Babies in Waiting (39 page)

‘Yes. She spoke to Toni on the phone, and she got very worried and emailed me. She thinks it might be post-natal depression.’

‘Post-natal depression? Oh, I, er . . .’ James sounded really uncomfortable. But Gemma wasn’t going to let him brush her off.

‘Look, what’s your email address? Can I send you some links?’

James gave her his address. ‘I’m sending them now,’ she said. ‘And James, if you don’t believe me, ask yourself, would the Toni you know normally be in bed, asleep, by eight fifteen?’

There was a long silence, then James spoke. He sounded tense and a bit angry. ‘Look, let me read the stuff you sent through and I’ll ring you back. What’s your number?’ Gemma gave him her mobile number and they rang off.

She sat on her bed, watching Millie sleep, her perfect little face in repose, her arms flung above her head. Poor Toni. It must be awful to be in such a dark place in these precious first days with your baby. But James would make things okay. James was amazing . . . strong, caring, compassionate. Toni really was the luckiest girl to have him.

After half an hour or so, James rang back. He didn’t bother with hellos or chit-chat. ‘So if this is what she’s got, what do we do?’

‘I suppose you have to speak to her. She won’t talk to
me, or to Louise apparently. Maybe she’ll listen to you if you say you think she needs help.’

‘I feel like such a bastard . . . I’ve just been annoyed with her lately, to be honest. I keep coming home to her in tears and the house in a mess, and then she wants me to take Harry the minute I walk through the door, and I kept thinking – well – I keep thinking that surely it can’t be that hard. Other people manage with new babies. Why not Toni? But this . . . this makes sense. Thanks, Gemma.’

‘It’s nothing, really . . .’

‘It’s not nothing, You’re amazing . . . you’ve been such a good friend to Toni. And I can’t believe how brilliantly you’re doing with your own baby. You’re my hero, girl!’

Remember that sick feeling you got in the pit of your stomach when you were at school and there was some piece of homework you were supposed to have done or something you should have brought to class, and you hadn’t? You knew you’d get found out and that you’d be in trouble, but you just had to wait it out until the trouble hit? Well, I’d been feeling like that for weeks. I’ve been feeling like I left my metaphorical PE kit at home, and someone was going to crap all over me. Except it’s not PE kit, it’s my ability to be a mother. Yes, I know, no one can mix a metaphor quite like me. But in all seriousness, if someone were to mark me on this whole maternal thing, I would definitely get a failing grade. I’m trying. I really am. But it’s so hard. Deep, deep down, I know I love Harry, but what with the screaming and pooping and endless feeding, it’s all so thankless. And every day is the same. I really don’t see the point in trying, so I do less and less every day. I hardly ever get dressed, and I can’t face the idea of going out. I keep the curtains closed, because the light is too bright. I used to watch loads of telly,
but the noise felt like scratching on my skin, so now I don’t even turn it on. I tried reading when Harry was asleep, but I can’t retain information, so as soon as I turn the page, I forget what I’ve read and I have to go back and read it again. I know if people come here and see me, and see me ignoring Harry and sitting staring at the wall, they’ll know I’m a terrible mum and they’ll take him away from me, or yell at me, or something. So I’ve stopped answering the phone, and if people try to come round, I tell them not to. With James, I try to go to bed as soon as I can after he comes home, and I pretend to be asleep until after he’s left for work, and for the times that he’s here and I’m awake, I use all my energy trying not to look like the dead-inside zombie psycho that I know I really am.

It’s a funny thing, that PE-kit feeling, because when the teacher finally says, ‘Why haven’t you changed yet, Antonia?’, under the fear, there’s a feeling of relief that it’s all over and out in the open. You’ve been found out, and you’ll be scraping chewing gum off the gym floor for the next hour. So, when I woke up that morning, and James was sitting on the bed watching me, holding Harry in his arms, and his face was sad and angry and full of love, under the awful feelings, I was relieved.

I looked at the clock, and saw it was 9 a.m. I sat up quickly.

‘You should be at work! Why are you still here?’

‘I took the day off. Toni—’ I couldn’t let him start talking, so I interrupted, instantly on the defensive.

‘I would have woken up when he cried. I would have.’

‘I know you would have. I was glad to let you sleep in a bit.’

‘I’m fine!’ I swung my legs out of bed. ‘If you’re here and you can hold him for a bit, I’ll jump in the shower.’

James put his hand on my arm. ‘Can you sit down for a sec? I want to talk to you.’

‘I really should shower. I should have fed him an hour ago.’

‘Toni . . .’

I sat back down. I might as well face the music now, I thought. ‘Do you want a divorce?’

‘What?’ said James, his face a picture of shock. ‘No! What gave you that idea?’

‘You’ve stayed home from work, you’re hanging on to Harry like you can’t trust me to hold him . . .’

‘Toni, I’m worried about you.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re not fine. You know you’re not fine. Your friends know you’re not fine.’

‘What? Who? Who have you been speaking to?’

‘Gemma rang me. She’s worried, and she passed on an email from Louise—’

‘Louise emailed
Gemma
? She hates Gemma. And Gemma hates her.’

‘Well, that’s how concerned about you they are.’

‘Seriously . . . Louise and Gemma talked to each other?’

‘Toni, can we focus on you?’ said James, and I could hear he was using his ‘patient’ voice. I decided just to shut up and let him talk.

‘I know you’ve been very . . . down since Harry was born.’

So much for keeping quiet. I jumped right in.

‘That’s not true . . . I was okay when we were in the hospital, and when you were on paternity leave.’

‘Well, since then,’ said James, jiggling Harry, who was starting to whimper.

‘What do you mean “down”?’ I said, playing for time.

‘Gemma tells me you don’t leave the house.’

‘Harry cries. He’s got colic.’

‘He’s much better now, though. And he always only cried in the afternoons. Did you not want to go out in the morning?’

‘I . . .’ I didn’t know what to say. What I wanted to do, most of all, was lie back down on the pillows and go back to sleep. James patted my hand.

‘Toni, my love, you’re not on trial. I love you, and I’m very worried that you’re feeling alone and very unhappy.’

‘So what if I am? I
am
alone. And how can you change that? You can’t give up work to stay with me. Harry exists. He’s not going away. I’m here alone with him for the next eighteen years and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

James tried not to smile. ‘Well, the authorities might wonder why you didn’t let him go to school, but okay. My love, the point is, you’re not alone. You have friends, and family, and support if you ask for it. But you’re not asking. You’re hiding.‘ He paused, and I could see he was nervous about what he was going to say next.

‘Louise and Gemma think you may have post-natal depression.’

There it was. Someone had said it. The words I’d been too scared to say to myself. I’d kept telling myself that I don’t get depressed. I’m Toni. Bubbly Toni, always smiling. How could I possibly be suffering from depression? I didn’t say any of that to James, though. Very intelligently, I said, ‘What?’

‘Gemma sent me some information, and I think you should look at it. If the symptoms look like something you recognise in yourself, we can look for help for you.’

I blathered on for a while more about how I was fine, just a bad day, etc., etc., but I just felt such relief. Someone had recognised the dark, dark tiredness that was my whole life. It had a label other people knew. There were web links. Support groups. I wasn’t a bad person, just someone who needed help. After a while, without thinking, I took Harry from James and popped him on the boob for a feed. When he was full up and sleepy-drunk, I handed him back and went for a shower. Then I sat down at James’ computer to read the information he had gathered. After about half an hour, I turned to him.

‘I could have written this myself. It’s exactly how I feel. So what do I do?’

‘What do
we
do, you mean. We’ll work together.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘We go and see the GP. He or she can recommend whether you take medication or see a therapist or whatever. But it’s a good place to start.’

I shrank back a bit at that. I hadn’t left the house in over a fortnight. But James was ahead of me.

‘You won’t be going alone. I’m going with you, and I’m not going to let go of your hand the whole time.’

‘And when . . . ?’

‘Two o’clock. I made an appointment already.’

We saw the doctor, and she was a lovely warm lady, very maternal, who was quick to tell me she had had postnatal depression after the birth of her second child. She spent ages with me, and we drew up a plan. I wrote everything down, and when I looked at it later, it still looked like quite a sound arrangement. This is what we worked out:

1. Antidepressants. I was really scared at the thought of taking mind-altering medication, especially as I wanted to keep breastfeeding, but she promised me it was perfectly safe and wouldn’t harm Harry at all. She explained that the tablets would help the really extreme mood swings and would just let me see things a bit more positively.

2. Company. She made me promise to ring friends and set up a roster, so I had someone coming round pretty much every day. So Gemma said she’d come round on Mondays and Wednesdays, Louise said she’d take Tuesdays and Thursdays, my dad said he’d come down and spend Friday afternoons with us, and Robyn and Caro said they’d split Saturdays – when James was at football – between them. Gemma had also told James there were groups online, so I was going to join the September PND
group . . . I’d be able to chat to women I knew from the site already, who were going through the same thing.

3. Therapy. The lovely doctor recommended something called cognitive behavioural therapy, which isn’t about lying on a sofa and thinking about your childhood, but more tackling each negative thought and trying to turn it into a more positive one. She gave me the name of a therapist she often worked with, and I booked in to see the woman once a week for six weeks.

4. The last bit of the plan was what we called ‘baby steps’. The doctor said that if I made a tiny bit of progress every day, managing to do something I couldn’t before, that would be very positive. So, for example, I’m going to try to get Harry and me dressed every morning. That’s my first baby step. Then maybe a little bit of housework each day. Then maybe a trip to the shops every couple of days. She made me promise not to try and do too much, and also not to beat myself up if I didn’t do something every day. ‘Remember,’ she said, ‘eighty per cent is still an A!’

So that was The Plan. To be honest, just admitting there was a real problem and taking steps to do something about it had made me feel a million times better already. It wasn’t a miracle cure, far from it, and I still had some really bad days. But it was all out in the open. I wasn’t
crazy about the fact that James had been talking to Gemma behind my back, it seemed like I was some kind of invalid that people were gossiping about, but I was grateful that they’d helped me. Honest I was.

The first week, it was as much as I could manage to have someone come round for half an hour a day. The good thing about admitting I had PND was that I could actually say, ‘Sorry, I’ve had enough, can you go now?’ without sounding like the rudest woman in the world. Gemma was happy just to sit with me and be quiet, and Millie, the perfect baby, just sat in her bouncy chair and stared at things without making a sound. Gemma was such a head-girl type . . . she always made sure she stayed till James got home, and he always walked her down to her car. I knew she was giving him a report on me, and I tried not to mind.

Louise wanted to chat more, which was more work, but good. She pushed me a bit harder to do things, like go out to the shops, even if it was just to buy a pint of milk. She was so no-nonsense and jolly about it, that I managed to do it without too much anxiety, and Harry seemed to love being out. He peered around him at the outside world with big eyes.

One night towards the end of the second week of the execution of The Plan, Harry woke for his 2 a.m. feed and I went to pick him up. In the dim glow of the night light, he saw my face as I bent over the Moses basket and he gave me a big, gummy grin. There was no doubt about it, it was a real smile. His first one. Well, I woke James up
straight away, and the two of us danced around the Moses basket like a pair of demented monkeys, trying to get him to do it again. When he did, we clutched each other and laughed, and James wanted to run and get a camera. ‘Poor little thing,’ I said, laughing. ‘We’re so busy trying to get him to perform, and all he wants is his feed. Come here, little frog.’ I scooped him up and sat down in the rocking chair to feed.

James came to sit on the floor beside me, and rested his hand on my knee. ‘I don’t want to jinx it, Tones, but that’s the first time since Harry was born that I’ve seen you laugh. It’s wonderful.’

I didn’t say anything, just stroked his thick hair. Baby steps.

Even in her fuzziest baby-brain moments, Louise never missed her weekly visit to Rachel. Every Wednesday morning, she’d drive round to Rachel’s house and spend an hour or so there. Rachel was very frosty for the first few visits, but Louise persisted. Her sister was too polite to ask her not to come, or to be inhospitable, so they sat and sipped tea, and Louise cradled Peter in her arms or let him sit beside her in his car seat. She took care to dress him in an outfit Rachel had bought every time she took him for a visit. One Wednesday, her fourth visit, she noticed that Peter, sitting on her lap, seemed to be staring fixedly at Rachel.