Is This My Beautiful Life?

by Jessica Rowe

  The midwife handed me a mirror. There it was, a damp patch of dark hair that belonged to my baby, my wish upon a star. I pushed and pushed and then I was told to stop pushing, but I couldn’t resist the impulse as my pelvis stretched and expanded. The doctor pulled his tray of instruments closer and I kept glancing at where his hands were, hoping he was not going to reach for the scissors.

  ‘Peter, put your fingers here,’ said the doctor.

  My husband carefully placed his long index fingers under the armpits of our baby and helped deliver her into the world. There was instant relief; the pain had stopped.

  ‘It’s a boy!’ said Peter.

  ‘Are you sure? It looks like a girl!’ I said.

  ‘Yes, it’s a girl, a beautiful baby girl,’ said the doctor as he rested our daughter on my chest. Relief poured through my exhausted body, and Peter and I began to cry, our happy, salty tears dropping onto our baby daughter’s head. We were a family at last. I had never felt as close to my husband, or as in love.

  Allegra gazed up at me, just thirty seconds old, lying on my breast and totally reliant on me for her survival. One of the great love affairs of my life had begun as she looked at me with one dark blue eye, her other eye gummed closed with vernix.

  ‘Hello, my darling, there you are. I have waited so long to meet you. I love you, I love you, I love you.’

  Things could only get better.

  I had been conscientious in the hospital. I wanted to get a gold star for breastfeeding and made an effort to get to all the classes held in the maternity ward. Feeding was something I wanted to master—surely it would come naturally. Looking around at the other new mums crammed into the room, all their babies seemed to be happily sucking away. How could these women be smiling? Why weren’t they wincing? Unlike me, none of them seemed to be breaking into a sweat. My pyjama pants were often damp, and it wasn’t from my leaking vagina. I had a sanitary pad the size of a paddleboard wedged between my legs to soak up the copious amount of blood that kept flowing out of me, days after I had pushed my baby girl out; now I understood why my sister had suggested packing so many pairs of dark, comfy underpants. On top of this, sweat was pouring out of the skin at the top of my thighs, the dark, damp patches spreading across the front of my pyjama pants and clearly visible on the brightly coloured heart-print fabric. I think all the sweat was a by-product of the mixture of adrenaline and anxiety I had about breastfeeding.

  I had expected some blood during labour, but I never knew nipples could bleed until now. Mine seemed to have been bleeding for days. Or was it nights? I had lost track of time burrowed away in the small hospital room with my new love. It felt safer to keep the curtains closed, shielded behind the drab hospital drapes. I wasn’t ready to step out into this brand-new, scary, exhilarating world with my baby yet. Something terrible could happen to her. She might catch a cold. She might be woken from her long sleeps. Strangers might want to touch her cheeks and breathe on her. While Peter cheerily pushed Allegra out of the room and along the hospital corridors in her cot, I stayed on my bed. I could hear him chatting with the other new parents, but I didn’t want to talk or even smile at them. All I wanted was to stay safely in my room, right at the end of the corridor.

  But what I couldn’t escape from was my bleeding nipples. I put cream on them, sat naked from the waist up in bed to give them ‘plenty of fresh air’, scrubbed them with a toothbrush to toughen them up. There was constant pain in my neck from looking down at my boobs. Was I holding Allegra the right way? Was her mouth open enough? Was she in the ‘correct’ feeding position? Well-meaning but rough midwives held my breast with one hand and hurled my tiny baby onto my nipple with the other. Surely I would be able to do this simple, natural thing. If I couldn’t breastfeed my daughter, I had to be a bad mother. Your mind does strange things in the dead of night.

  ‘I’m trying. I love you. Be patient with me. I love you. I love you. I love you. But please, little vampire, stop munching and crunching,’ I whispered over and over again to my baby girl in the midnight hour.

  My breasts had never had so much attention. I was used to being flat-chested, but now I felt like I had been visited by the plastic surgery fairy overnight. One morning I woke to find my breasts were hard, round, heavy and tender to touch. My black Bonds maternity bra was soon stuffed with cold cabbage leaves, the morning-shift nurse suggesting the leaves would take some of the pain away as my milk came in. It helped, but I smelt like a dirty fruit shop. I started to laugh and cry at the same time. I wasn’t even home yet and already I felt adrift. No one told me it would be like this. I knew how to love, but I didn’t know any of the practical stuff. I didn’t know how to change my daughter’s nappy (one of the confident, bossy midwives had suggested I could lose the gentle fairy taps and be more vigorous with the baby wipes at change time). I had never even held a baby properly before I had Allegra.

  I had also bowed out of the bathing class given by the midwife dubbed ‘the bath Nazi’. Her reputation for making new and not so new mothers cry because of their inappropriate bathing techniques was legendary; my girlfriends with toddlers had already warned me about her. Not surprisingly my husband, who can charm a cobra, passed her class with flying colours. ‘She wasn’t scary at all,’ said Peter. ‘She told me I was good at it.’

  ‘Right, well bathing can be your job when we get home,’ I told him. My head was already spinning with instructions on nappy changes, how to put a teeny-weeny singlet over an even teenier head, and the feeding—the feeding.

  One night it was just too much and I buzzed the night nurse for some help. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,’ I said, crying. ‘My nipples won’t stop bleeding.’

  ‘Well, you certainly can’t feed on them, and I don’t know why you still are,’ said the nurse.

  ‘What do I do?’ I said. ‘One of the other nurses told me I could try feeding Allegra from a spoon.’

  ‘Alright, but this will hurt,’ said the nurse, reaching across and squeezing yellow colostrum out of my nipples. The drips of liquid gold were barely filling the teaspoon. How quickly you can feel just reduced to your body parts once you have a baby. Here I was, sitting with a woman I had met only moments before who was now squashing and tugging my nipples.

  I was getting different advice from the myriad midwives that came into my room. I didn’t know who had the ‘right’ advice and who I should listen to, so I kept trying to cram every new bit of information into my befuddled brain. My confidence ebbed away with each additional piece of conflicting advice. During one of my night-time research sessions I read the bizarre ‘fact’ that some women experienced something close to an orgasm when they breastfed their babies. What? Who was this hippy, trippy author kidding? Chrissie Amphlett’s song ‘Pleasure and Pain’ kept playing on repeat in my sleep-deprived brain; I knew ecstasy was a long way off, but surely breastfeeding should not hurt so much. For me there was no fine line: I had fallen into a deep hole of pain, a whole new world that I didn’t like at all.

  A few hours later, after some snatches of sleep, I again inspected my nipples. My chin now seemed to be permanently attached to my clavicle due to the number of hours I spent examining my chest. My once pale pink nipples were still red and raw, despite feeding my daughter off a spoon overnight to give them a break. It was time to get some expert lactation advice. Surely that would help? My dear husband, who was spending every spare moment in the hospital with us, made sure he was also there for our appointment.

  ‘Okay, let’s see how you’re feeding this baby,’ said the lactation consultant.

  I gritted my teeth, psyching myself up for the inevitable pain as Allegra latched on.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well, if it hurts, you’re not doing it properly.’ She took my daughter roughly off my breast, and then shoved her back on my nipple.

  ‘Does that hurt?’

  ‘Umm, not really.’ It did hurt, but I was too scared to say anything. I
didn’t want this woman manhandling my boobs again.

  ‘You will have problems feeding because of your medical history with polycystic ovaries. Ask your husband to get these vitamins from the hospital chemist, okay? And this appointment costs three hundred dollars. I do take credit cards.’

  Peter and I were shocked. There was nothing gentle or reassuring about her bedside manner. My husband silently handed over his credit card.

  Allegra had some issues with her little right foot because it had become jammed up in my tummy. When she was born it was like she had a little flipper; essentially it would have meant she had a club foot if not for the wonders of modern medicine and physiotherapy. Allegra wore a tiny cast on her foot for the first few days of her life, which was replaced with a plastic splint that I had to wrap a tight bandage around to encourage her foot to start turning the right way.

  I had managed to have some extra days in hospital with Allegra because of the extra physio she needed to do and the exercises I needed to learn. But it was now time to go home and I was terrified. How would I manage breastfeeding on my own? My nipples were still bleeding, it still hurt to breastfeed and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to feed my own baby and keep her alive. Peter and I couldn’t even get Allegra into her car baby capsule on our own; the physio helped us adjust the straps and clip Allegra in securely. How would we manage at home? I sat in the back seat next to Allegra for the drive home. She had been constantly by my side in the hospital and I couldn’t let her out of my sight. Peter kept looking at us both in the rear-vision mirror. I tried to smile at him through my tears. Tears of happiness, exhaustion and fear.

  My husband shoved our heavy wooden gate open, leaning his tall body against it so our daughter and I could get past. Only seven days before we had left our little cottage as a couple; now we were returning as a family. I had hoped and prayed for this moment. I was finally a mother, and I had never felt so vulnerable. My heart, safely tucked away for so long, now felt like it existed outside of my body. A strong, spidery silver thread was linking it, tying me to this little soul, this six-day-old baby, who lay asleep in her capsule.

  ‘Welcome home, my darling. This is the front door.’ I sounded like a tour guide as I awkwardly lugged the capsule with my still sleeping baby girl around our cottage. ‘This is the hallway, the kitchen, and here is your bedroom.’ Allegra’s eyes were still closed as I placed her and the capsule softly on the floorboards, late afternoon light filtering through the window.

  ‘Petee, get your camera, we need to get a photo of this. Allegra in her bedroom.’ I smiled at the camera, my eyes teary and arms aching as I carefully held the surprisingly heavy baby capsule. Nestled inside the lamb’s wool liner my daughter slept on, oblivious to the importance of documenting this moment for her parents.

  ‘What do we do now?’ I asked.

  ‘Um, should we just leave her in her room?’ Peter suggested. Her bedroom had a brand-new white cot, white sheets on a pristine mattress, a fully stocked nappy change table and a white rocking chair.

  ‘But if I leave Allegra sleeping, that could throw the routine out. I think I need to give her a feed again soon.’ In one of my bags from the hospital I had a notebook documenting all the important stuff. It was full of dates, times, duration of breastfeeds, wet or dry nappy changes and what boob I had finished feeding on. One of the midwives had given me an information sheet explaining how often I needed to breastfeed Allegra. There was also the book Baby Love, and already I had dog-eared all of the pages in the breastfeeding chapter. Information had always been my saviour: if I had all the guidelines, facts, parameters and, research and jumped through the correct hoops, I would get the ‘right’ answer. But now I felt like no amount of information could help me work out if what I was doing was ‘right’. Was it right to wake up my daughter? Should I give her a little poke so we could stay on track with the routine of feeds every ninety minutes?

  ‘Why don’t you have a sleep? I’m sure she’s going to wake up soon,’ Peter said.

  ‘Alright, but get me the minute Allegra wakes up,’ I said, before checking that we had plugged in the baby monitor correctly and switched it to full volume. But from my room I couldn’t hear her snuffling sleep sounds, all I could hear was static and the sounds of cars passing outside. Exhaustion mixed with adrenaline meant I couldn’t switch off and slow down my buzzing mind to get some sleep. Okay, I last fed on the left side and that was about two hours ago. When Allegra wakes up I need to start on my right—or was it my left? I need to find the right sort of cushion to rest her on when I feed. I need to make sure I sit in the right sort of chair with a straight back. What about my feet? I need a footstool, something to help my posture. I need to change her nappy before the feed—or do I do it afterwards? I need to make sure I have a bottle of water to drink constantly so I can keep up my milk supply. I need to …

  ‘Mah, mah, mah,’ came the sound from the monitor. I leapt up.

  ‘My darling, my snuggle bunny, Mummy’s here!’ I rushed to her room and reached down to scoop her out of her capsule. She was funny looking, my baby girl, no chubby cheeks or angel curls. She reminded me of a little frog with long arms and legs that splayed everywhere, kicking off the white muslin wrap that I had clumsily tried to roll her up into before her sleep.

  ‘Come on, darling, time for a feed,’ I said, trying to sound confident. Who was I kidding? I was frightened.

  Peter reassured me that it would be okay as I tried to get our daughter onto my breast. The front doorbell suddenly rang. We knew that it would be Chris, a mothercraft nurse who we had organised to come around and help. She came highly recommended through friends, who described her as a ‘lifesaver’ when they brought their babies home. I needed a lifesaver! Chris first met with Peter and me while I was still pregnant and had helped me organise the nursery; she’d also had some suggestions about how I could manage returning to work. She would be coming over regularly to help once Allegra was born.

  ‘Stop, stop feeding now,’ said Chris. ‘You can’t feed on those breasts. They’re bleeding.’

  I started to sob with relief. ‘I tried.’

  ‘Of course you did, it’s not your fault. The hospital should have stopped you feeding once they saw the state of your nipples.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ I said, as Chris gently took Allegra from me and asked me to tell her everything.

  ‘I can’t feed. I don’t know what to do. It hurts, it’s bleeding. I can’t feed my baby.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes you can,’ she said. ‘We just need to get those nipples better before you give it another go. I’m going to write a list of supplies that Peter can get from the chemist.’

  My ever-dependable husband was dispatched to the all-night chemist and returned in record time with bottles, nipple shields, dummies and formula. I already had a steriliser and a breast pump and now even more instructions to write down in my notebook: when to pump, when to sterilise, how to freeze breast milk and when to use formula. Now I really felt like a failure. I was the world’s worst mother because my baby was going to be fed formula—I was lowering her IQ, making her obese and setting her up for a lifetime of delinquency. But Chris reassured me and wrote down everything that I needed to get through the evening. She gave me a hug and said she would be back the next morning. I was relieved to have a written plan. Perhaps if I just focused on the notes for the night it would be okay.

  Peter and I didn’t sleep much that evening as we took turns to check that Allegra was still breathing. I put my ear as close as possible to her nose to listen for her gentle pixie breaths. After a while we took her out of the cot and put her in the fresh, spotless pram right next to our bed. Still our peaceful girl didn’t stir, she just kept sleeping. I pulled the pram even closer to my side of the bed. I missed the feeling of her somersaulting and stretching inside of my tummy. I wanted to keep her safe. Always.

  Amber and pastel pink light was breaking apart the dark night sky. I leant into Peter as we looked o
ut our back kitchen window, watching the sunrise and listening to the sound of rainbow lorikeets calling to each other in the wattle tree near our fence as they started their day. Peter was wearing his faded orange t-shirt that was ripped around the neck and sleeves, a favourite item of clothing that I had banned him from wearing outside the house. I buried my head into his shoulder and inhaled; he smelt safe and secure—oh how I loved that about him. I breathed out, but only a little. We had survived our first night as a threesome. My mobile beeped with a message from a girlfriend: You made it. You got through the night. I wondered what she was doing awake. Her boys were in primary school—surely you wouldn’t choose to be up at this time?

  The hum of the steriliser, cleaning its bottles and dummies, was competing with the sound of static coming through on the baby monitor. Despite keeping the volume turned right up, still all I could hear was the noise from the street. A garbage truck pulled up out the front and I could hear the smash of glass as it was tipped into the back. Next to the noisy monitor, the kitchen bench top was covered with items that I barely knew existed a week before: a breast pump, nipple shields, cherry-shaped dummies and tins of formula. The explosion of bottles was jarring to my ears, my senses on high alert. Allegra slept on. Should I wake her up? Did she need another feed?

  ‘I’m sure you should never wake a sleeping baby,’ said Peter.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘But I have to make sure Allegra is getting enough milk. I have to keep feeding her, so my body can keep making more milk.’ I was sure Chris had told me to wake Allegra for her morning feed.

  I went into our bedroom to give Allegra a little nudge in her pram. I told myself I wasn’t really waking her up, and if she didn’t open her eyes straight away I would creep out. Her little hand had wriggled free from her wrap. As I stroked those tiny fingers I could hear her breathing change. I touched her delicate cheek and leant closer to inhale her soft, sweet new smell. Her almost translucent eyelids flickered open, reluctantly waking up from her watery dreams. Allegra’s dark blue eyes gazed into mine, and the simple trust I saw there opened a window on my soul. The crushing feeling of love and responsibility threatened to overwhelm me as I teetered on the cusp of a new life. Nothing would ever be the same again.