Things I Want My Daughters to Know (23 page)

And I’ve got better things to Google) got it so right for you lot. Lisa was my Sunday baby—bonny and blithe, good and gay. Of course, she’s not gay, and I don’t really know what being blithe entails, but she’s definitely good and bonny. (Note: Bonny does NOT mean chubby, Lisa, although the baby pictures tell their own story . . . my fault. I thought if I kept feeding you, you’d be bound to sleep through the night. You were like a foie gras goose until you were about ten months old. Sorry about that.) Jennifer—who came on Saturday, during the football (an early indicator of both your loathing of team
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sports, and your uncanny ability to wind your dad up)—works hard for a living. She works hard for everything (and, by the way, always dresses immaculately. Did I ever tell you how much I admired that about you? You look like a magazine article—always). Lo and behold, Amanda came on a Thursday, with far to go (Have you got there yet, my lovely?). It got to the point where I was terrified Hannah would come on a Wednesday—her due date, incidentally, making her full of woe, but thank God she came two weeks early, helped along by a slightly elevated blood pressure, a sympathetic doctor, and an intravenous wee dram of syntometrine, on a Monday. And was, of course, fair of face (apart from those little milk spots, which it nearly killed me not to squeeze), as you all were. I was the Wednesday baby in the family. So that figures! Although the woe didn’t really kick in until much later. My mother reports that I was an agreeable, happy baby, in no hurry to walk or talk, which, coupled with the inane grin I apparently always wore, made people think I was simple. Thanks, Mum. No photographic evidence exists of this phase, fortunately.

I’m writing this in the hospital, by the way. I’m having a

“course” today. Mark drops me off, but I get him to leave me here.

This is not a spectator sport. He buys me a vast stack of magazines in the hospital shop. As though Jude Law and Sienna Miller are a suitable distraction. Bless him. And sometimes a helium balloon, which he ties to this high-backed plastic upholstered hospital chair I’m confined to. He thinks it makes it jollier. I think it makes the nurses nervous. Especially the times the only balloon they have in stock says CONGRATULATIONS. I’m definitely full of woe today—I hate this. I get it, but I hate it. Never went to hospital for myself, except to have babies, before the C word stuff. These wards are not so much fun. Never had a broken bone, or a bad infection, or a rash that couldn’t be explained, or a weird thing that needed to be cut off. Just had babies.

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had a baby of your own. Presumptuous, I know. You might not have liked it—the fathers of these babies might have been horrified at the notion of having their mother-in-law (get me, old-fashioned—

their partner’s mother, should I say!) muscling in. But I would have asked. I think it would have been amazing.

And now—unless one of you (PLEASE not Hannah) gets busy very soon—I’m afraid I won’t get the chance—even to ask. I do hope you have babies. I’m not interfering, honest. I’m just saying. It was, without doubt, the very, very best thing that ever happened to me. I know women can exist happily without children, and I know society shouldn’t pressure them—blah, blah, blah—and I get all of that—really I do—I’m quite modern, for an old girl. I just want my girls to have babies. That’s all. So they know what I know.

Lisa came on a Sunday, like I said. She was a week and a half late. Which felt like a year and a half. I was the size of a small cow.

It was hot, and it had gotten so that my thighs rubbed together and got sore when I walked, so I tried to avoid that. I couldn’t get cool and I couldn’t get comfortable. And I couldn’t get you out, Lisa.

Even drank castor oil, which I don’t recommend. When my waters went—rather theatrically, really late on Saturday night. I was half asleep on the sofa. Thought I’d wet myself—I was so excited.

Because I was going to get to see my baby, of course—and don’t forget, we didn’t have scans and things like that, so we didn’t know whether you would be a girl (although I desperately wanted you to be one. I never said, because it seemed disloyal to a boy, but at night I used to lie in bed and imagine a girl, and dream of a girl)—but also because I figured I was finally going to get some sleep. I know—idiotic notion. But I was young and naïve. We didn’t have a car, so your dad called a taxi, and off we went. I had one of those hard-sided round suitcases. I’d had it to go on honeymoon. It was red. I’d been knitting matinee jackets, yellow and green, of course, all summer—I could have clothed the entire maternity ward. Off
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we went, and it was like I was heading for the Omaha landings; I’d spent nine months imagining that this was going to be the worst, the very worst, most agonizing pain a person could go through. For the woman in the bed next to me, it clearly was. I told myself I was a cabbage, and I just lay there, saying, in my head, “You’re a cabbage, you’re a cabbage.” Who knew I was an early practitioner of meditation technique in labor?! A pioneer. Thing was—I kept waiting for it to get really bad, waiting for death to seem like a good option, and it just never did. I remember this midwife—she was Welsh, and about five foot two; I could barely see the top of her head when she was down at the foot of the bed, coming to do a check on me, and asking her whether she thought my baby would come today. She’d laughed and said that she thought my baby would come within the hour and that they needed to get me down to the delivery ward right away. I couldn’t believe it! I’d just sent your dad to the pub down the road for a sandwich and a beer. It was all over by the time he got back. Not that he’d have been there if he’d been there, if you know what I mean. Really was the old days! Suited me fine. They let me tell him you were a little girl, after I’d got into a clean nightie, and they’d cleaned you up. None of this demand feeding stuff—you were promptly wheeled off to the night nursery.

You had the longest fingers. Everyone kept saying you’d make a great pianist. I loved them. You waved them around in front of your face, and they were so graceful and expressive. They said you were overcooked—your nails were long and your skin was dry—but I thought you were perfect. I felt like the only woman alive who had ever done this. We stayed in for a week, in those days. Your dad took the bus up to the hospital every day after work and held you. I had a white knitted bed jacket. I remember my friend Maria brought me in some knitting needles and some pink wool—she had boys; we were all so delighted that you were a girl, who we were going to get to dress up, and make pretty, and wheel around in the big Mary Poppins pram.

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I was sure Jennifer would be a boy. I carried her differently—

much neater and all out in front, everyone else said so, too. It was winter, so I wasn’t so uncomfortable, and I didn’t get nearly so big.

I could still button up my winter coat until almost the end. Probably chasing after Lisa did that. She was just walking—I swear all that endless leaning over her as she toddled everywhere got that labor going. I wasn’t nervous at all—whatever discomfort I’d felt last time had receded in my memory, and I thought I was an old pro. Jennifer was much more difficult, though. We should have known we were in trouble when she started during a crucial Man United game. Maria had Lisa for us, but we had the car by then. I remember not wanting to sit down in the front seat, so I ended up sprawled on the backseat. It was all going along like it should, and then everything sort of stopped. The contractions were still strong, but they were much further apart, and I was tired. You were stuck, they said. Forceps. Which, when you are lying flat on your back and see them wielded above your nether regions, are particularly terrifying pieces of equipment. You were literally dragged into the world—I remember watching the doctor leaning back and pulling on them. After Lisa I felt exultant and triumphant; after Jennifer I just felt like I’d been hit by a lorry. I barely looked at you when they wheeled you away to the nursery, barely registered surprise that you were a girl. You were a tiny, wrinkled face in a huge white blanket. They were having to stitch me up, and I was sore and exhausted, and probably a bit fed up. Then they gave me a cup of tea and a piece of toast and I felt dreadful that I’d taken so little interest in you and insisted that they bring you back to me. I cried, I think. I was like a lioness then. You had Lisa’s fingers, too, but way more hair, curling on your neck. The forceps had left little indentations in your forehead, little bruises, and I remember kissing them and telling you how sorry I was that you’d had such a difficult journey. You’d had a tough day, too. You barely cried. You just
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stared up at me, and your eyes were practically black, and unblinking.

The midwife called you an old soul. She said some babies just looked like it wasn’t their first time around, and that you were one of them. Your dad whispered to me that she was talking rubbish, but I knew what she meant.

It seemed so neat, two girls so close together. The perfect little family. You had a little present for Lisa, when your dad brought her in the next day to see you. It was a dolly—you remember Doll Baby?—and we put it in your crib, so that she thought you gave it to her. She was so uninterested in that doll, the first day. She just wanted to get to you—a real baby was much more fun. She adored you. Until you were about three and you started arguing with her.

But when you were new she adored you. You and Doll Baby used to lie together on a towel on our bed. Her baby and my baby, being washed and dried and powdered, and talked to.

I wasn’t with Dad anymore when Amanda was born. I know it sounds selfish, but I enjoyed you being all mine. Not having to share you with anyone, even though I clearly caused a stir in the maternity ward. You were absolutely the standard seven-hour labor—

straightforward, painful, but pretty quick. This time I really felt like I understood the process. I’d perfected the cabbage thing, and I got the rhythm of it. Each contraction brought you closer to me (I know, that sounds like new age bollocks, but trust me, if you think of it that way, it really helps). I also seem to remember that there was quite a lot of gas and air involved. The woman in the next bed kept screaming, asking the doctors if they’d found her coil yet, and the gas and air made me think that was hilarious. I had these visions of the wretched thing being implanted in the scalp of her poor unwanted babe, like a satellite receiver. We’d moved by then, so I didn’t have Maria anymore. And the times had moved, too, so you didn’t get to stay in hospital for very long. One night, two at the most. It was tougher. Going home on my own, with a baby. Your 172 e l i z a b e t h

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big sisters were ridiculously excited and a great help during the day—it seemed like I never had to change a nappy—but I remember the nights feeling quite long. I think I was in a light coma for about twelve months. You sat up early, you crawled early, you were mountaineering on the sofa early. We had those stairs with the open tread (I know, very ’80s Ikea), and you used to skid about on them, in tights—I was convinced you’d never make it to your first birthday. But by then you were running around. Always in a hurry, Amanda. Matter of fact, you could hold your head up almost as soon as you were born. I know all mothers like to exaggerate about their own children—make them sound just a little bit more special than other people’s children—I used to hate that, in the playground—but you really were strong, even then. The midwife said so. It was like you wanted to look around and see what you were missing. When I watched you, I remembered Jennifer’s staring, quiet eyes, and I thought then that you were going to grow into very different people. And you did, didn’t you?

Now—Hannah. They call you an elderly mother, when you have a baby over the age of forty. Depressing, or what? They like to fill you up with gloom and doom talk and do nuchal scans and explain your increased risk of Down syndrome and the need for amnio tests. Actually it starts before that, when you make the foolish mistake of going to the doctor to talk about even the possibility of having another baby. They want to tell you to think about how tired you’ll be. How your body isn’t capable of doing what it used to be able to. How your fertility will have fallen away to such an extent it may already be impossible anyhow. I came out of the GP’s feeling like a dessicated old prune, I tell you. Forty-four years old. Forty-four and a half, to be precise. I didn’t feel old. You never do, I don’t think. Even now, in my head, I feel eighteen years old, despite major evidence to the contrary. Your brain doesn’t age at the same pace. And your dad—my toy boy—had made me feel
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younger in that first year together than I had in . . . well . . . ages.

Younger and more fun, and more alive and sexier (sorry!). And he wanted you so badly. Turned out the GP was an idiot and I got pregnant the second month we tried, so that was that and you were on your way. Your dad took such incredible care of me. We were living in a caravan, while the house was being built. He flogged himself—and the poor Polish builders—to get it finished before you came, but made me take it easy the whole time. He would cook dinner, bring me tea in bed. Kept offering to get me coal, or pickles, or ice cream in the middle of the night. He also read “the book” and became an expert. I refused point-blank to go to the childbirth classes with him, on the basis that I would almost certainly be old enough to be the grandmother of most of the other babies, so instead, he would read out things to me every night.

Visualization exercises, breathing techniques, the need for a birth plan. It was hard not to laugh at him, knowing what I knew. I tried hard not to remind him all the time that this wasn’t new to me, because it was so new and so exciting to him. I tried to explain the cabbage technique, but it wasn’t in “the book.” He bought wooden letters spelling out our boy and girl names and said I should bring them to hospital and line them up on the windowsill while I labored. Right. Do you know what your name would have been, Hannah, if you’d been a boy? James. That’s why Amanda had a guinea pig named James. And that’s why James’s cage had his name on it.