The Decision: Lizzie's Story

by Lucy Hay

  “You can hardly even tell you’re pregnant from this angle.” He attempted helpfully as I stood, with my back to him once.

  “Thanks a lot.” I said sarcastically.

  “It was supposed to be a compliment!” He countered hotly, eyes flashing.

  That was the nature of most of our exchanges these days. There was always a disagreement bubbling under between us, just ready to come to the fore. A cruel streak had surfaced in Mike I hadn’t noticed before too: there were lots of subtle put-downs and the occasional outright jibe. When we were alone he’d pinch me or twist my arm then insist he had never done so. Sometimes – and usually when the rest of the family were out - he even pinned me down and yelled in my face, insisting I wasn’t listening to him. Everything I said or did he called into question, making me doubt myself. When I asked him why he was doing it, he denied all knowledge. Angry and confused, I caused arguments of my own, playing directly to his belief everything was my fault and I was an unreasonable human being. In direct contrast, Mike cosied up to my sisters, courting them with pleasantries and compliments, the exact opposite of what he was giving me. Whenever he and I argued, he’d appeal to Hannah in particular, who - still just a little girl in so many ways and so eager to please - would always confirm: yes, it was me, not him. Impressionable as ever, Hannah even took to waiting on Mike hand and foot, bringing him tea and biscuits and laughing at his poor jokes. Sal enjoyed seeing my relationship under the microscope and did the best she could to stir. Inexperienced in matters of the heart, she was completely unaware of the strain of it put on me. Worse still, there were hushed voices and the smell of marijuana from the old disused chicken house most weekends Mike was down. Even with a baby on the horizon he could not give up his habit and now he was including Amanda and Hannah in on it, as our oblivious Mum slept. I felt torn with both guilt and jealousy.

  At least the spectre of Francis’ influence decreased: Mike was with us most of the time he wasn’t at university and before the baby arrived, we barely saw the old man as he was confined to the end of the phone instead. I soon wished Mike were the same. It was so bizarre: I’d spend weeks just waiting to see him, yet when he was there, I’d wish he would leave again. Sometimes, usually very early in the morning as I listened to Mike snore softly next me, I wondered if we were just acting out the parts we felt we ought to undertake. However negatively I felt about him, I didn’t want to get rid of Mike and deny him the chance of knowing his own child, but equally he probably didn’t want to be the one who broke up with me. Neither of us wanted to be the bad guy. So we waded on through the mire of our feelings for each other, called it “love” and pretended all was fine. Paradoxically, I couldn’t imagine a future without Mike in it, either. I wanted the little house, I wanted more children, I wanted my own career. Could I have any of those things without him? Looking at my parents, I felt my own question twist even tighter: could I have those things even with Mike? Nothing seemed certain. I just wanted someone, anyone, to help me formulate a plan – or better still, figure it all out for me and let me know what I would be doing a year from now.

  Perhaps I would feel better once the baby arrived, I reasoned. I didn’t have to wait as long as I thought I would either, for the baby came a whole month early. There was chaos and panic as my waters broke at home. A weekend, Mike was there and watching, silently bemused as Mum tried to calm me, telling me thirty six weeks’ gestation is fine for some babies. But I refused to be pacified, shrieking at her, demanding to know how she would know when her babies were always late! Dad looked after the girls and Mum drove Mike and I to the hospital. Mike was both scared and sulking, for I’d already told him some weeks before that I wanted Mum present at the birth as well. He had attempted to dissuade me many times already, telling me he “should be enough for me”, yet deep down I knew I could not rely on him. What if he fainted or ran out, unable to handle it? What if he said stupid things or stressed me out? I knew I needed someone present I could count on – like Mum - no matter how many tantrums Mike pulled in advance.

  At the hospital a midwife reassured me my mother was right; not all early babies were in danger and that actually, thirty seven weeks is considered “on time” so in reality, my baby was officially only one week early in real terms. I felt my stress levels decrease and the pain of labour went down a little as I stopped panicking, though it was still more excruciating than I had ever contemplated. Mum coaxed me to breathe through it, showing me how and holding my hand as Mike stood by on the sidelines, hands deep in his pockets. I had wondered if I would feel sorry for him beforehand, but now I was so busy I had no time for anything else but concentrating on the birth. Even Mum seemed far away somehow, even though I had had no drugs. It was just me and the baby. I had not asked if I was carrying a boy or a girl; I’d wanted the surprise. Mike had felt sure the child would be a boy and had even picked out a name: Tommy. Not wanting more arguments, I’d simply decided I would see the child for who he or she was and name it on the day. Now I couldn’t wait to see the little one’s face and it kept me going through the pain. About three hours in, I suddenly realised: despite all the uncertainty, the trepidation, my worries for the future, I wanted this child and I couldn’t wait to be a mother.

  The labour was long and arduous. Two shifts of midwives shuffled in and out, checking me and monitoring the baby, talking to Mum as if I was an idiot. I knew labour could be long, but after more than fourteen hours with contractions every three minutes, I began to feel desperate at the slow progress. Would it ever finish? And then, as if my thoughts had released something, it was: there were shouts and the crash of bed railings. Mum was trying to tell me something: baby in distress. Panic pierced my heart all over again: could my baby die? Mike was suddenly beside me, and actually holding my hand. And then he disappeared again like magic and the midwife was talking at me, saying they needed to get me prepped for theatre and I mustn’t worry: this happens all the time; the baby’s tired; they just need to give him or her a helping hand. But all her words ran together and all I could really hear was the spinning of bed wheels, the mutterings of consultants and midwives, my Mum’s hurried reassurances and someone sobbing, which I realised later was me.

  Daisy Heather Carmichael was born at one twelve am, weighing just under five and a half pounds and screaming her heart out with rage.

  “Nothing wrong with those lungs!” the consultant joked, sewing me up.

  Still lying down and staring up at the hospital’s white tiled ceiling, relief flooded through me to hear her cries and Mum started crying immediately, saying: “Oh Lizzie, she looks just like you!”

  Seconds later a theatre nurse with a big smile on her face presented Daisy to me in a pink blanket: “You have a daughter.”

  A daughter. What fantastic words. Holding her gingerly for the first time, I took in her delicate features, which were twisted up as if she were in the biggest of huffs. I couldn’t help but laugh, then regretted it; my insides felt red raw, which they actually probably were. As they wheeled us back to the ward, I caught sight of Mike slumped in a plastic chair near maternity and felt a pang of sorrow he hadn’t been there to see her born too. But as the panicked rush for theatre had started, he’d retreated and had been left behind somewhere.

  “I’ll leave you two alone for a bit.” Mum said brightly.

  Mike peered at the tiny pink bundle. “She’s okay?” He enquired.

  I nodded. “I thought… Daisy?”

  Mike’s upper lip immediately curled. “How about Olivia?” He said.

  “Please, Mike.” I said, desperately tired.

  “Fine.” He replied. “As usual I don’t count for anything.”

  “No, that’s not true.” I said, tears pricking my eyelids. This was a special moment. How could he want an argument now? But Mike could barely look at me and went back to staring out of the maternity ward window, down on to the concrete car park below. There was a painful lump in my throat as I regarded his hostile form, confused at his react
ion. Why couldn’t I name the baby? He had had no particular penchant for a girl’s name; as ever, he just wanted it his way and when I objected or held up an alternative, I was punished with loaded silences.

  Much to my chagrin, I had to stay in hospital for the next three days. Mum of course had to go home to look after the rest of the girls, but Mike popped in a couple of times, though never with the gifts I saw other Fathers bestow on their partners and newborns on the ward. An empty vase stood on my nightstand and there were no toys placed in Daisy’s crib. Francis came and tried to extend nicotine-stained fingers near her mouth, though at the last minute I managed to deflect him when I said I needed to feed her. Embarrassed, Francis withdrew and said he would come back another time but never did. I finally got to meet Mike’s mother Maria, who arrived with helium balloons and an almost hysterical smile on her face, dragging Mike’s half-brother James behind her.

  “You’re an uncle now!” She kept exclaiming. James seemed disinterested and just like his older brother, spent most of his time staring down at the car park.

  Perhaps most surprising of all, Shona turned up. She’d been down for the weekend at her parents’, though she hadn’t told me. She came in with a ridiculously large pink teddy for the baby that was far too fluffy for a newborn, but I thanked her regardless. “So, how you been, anyway?” She said guardedly.

  I would have laughed at the banality of the question, had I not known it would hurt so much. I wanted to tell her my entire life and outlook had changed; I wanted to say that she might have been the one who had “got out”, but I was the one who had outgrown her. But instead I said: “Fine, thanks.”

  Mum arrived on the third day just as I was signing my discharge papers. Mum regaled me with how she’d moved the girls around, so I could have the room I’d previously shared with Amanda to myself, with Daisy. Apparently Hannah was happy enough to share with the twins now and they’d been bribed with a new set of pink bunkbeds. Amanda had never cared where she slept; it was only Sal whose nose was out of joint, complaining that Amanda spent too much time spraying perfume when she was trying to study. I listened to Mum and shuffled out to the car holding the baby like a little old lady, wondering why Mike had not come to get us as well.

  “I did ask him.” Mum said.

  “What did he say?” I enquired, almost dreading the answer.

  “Francis said he couldn’t come to the phone, he was sleeping off a bender apparently.” Mum said grimly. “Wetting the baby’s head maybe.”

  A chink of hope opened in my heart: perhaps if Mike was celebrating Daisy’s birth, he was finally entertaining the prospect of Fatherhood? But just as quickly, a cynical voice in the back of my head crushed it: or he’s just doing what he’s always done. I never knew where I stood with Mike and crucially, never had. He always blocked my attempts to find out, making me guess instead. When I inevitably got things wrong because I was not a mind reader, it was my fault. I wondered if I could stand a lifetime of it. Looking at Daisy’s face, I figured I would have to. He was her father and nothing could change that fact now.

  Mike finally turned up three days after I came home from the hospital and six days after Daisy’s birth. He seemed in good spirits and was perturbed when I asked him where he’d been, telling me haughtily I had no right to ask. He held the baby awkwardly when I asked him to and he was soon gone again, telling me he had to get his stuff ready again to go back to uni. His “weekend away” had become a week with the university’s permission.

  “It’s not every day you become a Dad.” Mike joked.

  So why not see your baby every day, then? I wanted to say, but didn’t. This was becoming the story of my life now: I would want to ask Mike something, but feared an argument, so would keep my mouth shut… Yet somehow I still ended up embroiled in arguments with him anyway. It was so bewildering. I didn’t believe I was a particularly argumentative or difficult person, but Mike seemed to think I was – so did that make it true? I couldn’t decide.

  Mike went back to university and I settled into the routine motherhood brings with it: feeding, changing, washing and healing. I looked in the mirror and saw the saggy skin of my belly, the black stitches that now held it together. My breasts, filled with milk, were sore and massive. My complexion was ghost white, my hair greasy. I felt a million years old and looked it. I didn’t recognise my own body. Mum told me everything would change back, but I wasn’t convinced. I never remembered Mum having so much as a stretchmark, even as big as she got with the twins – yet I was covered with them. I felt like soiled goods.

  Daisy, however, was the perfect baby. She was bright, cheerful, always smiling. I found breastfeeding easy as she took to it so well. She slept lots – when I let her. I was so paranoid she might die from cot death if she slept too long, I kept waking her up by accident. Mum told me I had to relax; Daisy would let me know if there was a problem, but I just kept worrying. I was young … If I got things wrong, there must be people willing to take her away like a shot? Mum told me again and again this wasn’t true; I had a good support network and Social Services never took children away on a whim. Yet everywhere I saw the bogeyman of the authorities just waiting for me to slip up and snatch my child from my arms.

  Money was tight and it wasn’t long before I had to give up my part-time job at the chemist’s and sign on, instead: I didn’t want to, but I simply could not earn enough to justify childcare and Mum had her own work and childcare difficulties. She did manage to pick up a permanent job at a bar near the seafront, but it meant her working nights, so I became the official babysitter of the twins so at least one of us could stay in work. I enjoyed my new role however as matriarch when Mum was not there; Amanda and Hannah took me seriously, even if Sal was as derisive as ever. Mike was as disinterested in his new role as a Father as he was me. As before, he’d ring and tell me about things which had happened at university, without ever asking what I had been up to, tacking on that all-important question as and when he remembered:

  “How’s the baby?” He’d say. Never Daisy. Always “the baby”.

  “Fine.” I’d say automatically.

  “Good.” He’d reply.

  Mike’s behaviour towards me changed very little after the birth, despite my hopes for the contrary: his disregard for me was frightening and fatherhood did not come easily to him. Mike would smile and hold his daughter for a bit, then swiftly give her back to me. Occasionally he’d play with her for a few moments, or lie next to her asleep, but he’d bore just as quickly. Instead he spent all his money on the various gadgets he’d put so much faith in before, without ever offering any support for Daisy. When I complained, he’d look at me incredulously and say, “But I’m a student”, as if that explained why he could buy a four hundred pound phone, yet not buy some nappies or a few toys for his daughter. And like a complete mug, I let him get away with it.

  One thing Mike loved however was showing Daisy off to his friends. Sometimes he would bring university friends back to Francis’ and demand our presence and like the good girlfriend, I would trot over there and indulge him. It seemed he was quite the celebrity amongst his friends: a father! At his age! And Daisy was so cute! I felt a pang of envy that none of my old college friends wanted to see her or me in the same way. But even so, after an hour – never much longer – Daisy was unceremoniously handed back to me and in body language, rather than words, I was told we would no longer be required. Like typical students, they were off to the pub and I was never invited.

  Time passed and my body did start to change back to normal as Mum had promised, so I became a little more confident and less accepting of the status quo between Mike and I. I started to wonder what would happen next. Why shouldn’t I? Daisy was weaned and almost one; she was already tottering about Mum’s kitchen like a pro. I had been patient, allowing Mike his freedom and time to adjust and though there had been problems between us, the relationship had not ground to a halt. Mike was not far off finishing his second year at university and the time
felt right to ask where I stood and whether we could be a proper family at last. I waited for him to come back for the weekend, rather than ask him over the phone and that first night, lying in bed with him, Daisy asleep in her cot, I finally got up the courage:

  “I thought we could get our own place, with Daisy?” I said.

  Even in the moonlight through the crack in the curtains, the panic in Mike’s eyes was unmistakable. “But I’ve got university.” He said.

  “I know.” I said, sighing inwardly. I had known this would not be easy, Mike was a creature of habit. I just had to stick to the lines I had rehearsed in my head a thousand times that week; I couldn’t let him make me deviate from them. “We would come with you, live near the university. I could get a job, Daisy could go to nursery.”

  “It’s my third year, I’ll have my finals.” Mike countered.

  “I don’t understand.” I said, puzzled. I had not envisaged this answer and wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “Well, I can hardly study in peace with a crying baby in the house, can I?” He scolded. “What if I fail? Then all this would be for nothing.”

  Anger coursed through my veins, as much as I tried to suppress it. “All this”! What was that supposed to mean? I was the one who had made all the sacrifices, Mike had lived the life he was going to, regardless. And calling Daisy a “crying baby”… Sure she cried, but no more than average. She was a sweet-natured girl, with only the occasional flares of toddler temper, which Mike would know if he spent more time with her. But I swallowed all this resentment down and tried to be as reasonable as humanly possible when really I wanted to strangle the life out of him.