by Leah Mercer
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
14 November
She’s here! Anabelle is here and she’s perfect. The hard part (if you can call lying on my back, feeling nothing, as the doctor scrambles around in my womb ‘hard’) is over, and my daughter exists in the world now.
Everything went according to plan. The sun streamed from the brilliant blue November sky this morning when David and I headed to the hospital. I watched our flat recede from the back of the taxi and a mixture of emotions streaked through me, strangely similar to how I felt when I left work: determination that our life will remain the same despite this new addition, mixed with worry that, even though I’d done everything possible to ensure a smooth transition, I was being shunted on to a course from which there was no return.
But then David squeezed my hand and smiled, and the excitement I’d felt last night flooded through me, sweeping away any doubts. If ever a couple was ready, we were.
David held my arm as we entered the gleaming hulk of the hospital and made our way to the maternity ward. The soles of my shoes clicked smartly on the tiles beneath me, and in the metal of the lift doors, my newly coloured and sharply trimmed pixie cut gleamed. The cocoon coat I was wearing disguised my bulk, and if you cast a quick glance over me, you might not even know I was pregnant. I smiled as I realised that this time tomorrow, I wouldn’t be – God, I couldn’t wait for that. No more people’s eyes raking my midsection. No more gooey glances from older women, and none of this ‘when’s it due?’ nonsense. I’d be back to me – a mother, yes, but a person in my own right once again.
We checked in, I had an epidural, and several hours later I was lying on my back, my heart lurching when I heard my daughter’s cry. The doctor placed her on my chest and she gazed up at me, her blue eyes blinking in instant recognition. And then they whisked her away to check her weight and make sure everything was all right. It was, thank goodness: she had ten fingers, ten toes and all the usual bits in all the right places. I held my breath until she was back by my side. I’ll never forget how her eyes – so alert for a newborn – sank closed when she touched me.
As if she knew me; knew my body, the place she’d made home for the past nine months. Here she was, and now she was mine.
David bent down to kiss me, and I glanced up in surprise. I’d kind of forgotten he was there. Thank God he is, because I’m going to need him more than ever . . . now that we’re a family.
Now that we have Anabelle.
Anabelle. I can’t help smiling at the name, because it’s certainly not one I’d ever have thought of choosing. It definitely wasn’t on our list of top five names. But once we saw our baby, the traditional, solid names we’d settled on seemed so plain, so . . . unemotional, really, and ill suited to our beautiful girl. David and I stared at her for hours this afternoon, unable to look away. If I say so myself, she’s gorgeous. Just enough hair not to look like a bald egg, but not too much that she resembles a gorilla. Her skin is unmarked and her head so nicely formed, she looks like she’s come from a doll mould.
We dressed her in a pure white Babygro, taking it in turns to hold her snug little body up against us as she dozed for hours. David picked up Chinese and sparkling elderflower pressé and we toasted our new family – our new life – as parents. So far, so perfect.
Finally, just before David bunked down on the gym mat the nurse had left for us in the corner of the private room we were lucky enough to get, he turned to me and said, ‘What about Anabelle?’ He’d heard the name on the radio as we drove to hospital, and for some reason, it had stuck with him.
I would have dismissed it before as too cutesy, but gazing down at our daughter sleeping peacefully, her black lashes grazing her rosy cheeks, I couldn’t imagine a better-fitting name. It was melodic and feminine, and our strong, healthy daughter didn’t need a plain name to telegraph her strength: she would show it every day in the future.
And so, I’m Anabelle’s mother. I’m a mother, and yet I don’t feel any different. Despite my pre-birth assertions, a very small part of me still feared that by crossing the divide to motherhood, I’d instantly be changed . . . but I’m not. I still care about work; still plan to show everyone I’ll be as committed as ever when I return. In fact, I’ll confirm my return with HR once we’re back home, now that I’ve had the baby and everything is all right.
It’s only been a few hours, and already I can’t believe how full of emotion I am for this tiny creature. But there’s room in this life – in my heart – for me, too.
And I think we’ll all get along just fine.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
16 November
I’m guessing at the date – our whole world has stopped. I can barely see to scribble on this page. God knows if what I’m writing is even legible. But it doesn’t matter. I’m not writing this to be read. I’m writing this because I just . . . I need to get out this uncertainty, as if by penning the words, I can then cross them out.
Delete them.
Forget that this even happened.
Everything was going so well. Better than well, even: fantastic. I was in less pain, Anabelle was the best sleeper ever, and even though my boobs looked like twin missiles ready to eject from my chest since my milk had come in, I was confident we could take it from here – so confident I badgered the nurses and midwives to perform Anabelle’s physical exam as soon as possible so we could be discharged. I longed to be back in my familiar surroundings, with all my carefully chosen baby gear at hand.
And then . . . Oh God, and then.
I can’t believe it. Even though I’m sitting here, in this horrible room on this rickety rocking chair, I still can’t absorb this has happened to us – no, that this might be happening to us, because nothing has happened yet. The nurse could be wrong. I’m hoping. I’m praying, even though I don’t know to whom, that the doctors are just being overly vigilant. That the tests come back saying everything is wonderfully, beautifully normal. We’ll take our daughter home and start our lives, even more grateful for our perfect child than we were before.
Not that I was grateful to begin with, actually. I’d taken Anabelle’s health for granted, not even thinking something could go wrong. But oh, God, I will be grateful now . . . now that I know things can change in an instant.
Now that I know what fear really is.
I’d been so excited when the midwife came to collect me and Anabelle for her physical exam. She asked if I wanted to wait for my husband, but David had nipped out to get me a coffee (the hospital coffee is dreadful), and I was keen to get on with it. I hobbled down the corridor, wincing with every step, as the midwife cheerily wheeled along Anabelle in her glass-sided cot. She looked so peaceful, wrapped in a soft pink blanket that David’s mum has given us. Even though I’d vowed not to force pink on my daughter, it was such a wonderful dusky hue and such soft fleece that I hadn’t been able to stop myself shoving it in my hospital bag at the last minute. And now, it seemed to suit her, contrasting nicely with her almost translucent skin.
My daughter woke briefly as the midwife handed her to the nurse, her eyes fluttering open, then closing again. She didn’t even stir as the nurse unpeeled her layers, examined her hips, then dug out the smallest stethoscope I’ve ever seen and placed it on my baby’s skin. I tapped my foot impatiently.
She’s fine, she’s fine, I remember thinking. Come on, just let me go home.
But the nurse didn’t hand my baby back. Instead, she took the stethoscope from her ears, and turned to face me.
‘I’m just going to grab a doctor to have a quick listen to your baby’s heart,’ she said.
‘Heart?’ Immediately, my own heart fluttered inside me. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘I’m sure it’s okay,’ she said, her voice calm and soothing, as if she was used to dealing with neurotic first-time mothers. ‘She does have a bit of a murmur, but it’s quite common in newborns. Always good to let the doctor have a listen, just to be on the safe side.’
‘Oka
y.’ Back in her glass cot, Anabelle had fallen sound asleep again. She’s fine, she’s fine. My heart pounded out the rhythm.
‘Hello. I’m Dr Graham.’ A tall man with a kind voice appeared. ‘I’m just going to have a listen to your baby’s heart, all right?’
I nodded, watching as he repeated the same procedure as the nurse. But instead of telling me it was nothing, he listened again. And again. With every second that ticked by, my panic rose.
‘There’s definitely something there,’ he said at last, settling the blanket back around my daughter.
‘But it’s quite common for newborns to have heart murmurs, right?’ I parroted the nurse’s words, holding on to them like a lifeline.
‘It can be, yes. But the one in your baby is quite loud, and that can be a sign of something more serious. That, and she does look a bit cyanotic to me.’
‘Cyanotic?’ I echoed. ‘You mean blue?’ I peered at Anabelle. She did have a slightly blue tinge, but I’d figured it was just because her skin was so thin. Something more serious? The room began to close in around me as fear more intense than anything I’d ever known swept through me. It couldn’t be that serious, surely, or one of the prenatal scans would have picked it up. That was the whole point of them, wasn’t it?
Then I remembered, and I went cold. The anomaly scan – the one I’d ducked out of. The one I’d never rescheduled. Shit. I sucked in air, trying to fight my way through the terror gripping me. Our first scan was perfect. The ultrasound technician had almost completed the second scan. I was healthy. I had no problems in my pregnancy.
Everything would be okay.
‘I’m going to refer you for some more tests,’ the doctor said. ‘Then we’ll have a better idea of what we’re looking at.’
‘But I can still go home today?’ My voice sounded plaintive even to my own ears, and I hated how Dr Graham and the nurse exchanged looks, as if they knew something I didn’t – as if they felt sorry for me. I wanted to shake them, to tell them they had no reason. My daughter would be fine. She was fine.
‘I’m afraid not.’ Dr Graham shook his head. ‘If there is something wrong with your baby’s heart, we need to know just how serious it is before we can release you. Sometimes an infant will seem fine for the first few days or even weeks, but then the problem can make itself known.’ He patted my arm. ‘I know it can be worrying, but just try to relax. You’re in the best place you can be right now, and your baby will get all the help she needs.’
I jerked away from his touch. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it. Relax? I glanced down at my child, and suddenly she seemed so fragile, so pale, so helpless in that dusky pink blanket.
Just be okay, please. I’d sent up a silent prayer. Just be okay.
And now, I’m back in the room with my daughter. She’s still sleeping, and I’m writing this down before David returns, trying to grasp it all so I can force out the words when he comes back.
Trying to beat back the panic that rises each time I replay the doctor’s words.
It’s nothing, I’m sure. It has to be nothing. Because if it’s not, and they do pick up something . . . Something that might have been spotted if only I’d gone back for that scan . . .
No. I won’t think that. The doctors are just doing their job. I’m thankful to them, even if I wish I could be home right now.
Once we’re back at the flat with our daughter in our arms, we’ll laugh about this little hiccup. It’ll become part of Anabelle’s birth story, adding some drama to an otherwise straightforward tale. We’ll clutch our daughter closer, thanking God our lives haven’t been detoured in such a sudden, brutal manner.
Relieved that our family’s future is still intact.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
20 November
Nothing exists except my daughter. My daughter, who’s in a neonatal intensive care unit now, a needle in her arm and breathing with the help of a respirator until she has her open-heart surgery tomorrow – surgery she needs to survive.
My daughter, who’s so weak that she can’t even breastfeed.
My daughter, whose mother failed her – failed to help, failed to do everything she could to ensure her daughter’s future . . . because of her job. Her fucking job was more important than her baby’s health!
How could I have been like that? How could I have been so careless?
I want to scream and cry. I want to tear myself open and to rip out that part of me, but what good would that do? I can’t turn back the clock. It’s too late, and all I can do is wait. Wait, and try not to stagger under the guilt that presses down on me. A guilt that’s so palpable, it’s like another person in the room.
It’s been four days since the nurse first heard Anabelle’s heart murmur, yet it feels like we’ve been living this nightmare forever. When David returned from the coffee run that day, I couldn’t bear to tell him straight away. I watched as he picked up our sleeping daughter, cradling her in his arms. Her rosebud mouth stretched in a yawn, and he smiled with such contentedness and absolute bliss that I felt my heart almost break in two.
‘Did the nurse do the final checks?’ he asked, his voice so quiet I could barely hear him. Anabelle stretched in his arms, and we were both silent until she was still again. It’s funny how, even though it was barely two days at that point, already we’d adapted our behaviour to suit Anabelle’s needs.
I looked up at him and swallowed, my heart lurching. Even though I refused to believe that anything could be seriously wrong, the very thought of planting a seed of doubt in my husband’s mind made me want to be sick. And although I’d done everything possible to minimise the worry inside me, voicing the words aloud might make those fears real.
I took his hand and pulled him down on to the bed beside me. I leaned against him, weaving my finger into Anabelle’s closed fist. I wanted us to be physically connected. I needed to feel solid and real.
‘She did.’ My voice was hoarse in the small, stale room. The sound of babies crying, phones ringing and a woman’s laughter drifted through the air.
‘We can go home, then?’ David’s voice lifted in excitement. ‘Thank God.’ He grimaced and rubbed his back. ‘I can’t say I’ll miss that gym mat.’
‘Actually . . .’ I took in a breath. ‘They want to do more tests.’
David’s eyes swung towards me, and I felt his muscles stiffen. ‘Why?’
‘They think something might be wrong with her heart.’ I forced the words out of me, and they hung in the air. I waited for David to bat them away but instead his features contorted with fear.
‘Her heart?’ His face had gone white, and panic clutched at me as I saw his response.
‘Apparently she has a heart murmur, and she looks a bit blue.’ I peered over at her. ‘She doesn’t look blue, does she?’
But the way David’s lips tightened confirmed that, really, she did.
And before we knew it, a doctor had come to take our daughter away for an echocardiogram, to see inside her heart. David and I followed, me still hobbling like an old woman and David holding my arm . . . though, in reality, I don’t know who was supporting whom. David was supposed to tell me I was being silly. He was supposed to boost me up, to say that this was just an extra check, to be sure. Instead, he seemed as lost as me.
And then the doctor blew our world apart – a world we hadn’t even had a chance to properly construct. Our daughter has transposition of the great arteries, a condition in which things are flipped around inside the heart, so that blood without oxygen is pumped around the body instead of blood with oxygen. It’s a condition ‘not conducive to life’, as the medic so bluntly put it, and Anabelle will need open-heart surgery to survive. Until then, they’ll give her medicine to help her breathe and she’ll use a respirator, if need be.
The doctor’s words flowed over me, and I tried my best to keep them in. Operation in the next few days, moving us to family accommodation, family resource and support centre . . . we were caught in a current sweeping us
down a river so quickly I couldn’t get a grip on anything to save me, to haul me from this disastrous place I was drowning in. I looked at David and he was already under the surface, his eyes wide and unseeing, his mouth open in a silent gasp.
We followed a kind nurse to the neonatal intensive care unit, me holding Anabelle in my arms, despite the pain of her soft baby weight on my stitches. When the nurse stretched out her arms to take my baby and settle her into her new cot, I just . . . couldn’t. My head told me I needed to, but my heart . . .
Finally David eased Anabelle from me and I stepped back as the nurse attached our daughter to tubes. I felt so empty, as if she had already been taken from us. She wasn’t inside me any more, and she wasn’t in my arms, either. She was existing in a hinterland between life and death, a place where I couldn’t reach her. In the space of a few hours, our daughter had gone from a healthy newborn to one who might—
I stopped myself from travelling down that road. I couldn’t travel down that road.
That first night in our family accommodation, I didn’t sleep. I lay beside David, my eyes wide open. I didn’t know if he was awake or not. Each of us was locked into our own separate world, unsure what to say or do to comfort the other. I longed for him to tell me everything would be okay; to revert to his blue-sky thinking as usual. But he seemed frozen, unable to utter even a word.
When David was asleep, I slid from beneath the starchy covers and opened up my laptop. I was desperate to absolve myself for my negligence; desperate to prove that even if Anabelle’s condition had been spotted sooner, it couldn’t have made any difference – to her, anyway. I might not have rescheduled that scan, but maybe it didn’t really matter.
It had to not matter.
But instead of plugging the gaping hole of guilt inside me, what I discovered ripped it even wider. Because if the condition is picked up on scans before the baby is born, children usually have better short-term and long-term outcomes.
