Confessions of a Bad Mother (7 page)

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, her 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.

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.