Page 71 of So Thrilled For You

Nighttime.

No sleep. Babies crying. Sometimes it was mine, sometimes others.

The sting of them taking the catheter out.

The laugh of a woman when I pissed myself getting out of bed.

That laugh.

I’ve never known shame like it.

If I had the chance to stab her to death – whoever laughed at me on that dark first night – I would stab her until she was mush. I imagine doing it often. Finding her. Killing her.

They came to clear up my urine from the floor, but they wouldn’t give me a painkiller. They weren’t allowed to do that. Some other midwife had the authority and she’d come when she could but they were very busy because it’s September, and a full moon, and the NHS maternity crisis and, can you please tend to your baby, his crying is keeping the other mothers awake.

Should I have used my BRAIN then, fucking hypnobirthing lady? Does BRAIN work against a staffing crisis? Yes, feminism! And advocate for yourself! But how does that work when you’re begging for painkillers, and they won’t come, and someone has laughed at you for pissing yourself, and you think you almost died, and your baby almost died, and now it’s alive and won’t stop shitting itself, or attacking your nipple with gums as hard as cement, and your husband isn’t allowed to be here and advocate on your behalf, and how is this legal? To do this to women? To leave them alone, behind a flimsy curtain, with a creature that needs 24-hour care, when the woman hasn’t slept in six days, and just had seven layers of fat and tissue and muscle ripped into, and her bladder is fucked, and she’s scratched her skin off, and she has no idea how to look after a newborn baby. None. Because fucking hypnobirthing lady never told you about looking afteryour baby. They only lied and said that you can sneeze your baby out as long as you use your BRAIN and secrete enough oxytocin.

Tristan rescued me before the second night.

‘She can’t be discharged without her papers.’

‘Yes, she can. This isn’t prison. In prison, they give them medication.’

He told them he’d complain to PALS. He cried when I told him about the woman who laughed. On the drive home, he gripped the steering wheel so hard that I thought it would snap off. Woody, so tiny in his car seat. I thought every slight jolt in the road might cause him brain damage. Every jolt had me gasp in further pain.

Then we were back in our house with this tiny thing to keep alive. Even though I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t get out of bed without wincing and holding my stomach so my guts wouldn’t spill out. And Woody wouldn’t sleep. At all. He screamed and screamed and wouldn’t sleep. Tristan and I watched him in incompetent horror – clueless, useless, broken beyond repair.

I was hollowed out. I wanted to rest. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to run away. I wanted to scream. I wanted to sue. I wanted to kill myself.

What had happened to me?

I needed to go to some kind of Priory-like facility, with a spa, and have two weeks, at least, to recover and process from whatever the fuck had just happened to me. Someone to cook me food, and change my dressing, and hoist me out of bed, and let me sleep, and have intensive EMDR to stop the horrors of my past week dancing behind my eyelids inthe rare moments Woody allowed us to sleep for more than 40 minutes.

People kept sending cards, and presents, like something good had happened to our lives.

I didn’t want to see anyone, but people came anyway. Pretending they cared about me, but only really caring about holding my baby, and getting their picture taken with it, and telling me ‘oh, but it’s worth it’ if I dared mention the hell I’d just endured.

Tristan and I almost divorced about his parents coming to visit us.

‘They can’t come,’ I told him, sobbing on the bathroom floor for the fortieth time that day, while the other NCT mums made jokes about my tears on the group chat.‘Sounds like your milk has come in.’ ‘They can’t come,’ I repeated. ‘Nobody can come. You’ve got to stop guests coming around. I need to be alone. I don’t have the strength. No.No.’

‘Lauren, they’ve flown fromAustralia.These flights have been booked for months. Youwantedthem to come. You told them to book those tickets.’

‘That was before.’

‘Lauren, they’re coming. They’re even staying in a hotel, please.’

‘No. Everyone needs to leave us the fuck alone.’

‘Lauren?’

‘Nobody. No visitors. I mean it, Tristan. I can’t . . .’

Except, of course, I could and I did, because I didn’t matter anymore. That’s what the last week had taught me. I am a mother now and mothers don’t matter. I’m no longer a human because I created a human. Rather than reward for this, there is only punishment.

I haven’t mattered for nine months now.

Woody is what matters. Woody is what people care about. I am just the inconvenient, fat, frumpy, mess with a greasy bun lugging the precious thing about.

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