Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [32]
Tick, tick, tick…I counted down every day of this sad and lonely pregnancy. At least the baby kept reassuring me that it was okay, with regular kicks and nudges.
During one of my last prenatal appointments, Greg told me the baby was in breech position and unlikely to turn at that late stage. He advised me that there would be a higher risk of complications if I tried to deliver the baby naturally and I was having none of that.
‘Let’s look at this as an opportunity,’ he said, ‘and deliver this little baby a couple of weeks early. It won’t affect baby’s health in any way and you’ll finally be able to relax.’
We scheduled an elective caesarean and Tony arranged for a weeks’ leave at this time.
At last, at 10.43am on August 12th 2002 Isabel Pamela was born. As I was wheeled into the operating theatre Tony and Greg eyed each other off suspiciously. I had an epidural and was conscious throughout the procedure. When they lifted her out and I heard her cry (she was breathing!) I took my first proper breath in months. They bundled her up and laid her beside me, and as those twin burdens of fear and failure lifted off my shoulders I felt whole for the first time since that sad day in September almost two years earlier.
I lay staring at this magical creation all that first day and felt her healing gaze. As the months wore on Isabel’s eyes assumed the same grey-blue tone of her father’s and grandmother’s, but at the time of her birth they were a peculiar inky-blue-brown - almost a non-colour. Something about that colour made this extremely new human instead seem very old indeed: an old soul reborn perhaps? At the time I imagined those wise, old, unblinking eyes were telling me:
Don’t worry mummy. I’m here now and you’ll never be lonely again.
But it’s equally possible they were saying:
Your troubles are not over yet.
***
Having Isabel was probably the only thing I’ve ever done - ever - that Pamela has approved of. After producing two sons herself she was delighted with her new granddaughter. She arrived at the hospital with a veritable trousseau of exquisitely expensive French dresses and knits, all of which required hand-washing or ironing, but most commonly both. I eventually learnt to dress Isabel in these for visits to the in-laws, leaving her in machine washable all-in-ones the rest of the time.
It also gave Pamela a new repertoire of things to criticise me about and she found this very energising. I paid close attention to the midwives’ instructions and thought I had mastered the basics pretty well, but no, no, the twenty-five-years-out-of-date experience of my mother-in-law apparently trumped any new fangled ideas these professionals could offer me. Within the first few days I found that I bathed the baby incorrectly, burped the baby incorrectly, changed nappies incorrectly, fed the baby too often and let her sleep too much. If I wrapped Isabel in a sheet it was certain she would ‘get a chill and catch a cold’, but if I added a single blanket there was no doubt she would ‘overheat’. I gave lip service to all this but reverted back to my own ways when at home.
No, Pamela wasn’t the problem.
I think it was evening visiting hours the night before I was discharged home, that I realised. I had finally managed to get a fretting Isabel to sleep when I heard my husband chatting and laughing as he made his way, slowly, up the corridor towards us. He entered the room smiling.
‘Nice to see you finally,’ I said, handing him Isabel. ‘I want you to look after your daughter while