The Mothers' Group (2 page)

Cara returned to her seat, in the middle of the row, and leaned over a bassinette to check her baby. Ginie steered her pram towards an empty chair on the far side of Pat, sidestepping car capsules and nappy bags. She sat down next to a woman with wavy black hair and startling green eyes, who was attempting to comfort her baby. She smiled at Ginie in a distracted way, while pushing a dummy into the baby's mouth. This only seemed to enrage the infant, all red-faced and writhing in its pram.

‘Shhh, Rory, shhh,' the woman soothed. As the baby's cries grew louder, she stood up from her chair and began to push the pram around the room.

‘Well,' said Pat. ‘Now that everyone's arrived, let's get underway. Welcome.' She smiled. ‘You're all here because you've had a baby in the past six weeks
and
you live in the Freshwater or Curl Curl areas. So, let's get to know each other first. I'd like you to tell us your name, your baby's name, and something you'd like to share about your birthing experience. We'll start at the front.' She waved a hand at Ginie.

Ginie shifted in her seat. She was adept at public speaking in corporate settings, but this was different. She felt strangely nervous.

‘Okay, I'm Ginie,' she started. ‘This is Rose. She's asleep, obviously.' She glanced down at Rose and, for the first time, realised how much she resembled Daniel. They shared the same high cheekbones and sandy-coloured hair. She looked at Pat again; she couldn't remember what else she was supposed to say.

‘Would you like to tell us something about your birthing experience?' prompted Pat.

‘Oh yes, sorry.'

Birthing.
She hadn't properly described the experience to anyone. It was something she'd rather forget.

‘Um, I was in labour for fifteen hours, then I ended up having a caesarean.'

Pat nodded, the picture of concern. ‘And how did you feel about that?'

Ginie shrugged. ‘Relieved, actually. I was bloody glad to get her out.'

Someone giggled.

‘Right. Next.' Pat nodded at a voluptuous blonde. Ginie sat back in her chair, grateful the focus had shifted elsewhere.

She hadn't been ready for Rose's arrival at thirty-six weeks. It was seven thirty-five am and she was steering her two-door black BMW across the Spit Bridge, notorious for its peak-hour bottlenecks. At any other time of day, it only took her thirty minutes to drive from her home in Curl Curl to the Sydney CBD, but on this particular morning she'd already spent an hour behind the wheel. She was speaking to a client, leaning towards the hands-free phone on the dashboard, when she felt a sudden warmth between her legs. She glanced down to see light red fluid oozing beneath her, creeping across the cream leather seat. For a moment she stared at it, as if it was a phenomenon disconnected from herself, then she swerved out of her lane and towards the kerb. Flicking on the hazard lights, she'd abruptly ended her call and telephoned Daniel.

‘There's something wrong. I'm . . . bleeding all over the car.'

‘Just take a breath, Gin,' he'd said. ‘Do you think you can keep driving to the hospital?'

‘Oh for fuck's sake, Daniel, what do
you
think?'

‘Alright, I'll call an ambulance. Where are you exactly?'

The ambulance officers had determined quickly that neither she nor the baby was in danger.

‘The baby's kicked a couple of times, so that's a good thing,' said one.

‘What about all the blood?' she asked.

‘Looks like your placenta has started bleeding,' he said. ‘It's quite common at the end of pregnancy. Very soon, you'll be a mum.'

‘So close to Mother's Day too,' said the other. ‘You planned that well, didn't you?'

Oh yeah, very well, she thought. That's why I'm going to the hospital in an ambulance, propped up on a stretcher, wearing a business suit.

‘Trying to give us all a scare, eh?' the obstetrician joked as he attached the CTG machine to her bulging abdomen. ‘Let's see what's going on in there.'

The scan indicated that the baby was fine.

‘You've had a placental bleed,' he confirmed. ‘We'll give it twelve hours and see what happens. But you'll have to stay in hospital, I'm afraid.'

At least she'd brought her laptop.

Several hours later, she felt the first contraction. But after fifteen hours of labour, her cervix was only five centimetres dilated. She was slippery with sweat, exhausted. Daniel stood next to her, offering her water, a cool washer, lip balm.
And what should I do with that?
she wanted to scream at him.
Stuff it up your arse?
Instead, she ignored him, pacing the room and squeezing a cushion as the contractions peaked.

She wished she'd opted for an elective caesarean. At thirty-nine and with private health insurance, she could have demanded one. But a part of her wanted to
conquer
childbirth, as she had conquered all the other challenges in her life to date. An elective caesarean seemed like a cop-out, and Ginie wasn't a quitter.

‘Ginie.' The voice came from afar.

She looked up from the cushion and watched the obstetrician mouth the words. ‘I'm recommending a caesarean.'

‘Okay.' She was beyond caring. She squeezed her eyes shut against another crushing contraction.

The operation was a haze of anaesthesia and bewildering sensations. She was conscious throughout the procedure, with Daniel standing beside her, stroking her hair. Two obstetricians hovered over her abdomen, talking between themselves like pilots landing a jumbo jet.

‘I tend to go in here, less vascular,' said one.

‘Do you?' replied the other. ‘I prefer a more muscle-sparing route.'

She felt suddenly nauseous. ‘I think I'm going to die,' she breathed.

The anaesthetist, an impassive man in his fifties, leaned towards her. ‘It's just your blood pressure dropping,' he said, not unkindly. ‘Let me fix that for you.' He injected a vial of clear liquid into her drip and, almost immediately, she began to feel better.

She clung to Daniel's hand and begged him to talk to her, to drown out the matter-of-fact commentary of the obstetricians.

Suddenly there was some forceful pushing and pulling, as if her insides were being wrenched apart.

She couldn't take any more. ‘Daniel, I . . .'

‘Here we are,' announced one of the obstetricians.

A bloodied baby floated above her eye line, not even crying. It was a little girl. She was perfect.

Back on the ward, Ginie's pain was intense. The wound itself—incision through skin and muscle—throbbed with even the slightest movement. The painkillers they had given her appeared to be having little effect. She watched with interest as the curtains began to billow of their own accord, swelling in front of the unopened window. It was a narcotic hallucination, she knew, yet the pain was getting worse.

She tried to explain this to an officious-looking midwife at three o'clock in the morning.

‘Well,' came the stern reply, ‘you're not due for any more pain relief. If you have an
intervention
like a caesarean, it
will
hurt more. Natural births are much easier on the body. Pain is very subjective, dear.' The midwife bustled away.

Ginie was too exhausted to object. Defeated, she lay back on her pillow. Rose was in the nursery; the midwives would bring her in when she woke. Ginie desperately wanted to hold her again, to bury her nose in her folds of soft flesh, but she couldn't even climb out of bed. The noise from the nursery was audible across the corridor. Every time the door opened, the sound of babies crying was like cats mewling in an alley.

Six hours later, Ginie's limbs trembled beneath the blanket, defying all control. Her wound was throbbing, weeping through the cotton pad stuck across her pelvis with surgical tape. Beneath her hospital gown, her nipples were chafed from repeated unsuccessful attempts to clamp Rose to her breast. So much for natural, she'd thought, as a midwife palpated her nipples like a farmhand milking a cow. Nothing much had happened, despite these exertions. A thin watery substance had oozed from her right nipple, which the midwife attempted to capture with a syringe.

‘Hello there,' chirped a friendly voice. ‘How are you this morning?'

She'd never seen this nurse before, a young woman with red hair. She strode over to the window and threw back the curtains. The sunlight was painful.

The nurse turned to her. ‘You're shaking. Are you alright?'

Without warning, Ginie's eyes filled with tears.

‘How's your pain?' asked the nurse.

Ginie's voice cracked. ‘I've been telling your imbecile colleagues all night. But they're too interested in making sure my milk comes in, never mind my fucking pain.'

The nurse looked taken aback.

Instantly ashamed of her outburst, Ginie began to cry. ‘I'm sorry . . .'

‘We'll fix that straight away,' said the nurse. She patted Ginie's hand. ‘You shouldn't be in that sort of pain, you poor thing. I'll call the anaesthetist and get something stronger written up for you.'

The nurse's kindness caused Ginie to cry harder. She wept into her hands with long, shaking sobs.

‘You'll be alright,' said the nurse, passing her a tissue. ‘Once you're pain-free, you'll feel so much better about everything.'

Ginie doubted it.

‘Hello, everyone. My name's Suzie.'

Ginie started at the sound. The voluptuous blonde pushed a mass of ringlets behind her ears. Her pale blue eyes darted nervously around the room. She couldn't be much older than twenty-five, Ginie guessed.

Suzie glanced into the pram parked next to her. The baby was making loud suckling sounds. ‘I think Freya needs a feed,' she said, apologetic. She fumbled with the top buttons of her camel-coloured cardigan, then lifted her baby to her chest.

Ginie looked away, a little embarrassed. Briefly she wondered if
her
chest might have looked like that had she persisted with breastfeeding. But she hadn't. After five futile days of hot packs and breast pumps in the hospital, she'd gone home with a tin of formula and a plastic bottle. ‘You've got the lowest milk supply I've seen in years,' one of the nurses had said.

Ginie had been gutted. The benefits of breastfeeding were spruiked from every corner—her obstetrician, her mother, even Daniel was an advocate—and Ginie had just assumed it would all happen effortlessly. No one had considered that she might not be
able
to breastfeed, let alone prepared her for the crushing guilt when she couldn't. Now, watching Suzie feed her baby so naturally, Ginie felt responsible for depriving Rose of the best start in life.

It was hard to tell if the baby was a girl or a boy: it was pudgy and pink, with a white-blonde tuft of hair poking up from its crown.

Suzie cleared her throat. ‘My daughter's name is Freya,' she began. ‘After the Scandinavian goddess of love.'

Oh God, thought Ginie. Bring on the flower power.

‘My partner has Swedish heritage,' she continued. ‘My ex-partner, I should say. We separated when I was seven months pregnant. So my birthing experience . . .' Her blue eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘I mean, I had the loveliest midwife at the hospital, but . . .' She brought a hand to her mouth and shook her head, unable to continue.

No one moved. Ginie looked at Pat, willing her to intervene. But Pat sat motionless, her head tilted to one side, a contemplative look on her face.

Eventually, someone spoke. ‘That must've been hard.'

Ginie turned towards the voice. It was Cara, the woman who'd helped her at the door.

‘Do you mind if I go ahead?' she asked.

Suzie nodded, clearly relieved.

‘I'm Cara,' she continued. ‘And this is Astrid.' She bent over her pram, flipping her thick ponytail over her shoulder. She was attractive in an understated way, with a classic hourglass figure and lively brown eyes. When she smiled, it was hard not to follow suit.

Cara beamed as she held up a chubby, strawberry-blonde baby. Daddy must be a redhead, Ginie mused.

‘Astrid was overdue by ten days. So when she finally came along, she was in a bit of hurry.' She shifted Astrid into the crook of her arm and stroked her hair. ‘I had my first contraction at six o'clock and she arrived two hours later. It wasn't too painful either, which was a bonus. I guess I was expecting the worst.'

Pat clapped her hands together. ‘Wonderful. Was anyone else pleasantly surprised by the birthing experience?'

‘Me.' It was the woman Ginie had sat next to earlier. She'd been pushing her pram around the room nonstop.

‘I'm Miranda.' She pointed to a muslin cloth covering the pram. ‘This is Rory. I don't think I can stop walking him
just
yet.' She peeped under the edge of the cloth, and Ginie caught a glimpse of dark hair. ‘Well, at least he's closed his eyes.' She lifted a bottle of water to her lips and swallowed several mouthfuls.

Ginie admired her profile; she was tall and slender, with no trace of baby weight. Her green eyes stood out against translucent skin, peppered with attractive freckles. Her hair fell in black waves over slightly pointed ears, giving her a pixie-like look. Ginie guessed she was in her early thirties. The substantial diamond on her ring finger glinted as she screwed the lid back on to her water bottle.

‘And what about your birthing experience, Miranda?' asked Pat.

‘Well, I thought it would be horrible.' She shrugged. ‘But I quite enjoyed it.'

Ginie wondered how anyone could associate the word
enjoy
with giving birth.

‘But, then, I'd done a lot of prenatal yoga and breathing exercises beforehand,' Miranda added, ‘which probably helped me move through the contractions.'

Well isn't your life perfect? thought Ginie.

Pat lit up like a Christmas tree. ‘And I suppose they've helped with your recovery?'