Can Anybody Help Me? (22 page)

Yvonne sent her message, tapped the phone screen and refreshed the page. Poor woman. She silenced the car radio and turned her head to look at the baby in the back seat. Soothed by the car journey, Róisín was dead to the world, her tiny chest rising and falling under a pink blanket. Yvonne checked her watch. She'd be out cold for at least another half-hour. Which is why she herself should have been sitting at home, drinking a coffee and watching a
Murder She Wrote
rerun, not parked at a community centre she didn't want to visit, waiting for a class she didn't want to attend.

She tapped her Netmammy app again, but there were no new replies to MammyNo1's sad post. Meanwhile, Irish Mammies of the flesh-and-blood variety were pulling into the parking spaces around her, unbuckling toddlers from car seats, pouring babies into slings and giving each other hearty greetings and air kisses as they walked through the door festooned with a ‘Baby Yoga' sign.

Yvonne bit her lip. She hated this. Hated the rule that said that said you had to be friends with people just because you all decided to procreate the same year. And, she admitted to herself, she had also started to hate the Public Health Nurse, Veronica, who seemed to have made Yvonne's initiation into the world of mother and baby groups a personal crusade.

When the doorbell had rung at 10 a.m. the previous morning,
Yvonne – who had spotted her blue Nissan Micra from the bedroom window – had considered not letting Veronica in at all. But as the nurse walked up the path, Yvonne suddenly remembered that the sitting-room window had been left open to air the house after a particularly nasty nappy incident, and that the sitting-room floor was covered in dirty laundry and would be visible to anyone who decided to take a quick peep through the blinds.

So she'd thrown the least stained cardigan she could find over her pyjamas and shown Veronica through to the kitchen, which, although also untidy, was at least relatively clean.

‘Having a little duvet day, are we?'

Yvonne had resisted the urge to point out that only one of the three of them was actually still wearing nightclothes. Instead she'd muttered something about being on her way to the shower and glumly handed over the baby while putting on the kettle for tea. Teething had kept both herself and Róisín awake all night, but by the time she'd found two clean cups the little traitor had fallen cosily asleep in the nurse's arms, leaving her to return to her favourite topic, Getting Yvonne Out and About.

‘You don't have any family over here, do you?'

Veronica had a particularly irritating way of tilting her head to one side and looking at Yvonne from under her eyelids that made her feel like a toddler being sent to the naughty step.

‘No. Well. My mother-in-law is brilliant.'

The nurse's sleek black bob waved gently from side to side as she shook her head.

‘That must be lonely for you, though? Not having your own mum around?'

Not really, Yvonne wanted to say, given that she hadn't spoken to her mother in a decade. But she settled for a shrug, and a sip of tea.

‘Hmm.'

The black bob, unconvinced, fell back into exact, sleek lines.

‘So, have you given more thought to our little group?'

‘Yeah. Great. It sounds lovely. I mean, I'm up to my eyes at the moment with …'

But Yvonne's sleepless night had left her brain encased in concrete and her sentence simply tailed away, giving the Veronica the gap she needed.

‘Mums need other mums!' Keeping the baby clamped under her arm, she reached into her large black handbag and dropped a number of leaflets on the counter. ‘Post Natal Depression – the Signs' waved up at Yvonne in large yellow writing.

‘I've a class tomorrow morning as it happens. Baby Yoga, with tea afterwards. Will you come? We weigh the babies too, it's lovely!'

Lacking the energy to come up with an alternative plan, Yvonne had simply agreed. Which is why at 10.55 the following morning she found herself lurking in the car park, listening to her baby snore and wishing with every bone in her body that she was anywhere but here.

She was just unbuckling her seat belt when a text message pinged into her phone. Rescue? No, unfortunately. Just a reminder from the local beauty salon that eyebrow waxing was half price for the next two days. Chance would be a fine thing, muttered Yvonne, realising she hadn't so much as applied moisturiser in three days. But as she deleted the message she
found her finger straying once again to the Netmammy app. Just one look.

‘Cooee!! Great to see you! And the little pet! Are we set?'

Crap. Yvonne closed the app and looked bleakly out of the car window to where the nurse, now dressed from head to toe in a navy tracksuit that looked like an inflated version of a primary school uniform, was waving at her. Did people actually say cooee? In the back of the car, Róisín murmured and then started to complain.

She rolled down the car window.

‘Just coming!'

MammyNo1 would have to languish in cyberspace for another little while.

*

‘And you're still feeding her! Aren't you fanTAAStic.'

The elongation of the middle syllable made it clear to Yvonne that Nurse Veronica Dwyer thought she was anything but. Resisting the urge to say, ‘What do you suggest, that I starve
her?' she hitched the baby higher into her arms and pulled her cardigan closer around her. She wasn't usually squeamish about breastfeeding in public, she wouldn't have left the house at all over the past six months if she had been. But there was something about the way the other mothers at the table were looking at her that made her feel she was doing something wrong. She had tried her hardest to escape as soon as the class was over, but Veronica was having none of it. Instead, she had bustled her towards a table at the back of the hall and insisted she join a group of three tracksuited women for tea and a plate of what Yvonne knew would be referred to as ‘biccies'.

‘And how's she sleeping for you?'

‘Oh, you know.'

Yvonne smiled and stroked Róisín's forehead, thinking about the lovely hour-long snuggle they'd had that morning, after Gerry had gone to work and the baby had finally dozed off.

‘She's up and down. She still feeds a good bit at night, but I don't mind really. Anyway, she's in the bed beside me most of the time, I really don't notice the night feeds any more.'

‘I see.' Veronica's eyebrows disappeared upwards into her hairline. Beside her, a vision in pink velour took a dainty sip from her tea.

‘Have you tried upping her solids maybe? A spoon of baby rice at night in the bottle does wonders for this little one, she's been sleeping through since she was six weeks old!'

‘Actually, I've never given her a bottle.'

And there it was, baby chess. Yvonne shrank back into her seat as the other woman sniffed and offered up an imaginary pawn.

‘Oh, I know they SAY it's best for them …' The woman upended her own baby's bottle, and noted the final suck with
a nod of satisfaction. ‘But I always think there is great comfort in knowing exactly what they're getting!'

Check.

Yvonne gave a weak smile and watched as the mother, who had managed to coordinate her child's pink babygro to her own perfectly fitting yoga pants, balanced her baby against her shoulder and elicited a burp with such precision that Yvonne wanted to applaud. She laid the instantly asleep baby back into its Bugaboo (also pink, of course) before picking up her drink and continuing.

‘And I know lots of people delay solids till they are six months too, but really I've done this three times and a spoon of baby rice in the bottle never did mine any harm!'

Checkmate.

Yvonne looked at the woman's contented bundle and compared her to Róisín who was wriggling, unsettled and trying to look around the room while keeping her sharp and aching gums wrapped firmly around her mother's nipple, a procedure that wasn't particularly comfortable for either party.

‘But whatever works for you!'

The other mother drained her drink and gave a polite shake of her head as a box of chocolate biscuits was slid in her direction.

Yvonne, who was limiting herself to one cup of caffeine a day and had just eaten three biscuits in the hope they'd keep her awake, found, to her horror, that tears were prickling against the back of her eyes. The other mother looked at her, and her face softened.

‘You look tired, pet. It's all a bit mad isn't it, the first time?'

Yvonne looked down at Róisín and swallowed. But the genuine
kindness in the other mother's voice managed to achieve what her implied criticism had not and a large salty droplet escaped and trickled down the side of Yvonne's nose.

‘Don't worry, pet. We all go through it. We're all just mums here, we're all the same.'

But you're not, Yvonne wanted to say, as she sniffed in a desperate attempt to stem the flow. She looked around the room which, minutes earlier, had been full of women and babies doing the downward dog, and now featured the same cast of characters bonding over plates of treats, some of them homemade. You all look so together! You all look like you know exactly what you're doing! And I haven't a clue.

‘We all get tired.'

The woman leaned over and patted her knee, just about managing to avoid the patch of baby sick that Yvonne hadn't had time to clean up that morning.

‘I suppose …'

But Yvonne's voice broke before she could finish the sentence. Did they, though? Did every woman here feel as abso lutelybone-shatteringly knackered as she did? She doubted it. The room was packed with mothers and babies of all shapes and sizes, in fact SuperMum beside her was the exception, most of the others looked a bit wrinkled, a bit less than co-ordinated and a bit shell-shocked at this the new direction their life had taken. But at least they all looked alive, and somewhat focused.

They all seemed to be holding it together long enough to have conversations without bursting into tears. Some of them were even cracking jokes. Yvonne just felt as if she weren't really there. The layer of Vaseline was back, keeping her apart
from the room. It wasn't tiredness: she had gone beyond that. She felt detached from everything, distanced, spaced-out in the same way she had been during the birth when the drugs had finally kicked in. In space. Drifting. Not really there.

Róisin whimpered again and she lifted her against her shoulder, burying her face in the one clean babygro she'd managed to find.

‘Is she due a nap?'

Veronica gave a glance at her watch and Yvonne gave a watery smile.

‘Well, she slept in the car on the way over. But she might go down again, we'll see.'

The nurse frowned.

‘Oh, she should be in a better routine than that at this stage! Orflaith here …' She smiled at the pink bundle, whose mother had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Orflaith here is getting forty-five minutes now, isn't that right, Ruth? And then another hour at five. She'll sleep through the night no problem then, with a dream feed. You must find it very draining, lovey? The breastfeeding?'

Yvonne stared at her, lacking the energy even to answer. In her arms Róísin, still unsettled at the sight of so many babies and the unfamiliar room, was working herself up to a full-blown wail.

Veronica winced.

‘Do you want to give her a dodi? Might settle her for you?'

‘We don't use a …'

But the tears were flowing freely now and Yvonne got out of her chair, pressed the weeping child against her shoulder and fled from the room. She pushed her way through the
heavy double doors and looked desperately from right to left until she spotted, through a film of tears, the disabled toilets. Praying they weren't the type that needed a special key, she pressed her shoulder to the door and felt it open with relief. Shutting it behind her she sank down on the closed toilet lid and allowed the tears to burst forth in hot angry sobs.

But the relief they brought was short-lived and within minutes, she was sitting silently on the toilet seat again, mortification now mixing with sadness and fatigue. What the hell was going on? She didn't recognise herself, this weeping uncoordinated mess. It didn't make sense. She felt permanently on edge, like she was waiting for something to explode. But Róisín was a baby, not a hand grenade. How had she ended up here? She'd been through tougher times than this, the row with her mother had been bitter and unending and she'd had to cope entirely on her own, with no Gerry to support her or Róisín to love. She'd moved to London on her own and made her way. She'd managed. She always managed. She always knew what to do. Until now. Maybe the nurse was right and she was going a bit doolally. The room outside was full of copped-on mothers, a bit tired, maybe, but coping just fine. And here she was, huddled in the toilets unable to get through a simple conversation without breaking down.

She rocked Róisín gently and felt the baby's small body relax against her. At least her daughter liked her. Her colour rose as she imagined the horror of going back into the room. She was sure the nurse had seen what had happened. She was like a poster girl for postnatal depression. Desperate to delay the inevitable she took her phone out of her pocket and pressed the Netmammy app. Just a little look, to calm her down again.

In the hour since she'd begun the class, several new posts had been added to MammyNo1's thread.