by Kris Webb
Having escaped Olivia and Paul, I raced down the escalator and was about to head for the doors when I heard someone calling my name. To my disbelief, I saw Alice and Steve, two of my good friends from university days, waving wildly at me. In all the time I’d lived in Sydney I’d never run into so many people I knew in one outing.
‘Sophie, how are you? How is Sarah? You look marvellous,’ Alice exclaimed excitedly.
I did not look marvellous. The effects of my morning coffee and champagne were wearing off and my eyes felt as though someone had thrown a handful of sand in them. I hadn’t even considered makeup and had thrown on an old pair of jeans and a pale blue T-shirt that had seen better days. However, I’d already discovered that one of the great benefits of having a baby is that everyone expects you to look like absolute death afterwards, with the result that if you look even slightly less than horrific you are treated like a supermodel.
I smiled at Alice gratefully and was about to launch into an explanation as to why I had left Sarah in order to cruise the shopping malls, when I followed Steve’s gaze to the front of my shirt. As the stain spread over my left breast, I realised that a detailed description of the contents of my shopping list was not necessary. I also realised why you never see women with young babies in light-coloured tops.
‘Yes, well, there were certain items I didn’t get around to buying before Sarah was born…’ I stammered, once again waving around my shopping bag by way of explanation.
They both nodded and Steve started edging away, looking as though even that brief statement contained way too much information.
‘Well, I’d better be off. Sarah is with Debbie and I don’t want to be away long,’ I said.
That halted Steve’s sideways shuffle, and both he and Alice looked at me incredulously.
‘Debbie?’ Steve said. ‘You left Sarah with Debbie?’
The reactions I was getting couldn’t have been much worse if I’d announced that I’d left Sarah with Hannibal Lecter.
‘Well, yes, but only for an hour. Look, I have to go,’ I said and raced through the doors of the shopping centre and out to the car park before anyone else I knew could confront me.
Everyone’s horror at my having left Sarah with Debbie had made me worried and I raced home, running a couple of lights that were more red than amber and taking the corner to my street with a squeal of tyres. My feet hit the pavement as soon as the car stopped and I ran up the path and flung the front door open. However, instead of the team of paramedics working uselessly on Sarah’s lifeless body which I’d pictured on my way home, I found both Debbie and Sarah fast asleep.
EIGHT
I had no doubt that Sarah’s first doctor’s appointment at six weeks was not to check her at all but to test whether I was capable of getting the pair of us out of the house and to the surgery within one hour either side of the allotted time.
To make it even more challenging, whoever it is that decides such things had decreed that it would be a good idea to schedule an obstetrician’s check-up at the same time. As Sarah’s paediatrician was in the same building as Dr Daniels, I had booked the appointments close together.
Determined to pass, I had started planning the outing with military precision twelve hours beforehand. I’d booked the first appointment for ten in the morning, and at ten the night before I packed my bag.
When I’d found out I was pregnant I’d made a vow that I wouldn’t cart around enough baby-related paraphernalia to fill a small suitcase. I had also decided that what stuff I did have to carry (at that point, I was vaguely imagining a cute fluffy toy and maybe a sunhat) would just have to fit in a bag that wouldn’t shame me in the trendier parts of town. When I was six months pregnant I’d ventured out to buy a baby bag and come home three hours later empty-handed and depressed. Every baby bag I had looked at was either lemon yellow, baby pink or light blue and had pictures of animals all over it. They were also big enough to fit a whole baby inside, and for some strange reason most of them were padded. Obviously I had missed something, as it didn’t seem to me that baby stuff was terribly fragile.
Being a typical Sydney girl, about ninety per cent of my wardrobe is black, so we are talking a major (and very dubious) fashion choice to add something as eye-catching as a pastel baby bag to my attire. There should have been a ‘How to Accessorise with Your Baby Bag’ session at prenatal classes.
I had tried to explain my concerns to a shop assistant at one of the baby shops. ‘Don’t you have something a little plainer than this?’ I asked, referring to the bag I was holding, which was yellow with red farm animals all over it.
The shop assistant nodded enthusiastically and produced the same bag in two shades of yellow.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I want something really plain. You don’t have anything in black, do you?’
The shop assistant shook her head and looked at me as though she was seriously revising my IQ. ‘This is a baby shop, we only sell things for babies,’ she explained, as if I could have failed to notice that I was surrounded by cribs, prams and clothes in tiny sizes.
I decided to try a different tack. ‘Do you have anything smaller than this one, then?’ I thought that perhaps if I found something which wasn’t the size of an overnight bag, I could dye it black.
Now the shop assistant was starting to look worried, obviously convinced I was some kind of deviate. ‘No,’ she replied carefully. ‘A baby bag can’t be any smaller than this because you need to fit in at least four nappies, two changes of clothes for each of you, toys, baby wipes, bottles if you’re not breastfeeding, a cloth to clean up vomit –’
At this point the picture she was creating started to make me feel faint. Preferring to maintain my current idea of motherhood, which consisted largely of a vision of me gazing tenderly at my cherub fast asleep in its crib, I interrupted her.
‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry but I think maybe I’m not ready to deal with this just yet. Thanks anyway.’
The shop assistant looked relieved as she turned back to serve a normal pregnant woman trying to decide between a Mickey Mouse baby bag and one with felt birds sewn all over it.
In the end I just bought a black cloth shoulder bag, the same size as my largest handbag. As well as being something that wouldn’t get me laughed out of town, it was also about half the price of any of the pastel numbers I’d seen. The shopping I had done to date had me convinced that Debbie’s designer purchases were a bargain compared to anything intended for babies.
So, packing for our first medical visit, I turned to the checklist in my baby book. Nappies were first on the list. I have to be honest and reveal that I had absolutely no intention of changing Sarah’s nappy when we were outside the four walls of the house. It was hard enough to do it at home on a specially designed table with all the necessary aids an arm’s length away. I knew that my level of proficiency was not great enough to manage it in public. Despite this, I put in a couple of nappies. After all, the doctor might ask to check what I had in my bag and if he realised that I obviously intended to leave Sarah in a sodden, dirty nappy until we got home, he might call up a social worker and have them take her away.
So nappies went in, as did baby wipes and Vaseline (for the nappy change which wasn’t going to happen), vomit cloth, baby rug, sunscreen (it was 10°C and cloudy but the book said to put it in, so I did), a rattle, a couple of changes of clothing for Sarah and a spare shirt for me.
My wallet and chequebook were relegated to the side pocket and I stuffed Sarah’s things (just) into the main section. I’d abandoned my makeup bag and brush, figuring that I never even managed to brush my hair at home these days so the chances of attending to my appearance in public were pretty slim.
The next morning Sarah woke at five forty-five for her third feed since nine the night before. In only six weeks my definition of morning had changed from the start of the morning radio traffic report at seven-thirty, to any time on the digital clock which started with the number five. One consolation was that
I’d finally found a use for the Nike sports watch Andrew had given me last Christmas. After having gathered dust on my chest of drawers for the last six months, it was now in constant use as it had a digital face and a light, perfect for night feeds.
I tried to figure out Sarah’s likely feed and sleep times over the next few hours, only just resisting the urge to do a time line for the morning’s activities. Miraculously, it all seemed as though it should work – she’d have a sleep and then another feed at about nine, which would take about thirty minutes, so that would leave me thirty minutes to get her in the car, drive five kilometres to the doctor’s surgery and get her out of the car.
I had known before Sarah was born that babies feed about every two or three hours in the first few months. What I hadn’t known was that the two or three hours runs from the start of each feed, which means that if it takes you an hour to feed the baby, it can be only another hour before you’re on the job again. I also hadn’t realised that breastfeeding wasn’t like filling up a car at a service station.
Everything went according to plan and at nine-thirty I was balancing Sarah against my shoulder as I tried to open the car door with my spare arm. I was about to swing her down into the baby seat when I felt something dripping on my shoe. Assuming she had been sick, a not infrequent occurrence, I straightened up.
‘Strange,’ I thought as I noticed she didn’t have anything on her face. I decided that she must have been leaning over when it happened. Peering around Sarah I looked down at my shoe and groaned. What was on my shoe was yellow, not white, and Sarah’s pink onesie was soaked with the stuff.
I raced back inside, threw Sarah on the change table and pulled her onesie off. I started to wipe the back of her body from her neck to her knees, then decided that the only viable option was to hold her under the shower. As I dressed her in a fresh grow suit, I grappled with her arms, trying to pull them through the tight hand openings, which seemed to have suddenly shrunk.
Finally we were ready. I looked at my watch – nine-forty. I raced out the door, threw Sarah in the capsule and drove to the doctor’s surgery. There was a parking lot behind the surgery and, after pulling in, I leapt out of the car to grab the pram from the boot. No pram. I’d left it behind in the rush. Refusing to be flustered, I flung the baby bag over one shoulder, hefted Sarah on the other and kicked the car door shut behind me. I looked at my watch as I walked towards the receptionist’s desk: nine fifty-eight, not bad at all.
‘Sarah Anderson to see the doctor for her six-week checkup,’ I announced triumphantly, expecting the receptionist to leap to her feet and congratulate me for being not just on time but early. Strangely, she looked very underwhelmed and just nodded, pointing me to the waiting area.
The woman sitting next to me smiled. ‘Your little boy is lovely,’ she said.
‘She’s actually a girl,’ I replied. ‘Her name is Sarah.’
‘Oh,’ the woman said. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that she does look so much like a boy.’ She was looking at me dubiously as if I could have got it wrong.
‘Well, she’s definitely not,’ I retorted slightly sharply, wondering how anyone could think my beautiful daughter with her big blue eyes and rosebud lips could be anything but a girl.
At ten-fifteen I was finally ushered in to see the doctor.
He asked me to put Sarah on the examination bed, gesturing to one end where I should put her head. Having been about to put her the other way around, I lost my balance as I swivelled her body in midair and deposited her on the bed with enough force to make her blink her eyes, too surprised to scream.
I couldn’t believe it. In six weeks I hadn’t so much as jolted Sarah and the second I walked into the doctor’s office I dropped her. Tensing, I expected the doctor to push me aside as he swooped to check Sarah for brain damage. However, when I looked up, I was surprised to see him smiling calmly.
‘You’re obviously a confident mother, moving her around like that,’ he said.
Confident mother! Did this man know nothing, I wondered as I pasted what I hoped was a Madonna-like smile on my face.
After examining Sarah and pronouncing her perfectly healthy (I presumed this meant no long-term injuries from the crash onto the bed), the doctor turned to me. ‘So, do you have any questions?’
Everything I’d read said that the first couple of months of a baby’s life were vital in their long-term development. But, as I’d said to Andrew at Sarah’s coming-out party, I still wasn’t sure just what I should be doing in that department. My baby book wasn’t much help. It exhorted me to have fun with Sarah. Fine, but I needed specifics, and at six weeks Sarah wasn’t exactly providing me with much feedback on how I was doing.
‘What exactly should I do with Sarah when she’s awake?’ I asked.
‘Not much,’ the doctor answered with a smile. ‘You can forget mind-expanding activities and educational experiences for a good while yet. Just talk to her and love her. The rest will look after itself.’
Comforted that I wasn’t reducing Sarah’s IQ by poor mothering, I smiled at him gratefully as I picked her up and headed for Dr Daniels’s office.
Sarah behaved perfectly throughout the second appointment. The only time I felt uncomfortable was when Dr Daniels mentioned Debbie.
‘So, how’s that friend of yours? What was her name?’ he asked.
His casual tone didn’t deceive me. I’d had too much experience with men bedazzled by Debbie. She had promised to call him but hadn’t. She’d declared that she felt like it was her baby he had delivered and that she couldn’t contemplate anything vaguely sexual with him.
Life with Debbie was never boring, I reflected. Most women spent their first doctor’s visit post-birth discussing pelvic floor exercises. Mine, however, was spent trying to gently tell my lovestruck obstetrician that he had been dumped by my best friend. I shook my head as I put the car into gear and headed home.
NINE
I was feeding Sarah one morning a couple of weeks later when the phone rang. On several previous occasions I’d tried unsuccessfully to reach the ringing phone on the other side of the room by shuffling towards it with a still suckling Sarah clutched to my chest. However, I had now learnt to bring the cordless phone with me when I sat down to feed her.
‘Hello,’ I said, tucking the phone between my left ear and shoulder as I swapped Sarah, who had finished one breast and was still demanding more, to the other side.
‘Sophie, it’s Max,’ said the voice.
I jolted upright and dropped the phone on Sarah’s head. Nothing could distract that child when she was really hungry, though, and she continued determinedly with the task at hand. Grabbing the phone with my free hand, I held it back to my ear. Despite everything, my first reaction on hearing his voice was pleasure. We’d had so many good times over the years – it was impossible just to put them all aside.
‘Sophie, are you there?’ Max was asking.
‘Yes, yes, I’m here, Max,’ I said, feeling this wasn’t exactly the best time to go into a detailed description of why I’d dropped the phone.
‘So … how are you doing?’ he almost stammered.
I understood his discomfort. There wasn’t exactly an established protocol for what to say when you call your ex-girlfriend to whom you haven’t spoken for nine months and who has just had your baby.
‘I’m fine, Max,’ I answered.
Unsure as to whether Max wanted to know how Sarah was, I hesitated. Deciding to take a middle line I said, ‘We’re both doing really well, Max. Sarah’s wonderful.’
‘That’s great, just great,’ he said.
The silence seemed to last forever.
‘What are you still doing up, anyway?’ I asked eventually. ‘It must be the middle of the night for you in America.’
I’d never managed to get the time difference sorted out, but I knew that if it was a sociable time in Australia it was the opposite in San Francisco.
‘Actually, I’m not in the States, I’m i
n Sydney. I’m just here for a couple of weeks for a pitch.’
Knowing that he wasn’t talking to me from the other side of the world shouldn’t have made a difference, but it did. As I tried to think of something to say, Max spoke again, obviously trying desperately to come up with what he thought was appropriate small talk with the mother of a young baby.
‘So, do you still feel tired from the birth? I’ve heard some pretty awful stories.’
I didn’t quite know how to respond to that. Was I still tired? I couldn’t remember what it felt like not to be tired – it was just situation normal. ‘Um, yes, I guess. Sarah wakes up two or three times a night but you just sort of get used to it.’
‘Sophie, can you hear that noise your end too?’ Max asked suddenly.
The drawback to talking on the phone while I was feeding Sarah was that she made huge gulping and slurping noises. These noises were obviously audible on the other end of the phone, as my callers frequently made tactful comments like, ‘Oh, so Sarah is there too, is she?’, or in the case of close friends, tactless comments like, ‘God, that child is a guzzler!’
Unable to face explaining the source of the noise to Max in this already uncomfortable conversation, I replied in what I hoped was a convincing manner, ‘What noise? Oh, you must be hearing the washing machine in the next room.’
‘Right,’ Max replied dubiously.
Trying to think of a way to change the subject, I struggled to remember what people talked about when they didn’t have babies. Of course – people with lives worked, it was all coming back to me.
‘How’s work?’
‘Work’s great. Except for the fact that everyone except me talks strangely, it’s all pretty much like being in the Sydney office.’
‘Don’t ruin it for me,’ I joked. ‘Tell me it’s incredibly glamorous, that you have a personal stylist, lunch with Nicolas Cage every week and play squash with Sean Connery every second Tuesday.’
‘No,’ he replied and I could hear from his voice that he was smiling. ‘Sean and I play lawn bowls on Thursdays – he’s not as young as he once was, you know. And Nic likes his privacy so I’m really not at liberty to tell you about that.’
