Is This My Beautiful Life?

by Jessica Rowe

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Nothing, this insurance ad is making me cry.’ My emotions felt raw and exposed, and I seemed to be constantly on the verge of tears. And this father saying goodbye to his little baby in the television commercial when he went off to work was making it worse. I had always been a sensitive soul, but this was the first time a TV ad had made me cry! The midwives at the hospital had told me that it was natural to experience ‘the baby blues’ a few days after giving birth, describing it as being teary and emotional over pretty much anything and everything. My sister Harriet, who had just had her second child, also told me she always felt more emotional just after she had her babies. She said it was normal to feel that way—but was it normal to feel undone by the simple mechanics of assembling a pram? I had interviewed prime ministers and pop stars and dealt with Machiavellian bosses, but apparently I couldn’t cope with a pram. It seemed impossible to unclip the blue bassinet and collapse the wheels properly so I could fit the damned designer buggy into the boot of my car.

  The twenty steep stairs leading from the door to our front gate had left me feeling trapped at home. After slipping down them once when pregnant I was tentative whenever I went up or down, but now my anxiety had increased because I had to get Allegra and her pram up those steps to reach the street. The only way I could get out of the house was if Harriet came over and helped me lift the pram, with Allegra sleeping in it, up the stairs. Then we would walk the streets of the neighbourhood, pushing our babies in their prams. Her little boy, Elliot, was just a few months older than Allegra, and the pair of them slept while we talked and walked. Harriet was gently reassuring, offering suggestions and tips about breastfeeding. It was good to leave the walls of the house behind and feel a part of the world again. I had always been close to my sisters but having Allegra had brought me even closer to Harriet. She understood my vulnerability, and our walks and talks together were a godsend for me.

  Life seemed to return to normal quickly for my husband. Of course he was changed because he was now a father, but he was able to leave the house, drive his car, get dressed, have a shower and walk out the door alone! He was already back at work when Allegra was just three days old, his parental leave cut short because he was ‘needed’ to do a story for 60 Minutes. Not much had changed for him, but everything had changed for me. I didn’t want to be resentful but I was. It was hard to have a shower and get out of my pyjamas. I didn’t have the physical or emotional energy to get changed. Every moment was consumed with thinking about Allegra and what I needed to do for her. I didn’t want to leave our daughter alone for even a moment while I got into the shower. There was so much to do and my needs came last. I didn’t care about myself anymore, all that mattered was our baby girl. My body no longer felt like my own: it was a feeding, bleeding machine. Even with years of early morning starts for work, I had never experienced tiredness like this where life was broken down into three-hour feeding blocks. Days and nights blurred into one, and there was no off switch. I always needed to be on and ready to feed, change, snuggle, wrap or try to settle Allegra. I tried to snatch pockets of sleep while my baby slept, but even then my dreams were full of sterilising bottles and singing lullabies.

  I adored my baby girl, but I felt exhausted and strung out from the relentless routine. Breastfeeding wasn’t getting any easier; my nipples were still bleeding, and even though Allegra was getting formula as well as my breast milk she wasn’t putting on enough weight. It felt like another black mark against my name every time her weight didn’t match up with the appropriate gain on the chart from the baby clinic. And was it normal to end up in tears when I couldn’t clip Allegra and her baby capsule into the car? Getting out of my pyjamas and out the door with my new baby felt like such an achievement.

  ‘What have you done to Allegra’s car seat?’ I screamed at Peter down the phone.

  ‘Nothing. I haven’t touched it since I got Allegra out of the car yesterday.’

  ‘You’ve broken it, you must have. It’s not working. I can’t do it. And I have to get to the mothers’ group meeting!’

  Allegra blinked up at me.

  ‘Okay, let’s try it again,’ Peter said patiently. ‘Angle the front of the capsule into the clip. Once you hear it click then push the back of it down.’

  ‘It’s not working!’

  ‘Check the front seat, maybe you pushed it back by mistake.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t have done that.’

  Putting Allegra down on the footpath in her capsule, I pulled the seat forward.

  ‘Oh, um, I must have done that yesterday. It’s working now. Love you,’ I said, ending the phone call.

  ‘Mummy is silly. Sorry about that, my darling. Let’s go and meet some more mummies and babies.’

  I was the last to arrive at the baby clinic. Struggling to push open the door, I tried to balance Allegra in her baby capsule on one arm and lug a huge bag on the other, crammed full of wipes, dummies, disposable nappies, a leopard-print change mat, spare clothes for Allegra and breast pads. I sighed noisily as I came in, glancing at the other mothers in the group. None of them looked flustered or sweaty, and I bet they had no problems getting their baby capsules into the car. They were sitting in a circle, blissfully breastfeeding and snuggling their babies. I found the last chair in the circle at the back of the room and placed Allegra at my feet in her capsule, happily sucking on her pink dummy.

  ‘You’re not using that, are you?’ said the nurse running the group.

  ‘Yes, it’s helping me with settling Allegra. And she really likes it.’

  ‘No, no, that’s no good. She won’t be able to latch on properly for feeding. You can’t rely on that.’

  I looked around the group of women, holding back my tears. A few of their babies had dummies as well. Surely it wasn’t that bad?

  ‘Isn’t this the best thing you’ve ever done?’ said one mother.

  ‘It just gets better and better,’ replied another.

  Christ. Next I’ll hear that they orgasm while breastfeeding.

  ‘Oh, and I just love breastfeeding.’

  I stayed silent. No, this is not the best thing I have ever done, I thought, it is the worst thing I have ever done. I don’t know what I am doing. I love my baby girl, but it’s excruciatingly painful to breastfeed. I can’t collapse the pram. I am using dummies, formula and bottles. And it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse. I can’t sleep, even though I have never been so dog-tired in my life. I feel out of control, scared and overwhelmed. And I shouldn’t be feeling like this. I have wanted to have this glorious, golden baby for such a long time. It was such a struggle to have her. It should be the happiest time of my life and I should be grateful. I had always promised that I would never be one of those mothers who complained. All the women there looked calm and capable—not like me. But I kept my chirpy veneer in place, nodded my head and smiled. I would not be coming back to this meeting.

  I had never been more alone. Somehow I had fantasised that I would find my tribe at this meeting. Surely I was not the only mother who was struggling? What was wrong with me? I was too scared to open up in front of these women, who seemed to wear their motherhood like a badge of honour, a competition that they were winning. I had always been so in control of my life and believed that by working hard at something it would turn out the right way. But I had never worked harder at anything and been so powerless of the outcome. I was not winning this mothering caper. And I couldn’t tell anyone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mum’s bedroom was right next to mine, the walls not thick enough to muffle the cries that got louder and louder. Frightened, I would creep out of my single bed and walk to her closed bedroom door, sliding my back down it to sit on the floor, still and quiet. Frozen in that position, I was torn between opening the door to comfort her and sneaking back to bed. But each night I couldn’t move from that spot until the terrifying sounds on the other side of the door had stopped; only then would I go back t
o my bed and sleep. I never asked her about those noises in the night. The smiling, happy mother I knew in the waking hours was so different to the woman I heard behind her closed door once the stars had come out to brighten the night sky. I was an eight-year-old, obsessed with ballet and chocolate Monte biscuits, but already I’d learnt about putting on a brave face.

  Mum was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was about ten years old. Thankfully it’s an episodic illness, so there are plenty of times when she is well. But there have been many times when she has fallen into the dark hole of severe depression. Mum has spent months at a time in psychiatric wards, taken numerous medications, and endured endless bouts of electroconvulsive therapy to try to shock her brain out of that terrible place in which she has battled to survive. Throughout my teenage years, Mum was hospitalised at least every twelve months. I had become expert at looking for the warning signs, Mum’s face becoming drawn and the dark rings under her eyes more pronounced as she existed on almost no sleep.

  My sisters and I would be woken by the sound of the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the night as Mum’s illness made it hard for her to sleep. I would spy Mum dressed only in her singlet and underpants, vacuuming the bookshelves. Other times we would wake and find twenty homemade hairclips that Mum had painstakingly sewed with fake flowers and pretty blue velvet ribbon during the night. Once we came home from school to find a whole new lounge in the living room; that was quite a surprise as Mum didn’t have a lot of spare money to be splashing out on new furniture. The next day she bought five straw sunhats, identical apart from their colours. She said she couldn’t decide which one she liked best. My sisters and I didn’t realise at the time but this behaviour meant Mum was in the manic phase of her bipolar illness. She would be full of extreme ideas, have extraordinary energy and not want to go to sleep. Her mind was operating on fast forward. Soon after this sort of exuberance, Mum’s mood would inevitably darken. She would snap at our chatter, telling us we were too noisy. But I couldn’t stop trying to make her laugh or smile. I was on alert, ready with my repertoire of funny stories.

  The doctors were trying to work out the best medication to keep her stable as she couldn’t tolerate the standard lithium treatment that worked well for many bipolar sufferers. I remember coming home from high school one afternoon and asking Mum how she had spent the day.

  ‘Looking at the walls.’

  ‘Oh … You won’t believe what happened at school today. I was swinging on my chair during Latin and then the—’

  ‘Please stop, you’re too loud.’

  ‘Can I get you a cup of tea? What about I go down to Woolies and buy you a scorched peanut bar? You know, your favourite?’

  ‘Be quiet, please …’

  With that I walked out of the living room back into the kitchen where my sisters sat around the old rectangular pine table. Harriet had already set out three glasses, so I got the milk out of the fridge and asked Claudia to reach the Milo in the cupboard. Right, today I would put three tablespoons of Milo into each of our cups. Usually we weren’t allowed to have that much, but right now I was in charge.

  When Mum started to spiral downwards she was increasingly impatient with the normal bustle of family life, becoming snappy and then angry with us. One day she yelled through the front door at me when I had left my keys at home. She threw the keys down the stairs at me and crawled back to the living room, unable to walk as the drugs she had been prescribed were reacting very badly with her system. But my sisters and I were unaware that it was the medication that caused such terrible changes to her mood.

  I became even more frightened when Mum’s impatience was replaced with a sinister quiet. This had been the pattern of her illness, first the mania, then the irritation and now the stone statue. Sitting in her specially upholstered blue chair, she appeared frozen as she stared at the new couch and dirty cream wall. My sisters and I would leave her there in the mornings after trying to tempt her with a cup of tea and Vegemite toast. When we returned in the afternoon Mum would be sitting in the same spot, barely registering when I kissed her soft cheek, her tea cold and the toast untouched on the coffee table. It was like our mum was no longer there, just a shell. When she was like this we knew it was time for her to go to hospital, and thankfully she didn’t need much convincing that was the safest place for her.

  I remember on one occasion, sitting on the edge of her hospital bed, I first set myself the task of trying to get her to smile. Just a hint of a smile would be enough; I wanted to see some light and sparkle return to her beautiful green eyes. Instead all I saw was my mother hunched on the corner of her bed staring vacantly at me. The sweet smell of the yellow jonquils I was clutching seemed to wilt when faced with the sadness and desperation hanging in this grim, grey room. There was no place for yellow spring flowers here. How could my naive songs, stories and jokes compete with such choking despair? But still I kept trying to pull her out of despair; that was my job, my role as Miss Cheerful.

  I’ve had a lifetime of rehearsals for putting on a brave face. It is a gift I developed from a young age, and my self-cast role became perfect training for a career in front of the camera, where it’s important to be consistent, calm and cheerful regardless of whatever else is happening in your life. It’s a tendency that I still find hard to shrug off, especially when I need to ask for help. So it seemed a sign of weakness for me to admit I was struggling as a new mum when I was supposed to be happy. I had seen what had happened to my mother when it was all too much, and certainly some part of me was fearful that I too might end up in a psychiatric ward. My mind was making all sorts of catastrophic leaps and I was terrified about where it would end. Would my life also unravel? Would the despair inside of me leach out and become those same dark, dead of night sobs hidden on the other side of the bedroom door while my baby and husband were locked out, listening on the other side?

  From the outside, in the sunny light of day, I at long last had my baby. My family was complete, so what reason did I have to feel anxious, insecure, out of my depth and unhappy? I had everything, but I was struggling. I wanted to be capable and strong, to be everything to my daughter that I felt my mother couldn’t always be because of her illness. I didn’t realise how high I was setting the bar or how much pressure I was putting on myself. Up until then I had managed to crash through and keep going through the sheer force of my cheery personality.

  But the skill set and default mechanism that had got me through my 36 years was not working anymore. What I really needed to do was ask for help, but instead I kept up my award-winning performance as the perfect mother with the perfect baby. Chris, the mothercraft nurse, would call me each morning to talk through how the night had gone. I listened dutifully to her suggestions about the day’s routine, wrote them down and did my best to make it work. Then I’d put on my pink leopard-print sundress with matching pink ballet flats and my big black Jackie O sunglasses to hide my tired, frightened eyes from the world. It looked beautiful from the outside, but inside I felt ugly, unworthy and a failure.

  I couldn’t stop looking at Allegra as I tried to manoeuvre the orange pram over the giant tree roots. The Moreton Bay fig outside our house has a magnificent sturdy trunk and glossy, green leaves, but the pram’s back wheels kept getting stuck on its unwieldy roots. The safety strap from the pram was wrapped tightly around my wrist as I shoved hard to get it moving along the concrete pavement. I was sure I detected a smile from my baby girl as she looked up at her sweaty mother. Yes, it was a smile, her first smile, even if my aunt would later tell me it was just wind. Was that a dimple I could see in her cheek? I was sure it was. You’re just too good to be true, my beautiful baby girl. The pair of us made slow progress along the street.

  ‘How are you?’ my neighbour asked, as she was walking back from the supermarket with her arms full of shopping bags.

  ‘Great, just great,’ I replied with a large smile, not wanting to stop for a chat. Allegra was starting to doze off thanks to the rocky
rhythm of the wheels bumping along the footpath and I didn’t want anything to interrupt her morning sleep as we walked down the street to pick up milk, bread and my morning coffee.

  ‘When are you going back to work?’

  ‘Soon.’

  It was odd. I was always being asked the question about when I was heading back to my job. The work question had now replaced the ‘When are you getting engaged/married/having a baby?’ questions. Unfortunately, I didn’t brush off this latest inquiry as polite conversation but instead used it to put more pressure on myself. When was I going back to work? Back to my life?

  I had grown up in a generation of young women who had been taught that we could have it all, and that we deserved it all, too. As a feminist, it was part of my belief system that my gender was not going to hold me back from achieving the work-life balance that I had naively predicted would accompany motherhood. I would be a superwoman, a supermum who could take it all in her glittering caped stride.

  But now that I was a mother, I was forever changed. I didn’t realise the exquisite, delicious hold my daughter would have over me. The leave form I had filled out while my baby was tucked safely inside me requested four months’ maternity leave. Sixteen weeks away from work sounded fine to me then; it would show my bosses I was very, very serious about returning to my job on Today. However, that arbitrary number had little relevance now that my Allegra had weaved her spell over me. I wasn’t ready for her to be looked after by someone else so I could face a television studio again. Despite feeling adrift and lonely, it was impossible to imagine being apart from my daughter. I wanted her, needed her to be close to me all the time. The love I had for her was suffocating and all encompassing. She was too precious for me to leave in the care of just her father or her grandparents. It didn’t matter that my dear father-in-law was an eminent paediatrician who had a lifetime of experience looking after babies and children. I was the only one who believed I could care for Allegra properly!