Babies in Waiting (35 page)

‘She could be Prime Minister,’ said Gemma proudly. ‘She can do anything she wants. I’m not going to dress her in pink or make her do ballet. She’s going to study physics and languages and we’re going to travel together.’

‘Wow . . . giving birth has turned you into a feminist!’ I said, surprised.

‘I want her to be braver than me,’ said Gemma softly, touching the lacy blanket that Millie was swaddled in.

‘Are you regretting this?’

‘No, not at all!’ She looked shocked at the suggestion. ‘But now I understand why people turn into pushy parents, sort of. I just want the world for her.’

I stayed with Gemma for an hour or so, but Millie stayed asleep. Then Ben arrived to spend some time with them. They both gazed adoringly at their daughter. Ben seemed all right . . . just, and I know this sounds stupid . . . very, very young. I suppose I’d got used to Gemma’s age, but,
looking at Ben, he really is just a kid. Half an hour later, the night nurse arrived and started bustling around and organising things. That was my cue to go, so I set off home.

That evening, I told James all about it. ‘It’s amazing . . . both Lou and Gemma seem quite different, like the whole experience of having a baby has changed them.’

‘In a good way?’

‘I think so. I suppose it’s that weird thing of realising there’s someone in the world who matters more to you than yourself.’

‘You matter more to me than myself,’ said James.

‘Thank you, love, that’s the right thing to say, of course, but it’s, you know, conditional. If I murdered someone, or shagged your best mate or stole all your money, you’d stop loving me. You can’t stop loving your child . . . ever.’

‘No, I suppose you can’t. Even if they grow long hair and listen to terrible music, or support Manchester United.’

I giggled at that. ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you the best bit!’ I said suddenly. ‘Gemma has a night nurse.’

‘What, like the cold medicine, or like the song?’

‘Neither. It’s a special maternity nurse who comes in at night and takes care of the baby so Gemma can sleep.’

‘Wow, what does that cost?’

‘A lot to the likes of us, pennies to the Hamiltons, I’m sure. Anyway, I met her. She’s a large, northern woman with a bosom like a shelf and a proper, old-fashioned nurse’s uniform.’

‘I bet poor little Millie’s too scared to cry at night,’ said James.

‘I’m sure she is. But the best part is her name. She’s called Sister Nethercleft.’

‘You made that up!’ said James.

‘I did not. She had a name tag and everything.’

‘Nethercleft?’

‘Nethercleft.’

‘Sister Bumcrack?’

‘Indeed,’ I said, and we started to laugh.

And that was when I felt the very weird sensation inside, like a swelling. And even though I’d never felt anything like it before, I knew it was my waters breaking. I jumped up with great agility, and made it to the bathroom and slammed the door before the flood poured out of me. James was right behind me. I heard him tapping on the door.

‘Toni? Are you OK?’

‘My waters have gone,’ I said, in a faint, sick voice. ‘There’s a big mess.’

‘What do you need me to do? Shall I ring the hospital?’

‘James, there’s greenish stuff in the water. And it smells awful.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s meconium. Stuff from the baby’s bowels. Basically, It’s done a poo.’

‘Is that bad?’

‘It can be, especially if there’s a lot of stuff.’

‘Well, is there? Is there a lot?’

‘I don’t know. It looks like a lot to me. James, come in.’

He opened the door then and came into the bathroom.

He took one look at the puddle of gunk on the floor around my feet, and he said, ‘I’m calling an ambulance.’

Things happened very quickly after that. James rang, and I was luckier than Gemma, an ambulance was there in minutes. As it was late evening, we got to the hospital really quickly. Through everything, I just kept doing my hypnobirthing breathing and holding on to James’ hand like it was my lifeline. I wasn’t in pain or anything, but I also couldn’t feel the baby moving very much. Maybe now the waters were gone he or she was a bit more squashed.

They examined me and put on a foetal monitor. I could see that the midwife didn’t look happy. She kept checking the readout, and then she went off and came back with a young doctor. The doctor looked at the printed sheet, then stood watching the paper spooling out of the machine for another minute or so. She was young and Asian . . . very pretty, but she looked even younger than me. Gemma’s age, if that was possible, which of course it wasn’t.

‘Okay, Toni,’ she said in a very calm voice. ‘It looks as if your baby is in some distress. I’m going to recommend an emergency caesarean, and that we prep you for theatre right away.’

‘But I’m doing hypnobirthing!’ I said. ‘I can’t—’

‘Do it.’ I’ve never heard James sound so firm. ‘Take her to theatre right now. Can I come too?’

‘A nurse will take you to clean up and get scrubs and a mask,’ said the doctor.

Before I knew it, James was gone, and my bed was being
wheeled down the corridor, very quickly it seemed. I tried to keep doing the breathing, but I was so, so scared. I remember seeing those circular theatre lights above my head, and hearing a kindly voice as I was hoisted off the bed and on to an operating table. I kept breathing and counting in my head, trying to visualise my special, calm place, but then I felt a needle go into my arm, and everything went . . .

Waking up from an anaesthetic is very peculiar, because it just feels like waking up at any other time. Except you didn’t go to sleep, and you’re not in your bed, and there’s pain and noise and lights and nausea, and more than anything, you want to ask someone where the hell you are, but you feel so damned sore and sick that you can’t.

It took me a good few minutes (not to mention a bit of retching into a kidney bowl, while crying and holding my stomach), to work out I was in a hospital bed and the birth I’d been looking forward to for nine months had happened, and I’d missed it. First I realised that the person holding the bowl for me to throw up into was James. Then I realised that the stomach I was holding was a mass of wobbliness and not a big taut ball any more. And then I sat up as best I could and looked around wildly.

‘Where’s my baby?’

‘He’s okay,’ said James soothingly. ‘He’s breathed in a bit of the meconium stuff so they’re keeping an eye on him. But he’s going to be fine.’

‘He? It’s a boy?’

‘He’s bloody gorgeous,’ said James. ‘Lots of blond hair.’

‘I want to see him!’ I started to cry.

‘I know, sweetie. As soon as they let me, I’ll put you in a wheelchair and wheel you over.’

‘I have to hold him! We have to have skin-to-skin contact to bond. Did you do skin-to-skin? Please tell me you did.’

‘I couldn’t,’ said James. ‘They had to take him straight away to clear his lungs. But we’ll hold him every minute as soon as we can.’

I lay back on the pillows, and the tears just kept falling. This was so not how I imagined it. Me, full of stitches, lying in a hospital bed, my baby somewhere else, sick, alone, without me.

The hospital staff were amazing, though. Within a few minutes, a nurse came and helped me into a wheelchair. She gave me a big handful of tissues to mop up the tears, and she and James wheeled me through to the baby ICU. And there he was, my little son, with a tube up his nose and his scrawny little chest struggling for breath. It was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen.

‘Don’t worry,’ said the lovely nurse. ‘He’s a big, strong boy. This is just a little setback. He’ll be right as rain in a day or two.’

I stroked his hand and he grabbed hold of my finger. ‘Wow! His grip is so strong!’ I gasped.

‘He’s a fighter,’ said the nurse.

James pulled up a chair on the other side of the little crib and took hold of our little boy’s other hand. And together we sat and watched him fight.

The lovely nurse was right. He was as right as rain. For the first two days, I basically sat next to his bed 24/7 with a breast pump attached to one of my boobs. At first, I produced little teaspoonfuls of colostrum (that’s the first, yellowy milk – you only get a tiny bit, but it’s very important that the baby gets it), but then my proper milk came in. Now let me tell you, I might have been a bit rubbish at giving birth, but I was born to breastfeed. I woke up on the third morning, and I swear I’d swapped boobs with Jordan. Without putting too fine a point on it, they were sodding enormous! Blimp enormous. 44-EEEnormous. When I showed James, he laughed out loud, and then looked like a little boy whose Christmas and birthdays and tickets to the Cup Final had all arrived on the same day. I felt a bit sorry for him . . . it wasn’t like he was going to get to play with them any time soon.

When I sat down to express, well, the milk started to just pour into the bottle. When one of the nurses saw, she asked if I’d like to donate some for the sick and
premature babies in the neonatal ICU. ‘Okay,’ I said dubiously, ‘as long as there’s enough for Harry.’

And there I go again, getting things in the wrong order. That’s his name. Well, it’s Henry, actually, but as soon as that was decided, it got shortened to Harry. He weighed seven pounds and ten ounces at birth, and he’s got this sweet little quiff of blond hair. Because he was born by C-section, he didn’t have that squished look lots of newborns do. As far as James and I were concerned, he was quite simply the most beautiful baby every born. And possibly a genius too. The pinnacle of evolution.

Those days in the hospital, while they were scary and worrying, were actually quite cool. Gemma and Louise couldn’t come in because you’re not supposed to bring tiny babies back to the hospital, but they texted all the time. Caro and Robyn rushed over with balloons and booze and all sorts of inappropriate gifts and made me laugh so hard I feared for my stitches. James’ parents and my dad came and gazed at their new grandchild with all the love in the world. There were loads of people around, and I was this big star because I was doing so well at feeding Harry (and about three other babies too, with my donated milk). He soon lost the tubes, and I could hold him as much as I liked, and feed him myself instead of expressing. And within a few days, he was so much better that we got sent home. Those first days at home were fun too . . . James was on paternity leave, and loads of people came to visit, and everyone brought food and presents and wanted to cuddle Harry.

But then James went back to work, and the visits slowed down and then stopped. And I was on my own at home with Harry, all day long. And then Harry got colic.

I never really knew what colic was before I had Harry. It’s just a little word. Five letters. C-o-l-i-c. I’d heard people talk about ‘colicky’ babies, and I thought it meant they were a bit irritable. I remembered ‘colic’ as something horses got, from those pony stories I used to read when I was about eleven. But when it happens to your baby, well . . . then it’s more than just a little word. I suppose there are lots of things like that, words that seem small and manageable until they directly affect you. ‘Doctoral dissertation’. ‘Parachute jump’. ‘Root-canal surgery’. Well, ‘Baby with colic’ is right up there.

Harry was fine in the mornings . . . he’d lie quietly in his carrycot, looking at the world, or feed, or sleep. But like clockwork between 2 and 3 p.m., he’d start to grunt and pull up his knees, and then he’d begin to scream. And he wouldn’t stop until he fell asleep, exhausted, at about 8 p.m. It was just awful. I tried everything . . . walking up and down with him, jiggling him on my shoulder, holding him very still across my knees. Sometimes, holding him face down so his belly rested on my forearm would work for a little while and he’d stop and whimper, and even doze for a while. But it never worked for long, and besides, I’d get tired and so sore from standing and holding him. My C-section scar would start to pull, my back would ache and I always seemed to need the loo. Because of the screaming, I couldn’t go out, and I didn’t want visitors to
come round either. It wasn’t like I could chat politely to a visitor while poor Harry howled his little lungs out. So every afternoon became this endless, endless torture for both of us. By five thirty, I’d be standing by the window, praying that somehow James would have got off work early and would be coming down the road. But of course it would be another hour before he finally came through the door, at which point I’d thrust Harry into his arms and dash off to the loo. I needed to do that firstly because I was bursting to pee, but secondly because then I could bury my face in a towel and sob for a minute or two.

I looked it up, and there’s no cure for colic. There are some drops and medicines you can try, but they didn’t help Harry at all. The health visitor, or as James and I learned to call her, the total moron, suggested that maybe my breast milk disagreed with him, so against my better judgment I offered him a bottle of formula. Well, that made it ten times worse, so the formula went in the bin and the health visitor went on the shit-list. The best anyone could offer me was to say – ‘It usually gets better after twelve weeks.’ Which, when your baby is two weeks old, means you have at least seventy days of watching him scream for six hours at a stretch, and you can’t do a damned thing to stop it. And that’s
if
it got better at twelve weeks, because there’s no guarantee of that. It can go on longer.

So that was my life – completely overtaken by the monster, Colic, a five-letter word that I’d never given a moment’s thought to before. I’d imagined brunches in the sun with Gemma or Louise and their babies, strolls
by the river with Caro and Robyn pushing the pushchair and stopping at every pub, proudly taking Harry into the office to show off to everyone there. I’d imagined handing Harry over to a babysitter and going dancing, for heaven’s sake! The reality was, I often didn’t even get to brush my teeth or eat anything more complicated than a slice of bread with nothing on it, let alone dress up and go out. If you’d told me a year ago that this was where I’d be this September, I’d have laughed at you. Well, let me tell you, nobody’s laughing now.