I didn´t go straight to the supermarket. Walking until we were surely out of view, before allowing my legs to slow and my breath to catch. I sat in the playground, with no-one to play: my baby was sleeping.
Crescendo of tight chest, to sharp throat, to running nose and eyes. I watched him sleep and allowed the panic to rise, before swallowing it back down. It helped that there was no-one around. Only workmen, to whom now I am invisible.
My pram. My forcefield, my cloak of invisibility – my strength and my protection. Before, I would involuntarily tense when I passed them, channeling the walk I envisaged a confident person would walk, hoping I wasn´t walking too fast, don´t call attention, focused on unseeing, flinching yet not slowing.
It was one of the nice things.
Minutes passed. I didn´t want the baby to wake, which was his wont when sleeping without motion. We started out again, legs tired and shoulders achy.
***
The most difficult thing about having a baby, is not actually having a baby, it´s everything else. When the gynecologist confirmed the pregnancy, she asked me if I wanted to continue with it. On my answer, she called ahead to a specialist obstetrician and repeated, “very much”. And I did. We did. And we talked. Of how it would be. How he would support me, and do the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning. He would look after me whilst I looked after our baby. So much promise.
He would wake whilst I fed the baby, bring me drinks, live the experience by my side.
I´m almost sure, that the first night he left me a drink before going to sleep. The second night I was alone with my exhaustion and my new, enormous love. It filled the night, pushed back the corners and stretched it to hold the universe. I welcomed the solitude, just being with the weight of him, the smell of his soft alien head, my heavy breasts, my new power. I was born again with him. Or rather, a reincarnation. I was Mother.
Perhaps if the father had been present. Had fulfilled his side of the bargain. Had loved me as before. But it wasn´t this way. The fabric of the night covered and smothered, as a candle flame is snuffed. In the hole of his absence the love starved and died on broken promises that cut deeper than glass. But I had my new love. A new love which pricked a permanent light in the dark, to shine as brilliantly as any star in any sky of any time.
***
Some people say that it took them a while to bond with their baby. It wasn´t instant, it gradually grew. Or it hit them one day whilst changing a nappy or carrying out some other ordinary task. My mother told me, she didn´t love her second child until she was five weeks old. That day, she placed her a little roughly on the bed. My sister startled. There came guilt and the awaited love.
It wasn´t that way for me.
The minute before he was pulled and pushed into this world, I knew the world. What it was, what it was made of, where I fit. As soon as he was placed on me, the world changed; contracted and expanded, became both infinite and very, very small. The epidural didn´t work. I could feel them sewing me where they had just before cut me, but I paid no heed. The blood, the shit, the desperation bought and paid with 36 hours. No heed. It was if my eyes were not big enough, my brain could not process fast enough – just out of me, still attached to me, but I couldn’t get enough of him into me. Eyes on this perfect boy, this baby with the hairy shoulders and searching mouth, who I made and who remade me.
***
He took him to a bar when he was six days old. He wanted to show him off to his friends. I begged him not to take him. It was too soon. What if he needed me. It was too late, he shouldn´t be out on the street. He was induced early, he certainly shouldn´t be away from his mother. But he was wrenched from me regardless. “Have a nap, enjoy it”. My body protested on my behalf. My breasts leaked for him and my womb spasmed. I imagined him crying and not finding me. My my arms ached for him, my legs paced for him, and my heart broke.
On his return I cried. He hadn´t cried for me. He´d slept. They were close to the house, he was back with me in two hours. The father was confused and then quickly angry. And so the pattern began to be set. The newborn days turned in the blink of an eye to weeks and months. My fear and resentment focused. His anger retreated to a well-trodden stronghold – accusations of hysteria. “She´s crazy” If I was of an earlier time, I could have been facing a lengthy interment. Or a lobotomy.
It was easy for him to garner support in his corner. His childless friends, who were no longer our friends, stood witness to my phone calls and sympathised with his confidences. With his truth I did not recognise.
***
I remember hearing with a mix of fascination and revulsion, of a bridesmaid aunt with a newborn, whose breasts started leaking milk at a wedding. She heard an unknown baby´s cries, and her body responded. My child-self heard this and wasn´t sure she believed. My mother-self knew it to be true. Lifting my t-shirt to feed him (nursing shirts soon abandoned for foolery), small needles prickled my nipples. Before his mouth was on me, my skin was wet. The connection between a nursing mother and child. I am he; he is me.
Experts. Books. Philosophies, warnings, franchises. About spoiling your baby, about training. Shut it out. Just be.
In my aloneness where I was never alone, I gave myself over. The midwife cut the cord that first day; as the father had no desire to. But there was no separating the flesh of my flesh, we were one, and it empowered and was, in equal parts to scaring and intimidating. In the heady beginning of dreamy days and interminable nights, I didn´t realise the danger.
***
Have you ever loved so completely, you could die?
***
I lost a stitch on day ten. We had had to do a lot of walking and waiting, the painful afterbirth of bureaucracy. Especially for unmarried parents. The three of us, our fragile embryonic family, registering and signing and walking and waiting. Visitors and visitees, smiling and trying and not yet failing.
Episiotomy. A word you don´t hear until after pregnancy has begun, and which falls from your vocabulary as soon as it is done. A word I still don’t know how to spell, or pronounce. And I once thought I knew things. Blood-letting and injections a constant reminder, in medical we trust.
Yet no-one said the word episiotomy. I shouted, “and now he is cutting me!!” This doctor I had never seen before, until he saw me most intimate. Who spoke not a word to me, but who had promised to do no harm. “No-one is cutting you!!….oh….ok” I pushed and tried to please, another´s unwanted weight pushing on top of me, another holding me. No heed. He breathed. I breathed. Surviving, anger heating, vulnerability silencing. We breathed. Unruliness subdued, to submit again to sharp metal, as the point went in and out.
Day ten. Shock to see it on the paper. To feel something open. Sympathy expected, yet his silent anger grazed me. Then a dismissive doctors visit, first-time mother, no treatment needed.
An unsolicited second opinion, by him who hadn´t sworn an oath.
“Why didn´t you insist it was re-sown? Is it just me who cares about our future sex-life?”, he eventually spat.
An alien maleness I thought from another time and place. From one I thought I knew, who I chose, who I carried for. Some things smart more than piss on an open wound.
***
I am learning. I know I need to take more than just a change of clothes for the baby. I need a spare t-shirt too. I know my love will wake, and feed, and return to sleep ninety minutes after greeting the day. The morning is early and still belongs to me.
I have learnt a favourite song. How he sleeps quiet with head on heart, how I avoid milk in tea and yoghurt with cereal, how to bring a smile. And to know the devil when I see him.
***
The devil has always walked amongst man. All that is needed is to know him. The first couple didn´t. But they were the blessed, with one simple rule to follow and ignorance in which to wallow. Facing your own decision-making, with a face now known as ugly, a misstep is probable. If not likely. And one misstep, if follows another, can with your own two feet leave you exiled far from the righteous path.
And we come full circle. And now it is shame which powers ignorance not bliss, and the word episiotomy is not spoken, and you teach your baby no-one will come when he cries.
***
I think about the devil. And the pact I would make with him.
I knew him that day on the way to the supermarket. And the devil knew me.
I don´t know if he was dead. I think he was. Wanted, dead or alive. As the old posters said. But it doesn´t really matter now. Dead or alive. The price is on my head.
I love my child.
Words are not vessel enough to express how I love my child.
With a burning love. Consume me and burn me to ash. Turn me black. Blow me on the wind and leave no trace of me. You are me.
***
A pram. Where there should be no pram.
Workmen. They shout at the mother but she doesn´t hear them.
