The Girl Who Cried Wolf(54)
‘Can you feel this, Anna?’
‘Feel what? I can’t feel anything!’ My voice rises in panic but the surgeon soothingly tells me he was pinching my legs and the epidural has worked. ‘We need to deliver your baby, so please try to relax.’
He nods to Michael and as my teeth chatter, he talks to me about how everything is going to be fine, and in a few minutes our baby will be born. We still don’t know the sex of the baby as I had refused the option. I’m not sure why I did, as Michael had wanted to know, but I had grasped every opportunity for control over the last few months, of which there were not many.
I feel uncomfortable pulling and digging in my abdomen but I was happy that the excruciating pain of labour had released its determined grasp over me.
I look up at Michael’s pale face and his eyes widen as the surgeon lifts our baby from my body.
‘A girl,’ he announces, but my heart stops at his concerned tone. My daughter is bundled into a blanket and for the most fleeting moment, held in front of me, before they leave me paralysed and helpless as she is whisked away through the screen doors.
I had no moment to feel anything when I saw her for the first time. She was a strange colour and her eyes had been closed. If she had only opened them for a second to look at me, I may have connected to her, but she was gone from me and Michael can offer me no words of comfort.
***
It feels like hours later that I am waking up in recovery. I do not remember falling apart but Michael tells me that I became very distressed when they took her away, and administered morphine while I was being stitched.
‘You fell asleep,’ he tells me, looking at me with love, reassured that my distress was a good sign that I cared deeply for our little girl.
I’ve no idea how I feel as he tells me that she needed oxygen, which she was responding well to in the special baby unit.
‘Can I see her?’ I ask him.
‘Not yet, darling. Not yet.’
By the time they deem it suitable to let a mother see her own child, I am becoming increasingly cross. Only one person at a time stays with me while the others troop off to see the baby as she regains her strength. I do not feel that enough emphasis and concern have been bestowed upon me, considering the horrific ordeal I have recently endured.
My mother mistakes my disgruntlement for anxiety.
‘Don’t worry, they will bring her soon. In a little while when the epidural has worn off they may let us take you to see her.’
I look at my mother as though she has gone mad. ‘I will not be sitting in that contraption again, ever. They can bring her to me.’
Over the next few hours I complain incessantly of the pain I am suffering, so by the time they finally bring the baby to see me, I am quite doped up.
‘Here she is, darling.’ Michael lifts her tenderly from the little trolley as a nurse fusses about him. He looks confident and delighted as my mother props a pillow behind me and he places the sleeping baby in my arms. I feel such a surreal feeling of detachment from the entire affair that I wish for a moment they were not all watching me so intently. Under their scrutinising gaze I hold my breath as I look at her and consider that she looks much more appealing now than she did a few hours ago. Her hair is smooth and of the palest blonde, she has a tiny little nose and rosebud lips, which she smacks together a couple of times as I hold her awkwardly in my arms. As she opens her eyes for a flutter we look at each other for the very first time. I look over at Michael, who is smiling at me with expectation so I smile back at him.
I take another peek at my daughter before my head starts swimming and someone takes her from me. As I look at her beautiful little face, I feel nothing.
***
In less than a week we are all inevitably ensconced back at Elm Tree. My old room has been made into a recovery room for mother and baby. I am thankful for my caesarean section now, because despite the pain, it has posed me the advantage of requiring a great deal of help with the baby. I can’t pick her up, and only have to endure moments here and there when Izzy or Michael would pass her to me as I lie in bed. A concerned midwife eventually gave up on demonstrating breastfeeding techniques, telling me I needed to relax, so I was happily now expressing my milk, meaning less contact still. Mother was truly concerned, but I managed to persuade her to give me a little more time to get used to everything and I would smile sweetly to reassure her.
The moment they all left I would cry into a pillow to stifle the sound, my body wracked with sobs. How could I not love her as they did? She was so tiny and beautiful and seemed to have the sweetest disposition; even Freedom was enchanted by her.
Izzy knocks on the door and as she enters I do not try to hide my tears. ‘Michael is upset that you haven’t named her yet.’
It was true, she had been in this world for five days I hadn’t agreed on a name for the girl.
‘What’s wrong with me, Izzy? I can’t do this.’
At this point she wakes up crying and I feel as though I could sleep for a thousand years, even though that is mostly all I done since her birth.
‘Mother wants to see you in the rose garden.’
I begin to shake my head in protest, but Izzy interrupts me, saying she will feed the baby, knowing I would not miss that opportunity.
As she picks her up from her bassinet, cooing and singing to her as though she had borne a thousand children, I make as much fuss as possible slipping on my pyjama bottoms and pulling a long jumper over my head.