plush sofa. Woody twitches on the monitor but I shh him through the screen. Maybe he’ll nap for two hours, like other babies seem to, and I’ll get to enjoy the whole party? Miracles happen every day and I’m tipsy enough to believe in them right now.
Nicki’s shaking a large box, hastily wrapped in leftover Christmas paper.
‘Oh, that’s mine,’ I call over from my chair. ‘Sorry. I forgot to write a tag.’
Charlotte’s eyeballing the Santa paper like I’ve wrapped the present in my own shit. She writes something on her spreadsheet and I wonder if she’s grading people. Have I just lost points for not crafting my own wrapping paper using a potato print of my baby’s arse or something?
‘Love the paper,’ Cara says, and everyone laughed. ‘Spot the mother!’
‘Yeah, err, sorry. I . . . Woody . . .’ I blush in the heat as the circle laughs again.
‘Don’t worry at all,’ Nicki says, holding the gift up. ‘I think you and I have been giving each other wine in the same recycled gift bag for ten years now.’ She pushes a pudgy pregnant finger under a seam of my shoddily-wrapped gift.
‘The rose gold metallic one?’
She smiles at me from across the room. ‘That’s exactly the one.’
She rips off the offensive paper to find an Amazon box inside, because, yes, I got all her presents off Prime. Taking Woody shopping is currently impossible because he cries whenever I put him in his buggy. Nicki tactfully ignores the box, and reaches inside, pulling out a baby thermometer, two bottles of baby Calpol, two bottles of baby Nurofen, a snot sucker, a Windi and the intensive nappy rash cream that’s basically neon yellow Chernobyl in paste form.
‘Oh, wow, it’s . . . er . . . medicine.’
Bemusement etches itself on her features as she peers at the digital thermometer. I rush to explain, aware that nobody is cooing at this offering like they did whenever an elephant appeared in various forms.
‘Honestly, you never have any of this stuff in, and you only realise you desperately need it at, like, 2am, when all the shops are shut.’
‘Right, of course.’ She holds up the yellow tube and reads the back of the box. Polite til the end.
‘That stuff is amazing,’ I add. ‘Honestly, when they start teething they get such bad nappy rash. This is the only stuff that works. And, that thing that looks like an accordion?’ I lean over. ‘It’s really gross but you kind of put a tube up their arse and suck out their farts when they’ve got trapped wind.’ The entire table goes ‘Eww’, a proper eww way, not an amused eww way.
‘That’s disgusting,’ someone mutters and my blush deepens.
I thought so too, I thought. But I’ve been amazed at the level of grossness I’m willing to endure to bring peace to my baby. I’ve sucked out Woody’s snot with my own mouth to try and get him to sleep (before I bought the snot sucker) . I’ve sat covered in vomit that’s slowly cooking in the heat from the radiators, making me stink of mouldy cheese, because Woody was sick but then fell asleep on my chest and I knew the sleep would help him get better. I’ve carefully wiped liquid shit from every crevice of his body, multiple times a day. I’ve wiped it off the wall, from the sides of his baby bath when he injected the bubbles with his diarrhoea meaning I can’t look at Molton Brown bath products in the same way ever again.
‘You’ll need the Calpol for before the baby’s jabs too,’ I add. I feel everyone’s judgement and try and get them to understand what a good gift I’ve given. ‘It stops them getting a fever. But honestly, the digital thermometer is so useful. They always get their first fever at some godawful hour, and 111 always want to know their temperature, and you’re going spare for not having one, or for trying to use an adult one on a squirming, sick, baby. If it’s over 38, you need to go straight to hospital, but, without a thermometer, you don’t know, and you just panic, and end up in A&E without needing to, which is no fun with a baby, I promise you.’
‘Right,’ Nicki nods slowly, holding up the thermometer with the tips of her fingers, almost in horror. ‘That’s, er, a bit fucking dark, but I’m sure will be quite useful. Thanks, .’
A bit fucking dark.
I wilt back into my seat, the leather attaching itself to my hot bare dimpled skin, as Nicki reaches out for a present wrapped in paper with scented strawberry eco-glitter.
Fuck you , I think. You think you’re going to be grateful for an elephant onesie at 2am, when you’re convinced your baby is dying? Will your sensory Moomin mobile help then? No, it fucking won’t. One of the worst things about having a baby is the love. Yes, it’s the best thing too, but that love is the most terrifying and overwhelming feeling any human can feel. You will worry about your child dying, daily, multiple times. You will picture all the obscene ways it could happen. Meningitis. Kidnapping. The pram being hit by a car while you wait at a pedestrian crossing. When your baby cries, it peels you back to the bone because you love them so much and want to stop the pain for them. Your whole life will become an endless, failing mission to prevent them from ever crying because it hurts you so much. So, Nicki, yes. When your baby gets sick for the first time, which it inevitably will, because babies are like fucking lemmings, obsessed with danger and shoving everything into their dribbling gob, especially things that other germ-ridden babies have shoved into their gob . . . you will fucking LOVE me for getting you this DARK thermometer. For not having to frantically google which pharmacy might be open while your baby screams red in your arms, and you weep with desperate hopelessness. This thermometer will give you relief and comfort deep in your very soul, unlike a fucking Jellycat platypus. But, hey, yeah, a bit dark, go actually fuck yourself. This is the best present you’re going to get today, even in the Santa paper, you fucking fuck.
Phoebe sits next to me and holds up her drink to cheers me. She seems slightly drunk, her eyes not quite focusing. ‘Your gift is the best gift,’ she whispers, the smell of punch sweet on her breath.
I sag into her with relief. ‘Thank you. Everyone else seems to think I’m crazy.’
‘I’ll tell you who will be going crazy.’ She points over at Nicki. ‘This one, if her baby has a temperature in the middle of the night, and no Calpol.’
‘Exactly!’
‘Honestly, best gift here. Well done.’
I grin, liking this woman more and more. She’s so different to the rest of Nicki’s friends. Spiky – so not Nicki. I can’t imagine them getting on but she’s here, so they must. ‘I mean, it’s so clearly a competition. And the Santa paper really finished the look.’
She shrugs and waves the comment off with her hand, revealing some kind of tribal tattoo up the side of her wrist. ‘You’ve got a baby too, right?’ I nod. ‘The fact you’re here. Dressed. Not crying. You were on time, right?’ I nod again. ‘That’s amazing. That should be present enough, to be honest. My big sister has three kids and, I swear, it takes her so long to leave the house she often doesn’t bother. Forget the Santa paper. You’re a marvel for being here.’
‘I like you,’ I tell her, reaching out and swigging a swallow of her punch while she nods in approval. ‘You are officially allowed to be friends with Nicki. I grant you permission.’
Phoebe’s eyes travel to where Nicki’s unwrapping the last gift, with much less enthusiasm than she unwrapped the first. ‘Aww thank you. But I’m sure today will be the last day I see her.’ I tilt my head, confused, and she corrects herself. ‘I mean, everyone vanishes off the face of the earth when they have a baby, don’t they?’
‘What’s earth?’ I joke. ‘Where’s that? I miss that place.’
She reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. ‘You’ll come back. I promise.’
I almost well up, at her saying that. ‘Thank you. I hope so.’
‘Umm, is that thing yours?’ She points at the baby monitor in my sweaty hands, and Woody is awake. Of course he’s freakin’ awake. I’ve turned the sound off but I can see him crawling about, his mouth open, probably crying. He’s always crying. I check my phone. Yep, he’s been asleep for precisely 27 minutes. There’s no way he’s had enough nap. I look at the screen, and my pixelated baby going berserk in the travel cot. It’s easier to emotionally detach with the sound off. I know I should go to him and comfort him – sacrifice myself, and my day, and this nice conversation, and go be a caring mother. If Tristan was here, he’d already be in the room, being the Perfect Dad and never losing his temper because he’s not had to sacrifice as much as I have. Normally, despite my irritation, I’d already be in the room, self-sacrificing as Woody refuses to self-soothe. But today, a part of me has hardened or maybe just plain broken. Instead, I find myself turning the screen over and burying the device in the lap of my ugly dress. The expensive sleep consultant said we should be giving Woody a ‘ chance ’ to ‘ get himself back to sleep ’. Maybe now is the time to try? She promises his cries weren’t cries of distress, but merely ‘ frustration ’ that he’s awake. Tristan doesn’t agree, however, and hasn’t let us implement her plan. ‘How the hell does she know why he’s crying?’ he’d said, refusing to let us leave Woody crying for more than twenty seconds, condemning us to potentially unlimited sleep deprivation. But Tristan’s not here, and I’m having a nice time, and maybe this is what needs to happen to fix Woody’s sleep right now? Something has to change. It must. I can’t be this mentally deranged anymore. So broken that I limp through each day like it’s a time-loop of a car crash. I ’ ll give him ten minutes, I decide. He can’t get permanently damaged from ten minutes crying, and, who knows? It might actually work. I dare myself to imagine an alternate reality where Woody slept through. Maybe I’d get myself back? My sanity, my figure, my marriage, my hope. Maybe I’d enjoy Woody more if I could scrape some sleep?
I push the camera further down into my skirt – decision uneasily made. The party’s so loud nobody will hear him upstairs, and it’s only for a few minutes. I am here. I’m going to have a nice time. My baby will learn to sleep.
I turn to Phoebe. ‘You’ve got to tell me all about working at Roar Girls Jewellery,’ I say, just as Nicki applauds herself for finally getting through all the presents. Everyone joins in while Charlotte pushes the wrapping into a recycling bag and runs off somewhere. Probably spraying the peony wall with glitter juice or something? ‘I’m obsessed with their jewellery. Do you get a discount?’
I think I hear a yelp through the ceiling, but I tune it out.