Confessions of a Bad Mother (6 page)

Mr Silverstone inhabits a small room at University College Hospital,
London. Thin and smartly dressed, in a blue cotton shirt and tie, he exhibits
the neat, modest movements of someone who doesn’t need to draw attention
to himself. There’s none of the swagger traditionally associated with
consultants. The nurses do not back away like geishas when he comes down the
corridor. He talks to his staff quietly and courteously. He’s not unique
in medicine by any means, but he stands out.

The minute we sit down together, I feel more optimistic and I can tell
Peter does too. After all, if I fall to bits or go off my trolley, he’s
the one who’ll be left holding the offspring. The atmosphere is
pleasantly civilized, as if we might be equals. Indeed, he gives the impression
that rather than a whole person escaping from my nether regions, we could be
discussing something more aesthetically enriching, like a new kitchen.

I describe my fears, and wait for him to tell me to pull myself
together.

He clasps his hands together between his knees, and leans forward. He
has been listening so intensely that for a moment the whole infrastructure
– room, building, city – seems to fade away. There is nothing else
there except – well, it feels a bit like love. Afterwards I remember that
Sigmund Freud is said to have listened like that, in a way that caused his
patients to proclaim that they had never been listened to so completely in
their lives. He says: ‘Have you considered a Caesarean
section?’

I have gone in, not knowing how to face the biggest fear of my life, and
come out feeling –
allowed.
I consider starting a cult to worship
him.

We have extra drinks that night to celebrate. We’re meeting Ray
and Sarah, some old friends, who are going to have a baby at around the same
time. We’ll have so much to talk about!

We sit down in the restaurant, and as soon as we mention our triumphant
visit to Mr S, we’re in trouble.

‘You do realize,’ says Ray, ‘that having an epidural
harms the baby?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I say.

‘And so does pethidine. All pain relief, in fact.’

This is our first experience of Men Who Don’t Believe in Relief
For a Pain They Won’t Be Having – and it’s fascinating.

‘Would you have, say, a circumcision without an
anaesthetic?’ I ask him.

‘That’s so bloody stupid!’ he snarls.

Sarah and I look at each other.

‘What are you planning to do?’

‘I’ll just leave it to the doctors,’ she says.

‘Well … they don’t
always
know best,’ I
venture. I am thinking of a friend who was told ‘
Your baby’s
dead
’ after the lead of the fetal heart monitor had fallen off.

‘Are you saying you know better than
doctors
?’

‘Well, these days midwives are more—’

‘This is just stupid,’ says Ray again. Peter attempts to
lighten the mood.

‘A bloke at work told me he was standing outside the delivery room
listening to this terrible screaming, and he said to the bloke next to him,
‘
Bloody hell! Listen to that!
’ And the bloke said,
‘
We’re not having pain relief.
’

We walk home in silence, which is particularly tricky because
they’re staying with us.

Over the next few months, we have extensive experience of the Moral
Hierarchy of Birth Methods, with – naturally – No Pain Relief at
the top. Before you read on, though – or email me – please just
note one thing. I have nothing but admiration for women who give birth the way
nature intended, and if I ever thought there was the slightest hope of my doing
so, I would. But I know myself, and I’m not one of them. Even my mother,
former press officer of the National Childbirth Trust and potentially the most
annoying person I could possibly meet at this stage – upon hearing my
absolute terror of childbirth, extends her sympathy and support. With that in
mind, I must say, it is easier to go on. Still, I become a magnet for
everyone’s Birth Politics.

‘I do personally favour a Caesarean,’ says a woman from
Peter’s work. ‘But I wouldn’t have one, because if you
don’t actually give birth, your body fails to release oxytocin and
bonding doesn’t occur.’

Which rather begs the question: if the Caesarean is an emergency, does
bonding occur then?

I could do what Kate Winslet subsequently did – and lie. But
I’m not an actress and lie badly. Besides, I am intrigued by how the
choice I – an individual – make about my method of delivery, is
taken to mean that I am anti every other method and therefore have to be taken
to task. My C-section doesn’t illustrate my attitude to natural births,
any more than using a condom makes me anti-Pill. If you wear black to a party
and I wear pink – does my pink automatically state that I believe black
is
wrong
?

‘Is home-made bread better than shop bought?’ says
Peter.

‘Usually, yes, it is.’

‘Ah, but is it
morally superior
?’

Confident that he has had the Last Word on the matter, he opens his car
magazine. Well, at least one of us is going to be in good shape for the birth.
I, on the other hand, come home every other day in a state because someone or
other has ‘picked on me’ about my choice.

On top of which, I’m completely stressed at work. At thirty-seven
weeks, I’m still on a project that should have finished by now, and am
getting on so badly with one of the team that I keep thinking I’m going
to have a heart attack and die.

‘Well, that’d solve your Caesarean problem,’ says
Peter.

‘The weeks leading up to the birth are supposed to be CALM!’
I scream.

Maybe if I’d been a man, I might now be writing:
Week 37: I am
continuing to produce excellent work. I am earning
good money –
and am soon to be a Mother as well!

The day arrives. There are two surgeons, two anaesthetists, a couple of
nurses and two more people as well. Are they training
everyone
in this
theatre? Or am I so nervous I’m seeing double?

‘What do you do?’ I ask a bloke in theatre greens.

‘I’m a Medical Technician.’

That makes eight. No wonder the NHS isn’t keen. I try not to look
at the row of scalpels. As I bend forward for the epidural, they ask me about
the CD we’ve brought. Peter’s choice of opera duets has won over
mine of
James Brown Live at the Apollo
. Even though I know they’re
trying to distract me, I feel flattered. It makes a pleasant change from:
‘
Going on holiday this year?
’ as they shove in a freezing
speculum.

‘I feel as though I’m at a cocktail party,’ I say at
one point.

‘Oh yes,’ says the anaesthetist, ‘we like to provide
that atmosphere.’ Someone produces a bar, a bit like a huge loo-roll
holder.

‘You’re not going to stick
that
in my back, are
you?’

They hang a cloth over it, screening off what my sister refers to as
your ‘lower parts’.

‘I know it sounds silly, but I hate taking my pants off. Can I
keep them on?’

‘Of course, darling,’ says the nurse.

Julia has told me, ‘
You’ll feel a sort of
rummaging
’, but I don’t feel even that. Suddenly two hands are
holding a baby high in the air. It really was in there! Peter puts his hand to
his mouth, tears in his eyes, and gasps: ‘It’s a boy!’

‘It’s Lawrence!’

‘Dignity?! You won’t have any of that,’ crowed a male
friend, whose wife had a long, horrific labour.

Well, Blah to you.

I’ve got away with it! A whole little boy has come out of me, and
despite all my imperfections, he is absolutely fine. Well, almost.

Lawrence’s breathing doesn’t sound quite right. The
paediatrician says he is ‘grunting’. He looks fine, or as fine as a
newborn baby can look, resembling the usual red prune. His weight is fine. But
his blood isn’t picking up enough oxygen.

Peter takes him to meet my mother and my sister. Someone pushes a
Polaroid into my hand: a picture of a baby. A chill goes through me as I
realize it’s Lawrence. I shove it back at them; it makes it seem as
though he is dead.

Peter takes a proper picture of us together, then Lawrence goes off to
the Neonatal Unit, and he and I go back to the fifth floor. Thankfully,
Lawrence isn’t in the Intensive Care bit, which would be really scary,
just the moderately scary Special Care Unit.

Eventually Peter goes away. too, and I spend the night sitting amongst
all the other mothers – with their babies – in the Postnatal ward.
It isn’t at all traumatic, if you count listening to six babies crying as
not traumatic. It’s intriguing, watching all these mothers looking after
their babies, feeding and changing them, cuddling them and holding little,
murmured conversations. Will I be able to do all this? Although I’ve had
my baby, I’m still on a provisional licence.

Not having my baby with me seems quite normal; it is, after all, my
default mode. I don’t feel that we’ve been wrenched apart;
I’m not used to the condition of motherhood, so it’ll give me time
to break myself in. After all, he’s not in danger. It’s all part of
the adventure. Besides, when you’re as nervous as I am, the full battery
of medicine’s finest is a comfort. Being sent home in charge of a
helpless infant:
that’s
scary.

I’m looking at a week of staying with these nice people who
won’t make me wash up or get my own tea. I have a bed up on the fifth
floor, at the end by the windows, with a view over the rooftops. Peter, Claire
and my mother bring in Danish pastries and coffee, the odd sandwich and other
essentials such as chocolate and, later on, Indian takeaways and beer. I can
receive friends arriving with treats and flowers then, like a Victorian mother,
pop down to Neonatal twice a day for a spot of Heritage Parenting. I sit
amongst my bouquets and cards and feel good. One fine afternoon, a friend and I
go out on the balcony with tea and biscuits, and sit in the warm air like two
colonial ladies on their veranda. It is, all in all, quite a holiday.

My heart sinks, though, when I try to express milk. A grey, metal pump
is wheeled in on a trolley, like an exhibit from the metereological display at
the Science Museum: one of those early devices for measuring precipitation in
the section that nobody looks at.

I clamp on the glass trumpet and listen to the growling sound of the
machine. After half an hour’s concerted pumping I have about ten
millilitres, enough to fill the syringe at the top of Lawrence’s tiny
feeding tube only once. They ask if I will allow him to be given formula. What
if I say: ‘
No, I’d rather he starved to death on
ten
millilitres, so long as it’s my own
’? Will they go ahead and
give it to him anyway? I appreciate their attempt to include me in the
decision-making process. Every hour, I drop friends, tea and present-opening,
and run down to the nursery to plug myself in. Despite the clearly inadequate
nature of my offerings, no one says, ‘
Blimey! You
don’t
think he’s going to survive on that, do you?!
’ Instead, they
solemnly take the tiny plastic pot, with its almost invisible liquid in the
bottom, and pour it into the tube.

At 7.30 on a Sunday morning, when Lawrence has been in Neonatal for all
the four days of his life, I get up to go to the lavatory. In an hour or so
Peter will arrive with my coffee and Danish and we’ll visit him together.
I am just making my way across the ward when I’m intercepted by a
breathless Filipina ancillary.

‘Have you heard the news?!’ she cries.

The blood seems to drain from my head. This is it. All that stuff about
a minor breathing problem was obviously a lie. Lawrence is all the way down in
the basement. I can’t get there in time! And anyway, it’s clearly
too late. They didn’t even say he was that ill. I think,
what a way to
tell me
. They could have at least sent a doctor.

In the two or three seconds before I can sputter out the word:
‘
Lawrence!
’ she says: ‘Princess
Di-a-na
!!’

I shake her. ‘Lawrence? What’s happened to
LAWRENCE?!!
’

‘Princess
Di-a-na
has been killed!’

Why can’t she stop babbling this rubbish and answer?

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I say, and start for the
lift.

Suddenly I realize that she isn’t talking about Lawrence at all. I
turn back and slap her – luckily not very hard, on the arm.

‘I thought you meant my baby!! Oh, God – I’m
sorry!’

She shrugs and smiles, and goes off to repeat this silly hoax about the
Princess.

When I get down to the nursery, all the little radios are on as usual,
but instead of pop music they’re playing the National Anthem. Weird! And
some of the nurses are sort of standing to attention.

‘Lawrence! Lawrence!’

‘
Ssssh!
’ I reach the incubator. He is fine. I
can’t believe they’re thinking about anything else.

Visiting our baby is like gaining access to a safety deposit box. The
Special Care Unit is down in the basement, like a vault. We have to ask, and
– if the nurses are busy helping someone else – wait. Then he has
to be held a bit carefully so as not to pull off his wires. But though
he’s technically ours, the hospital has control. It’s like
Monet’s
Waterlilies
; it belongs to the nation, but you just try
putting it in your bag to take home. When the doctors do their rounds, we have
to wait outside. Even though we understand this, Peter says afterwards:
‘It’s as if we shouldn’t be here.’

A young midwife called Karen hands me a book called
Kangaroo
Care
.

‘It’s about the benefits to babies of being held against the
human body,’ she explains, ‘when they’re sick or premature or
even just like Lawrence – nearly well.’