Mine was a planned pregnancy. It never occurred to me to join that swelling band of thirty-something women who are choosing to remain childless for the sake of their careers. At the age of 27 I acquired a husband; at 31, I was ready for a child. I strolled into pregnancy blithely self-assured. I had moved countries three times, survived Oxford exams, and the launch of Prospect. Surely, I could do motherhood.
I was determined to be prepared. The moment I discovered I was pregnant, I rushed out to buy all the right books-Gordon Bourne's Pregnancy, Miriam Stoppard's Pregnancy and Birth Book and Penelope Leach's Babyhood. I weighed the merits of a Moses basket against a carrycot. I studied John Lewis's push-chairs and soon felt confident enough to tackle the accessories: raincover, footmuff, canopy. I registered at my local National Childbirth Trust (NCT) branch and signed up for "yoga in pregnancy" classes. After completing an application to join Tesco's Baby Club, I felt I was fully in control.
There is an old Yiddish saying: "Man makes plans and God smiles." He must have been laughing when I was writing my birth plan. Eight weeks of NCT classes and too many yoga sessions had convinced me that I wanted a natural birth. I might still opt for an epidural, I thought, but I would try to do without it if I could. Then came the news: at 37 weeks I discovered that I was going to have a Caesarian section because the baby was breech.
I was booked in for the operation on a Monday morning. The midwife brought in the hospital diary. "Tuesday is fully booked but we could still do Monday," she said, in her matter-of-fact voice. "Monday is fine," I replied, as if I was booking my next appointment with the dentist. I went home feeling elated. My baby would be born in four days. But, slowly, the reality of what had happened began to sink in: a Caesarian meant that I was not going to feel those contractions I had been preparing for over the past eight months. I felt I had been cheated. I was going to be deprived of a defining experience in womanhood.
Later, I found out that three out of the eight women from my NCT class ended up having Caesarian sections (roughly 25 per cent of all births in Britain are now by Caesarian). Yet the word Caesarian had not been mentioned throughout the course; none of us had been prepared for that possibility.
I was wheeled to the operating theatre on Monday afternoon after a seven-hour wait. The doctor walked in as my epidural was beginning to take effect. She introduced herself and muttered something about the fact that she would be performing the operation. But with an oxygen mask on my face, a drip in my arm, and already paralysed from the waist down, I cannot recall her face. Five minutes later, the baby was pulled out of my stomach. I did not feel anything, although I could hear the sound of my stomach being pulled.
Benjamin was born at 2:04pm, weighing 7 pounds 2 ounces. He was a beautiful baby, unscarred by the traumas of a difficult labour. He scarcely cried. He opened his eyes and looked surprised, as if not knowing why he should have been disturbed from his comfortable life inside the womb.
No sooner had we reached the post-natal ward than my confidence about motherhood began to crumble. I was not prepared for the pain of breast-feeding. I had no idea that my baby would demand to suck on my sore nipples for two hours during each feed. With six feeds a day, I calculated that I was feeding him, on average, 12 hours a day. "He's probably going through a growth spurt," the midwife told me during one of her house visits. I was too tired to reply. I had hoped for some advice on what I might do to improve the situation.
When the health visitor dropped in for her first visit, I was hoping for a shoulder to cry on. I argued my case. I spend hours rocking Benjamin to sleep and singing lullabies. When he finally falls asleep, I cautiously edge towards his Moses basket to put him down. On the rare occasions when he does not wake up immediately, he remains there for 10 minutes, wakes up, begins to cry, and the whole routine starts again. "My baby is not on a four-hour schedule, he is on a 10-minute schedule," I complained. The health visitor looked Benjamin in the eye. "You have a very alert baby," she finally said. "Thanks for pointing that out," I replied grumpily.
The UN lists sleep deprivation as a form of torture. Now I understand why. Four months into motherhood, I have not slept longer than three hours in a row, and my patience with colic-a fuzzy word to describe a baby's otherwise inexplicable crying-is wearing thin.
In despair, I turned to Penelope Leach. "If extreme wakefulness is not to be turned into misery... I believe that acceptance is the essence." In other words, grin and bear it. I did, however, find one passage which at least made my suffering seem worthwhile. Experienced friends had been trying to convince me that I should simply let Benjamin cry-"the double door theory," as one friend put it. I could not do it, and Leach was on my side: "Many mothers, health visitors and doctors believe that crying for company is in some way illegitimate... If there is nothing physically wrong, mothers are advised to put the baby down again, and let him cry it out. It is a curious attitude... We do not reckon that a husband who has been given his supper 'should not' require anything more of us until morning... The fear of spoiling a baby of this age is a tragic one."
Leach is absolutely right. But these days there are simply not enough people around to distract a crying baby. The problem, in other words, lies with the demise of community. Until now the argument about dismantling community had never impressed me. In any case, I had always been on the side of individual autonomy in that debate. Yes, modernity had meant the loss of community and the peer support which went with it. But it had also meant an increase in freedom. Not so long ago, women from my background did not choose their husbands. I had no desire to return to those dark ages.
But for the first time in my life I was beginning to feel the absence of family and friendly neighbours around me. My baby did not have unrealistic demands: throughout history, babies have been carried, rocked and cuddled by grandmothers, aunts and extended family. But in our world of atomised families, we are lucky if there are two parents to meet a baby's needs. Therein lies the problem.
I am luckier than most. I have married a "new man." Yet even a "new man" is no substitute for community. The best entente can be put to the test by a crying baby. With growing fatigue, resentment builds up. Arguments about who will pick up the baby next soon follow.
I didn't make it to my NCT reunion. I was glad Benjamin had a cold: it gave me an excuse not to go. I dreaded to hear about how they were all coping well, had already lost weight and were planning their next pregnancy.
I am back at work now. I have found it liberating after a four-month maternity leave. Yes, the juggling act is exhausting. But if the truth be told, I find work easier than full-time motherhood.
I often wonder why I find motherhood so difficult. There are obvious answers. Until Benjamin was born, I had never held a newborn baby in my arms. Nor did I take much interest in other people's babies. My involvement had been limited to buying presents for my friends' many babies.
A more significant point is that you cannot prepare yourself for motherhood. Most of the important steps in our lives happen gradually. As children, we are eased into school by attending nursery for halfdays. We acquire our independence gradually. Each stage is riddled with difficulty-our first day at school, our first love, our first job-but the transition is never too sudden. Even marriage has become a formality which does not substantially alter our lifestyles. But motherhood is different. Nine months of pregnancy do not ease you into motherhood.
There is one final element, which has to do with control. Thirty-something professionals are used to being in control of their lives. I was not prepared for the fact that I would not be in control of the birth of my baby, no more than I would be in control over the next four months of my life.
It has become a platitude to blame the high value we place on the pursuit of individual happiness for the increasing rate of divorce. (Actually, the unwritten rule has always been that men were free to pursue their own careers and goals. It is now that women, too, are demanding that their own happiness is not sacrificed that marriages are under strain.) Yet I, perhaps wrongly, never saw marriage as putting inconvenient limits on the pursuit of individual happiness. This is why I was shocked when motherhood came. If partnership is (arguably) compatible with our culture of selfish individualism, parenthood is not. I am slowly coming round to that.
I have never lost my patience with Benjamin. In fact, he is beginning to grow on me. And on those days when I still find the experience daunting, I remind myself that if nothing had prepared me for motherhood, nothing had prepared Benjamin for babyhood either.n
