Baby Blues and Wedding Shoes (41 page)

Zoe pursed her lips and frowned. “Not
enough mothers are like you, Helen. Many women don’t even try and
breastfeed. Of course it’s their choice, but the counsellors are
trying to get as many women as possible to give their children the
best start in life. Sometimes they try too hard.”

She looked over at Marcio. “Besides,
the dads like the chance to feed the babies too. Gives them time to
bond.”

Helen looked at Marcio as well. She had
never thought of it like that. It had seemed so important to give
her babies everything she could; it hadn’t occurred to her that she
was excluding Marcio. Maybe a carton or two of formula now and then
wouldn’t hurt. Especially if it meant she didn’t start screaming at
her babies in the middle of the night. Just remembering the night
before made the tears come again.

“Helen, what is it?” Zoe looked
concerned.

“I…” She wasn’t sure she should tell
Zoe. What if she took the babies away? “It was nothing.”

“Helen, you can tell me. Did you shout
at one of the kids, is that it?”

Helen stared. Zoe sat with her hands in
her lap, her smart suit and long blond hair making her look like an
office manager rather than a health worker. She was smiling
sympathetically at Helen, with no trace of judgement in her
face.

“How did you know?” Helen’s voice came
out in a whisper.

“When mothers get as tired as you, even
mothers with only one baby to deal with, they often find themselves
screaming at a child that won’t feed or won’t sleep. It’s perfectly
normal. If you find any urge to shake the child, put them down
immediately and leave the room. Or wake Marcio. The odd scream of
frustration won’t hurt them, although of course it’s better to try
and get some help. Shaking them is bad.”

Helen thought about throwing Jasmine on
the bed in the night. Her heart thumped painfully. Might she have
hurt her? She looked over at Jasmine, sleeping peacefully in
Marcio’s arms, and tried to think rationally. She hadn’t actually
thrown her, now she thought about it. More plonked her roughly. It
still felt awful, realising how close she might have come to
shaking her baby in frustration. Really, how did babies survive the
first few weeks in the world?

“Helen, you need some sleep. Go.
Now.”

“I can’t, the babies need feeding
soon.”

“I have a bottle and some cartons in
the car. I’ll lend them to you, Marcio can feed them. Get some
sleep. Really, the world will seem a better place when you actually
get a few hours in a row. They don’t use sleep deprivation as a
torture method for nothing, you know.”

When Helen woke four hours later, she
realised how right Zoe had been. She felt like a new woman. She
thought about all the times in her life she had taken sleep for
granted, and wondered if she would ever take it for granted
again.

Chapter
Fifteen

Helen looked at her babies, lying on
their play mat, kicking away happily and gurgling to themselves and
felt her heart surge with love. Now they had settled into a
routine, Helen found she was more able to enjoy them. Her favourite
thing in the world was burying her nose into their downy soft hair
and breathing in the unmistakable scent of baby. As she watched
them gazing up at the bright toys hanging above their heads, she
felt complete.

“On days like today I can understand
why women have dozens of kids.”

Sharni looked up from her own
contemplation of the infants and stared in horror at her friend.
“You want to have dozens?” She couldn’t even imagine having one. So
far she wouldn’t even hold them in case they started crying or
puked on her.

“God, no. I’d like to have one with
Marcio, maybe even two. You know, children that are his entirely.
Not that the twins aren’t his children in every way that
matters.”

Sharni nodded emphatically. When Marcio
had arrived in Helen’s life, she and Ben had talked about their
fears for Helen: that she was loving on the rebound, that Marcio
wouldn’t stick around once the babies were born. They agreed now
that they had been wrong on both counts.
You only have to spend
five minutes with Marcio when the babies are there, to see how much
he loves them.

“How many children does Marcio
want?”

“We haven’t talked about it.” Helen
paused, thinking about Marcio’s large family. “He probably wants
dozens.” She sighed, her feelings of contentment seeping away. They
didn’t seem to talk about much anymore except to share information
about when the last feed or nappy change took place.

“Have you heard from Daniel?” Sharni’s
voice was cautious. Looking at Helen’s pensive expression she
wished she had kept her mouth shut.

“No.”

“That’s good then, isn’t it?”

Helen’s expression was inscrutable.
Sharni thought, for a moment, that she looked as if it wasn’t a
good thing at all.
Please Allah don’t let her still have
feelings for him,
Sharni prayed, to a god she didn’t entirely
believe in. Still, it didn’t hurt, in an emergency. Time to change
the subject.

“The group are meeting for coffee on
Sunday, why don’t you come with the twins? I’m sure Ben and Stuart
would love to meet them? It’ll be a chance for us all to say
goodbye to Dawn too.” She knew that Dawn had been around a few
times since Jaz and Jay had arrived. She seemed to be relishing the
role of surrogate grandmother to the tiny bundles. Helen was going
to miss her when she left in a week’s time.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m ready
to be out and about with them. What if they want feeding or have a
nappy explosion?”

“You’ll cope, you’re amazing. We can
come to Pops if it’s easier? Then you can walk rather than battling
with public transport.” When Sharni thought about getting a
pushchair on a London bus it made her shiver slightly. No, she
wasn’t at all sorry not to be a mum.

“I guess if it was Pops that would be
okay.” She twisted her hands together and swallowed the rising
panic.

“Come on, you need to get out. Have you
even left the apartment since you got out of hospital?”

“Not much,” Helen admitted. “We go to
the park sometimes, but it’s such a palaver getting them all
dressed up in their cold weather gear.”

“That’s settled, you need to get out.
Come to Pops, I’ll tell everyone that’s where we’re meeting.”

“I don’t really have any pictures to
talk about.”

“Bring some photos of the babies.”

Helen thought guiltily that she didn’t
really have any pictures of the babies yet. She hadn’t unpacked her
photography gear since moving into the apartment. It seemed there
was never any time.
I am such a terrible mother, I should be
trying to record every minute of their precious lives.

Fighting back tears, she got up to make
tea, not wanting Sharni to see her face. When she returned, Sharni
noticed the red eyes, but didn’t know what to say. Although they
were friends, Helen seemed a world away now she was a mother. It
was as if her change in status opened a vast gulf between them.

“Why don’t I take a picture of you with
the babies?”

“My camera’s still packed.” Helen
shrugged.

“Then unpack it!” Sharni laughed. “Come
on, I’ll help you.”

With some cajoling Helen located the
box with her camera bag, found a battery with some charge, and was
about to hand the camera to Sharni when she hesitated.

“I don’t really want pictures of me, I
look awful.”

“You look just fine. But no worries,
take pictures of the bairns then. Look at them, all giggles and
gurgles.”

Helen pointed her lens at the babies
and snapped a few shots. It felt strange to be taking pictures
again, as if Helen the photographer belonged to an entirely
different life that didn’t exist anymore. She snapped a few more.
Reviewing the shots she had taken she was pleased to see that some
of them were quite effective. The babies were very cute.

“There, it’s like riding a bike, you
don’t forget.”

Helen looked over at Sharni
gratefully.

“Thank you.”

“What for?” Sharni gave her a
bewildered look.

“I don’t know.” Helen shrugged, trying
to find the words. “For reminding me who I was.”

“You’re still
you
, you daft moo.
It’s bound to take some time to get used to being Helen-Mummy. But
you’ll always be Helen. You wait, when you come to Pops, you’ll
remember Helen-Photographer. It’ll be grand.”

Helen knew it was a mistake going to
Pops before she left the flat. The children had been grisly all
morning, fussing over their feeds and setting each other off
crying. Helen was a jumble of grumpiness and nerves before she even
had them both in the pram. Determined to try and get some semblance
of normality back in her life, she gritted her teeth and headed to
the café.

It was the first time she had tried to
push the pram any distance. Although she was used to how cumbersome
it was, she was still mortified at the irritated glances thrown in
her direction as people had to vacate the footpath to get round
it.

The noise was incredible. Helen could
barely hear the twins crying over the sound of the traffic. She
could only tell they were still wailing by the sight of their
little red faces, peeking out from the blankets swaddled round
them. Every time their cries began to quieten a bus seemed to pick
that moment to whoosh past. The first time it happened Helen jumped
so high she nearly ended up in front of it.

Have the buses always passed so
close to the pavement? I don’t remember that.
She steered the
pram as far from the curb as she could, but there was no way to
shield the twins from the noise, or the fumes. She could feel the
exhaust fumes burning her nose and throat, and her skin soon felt
gritty with it.
It seems crazy that I worried about a bit of
formula milk when a five minute walk along the main road must be
filling their lungs with who knows how many toxins.

The city no longer felt benign; the
London she knew and loved seemed to have vanished. Every stranger
that jostled her was someone who was going to snatch the babies, or
cause her to steer the pram under a bus. The police sirens seemed
louder, the planes lower. The smell of takeaway and BO emanating
from the man walking in front of her nearly overwhelmed her newly
acute sense of smell.
If he doesn’t turn off soon I might
vomit.

As she waited for the pedestrian lights
to turn green before crossing the road, something she would never
have done before, Helen glanced surreptitiously at the other
mothers pushing their children along the pavement around her. They
seemed so confident; immaculate and manicured, wheeling buggies
one-handed while texting or supping a Starbucks.
How do they
manage to appear so together and serene when I just feel harried
and hopeless?

By the time she got to the café she was
ready for the ground to open and swallow her up. The only upside
was that James and Jasmine had finally cried themselves to sleep.
Her friends were sitting at the table in the window, and they waved
frantically as they saw her. Swallowing imminent tears, Helen
lifted her chin and tried to get the pram in through the door. No
matter how she squared the wheels it just wouldn’t go through.
Bowing her head, she bit her lip, determined not to break down in
such a public place.

“Here, let me help.” Ben appeared in
the doorway, glaring at the person behind Helen that was huffing in
frustration at the delay.

“The baskets come off. I can collapse
the frame if we take them off.” Helen’s voice was tiny.

“You’ll have to show me how.” Ben
laughed, looking at the pram in confusion. “I wouldn’t know where
to start.”

Helen swiftly removed the two basinets
and kicked shut the frame, handing it to Ben who tucked it behind
their table, while Sharni and Dawn came forward to take a basinet
each. Helen was sat at the table amidst friends inside a minute.
She smiled a watery smile at them all.

“Thanks guys. I’m still getting the
hang of it all.”

“You’re doing amazing.”

“You look fabulous.”

“They’re gorgeous.”

“Do you want coffee?”

Helen smiled gratefully at the chorus
from her friends. Much more so than with her baby group she felt
she was among people who were on her side.

The still sleeping babies were removed
from their baskets and passed round, although Stuart and Ben
declined a cuddle, leaving Sharni to face her fears and nestle
James on her lap. Dawn cooed over Jasmine and seemed to forget
about the rest of the group.

Soon they were lost in talk of
photography, babies, gossip about Derek and other catching up of
news. Helen realised she hadn’t seen the group more than twice
since meeting Marcio, and felt bad that she had neglected them. She
was grateful they didn’t seem to mind.

Looking up at the group, she caught a
glance that passed between Ben and Sharni. It occurred to her that
Sharni hadn’t mentioned Derek since the debacle of the Fashion
Photography course. Now she thought she might know the reason. It
made her smile.

“Er, Helen.” Stuart, who had finally
agreed to hold one of the twins, was wrinkling his nose and
shifting in his seat.

“I think your baby has, um, filled her
nappy.”

Dawn, Ben and Sharni laughed loudly at
Stuart’s face, where his normal aloof expression had been replaced
with one of horror.

“Pass her here.” Helen reached out and
took Jasmine. She felt damp, and Helen hoped she hadn’t leaked poo
on Stuart’s designer jeans.

Praying that James would behave in her
absence she took Jasmine to the ladies toilets. There was no
changing table; why would there be, generally Pops attracted
workers from the nearby offices, not mums with babies.