Sam was filled with a sense of anxiety that meant that even when she was absolutely shattered with exhaustion and had a moment where she could possibly lie down and sleep, she couldn’t relax. As soon as she’d put her head on the pillow with the baby monitor beside her, the fears would start. How could she protect India? What happened if someone broke in and tried to kidnap her? What would happen if Sam died? Who would look after India, then? Yes, Ted would be there, but it wasn’t the same. India needed her mother.
And Sam knew she was getting so much wrong. She could feed her daughter and change her and hold her tightly, but Sam was doing it all wrong – she knew she was because if she was doing it right, the feeds would be spaced out and India wouldn’t be waking up all the time in the night. On the phone, Joanne had told her it was important to grab sleep any time she could: ‘As soon as their heads hit the pillow, your head needs to hit the pillow,’ Joanne had said calmly as if it really was that simple.
But Sam wasn’t finding it simple at all. When India cried in the night, she bottle-fed her the expressed milk.
Afterwards, Sam was never able to go back to sleep. She was on edge, waiting for something to go wrong, waiting for a disaster.
Her heartbeat raced, and she felt the adrenaline rush within her, the way people who’d taken amphetamines described it: one huge rush, one huge speeding sensation through her whole body. And yet if this was speed, why did anyone try it?
It was horrible, stressful and fearful. It made a sense of doom and fear envelop her.
‘Are you OK?’ Ted would murmur sleepily, turning in the bed.
‘Yes,’ she’d whisper, lying, wishing he’d know she was lying so she could sit up and tell him the truth.
That the fear was so huge. That her milk was drying up because she was so tired. She couldn’t even do that properly. That when she slept, she had terrible dreams and in every dream, somebody was hurting India and Sam could never get to her baby in time to save her.
She often woke from these nightmares sobbing and it took ages for reality to kick in.
Worse, far worse, was the dark hole her mind went into: like an abyss she was standing on the edge of. Inside was darkness: no colour, just dark.
It was waiting for her, softly waiting.
Sam was afraid that if she fell in, she would never come out of the nothingness, never feel joy again.
When India slept, she sat in the chair in her baby’s room and cried, with the abyss waiting for her.
When India was awake, she tried to banish it.
‘I love you so much,’ she crooned to her beloved baby. ‘You are so loved.’
She knew India knew this, knew on a deep psychic level that her beautiful child could feel her mother’s fierce love. Knew all the pain she’d gone through for India to be born. Her star, her shining child.
All those years of treatments.
Injections in the morning from tiny bottles kept in the fridge. Scans to see what was happening.
Great excitement at the harvesting of healthy follicles.
Huge hopes at the clinic implantation of tiny cells made up of her and Ted: him holding her hand tightly and music playing in the background, the nurse holding her other hand. Everyone wishing the best.
And then the disappointment.
The crushing, life-numbing pain.
The abyss had been there too, Sam realised: but merely on the edges, a faint glimmer that never managed to reach her properly.
Just now it had come to claim her, when she had this miracle baby she’d been given to cherish. Why now? Why?
‘I love you, little India, with all my heart,’ she said scores of times every day.
Yet still the darkness waited and while she tried to keep it out until she was alone, it was creeping into her everyday life, making her eyes dull, her gaze full of pain.
Ted was concerned, she knew that.
He kissed her every morning but she couldn’t respond.
‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Sam, love?’ he’d said so often, his face creased with worry. ‘You look so tired and worn out. Should you go to the doctor? Will I take more time off?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ she’d say.
Once, this man had been her world and now, she couldn’t talk to him. The effort of explaining was simply too much.
Besides, he wouldn’t understand. Who would?
He’d think she was going mad.
She couldn’t even tell Joanne. Joanne had never felt like this. Sam was sure of that – she’d have told her if she had.
Sam had been in Joanne’s house when Joanne’s last baby, Posy, had been tiny and she’d watched, fascinated, as Joanne had wandered around the kitchen, Posy held against her expertly and she’d done things: she’d taken phone calls, kissed Patrick, had entire conversations, all the while knowing that she was safely taking care of the baby.
‘Make us a cup of tea, Patrick,’ she’d call happily.
‘Sugar?’
‘Oh gosh, yes,’ Joanne would say. ‘I need the energy. And a bun, if you haven’t snaffled them all.’
Patrick would laugh and say there was one left.
‘For me!’ Joanne would say triumphantly.
When the tea was made, Patrick would take the baby easily, and Joanne would sigh, grab her tea, rub her aching back at the same time, and sink into a chair, while Patrick, still holding Posy, would give her a plate with a bun on it.
It was like a seamless ballet of comfortableness, of people who knew what they were doing.
When Sam walked into her own kitchen, she was so full of fear something would happen: that she’d trip over one of the dogs, that they’d jump up and hurt India even though they were both knee-high to a midget and couldn’t hurt anyone. But she was frightened she’d fall and bang India’s tiny delicate little head on a chair, on the kitchen table, on the floor. Babies were so fragile.
Looking at the tiny delicate skin covering her daughter’s beautiful little skull, Sam could see a filament of veins and she could feel the fontanel. Under other circumstances she might have loved that word. It was otherworldly, but now it merely meant a tiny fragment of her precious child’s skull where the bones were not fused and where injury could occur.
She was sitting on the floor in the nursery with India one day, holding her and trying not to cry, when the doorbell rang.
Let it ring, Sam thought. She could not move while India slept. But then she heard a key turn in the lock and knew it must be either her father or Joanne, both of whom had keys.
Joanne appeared at the nursery door quickly.
She slipped onto the floor beside her sister.
‘You OK?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ began Sam automatically.
‘Ted phoned me. He said you won’t talk to him and he’s worried sick. What’s up, lovie?’
Finally, the automatic pilot that had kept her pretending for so long went off the grid.
‘Nooo,’ Sam said in a noise that was half-moan, half-sob. ‘I’m not OK. I don’t know what’s wrong.’
It disturbed India, who wriggled.
Expertly, Joanne took the baby and laid her in her crib.
‘She never goes back to sleep when I do that,’ said Sam.
‘I am a baby whisperer or a baby witch,’ said Joanne. ‘One or the other.’ She switched on India’s crib mobile, little coloured butterflies that whirled slowly to gentle music. ‘Come on.’
The sisters sat halfway down the stairs, the way they used to as children.
‘Spill,’ said Joanne, ‘and don’t give me any rubbish about how you’re just tired. It’s more than that.’
Sam spilled and as she did, she began to cry, relating the dreams and the fears and the terrible darkness that was waiting for her. Tears and snot mixed and eventually Joanne, who refused to move from her position holding her sister, handed over a scrunched-up tissue to dry the tears.
‘You poor darling. It’s going to be fine, I promise you. You’re not going crazy, Sam, really. I’d say it’s textbook post-natal depression,’ said Joanne. ‘Lots of women get it after pregnancy. You should have said something, lovie, but at least now that you have, it’s going to be easier. We’ll get you sorted. It’s a chemical imbalance and antidepressant tablets will sort you out.’
‘You never went through any of this with your babies,’ said Sam miserably. ‘I’ve failed India and Ted.’
She began to cry again at the thought of how she’d shut him out.
‘For a start, all women are different,’ pointed out Joanne. ‘Plus, having a baby after a lot of infertility treatment can be difficult.’ She looked carefully at her sister. ‘I’ve read up on this and it’s quite normal for people who have had a lot of treatments to get post-natal depression once they actually have a baby.’
‘Really?’ asked Sam, thinking of the social worker in the hospital and how she’d asked if Sam had ever had either depression or any previous pregnancy problems.
Joanne looked at her with wet eyes.
‘Oh lovie, I should have said something, I should have said it to Ted. I just never thought . . . Yes, it’s incredibly common. And you had to go through it all alone. I thought we were soul sisters forever and you were going to tell me everything, always.’
Sam managed a sort of a laugh finally.
‘It came on me and I got lost in it. I—’ She searched for the right words. ‘It came out of nowhere and was so frightening. Like I would never be happy again and the fear and pain of that – thinking that when I had India to take care of, when I’d longed for her for so many years.’
The sisters sat quietly.
Sam realised she was holding the little cuddly donkey Vera had bought for India. It was as soft as velvet and, as yet, India had no real interest in it, but it seemed so precious now.
She closed her eyes at the thought of her pregnancy and how she’d felt those moments of huge joy, and then those dark nights when she was too hot, her back hurt and her mind raced with all the fears she could never speak out loud. Not to Ted, not to Joanne, not to anyone.
At the time, she’d feared that she would never actually give birth, that something would go wrong, because she was not meant to be a mother.
Her genes were her mother’s genes. Those genes were not meant to be passed on. Plus, she didn’t know how to mother. She’d sit up those nights and remind herself tearfully that, yes, she could nurture and care. She had Ted, and her sister, her father, her darling nieces . . . so many people she loved and who loved her.
But the needling little voice went on.
‘I thought I couldn’t do it—’ she began.
‘Yes, you can,’ said Joanne fiercely. ‘You were scared. Scared of this older mother thing that you’ve glued onto yourself like a piece of gum stuck to your shoe.’
‘Well I am an older mother,’ said Sam, ‘although that wasn’t the thing that knocked me down into this hole.’
‘It was part of it, and so was Mum.’
Sam’s head had shot up. ‘What do you mean Mum?’
‘You’re worried that you’d be the same sort of mother as her.’
Sam almost laughed. That fear was mixed in there for sure and yet it was only a part of the pain she felt right now.
‘I was worried,’ she admitted, ‘but how did you know?’
‘It wasn’t hard. You are the career chick and that sort of defined you. When you weren’t going to have a baby, it defined you even more so. I don’t think we needed a psychiatrist to figure that out,’ Joanne said. ‘You were scared you’d be her sort of mum.’
‘Yes,’ said Sam, exhaling on the word, ‘it sounds stupid now, doesn’t it?’
‘Not stupid at all, but you’re not our mum. You can be anything you want to be, you can be a different sort of mother. Am I like her? No. You can break the cycle. And – you’re going to hate me saying this – but it’s the way she’s made. Not everyone should have kids, end of story.’
Sam nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said fervently. ‘I just want to feel better and to be a mother who isn’t crying all the time.’
‘Right, let’s do something about this, then,’ said Joanne. ‘First, you need to go to the doctor about having post-natal depression. Let’s phone now, and make an appointment. I’m coming too. It’s medication time – pretty much the only answer here even if you feel you’re almost allergic to meds after all the fertility drugs. Then, when the tablets begin to work, don’t spend too much time looking at the books and trying to figure out what you should be doing exactly now,’ she said, ‘because that can be fatal. One book might say you should be feeding your baby this way or treating your baby that way, and when you are vulnerable that doesn’t help. Just see if you can do it your way for a while.’
‘My way?’ said Sam doubtfully.
‘Yes.’ Joanne hugged her sister. ‘Your wonderful way.’