Early Days

Nothing has been as fulfilling as motherhood; suddenly I have a real purpose. In the early weeks I was so excited I could n’t decide whether I liked daytimes or nighttimes best. During the day I waited for my son to wake so I could hold him in my arms, at my breast, look at his little pink body and outstretched arms and marvel at this new being in my life.

Day and night had different rhythms; day full of light and listening to music while dozing, talking with my husband while eating lunch in semi-reclining position in the bed. Night; waking and switching on the dimmed light, gathering up my pillows to settle myself into a comfortable feeding position. At first I could hardly move, or sit up and baby boy lay on my belly feeding from my breast. I didn’t mind being woken in those strange night hours, in fact I felt so excited to have this special time alone with my baby son. I used to imagine all the thousands of women round the world who were also awake in the night feeding their babies.

I loved to watch his little face suckling and soon he would drift back into his dormouse like sleep, and I would lay him down in his basket next to my bed. In those early weeks, my memory of him, the nameless one, is of a baby who didn’t cry. Sometimes there was a sound, a rustle or stirring, and I would wake to feed him, but he was a peaceful baby, and I soon got to know his waking, feeding and sleeping patterns.

My very first trip out the house was to the post office to post the birth announcement cards. I carried baby T in a Wilkinet (a front carrying sling), my precious sleeping cargo. He must have been about 2 weeks old. Nobody in the post office took any notice of my extraordinary bundle. I wanted to shout ‘Look, I ‘ve got a baby. Isn’t he wonderful, amazing, special!’ But he seemed to be of no significance to anyone but me. I remember thinking how lovely it is for children in Mediterranean countries – that every one makes a fuss over them, and comments how beautiful they are. I wanted everyone to notice my baby, and say what a darling he was. I toyed with the idea of pretending to be an Italian mama so I could exclaim loud compliments about my miracle boy. But babies are not really seen as very important in our society. People just want them to be quiet and ‘good’.

Another time I walked to my local Tescos, again with T on my front. It was about 11am. A woman at the checkout queue said, ‘ I can’t believe you ‘ve managed to get yourself out of the house so early’. It made me realise that people’s expectation of the early weeks is of total baby anarchy hell, that it’s supposed to be impossible to do anything. But my experience didn’t reflect this.

I felt calm and blissful. My first two weeks were spent in bed. The post birth healing meant I couldn’t sit, and walking was a mere hobble. My husband was at home the first week, on nappy changing duty and to provide me with the six meals a day, 2 glasses of wine and chocolate that I wolfed down, and the occasional sandwich I seemed to need at 4am. Breastfeeding makes you constantly hungry. I once rushed home from the baker’s to feed T and simultaneously stuff a huge cream cake in my mouth.

As I rested and slept, I remember thinking, hey this is really quite easy; all I have to do is feed the baby, and even found time to write down my birth story, lying on my side with my elbow propped under my head.

People kept saying to me ‘it ‘will get better’, but all I could think was, how could it get better that this? I was on a total high, floating on a cloud of bliss. I had no desire to go anywhere, do anything or see anyone, I was so happy curled up in bed with my son. Later I moved from the bed to the armchair, where I spent hours with baby on my breast while I read several not very challenging novels. I occasionally glanced at a newspaper, but would feel overwhelmed by large pages of print, and then think that all the news was irrelevant to me. All that existed for me was my son. We were in a cocoon of love, and I remember thinking I don’t care if I never go to the cinema or see another play again, nothing of interest or importance exists outside of my baby centred existence. I could imagine nothing more fascinating or fulfilling than this mammalian creature that was permanently attached to me. This from someone who thrived on cultural and intellectual stimulation for 40 years before my son entered my world.

Baby T was born in November. I’d hoped for a summer baby, imagining being able to go for walks in the sunshine with baby in the pram. I was worried that the gloom of the dark days of autumn would allow post-natal depression to seep in. How could I have guessed that the weather, like all else in the external world, was irrelevant? In the first few days I just lay in bed watching the leaves turning red on the Sumac tree in our garden, only hobbling out of bed to go for a pee.

It is hard to hold on to the memory of the early weeks, the thrill of being united with this little creature that I had grown in my belly for 9 months. I remember the day after the birth being completely euphoric and wanting to have another 4 babies because it had been such a feeling of achievement and strength to have given birth at home without any drugs or intervention. I felt I could do anything now. At the same time I was so happy as I felt I’d fulfilled my life’s potential by achieving this ordinary yet extraordinary miracle of birthing a child.

I wanted quiet and solitude, and didn’t exactly encourage visitors. I remember how special I thought this time was, this time for me to get to know my little one. I spoke on the phone with another mother from my antenatal class, about 2 weeks after the birth, and was amazed she had already been out on a shopping trip. I didn’t want to be out in the world at all. I loved the special exclusivity of life with baby at home. I knew it wouldn’t be for long and soon I would be going out to all manner of activities with active boy.

In fact months later, on a particularly difficult day, one where I remember a rare bout of a lot of crying, I got in the car and drove to some out of town shopping centre, in the hope that T would fall asleep and I could feel like I had somehow comforted him out of his crying state. There I saw hundreds of mothers alone with prams and pushchairs, sometimes accompanied with their own mothers, and I realised that many mothers do want to be out in the world with their newborns, because home is too quiet, boring, claustrophobic or lonely? Because when we are working women, before becoming mothers, we are hardly at home, so it seems a strange place when we are suddenly confined there by this new life in our lives. Having always been a freelance worker, I was used to spending days at home, and now I had my baby son to care for had no desire to leave at all.

Every time I saw a woman with a pushchair, she was no longer an anonymous woman pushing a piece of mobile furniture, invisible, as we so often are. Now I saw, this was a relationship, an unbreakable bond, a mother pushing a special, loved being about. Or so I imagined, as I projected my own relationship with my son onto these other mothers, each with their unique relationship with their cargo offspring. But mothers in shopping malls transporting newborns, laid out in car seats, perched on travel systems, that struck a different thought in me. I thought how strange for this new dependent creature to be so far removed from its mother, lying wrapped in so many layers, carried in such an elaborate mode of transport, when it would be so much nicer, warmer and more natural to be carried in its mother’s arms. Having spent my early weeks in bed, cocooned up with my mammal creature, I found it hard to relate to these women out shopping with their mammal creatures tucked up in these elaborate travel systems. But our society has evolved to the point where it is seemingly normal to transport babies in mini vehicles, and not in our arms.

When I met with my antenatal class – maybe the babies were 4 or 5 weeks, I looked at the others and could only think; does my baby look so scrawny and red and floppy? To me, my baby was strong and healthy, held his head up high and looked alert, right from the beginning, but I guess it is only the mother that thinks her baby is beautiful and clever.

I kept two journals early on, one recording T’s development and my thoughts on mothering, written as a letter to him. The second one was my pre-motherhood journal, which somehow became the repository of anything negative, including the differences that arose between my husband and I in our approach to looking after baby T. I wrote in the day in a few snatched moments when he slept. Words were the last thing on my mind, but would flow when I started to write. I longed to be able to articulate my feelings about being a mother and searched to find other writer’s words that shared my experience. I wished that I could fashion poetry or find the right words to describe my cocoon bliss. I read Kate Clanchy’s poetry book ‘Newborn’; poems written in response to the birth of her son, but how could another mother, describe my feelings, even if she was an accomplished poet? By the time T was 7 months, this was the only bit of poetry that flowed from me:

In my mind’s eye
I hold the memory of your newborn self
A little nighttime suckling creature
Curled up like a dormouse
Your velvet crown and curled fingers tucked into me
Like some marsupial

I didn’t know I could be filled with so much love
Or hum with excitement
As I embraced each night and day I would share with you

I love your smiling eyes
Your giggle as I massage your thighs
The smell of your skin when I kiss your neck
And the lovely folds of your chins

You are my leaping salmon
My jumping bean
My pumpkin face
My popsicle
My sweetie pie
All these things you are

I want to grow, and play and learn with you
For you will teach me many things
My curious, playful boy.