Page 72 of So Thrilled For You

Tristan’s parents came and didn’t even bring me anything. Only presents for Woody, who could still only see in fucking black and white. He, of course, needed the presents. Treat the baby. Give the baby special things. Not me. Not that inconvenient mother. And I was bleeding and bleeding, and my scar hurt, and my womb was contracting back in on itself, and I was dripping milk through my clothes, and I couldn’t stop sobbing, but still, somehow, I was making cups of tea for guests, and,oh are you hungry? I guess I could make you some sandwiches, yes you must be jet-lagged, how very awful.

Shut the fuck up, that’s all I realise people want me to do.

Be a mother and shut the fuck up.

You chose to do this to yourself so shut the fuck up.

You’re lucky you were able to have children so shut the fuck up.

And, if your baby is crying, make sure it shuts the fuck up too.

Cope better, cope better, cope better.

Nicki’s almost come to the end of her giant pile of stuff. She’s practically dwarfed by the ocean of pastel presents surrounding her chair, despite Charlotte doing her best to organise them into piles at her feet. What was it Charlotte told me and Phoebe? Earlier in the kitchen? Today is a gender reveal, as well as a baby shower? I vaguely remember that I’m supposed to be in chargeof some kind of firework but I’m so tired. I hope Phoebe listened more earnestly . . . I can’t stop looking at all the piles of all the stuff. The endless, endless, stuff. Like Nicki, I’d also received an overwhelming amount of well-meaning crap. After I discharged myself and took Woody home, staggering through the door, bleeding into my adult nappy, crying with relief I was finally out of that horrific building, the doorbell wouldn’t stop buzzing from parcel deliveries. Flowers, more flowers – all of which withered to death, still wrapped in cellophane, on the counter, while we tried to cope with Woody screaming and never sleeping. More knitted blankets. Countless numbers of soft toys – all made from that achingly soft material, but, nevertheless, likely to cot death the fuck out of him, so we had to find room for it all. I hardly had time to shower daily to keep the stitches that were holding my insides together clean, and I remember feeling actual rage as the door buzzed and more crap accumulated. Where does one put six blankets? Two Sophie the Giraffes? Where should I store all the baby clothes my baby does not yet fit into because people were thoughtful enough to size up?

None of it was what I really needed. Which was a night nurse, an emergency pelvic floor examination, months of intensive trauma therapy with childcare so I could attend the sessions, or advice about baby sleep that actually worked. Wrapped in none of those hand-knitted blankets was a hand on my shoulder, and a caring,‘Are you really OK, Lauren? Your birth sounded awful and you’ve not slept since. I’m so sorry you’ve gone through this. What can I do to help you feel human again? I don’t care about Woody right now, I care about you.’ But, you know, baths toys are great too.

Cool Mum’s so grateful for the beautiful baby gifts she receives. She takes a professional quality shot of her perfect newborn wearing each outfit and gets it printed onto postcards. She handwrites thank yous on the back and posts them all within two weeks of her baby being born. Even though she can’t walk as far as the post box after her C-section, she still manages this, around a puking, screaming, insomniac newborn, when you have no idea what the time is, or day, or sometimes even year . . . Oh, hang on, I forgot. Cool Mum would never need a C-section–she did hypnobirthing–plus her baby slept through from three days old. Even when the baby wakes, Cool Mum doesn’t mind. She loves the cuddles, she knows it will go so quickly. She swaddles the baby up in six home-knitted blankets and makes artwork out of all the useless soft toys . . .

I was so sleep-deprived that I hardly have any memories of those first few months. Only a trauma deep in my guts of this desperate, relentless helplessness and trying not to scream with each painful latch, panic about jaundice, projectile vomits and poonamis splattered across our wall, begging for more painkillers, worrying about how much I was still bleeding. Hardly able to blink with the shock of what had happened to me.My pulse throbs in my neck as I remind myself of what Nicki has coming her way. Of what she needs to get through and survive. I finish my second glass of punch and allow myself to feel a sliver of smugness that my newborn hell is in the past while hers still awaits. Nothing can be worse than the last nine months of my life, surely? It can only improve from here. It must do. It already has. I’m here, at a party, drinking my second glass of punch. God, it’s great, Woodybeing asleep, I think, letting my shoulders unhitch as I glance down at him in the monitor. It’s so nice to be around people and to be me – rather than stopping him crawling into every available danger, or ripping down my top to try and breastfeed, or grabbing everything off the table to chuck onto the floor. Nicki’s friend, Phoebe, is really funny, too. We had a chat in the kitchen and she had me in stitches talking about gender roles in childcare.

‘How terrible is your husband then, on a scale of one to ten?’ she’d asked, outright. Her blatancy made me blatant in response.

‘He’s the least worst,’ I replied, that second glass of punch making itself known. ‘But the bar is basically so low it’s underground.’

Wow, I really have missed alcohol. How it softens the edges, gives life a glow, blunts reality. I’m two cups down, probably over the limit to drive, which I’m sure is the worst parenting ever. I won’t have a third, and I’ll have to stay a bit later to sober up, but, for now, it’s worth it. I’m smiling. I’m relaxed. I’m back in the present, nestling into this ludicrously plush sofa. Woody twitches on the monitor but I shh him through the screen. Maybe he’ll nap for two hours, like other babies seem to, and I’ll get to enjoy the whole party? Miracles happen every day and I’m tipsy enough to believe in them right now.

Nicki’s shaking a large box, hastily wrapped in leftover Christmas paper.

‘Oh, that’s mine,’ I call over from my chair. ‘Sorry. I forgot to write a tag.’

Charlotte’s eyeballing the Santa paper like I’ve wrapped the present in my own shit. She writes something on her spreadsheet and I wonder if she’s grading people. Have I just lost points for not crafting my own wrapping paper using a potato print of my baby’s arse or something?

‘Love the paper,’ Cara says, and everyone laughed. ‘Spot the mother!’

‘Yeah, err, sorry. I . . . Woody . . .’ I blush in the heat as the circle laughs again.

‘Don’t worry at all,’ Nicki says, holding the gift up. ‘I think you and I have been giving each other wine in the same recycled gift bag for ten years now.’ She pushes a pudgy pregnant finger under a seam of my shoddily-wrapped gift.

‘The rose gold metallic one?’

She smiles at me from across the room. ‘That’s exactly the one.’

She rips off the offensive paper to find an Amazon box inside, because, yes, I got all her presents off Prime. Taking Woody shopping is currently impossible because he cries whenever I put him in his buggy. Nicki tactfully ignores the box, and reaches inside, pulling out a baby thermometer, two bottles of baby Calpol, two bottles of baby Nurofen, a snot sucker, a Windi and the intensive nappy rash cream that’s basically neon yellow Chernobyl in paste form.

‘Oh, wow, it’s . . . er . . . medicine.’

Bemusement etches itself on her features as she peers at the digital thermometer. I rush to explain, aware that nobody is cooing at this offering like they did whenever an elephant appeared in various forms.

‘Honestly, you never have any of this stuff in, and you only realise you desperately need it at, like, 2am, when all the shops are shut.’

‘Right, of course.’ She holds up the yellow tube and reads the back of the box. Polite til the end.

‘That stuff is amazing,’ I add. ‘Honestly, when they start teething they get such bad nappy rash. This is the only stuff that works. And, that thing that looks like an accordion?’ I lean over. ‘It’s really gross but you kind of put a tube up their arse and suck out their farts when they’ve got trapped wind.’

The entire table goes ‘Eww’, a proper eww way, not an amused eww way.

‘That’s disgusting,’ someone mutters and my blush deepens.

---