by Kate Long
‘We can give you some gas and air. But you need to try and work with the pain.’ She was all happy and brisk, I hated her.
‘What do you mean?’ Why did they talk such bollocks? I really couldn’t be doing with it.
‘Keep on top of your breathing. Deep, controlled breath as soon as you feel a contraction coming on, then slowly out with the pain. Hum if it helps.’
‘But what about the drugs? I want drugs.’
‘Well, pethidine isn’t a good idea with you being a wee bit prem, it can make the baby a little woozy and we need him nice and alert. I’ll sort you out with the gas and air.’
‘I want an epidural. It says so on my birth plan – ohhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Jesus. Oh, I can’t do this. I can’t.’
She gave my hand a squeeze. ‘Of course you can. You’re doing great.’
Fucking five-star liar.
‘The epidural!’
‘Ah, the anaesthetist’s with another lady at the moment. We’ll bring him in as soon as he’s free.’ She nipped out sharpish.
My wail brought Daniel scuttling back in. ‘Charlotte, what is it?’
‘What’s the good of writing a fucking birth plan if nobody takes any fucking notice of it?’ I shouted at the top of my voice. Let the evil bitch hear. Far off someone else was yelling too.
‘Medieval women used to chew willow bark, I gather. Contains natural aspirin. Sorry. I’ll shut up.’ He dabbed at my neck and forehead with a cold flannel. His expression, wide nervous eyes and fixed mouth, made me think of a cod trying to smile. I could nearly have laughed.
Mrs Happy trundled the tank of nitrous oxide in and invited me to bite on the mouthpiece. ‘Like the breathing, start inhaling the second you feel the pain beginning.’
I took a huge great lungful and nearly fainted. Another contraction hit me.
‘Is it any good?’ asked Daniel, trying to read the writing on the side of the container.
‘Bloody rubbish,’ I said when I’d stopped groaning.
*
IT WAS LIKE being in prison, sitting on that train. All I had with me was my own thoughts, one dreadful memory after another layering themselves on top of each other, and uppermost, fear. There was no relief. Wherever I turned my gaze there was an awful image imprinted on my mind’s eye, like the mad stain on your vision after you’ve looked too long at a lightbulb. The pictures, some of them from the past, some from the future, blotted out the placid faces and the countryside around me. As we neared Manchester night was falling and all I could see when I stared out of the window was my own scared white face.
*
‘I want to get up,’ I raved.
‘We need to keep the monitor pads round your tum. Concentrate on your breathing now. Not much longer.’ The midwife wrote some notes and checked her watch.
‘Well, I need to take this off, then.’ I’d managed to get myself all tangled up in the T-shirt I’d brought. Why was it so fucking hot in here?
‘Er.’ Daniel was hovering at the edge of my vision. ‘Look, Charlotte, would this be a good time to go? My dad’s here and he’s going to drive me back to get the car. But I’ll stay if you want me to. You know I won’t leave if you need me.’ He reached out for my hand just as another contraction swept over me.
‘Charlotte? Charlotte?’
‘It’s fine,’ I managed to gasp. ‘Yeah, go.’ I needed to concentrate on the rhythm of the pain. I could see now why animals crept off on their own to have their litters in bushes. I couldn’t cope with his concern, his anxious questions, that bloody flannel.
‘Sure?’
I closed my eyes; perhaps he’d think I’d fainted.
‘I’d go if I were you,’ whispered the midwife. ‘You can come back tomorrow, bring her a nice big bunch of flowers.’ I saw her wink at him.
‘He’s not the father, you knowoooooooWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWooooooooooo,’ I howled. Her smile never slipped.
‘See you then,’ he muttered and waved limply. It felt better when he’d gone.
*
‘THE 10.05 TO BOLTON is running . . .’ The TV screen over my head flickered for a second . . . ‘thirty-five minutes late. We apologize for any inconvenience.’
‘But I NEED to get to my daughter!’ I shouted up at it, my voice echoing slightly under the iron rafters. No one on the platform took much notice; after all, there are a lot of nutters around these days.
*
‘Now, Charlotte, I need you to listen to me.’ The voice was coming as if from under water. ‘Charlotte, I can see the top of the baby’s head when you push. Lots of lovely dark hair. What I need you to do is to push as hard as you can with each contraction. Yes? Tuck your chin down and push through your bottom.’
I was beyond speaking now but I tried to do as I was told. There aren’t the words to describe the sensations, I was only a heaving mass of muscle and pain, all control gone.
‘Keep on top of it now. Down through your bottom.’
I pushed with all my might but I was getting exhausted. ‘I can’t do it,’ I managed to gasp.
‘Yes, you can. Come on now. You want to get this baby out, don’t you?’
Stupid fucking question.
I pushed till I thought my eyes would pop but we didn’t seem to be making much progress. I thought of all the women in history who’d had babies. Why did you never hear what it was really like? Had it been this bad for all of them? Some women had loads. Mrs Shankland at the post office had seven; had she been through this every time?
‘Charlotte.’ This was a man’s voice. ‘It’s Dr Battyani again. How are you doing?’ Sensibly he didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I’ve had a little look at you and I think we need to make a small cut.’ He didn’t say where, but I knew. We’d done it at antenatal class and I thought then, Whatever happens, I do not want one of those, no way. ‘It’s OK,’ he consulted his clipboard, ‘we will numb the area with an anaesthetic first.’
Oh, so you’ve got fucking anaesthetics now, have you? I thought. ‘Nyerhhhhhh,’ I managed. He took this as a yes; well maybe it was. I was so desperate to get the baby out by now they could have threatened to use a blow-torch and I’d have agreed.
The next part is confused because I was waiting for the cut, and an Irish voice said, ‘There’s somebody here to see you,’ and ‘Come in round this side and hold her hand.’ Then a huge wave came over me and I began to push again. ‘That’s it, Charlotte, you’re doing so well, the head’s nearly out.’ There was somebody crying near my face and when I opened my eyes it was my mum, my mum, and she held my hand tight then the head was out, and with a great slither and a gush the whole baby plopped onto the bed in a slimy mess. I was sobbing and panting and my mum looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards with tears running down her cheeks.
I collapsed against her while they took the baby and checked it over. ‘Time of birth, 23.42,’ I heard a woman’s voice say. The baby squalled when they put it on the cold scales.
‘Bless it,’ choked Mum. ‘I’ve no hanky.’ She wiped her eyes on her coat sleeve leaving a smudge of mascara on the beige cuff.
The midwife brought the baby over and laid it on my chest where it squirmed and hiccupped.
‘You’ve got a little boy, five pounds ten,’ she beamed.
‘Oh, a boy. I thought it would be a girl.’ I stared down at it, him, in bewilderment, with his matted black hair and his screwed-up, puffy eyes. I’d made that. He was mine.
Everything was quiet for a moment; somehow I’d expected a fanfare of trumpets or exploding fireworks, but there was nothing except the sounds of the midwife clearing away. Dr Battyani leant over me and lifted the purple baby up in his large brown hands.
‘We need to check him over again,’ he said and took him over to a table on the other side of the room.
Mum hugged me and kissed my hair while a new midwife appeared and began fiddling about down below. ‘I’m just after your placenta,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Then we’re all done and d
usted.’
Together Mum and the first midwife tidied me up and put my nightie on from out of the case, combed my hair and sponged me down.
‘Can I have my baby now?’ I asked, still feeling like I was floating.
‘He needs to pop down to the SCBU to have a spot of oxygen,’ said Dr Battyani. ‘Just to help his breathing.’
Mum and I looked at each other in horror.
‘Is he going to die?’
Dr Battyani tutted and shook his head. ‘He is a strong healthy baby for thirty-four weeks. But he will be more comfortable during the night if we give his lungs a little assistance. Have you got a name for him so we can write it on his tag?’
‘No.’ I thought briefly of Fyffes. ‘Oh, God, Mum, I’ve no name for him . . .’
‘Do not panic. We can put your name on.’ The doctor came over to my bed and spoke to Mum. ‘She needs to get a good night’s rest. You can stay with her for a little while.’
My limbs began to tremble with fatigue. I closed my eyes and snuggled against her, something I hadn’t done since I was tiny. ‘Oh, Mum, I’m so glad you’re here.’
She leant over me, stroking my arm.
‘My father and I just wanted to say well done,’ said Daniel emerging from the shadows.
‘Are you a hallucination?’ I asked reasonably. He laughed. Mr Gale stood behind him. I could see Mum eyeing them up and down. ‘I thought you were going home?’
‘Dad said I could hang around till midnight. And you got there in the nick of time.’
‘Didn’t we all,’ muttered Mum.
*
HOW OFTEN DO PARENTS say sorry? (Well, most of them don’t listen, for a start, so they never even realize they’ve done anything wrong.) In the struggle to take on the mantle of parenthood, and it is like a mantle, a big padded-shouldered superhero costume, you fall into this trap of arrogance. It starts early on when you’re outside a supermarket and your toddler is screaming for something totally unsuitable they’ve spotted on the shelves and taken a fancy to, e.g. a box of After Eights. You have to be firm, obviously. You have to look as though you know what you’re doing because there’s always this fear that if you don’t some passing shopper will spot your deficiencies and report you as a fraud, someone who’s only playing at being a parent. Then your children will be taken into care and your life will be in ruins.
Also you have to convince your child that you’re in charge, because this is what kids are supposed to like, firm boundaries and what have you. But listen, I don’t believe they ever do think you’re in charge. They know all along that what you’re doing is simply steam-rollering your opinions through because you’re bigger and can smack harder and shout louder, and that’s not really the same thing as being in charge. But you’re so caught up in the role you convince yourself that whatever the situation, you’re right and if your child disagrees they must therefore be wrong: the After Eights come to symbolize your superior understanding of the way the world works. And this is true up to the point where you die, so that there are even now seventy-year-olds being berated by parents in their nineties for being wasteful with money, deficient in visiting duties, slatternly round the house, etc.
Larkin wrote that famous poem about your mum and dad fucking you up; notice he didn’t go on to say, ‘And afterwards, when you’re all mature adults, they can appreciate all their mistakes and apologize wholeheartedly over drinks on the patio.’
I was going to break the mould. I was going to tell Charlotte I was sorry, and watch the sky crack and the earth split apart.
‘I THINK THEY’VE forgotten about us,’ she murmured, resting her head on my arm. ‘They were pretty busy earlier on. I’m not bothered. It’s nice, this, just us two. Do I look a right state?’
‘You’ve just given birth, it doesn’t matter what you look like. Was that your new boyfriend, the lad with all the hair?’
‘No. He’s a friend . . . from school.’
‘Some friend to come with you and hold your hand like that. He deserves a medal.’ I shifted round on the bed and gazed at her damp hair and her red eyes. She seemed so young, as if she’d woken up from a bad dream and sneaked into my room for a cuddle like she used to after Steve left. ‘Oh Charlotte . . .’
She let out a huge yawn. ‘What, Mum?’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Her blue eyes flicked onto me and her brow furrowed. ‘What for? You were here, weren’t you, in the end. I was all right. You know, they reckon that gas and air is only a temporary effect but I think it stays in your system. I could rise off this bed and drift round the ceiling.’ She stared up at the dirty tiles as if they were the most beautiful things she’d ever seen.
‘No, I didn’t mean going away. I shouldn’t have done that either—’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Lyme Regis,’ I blurted out. The French Lieutenant’s Woman had been on Granada last week.
‘Mmm. Dig up any skeletons?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Any old fossils. Ammonites, that sort of stuff. I know I’m talking rubbish, ignore me.’ She closed her eyes again.
‘Oh, I see. No, it was very quiet, really. I had to do some thinking. But I should never have walked out like that, without any warning. It wasn’t fair. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been following some sort of manual, The Guide to Being a Bad Mother; actually there’ve been times when I feel I could have written it.’
‘God, Mum, there are plenty worse than you.’
I pictured for a moment a door slamming in my face and, further back, a little shabby figure cowering in a corner, nobody there to protect her. Tears spilled over my cheeks again.
‘I’ve been rotten to you over this pregnancy,’ I sniffed. ‘I only wanted you to have a happy life.’
‘I know, Mum. But let’s not argue all the time from now on, eh? I hate it when we argue, the air turns all . . . spiky. Nan hates it too.’ She stretched and tried to roll onto her side. ‘You know, I used to be jealous of Nan when I was younger, ’cause of all the time you spent looking after her. You once said to me, “Love isn’t a cake, you can’t divide it up into slices.” And I said, “No, but time is. A clock even looks like a cake.” Do you remember?’
‘No.’ God, I had got it wrong. ‘I’m sorry for that as well, if you felt neglected.’
‘It was my problem, selfish adolescent; you were just trying to do your best. I can see that now. I can see a lot of things. I really love her, you know.’ She sighed and there was a long pause. I thought she’d dropped off to sleep and I was wondering about slipping over and dimming the lights over on the other side of the room. Suddenly she said, ‘Tell me what it was like when you had me. I’ve never asked.’
I settled back against the metal bars.
‘Well, some of it’s still very clear. It was the best and worst day of my life, I think. I remember, I was in labour for nearly twenty-seven hours and they had to use forceps, which is why you’ve got that tiny dent over your left cheekbone. The midwife was absolutely horrible. When I told her how much agony I was in she said, “You should have thought of that before you got yourself into this mess.” Honestly. You’d report them today. Steve wasn’t with me because he said he couldn’t face seeing me in pain, lame excuse. And Nan was beside herself with worry; she was terrified of losing me, or you, because she hadn’t long been a widow, so by the time you were born she was like a wet rag. She held you first – I think she may even have cut the cord, I’ll have to ask her – and then she put you in my arms. All the nurses commented on your blue eyes, and you fixed me with this fierce gaze, as if to say, You’re mine; don’t even think about giving me away. It made my insides melt, because it was the first time in all the pregnancy that I’d realized you were an actual person.’
I glanced down, proud of my speech, but Charlotte was fast asleep with her thumb in her mouth.
*
I woke with a shock when the breakfast trolley rattled past the door. My first thought was, The baby�
��s died in the night and they daren’t tell me. I pressed the buzzer and a young nurse came in carrying some charts.
‘How’s my baby?’
‘Oh, he had a very good night. You’re both going up to the ward today. You can have a shower first, make you feel more human; I expect you’ll be feeling a bit bruised and battered, but that soon passes. I just need to do your obs while I’m here.’
She took my temperature and blood pressure and all the time I was trying to get my head round the fact that I had a baby, I was a mother. Surely it was all a mistake. I couldn’t really have a baby, not really.
Up on the ward there were lots of real mothers all with their babies next to them in clear plastic cribs. The space by my bed was empty. I lay there, the biggest fraud in the world, while the woman opposite picked her child up, put her hand inside her nightdress and fished out a breast. Then she clamped the baby to her nipple and started to flick through a magazine with her free hand. It was pretty impressive. To my right a girl about the same age as me was changing a nappy, like she knew what she was doing. I tried to peer over her shoulder but it looked a bloody complicated arrangement and the baby kept wriggling. When she’d parcelled up its tiny bottom she put its sleepsuit back on, bending the minute limbs carefully, poking inside the sleeve openings with her finger to extract the curled fists. Finally she picked it up, her hand behind its floppy head, and called the nurse who brought a bottle which the baby drank with its eyes closed. I knew for certain I’d never be able to do any of this. I’d drop him, sure as eggs is eggs, or break his arm trying to dress him. I’d better tell them now I wasn’t fit to be a mum.
Just then they wheeled him in.
‘Here we are,’ said the nurse parking him expertly and flipping on the brake. ‘Here’s your mummy.’ There was no response from the swaddled heap. ‘He’s still asleep.’ She leant over the side of the crib and touched his head. ‘What a lot of lovely hair.’
