Kitabı oku: «Lost in Motherhood», sayfa 4

CHAPTER THREE

THE THIRD TRIMESTER/ACCEPTANCE

There’s no denying it now – I’m huge. I’m fully repurposed. It’s damned obvious there’s a baby on its way. I’m a MUM and everyone knows it …

I was under the distinct impression that a baby gestated for nine months. There was that film starring Hugh Grant, wasn’t there? And everyone says ‘nine months’ a lot, like it’s the absolute maximum time you’ll be pregnant for. But as I counted backwards on my fingers to the moment we think Rich impregnated me, I realise nine months is up and I’m still gestating. I ask the midwife, Look, babe, are we nearly done here? Has someone made a cock-up with the calculations? Because I’m pretty sure we should be entering the labour phase now. And she explained it was more like 40 weeks. THAT’S 10 MONTHS. More lies.

The grim realities of the final trimester – stretch marks, piles, breathlessness, aching joints – make it impossible to ignore the changes. Your body is totally foreign, you’re staring down the coming weeks of what feels like the end of your career, and of course, the birth. The brain changes again – you must nest, clean, furnish your home with the buggies, cots and digital thermometers, all of which suddenly seem full of potential hazards, each decision weightier than before. Your priorities are already shifting. Your old self can still be heard – Don’t do it, don’t do it! Remember, we’re not going to change! – but it’s all you can do not to bulk buy nappies and dribble bibs. It was then I started talking about myself in the past tense a lot.

Growing a grandchild

The other thing that was worrying me a bit was the ownership of the baby. Namely, the two grandmothers awaiting THEIR new baby. I was fiercely independent and actually very selfish with my time. But suddenly it wasn’t about me anymore. HOLD UP, WHAT?! There was a lot of talk about them not making plans around our due date, so they could be there (UM, unlikely! You are strictly NFI to this cervical hoedown and that’s a definite). Then there were the various debates over who we would spend Christmas with, from both sides. Now there was a child added to the mix, I could no longer decide for myself where we’d go and for how long – we were merely there to present her to either side. It was the first encroachment on my selfishness, I think. And I realised I was about to bring something to the table that everyone wanted a piece of: BABY.*

‘Why don’t we do Christmas alone, just the three of us?’ I suggested to Rich when his mum first enquired, even though I was still a whole month away from even having the baby.

‘We can’t do that!’ He was clearly up for sharing. Typical youngest-of-three. ‘I want her to be around her cousins and her grandparents. Christmases should be huge for her!’

I sulked.

I’d read somewhere that it was wise to lock everyone out for the first two weeks, and I agreed this was a sensible idea, based solely on the fact I don’t like lots of people around and I planned on bingeing on series 4–6 of Dexter. But nobody agreed. My mother-in-law said she’d never heard of such a thing, and my mum refused to return her key. And now I get it – it’s their grandchild – but at the time, I was just thinking of ME. I do not want a house full of people when I’ve just given birth! I want time to adjust away from judging eyes, I want time to suss it all out and see if I develop postnatal depression before I have to think about entertaining guests. What, will I breastfeed and then make a bloody pot of tea for everyone?! Hoover when I should be SEEING TO THE NEEDS OF MY NEWBORN BABY?!

But from then on it would be a battle of wills between me and the elders, who felt they had part-ownership of the baby. Not just in terms of the time they would claim, but also in terms of furnishings, apparently. Who will buy the pram, who will knit a blanket, who will provide second-hand monitors that already smell like electrical fires? My mum had already offered to buy us a new cot and changing station as a house-warming gift, and I’d agreed happily when I saw how much the bloody things cost. But then it was a bunfight in reverse. A car seat, baby bath and Moses basket were delivered within weeks of each other. I dumped them all in the shed in a fit of pique. If shopping was the only joy I’d get while my haemorrhoids were raging, I’d bloody well do it myself. You know, once the baby had arrived so as not to tempt fate, or whatever. Plus, we’d kept our mouths shut about what sex the baby would be, and it was killing my mother-in-law.

‘But how will we know what colour to buy for it?’

‘I mean, blue, pink, does it matter? Neither colour is going to harm the child, whatever its sex.’

‘Well, you can’t put a baby boy in pink, though, can you?’

OK. Deep breath.

‘Well, what about grey? That’s neutral, isn’t it?’

‘GREY?! You can’t put a baby in grey!’

We dropped the subject but my mother-in-law later sent down a parcel of hand-knitted baby blankets, all in grey. And every grey babygro she could find. And it turns out they’re quite hard to come by in Mothercare. So that made me cry, and also wonder if she wasn’t actually trying to take control at all, but that my mad hormones had made me a bit paranoid.

My body is somebody else’s temple

By the time I got to 28 weeks, I was bigger than anyone would have expected and there was definitely no denying it anymore. I heaved myself up onto the bus to work, sweating, huffing and puffing just taking the lift to the office. Eventually, my editor took me aside to tell me I could work from home if The Time comes sooner than we’d expected. And she was right. I kept on keeping on, thighs chaffing, bump propelling Londoners into oncoming traffic, but eventually I had to admit it: I was too massive to do the commute anymore. Enough. In July I agreed to work from home until the baby was born.

I started to think that the Victorian model of confinement wasn’t such a terrible idea after all.

At that time I started going out a lot less, a sort of self-enforced confinement. I needed people to properly acknowledge that what was going on with my body was wholly peculiar. A break with life might be helpful, or at the very least an admission that it’s very odd rather than everyone constantly poo-pooing your anxiety attacks because ‘this is the most natural thing in the world’. That just makes people who don’t find it natural feel crap. Pregnancy felt so unnatural, so utterly alien to me. It’s no less shocking for its regularity. Everything felt different.

I want to look back and think, I was a warrior. I want to encourage other women to carry on being kickass while they gestate their kids. I’m not into any form of reverting back to Victorian-style womanhood. But I did a lot of reclining, swooning and weeping. Hell, if you’re going to indulge in some naval-gazing at any point in your life, you might as well wait until that naval is swelling to epic proportions.

Meanwhile, Rich was getting a bit … chatty. I sensed he was getting nervous. He didn’t ask how I was feeling a lot, or watch me with concern, he just kept asking incessantly, ‘Do you fancy a wine yet, then? Or maybe some sex?’ as if those were the markers of me being the same person still. As it happened I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for alcohol because it made me feel even sicker, and my sexual appetite had trebled because of my now-huge vagina, so again, nothing to persuade him all was unchanged. All the blood was rushing down there, presumably in readiness for the stretch of its life, but that also meant that it was sensitive as hell and I could basically get off just by wearing the right jeans. Going sofa shopping was way more fun than it should have been, and emergency stops were my new favourite car manoeuvre. I was a massive vagina with legs, basically. It did mean that sometimes when I went to the loo, the pee would spring up like a fountain rather than down into the bowl, but otherwise: good.

Rich was watching my body do some pretty weird shit, too. Despite the fact that I’d been slopping various oils across my bump for the past eight months (thanks to the dire warning from my mum that if I didn’t I’d be ‘riddled’ with stretch marks), with two weeks to go, the piercing through my belly button which I’d removed months before grew a red forked-tongue out of the top and then a map of red threads snaking out of the bottom. A week later I had more red lines on either side of my belly button, and within days there was a tube map of livid scratches covering my entire stomach. Some of them sprang beads of blood as my skin started to break over the shape of the baby. I felt like it was only a matter of time before my skin would peel back and my stomach would burst. I still had a couple of weeks to go, when little spots began to crop up within the widest lines, followed by a rash that crept down my thighs and across my chest. It felt like my skin was on fire, it was so itchy. I went to the doctor, convinced I was about to explode, and he diagnosed something called PEP – Polymorphic Eruption of Pregnancy – which is an inflammation of the stretch marks. Nothing I could do or take, of course, because when you’re pregnant, there’s bugger all you CAN do or take. I tried icing it but nothing worked to calm the itch, and so I went up a whole new level of crazy.

I had been DUPED – I had done all the oiling and slathering I was told to do, despite the fact it felt horrible, and I had still got stretch marks so bad that they had their own acronym. I used to scream, ‘BIO OIL!’ as I dug my nails into my stomach when the urge to itch was overwhelming.

I only felt comfortable standing in the freezer aisle in Sainsbury’s. I had to remain alert – if the sales team were aware I was loitering for too long they might think my enormous bump was actually a stash of petit pois stuffed up my dress, and strip search me. And while the walking vagina wasn’t completely averse to that, I didn’t want to have my Nectar card taken off me. In amongst the potato waffles and Cornettos I could peacefully waddle along, lunging to separate my thighs from each other as I went. I had a trolley to hold onto and a freezer to lean against – life was good. Maybe I could give birth in here, I thought, the idea of a warm pool making me wince.

Massive vagina aside, I was not enjoying this tail-end of pregnancy, which was clever of the pregnancy gods (who I assume are chaired by Heidi Murkoff, author of What to Expect When You’re Expecting) because it meant I’d gone from fairly reluctant to give birth to actually thinking anything would be better than pregnancy. Maybe I’d even have an orgasmic birth,† I’d be that bloody happy to get things underway. Birth meant the end of PEP, the end of all the chafing and sweating and bleeding and gasping. I’d sleep again, pee normally again, maybe even fancy eating again if there wasn’t someone squeezing my stomach to half its normal size. It would be the end of everyone touching me and talking to me. I was so sick of people laughing – actually laughing – when they saw my bump. It was a kindly ‘Ho ho ho, not long now, eh?’ kind of laugh, not like a maniacal one, but it was still getting really old really fast. I wasn’t used to people commenting on my body. It was like I was wearing the fact that I’d been fucking right there in front of everyone, never more so than when I bumped into the vicar from my primary school, bump in full bloom.

It’s suddenly OK to reach out to touch strangers and do you know what? If you’re not Natalie Portman, it really isn’t. Especially when your hand is a bit low and in danger of brushing the massive vagina, which might be higher than you’d expect. Just stay safe and keep your hands to yourself. And your opinions, especially when they are:

1. ‘You are so massive, I hope the bag is packed and by the front door?’

2. ‘WOW, you’re really huge!’

3. ‘You’re carrying all up front – you must be having a boy.’

‘I’m having a girl.’

‘Nope, no chance. It’s a boy for sure. Or a he-she.’

4. ‘Do you worry that the baby will be so big you’ll need one of those C-sections, where they cut you straight down the middle?’

5. ‘Did you hear about that woman who died in childbirth last week? Isn’t it crazy that it still happens so often in this day and age?’

6. ‘Ah, my sister-in-law was a bit sick – have you tried ginger tea?’

Yes, thank you very fucking much! I have tried everything and nothing works.

So, suffice it to say, I was keen to get the baby out. Still a week from my due date I went back into hospital as my GP conceded I was massive and the PEP was a bit crazy. The gynaecologist I’d seen right from the beginning was waiting for me when without even letting her say hello or take me into a room, I begged for her to perform a C-section there and then.

‘I’ll paaaaaaaay!!’ I insisted, though of course I wouldn’t – as IF I had enough for a down payment on a C-section! I probably couldn’t even get one on finance! Damned passion-for-fashion career, why didn’t I go into medicine or law? Damn you, Anna Wintour!

‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous, Grace. You are a healthy young woman. Yes, you’re massive, but the head’s engaged and you’re fine. More than capable of having this baby naturally. Bloody C-section! HA!’

I realised then I was never going to get one just by asking nicely.

I scrambled around for my birth plan when we got home. I’d glibly told the poor midwife, my only plan was NOT to vomit when she’d pressed me for one. I’ve always had a phobia of vomiting and so this was the main thing to avoid, in my mind. I couldn’t be arsed because I knew I planned to get a C-section and clearly couldn’t tell HER that! So I kept it vague. She wrote down, Grace does not want to vomit and we left it at that. But now I needed to get planning.

‘Rich, I still think the most important bit is that I don’t vomit. So … how can we action that?’

‘Um, your body will just do it if it needs to. I don’t know –’

‘No, no, NO, I will not vomit, so what could cause that and I’ll just avoid it?’

‘Errrr … something with morphine in it, so pethidine? I guess?’

‘GREAT! Write down: no pethidine. Say I’m allergic. What else?’

‘Well, I think gas and air can make you feel a bit queasy sometimes?’

‘Right, no gas and air. Hey, we’re on a roll! Now, what about an epidural? Sick?’

‘Nope, it blocks the pain receptors that –’

‘FABULOUS! We’ll have one of those, and I’ll just listen to my hypnobirthing MP3. Now, how about those ice chip things? They shouldn’t make me sick, if from a safe water source?’

‘Yes, ice is fine … I think. Um, bubs, you might want to think about some of the stuff we talked about in NCT classes. Like the birthing pools and forceps and an episiotomy –’

‘What’s an episiotomy?’

‘It’s where they cut your va –’

‘NO! Next!’

‘Forceps?’

‘I just don’t think anything should be going in when we’re trying to get something out, you know? If it really is anything like having a poo, I don’t think insertion is The One. Unless it’s an enema. But it doesn’t seem like the time for one of those. If they offer an enema, I’ll take it though. So, no to forceps, yes to an enema. Hey, and maybe the sucking thing, they could do that sucky, vacuum thing. The Vogue-douche?’

‘Ventouse?’

‘Yep, I’ll have one of those, too. Write it down.’

Happy that my plan involved numbing and sucking, I was actually quite cheerful for the first time in weeks.

Nesting, A.K.A. watching Real Housewives of New York with a Twix

Firstly, I was decidedly unbothered about dirt in our house. I mocked up an attempt to clean the floor once, labouring over the corners and groaning as I couldn’t see the mop beyond my massive bump, only because I thought it might guilt Rich into agreeing to sell his car and get a cleaner instead. But I was still quite anti clutter, and by that I mean The Baby Stuff. Our new home was basically a Wendy house, and we’d had to hock our sofas which wouldn’t have even got through the door, instead buying a small two-seater which should have been called a one-pregnant-person-seater as it turned out. I didn’t then fancy filling the remaining space with baby stuff.

I put candles around the room, hung photographic prints of naked women by Helmut Newton and Mary McCartney, trying to squeeze the twee out of the cottage and keep the Brighton edge. I was looking more and more like a country mum, so I started wearing a lot of leopard print and black in an effort to claw back my London life, the last-ditch attempt to de-mum myself. I saw Jamie Laing from Made in Chelsea wearing one of my tops on the show and rather than feeling disgusted with myself, I was quietly reassured.

My mum was doing my head in. She’d been this towering inferno of strength and kickass power, and now she was perpetually worried. She was either sending me articles about pre-eclampsia and skin-to-skin bonding in birth or she was tiptoeing around my black moods, with that expression that screams, ‘I’m not going to say it, but …’

Where was the sassy, ‘fuck’em all’ woman I’d grown up with, who bemoaned the boring mums in our lives and instilled in me a sense that I could do anything? She was my role model for motherhood. Why was she being so wet about everything? And where had the sudden fascination with dribble bibs and breast pumps come from?

She wanted me to shop for the baby, clean up for the baby, start thinking about names, schools, godparents and what would the baby call her?

‘Errr, Grandma?’

‘God no, I’m too young! Frances’s granddaughter calls her Mimi – what about that?’

‘Sure, whatever, Mum, it’s fine.’

‘Or TT, because I’m the Timothy grandmother?’

‘SURE, MUM, THAT’S FINE.’

‘Or maybe GG – could be like Glam Gran …’

Rather than feeling comforted and looked after, I felt suffocated. She was in such a hurry to get me to the mum bit, while I was still hanging onto my life, losing grip fingernail by fingernail. On the flipside though, I knew she had nursed me through every ailment I’d ever had so I’d decided I definitely wanted her to be at the birth. I’d gone from thinking, not on your life, to thinking, well, how can I possibly do it without her and her homeopathic goody bag of sugar pills? There was no way I could cope without her to be the strong one. Rich was great but he was way too stoic – I needed someone who would know when to ask for the drugs, and the right lies to tell me when I shat myself.

Needless to say, Rich wasn’t thrilled about this.

‘I think it should just be you and me. She might get a bit stressed in that setting, she doesn’t even like hospitals, for God’s sake!’

‘Well, darling, I understand of course, but given that it’s ME who will be giving birth, I think I’ll have whoever I damn well WANT in that room. OK?’ Rich mumbled assent, but I think probably he thought we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.

I get it though – I wouldn’t have let his mum in the room if she’d brought a big fat epidural with her. Plus, my mum and I were rowing fairly constantly at this point.

I felt bad for being consistently moody, and agreed to push the pram she’d forced me to buy (admittedly, from a charity shop, but still) around her garden once she’d cleaned it. Just me in my wellies, pushing an empty pram around their garden. Normal. I let her have a key to our house, and regularly came home to a bag full of babygros or toys, alongside the pathetic-looking eBay purchase of just the one second-hand Boden cardigan I’d allowed myself.

Of course, she was changing, too. She was moving from a mum to a grandmother. She was buying all the things she couldn’t afford first time round, and becoming terrified by the prospect of the birth, which would potentially put her child and her grandchild at risk.

But I was hot-headed and hormonal.

NCT/Tinder for Parents

As you teeter on the precipice between your old self and the new you, you’re forced to make friends via Tinder-for-parents: NCT. The NCT classes are weird, by the way. Someone gives detailed information about what your vagina will go through shortly, in front of seven other couples you’ve never met before. And the real agenda for probably 75 per cent of the participants is actually to pick new friends from the other 14 people (I don’t include the teacher because surely nobody does that?). So, you make shit jokes, kick your husband when he says something dumb about nipple tweaking and try not to hear the stuff about tearing your perineum.

I was anxious to make new friends because I was already keenly aware that since we’d moved to the countryside and I’d left work, my friends had dropped off the radar. Before I got pregnant I had a lot of friends. In fact, I didn’t believe ‘best’ was a superlative – they were all my best friends. You know, that kind of female friendship group fetishised by Sex and The City? I was in that gang! I was that cliché in stilettos, going to the loo in packs and sloshing cocktails about, sharing clothes but NEVER boyfriends. I had a very clear friend code that was far better formed than my moral outlook on the world at large. Over the years, friends made me resolutely me, they knew every secret, mishap and triumph that had shaped me.