I am crying now too, unable to keep the tears from streaming down my face as I force her feet into the sleepsuit. I can’t do this. I can’t do anything. And it occurs to me, for the first time, that Alice might be better off without me.
‘Milly?’ Anna appears in the doorway, her voice both hesitant and alarmed. ‘Can I help?’
‘Take her.’ My voice is clogged and I turn away, wiping at my cheeks. Behind me, I hear Anna murmuring to Alice, and when I turn around, she is cuddling her, her cheek pressed against the top of her head, and Alice has stopped crying.
‘It will get better,’ Anna says, but she doesn’t sound convinced, and neither am I.
‘I’m going to have a nap,’ I say, even though I’ve just got up.
‘I’ve made you some coffee,’ Anna protests. ‘Why don’t you just spend a little time holding her, Milly? The nappy changes and bottle feeds are the tough bits. Just cuddle her…’ Matt must have told her about my disastrous attempts at feeding her. And the nappy changes and bottle feeds clearly aren’t difficult for her, for Matt, for anyone. Anyone but me.
‘You can do it,’ I say, and push past her.
Alone in my bedroom, I curl up on my side, my legs tucked up to my chest. I feel empty now, of tears, of resolve, of anything. Downstairs, I hear Alice singing ‘Hush Little Baby’, and a broken sob escapes me.
* * *
Over the next two weeks nothing gets better. I try, at least as much as I can; I manage to change Alice once, without her crying, and I give her half a bottle mostly successfully. These feel like huge milestones, but they’re not enough, and Anna watching me all the time makes everything worse.
Matt has gone back to work, and Anna is always here. When I changed Alice, she congratulated me, as if I’d scaled a mountain. I felt like a babysitter – a bad one that she has to chivvy along and bolster with fake praise.
And I can’t help but notice, at every turn, that it’s all so easy for Anna. She holds Alice in one arm as she pours cereal with the other, totally relaxed and confident. She asked if I wanted to bath Alice one morning, after she’d had a dirty nappy, and I watched in amazed fascination as she did it herself, holding a slippery, wet Alice with one hand as she scooped water with the other. Alice didn’t even cry.
It was utterly beyond me, and we both knew it. Everyone knew it – my parents, Matt, even Jack, who stopped by too often for my liking. Everyone was witness to my complete and utter failure as a mother, even if no one ever said as much. I saw it in their eyes, their faces, the pursed lips and sideways glances and telling silences. I saw it and I felt it.
‘How are you feeling, then?’ the health visitor asks when she comes for her weekly visit. Anna is in the kitchen, making dinner, Alice in the baby swing next to her. ‘It’s nice your friend is helping out,’ she adds kindly, and I wonder if she senses the disparity, how Anna is more of a mother than I am. Perhaps she is glad of it, because then at least she knows Alice is being taken care of.
‘Okay,’ I answer, because some stubborn part of me refuses to admit I can’t get past this. Or per
haps it’s just because I know I’m a failure, and admitting it won’t help. Instead I try, stupidly, pathetically, to hide it from everyone, including this woman.
‘The baby blues are fading a bit?’ she says with a smile, and I can’t believe I might be convincing her. She can’t tell that I am holding on by a fraying thread, if that. She can’t see the despair in my eyes, the feeling every morning that I, quite literally, cannot get up from bed, because my limbs are too heavy, as if I’ve been replaced by concrete. How can she not see? She’s a professional. But neither do I tell her.
‘Yes, they really are,’ I say. ‘It was a bit rough at first, but I think I’m getting the hang of it now.’ I almost want to laugh; what I’m saying is so absurd.
The health visitor nods, all sympathy. ‘The first few weeks are the hardest,’ she says, and I nod back, as if I agree with her, as if that’s all it is. When she leaves, I fight a sudden, desperate urge to claw her back, to tell her the truth. I’m falling apart and I hate myself. But I can’t, I can’t, and so I just wave instead.
‘I’m glad you’re feeling better,’ Anna says after she’s gone, making no attempt to pretend she didn’t eavesdrop on the entire conversation. ‘Do you want to take Alice out today, in the pram?’
I am annoyed by her suggestion, the way I’ve been annoyed by every other one, like I have to be managed, and yet I know I do.
‘That’s a good idea,’ I make myself say, because to refuse feels wrong, and at least I’ll be away from Anna. ‘I’ll take her out to the park.’
I shower and dress, and when I come downstairs, Anna has already bundled Alice into her snowsuit. She puts her in the pram as I get my coat, and I playact at being cheerful and insouciant. This is going to be fun.
Of course it isn’t. Alice starts crying almost the moment we leave, Anna standing at the door and waving me off. I grit my teeth and try to walk briskly, even though my incision still hurts and a walk is not actually a great idea for someone who had an emergency C-section a few weeks ago.
‘Come on, darling,’ I say, my voice cheerful and overloud. ‘It’s such a beautiful day today.’ Alice, of course, pays no mind. She continues to scream, looking too small in the pram; I should have wrapped her in a blanket, or put something under her head. She rolls around in the pram’s empty expanse like a marble in a jar. And she cries. Oh, how she cries.
I walk to the park as I once dreamed of doing, what feels like a lifetime ago. Alice cries all the while. Once I am there, I sit down on a bench, because I am tired and my incision hurts and I honestly feel I can’t go any further, in any respect.
Half-heartedly I rock the pram back and forth as Alice continues to scream, but then I stop doing even that. I wonder if I will ever move again, if Alice will ever stop screaming.
‘Miss, miss… are you all right?’ I blink an elderly man into focus; he is staring at me in concern. ‘Shouldn’t you be tending to your baby?’ I hear more than a hint of censure in his voice, and I don’t blame him. I’ve been sitting here for nearly half an hour, I realise, simply staring into space, as Alice howls.
Without answering him, I get up and start pushing her back home. I feel dazed and distant from myself; I barely hear her cries now, and I stare straight ahead, not taking anything in, like a mindless automaton.
Anna comes out the front door as soon as I’ve reached the drive. She looks panicked, and I realise how loud and awful Alice’s screaming truly is. When I look down, her face is bright red and she has been sick on herself.