They told Kate to make a birth plan, so she did. When she was pregnant, the midwife presented her with the options as though offering her a menu at a restaurant. The choice was overwhelming, but together with Jay, they made decisions about every small detail, from where she’d like to give birth (in a birthing pool, of course) to the type of pain relief she’dbe happy to accept. They spent hours making several playlists to bring with them to the hospital: a calming one for when she needed to relax and one filled with her favourite upbeat, invigorating tunes for when she needed a boost. Jay packed her hospital bag for her, along with a diagram detailing where everything was located in case they forgot.
When she went into labour a week after her due date, she didn’t feel scared. She felt prepared and in control. Jay was with her and her mum and sister weren’t far away. And even as the labour progressed and they headed to the hospital, Kate remained calm. As the contractions grew more frequent and intense, she held onto the image she had in her mind of holding her daughter for the first time. Every now and then, she thought of the lido, picturing herself floating in the cool blue water. Once all of this was over, she would be handed her baby and everything would be worth it.
She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when panic invaded the room, but after hours of exhaustion but general calm, something shifted. As she looked up, she caught a shared glance between the midwife and her assistant and for the first time since her contractions began, Kate started to wonder whether maybe she couldn’t actually do this after all.
What happened next took place in a blur, until, before she knew it, she was out of the birthing pool and on a hospital bed and the room suddenly filled with people. Everything after that came in snapshots. The repetitive beep of a monitor. The shuffle and squeak of shoes as the doctors and nurses moved about swiftly. The hot, clammy clasp of Jay’s hand in hers asthey gripped one another as though they were holding each other afloat.
When Rosie finally, and with much assistance, arrived in the world, there wasn’t the startled cry that Kate had been imagining. Kate held her breath for a second, waiting for it to come a beat later. But it didn’t. She reached out her arms, but instead of being handed her baby, the doctors whisked her away, their backs shielding her from view on the other side of the room.
Finally, there came a cough, a splutter and a wail. A sigh of relief spread around the room and Jay squeezed Kate’s hand even tighter, tears flooding his face. But Kate didn’t share the feeling of relief that was in the air. Because where was her baby? They still had her baby.
There’s no way Kate could have said how long it was between Rosie being born and being handed to her. It felt like days but was probably no more than minutes. Eventually, she was bundled up in a white blanket, a pink hat atop her head, and brought over by a smiling doctor.
‘Everything’s fine now, don’t worry. She just needed a bit of help getting started. But here she is. Here’s your daughter.’
With trembling arms, Kate reached up to receive her child, ready to finally experience the moment of overwhelming joy she had pictured for so long. But as she pulled the swaddled baby into her chest, there were no fireworks exploding in her heart and no warm glow spreading through her body.
When she’d made her birth plan, Kate had known that things might change, that you couldn’t predict exactly what would happen during something as momentous as birth. But the one thing she never even stopped to think about was thatthe moment when she met her baby wouldn’t be anything like she had been expecting.
Kate held her daughter in her arms for the first time and felt nothing …
‘At first, I thought I was just too exhausted to feel anything,’ Kate explains to Jay, her voice finally close to even again after managing to force out everything that has been eating her up inside for so long. ‘I thought it would come with time.’
She glances down at Rosie, who is now asleep in her arms, and fresh tears prick in her eyes, but she forces them back. She remembers returning from the hospital for the first time with her new baby, sinking, exhausted, into her own bed and turning over to stare into the Moses basket beside her, taking in every detail. The pink, wrinkled face, the tufty ginger hair, the clenched fists, the downy hair on her cheeks, her tiny nose.
This person had lived inside her for nine months. Kate had read to her and taken her swimming at the lido, feeling her tiny feet kicking in her ribs in time with her own strokes. She had felt that she knew her unborn child already. But as she looked at the baby asleep beside her, it felt as though she was looking at a complete stranger.
‘I did think about saying something. I considered telling the midwife when she came to visit, maybe Mum or Erin.’
‘And me?’ Jay asks.
Kate winces slightly, knowing how bad it sounds that she didn’t immediately turn to him.
‘I did want to. But as the days went by, I lost my nerve. You seemed so happy. Every time I looked at you, there was thisenormous smile on your face. It was just so obvious that you felt it. All the things that I thought I would feel too. They came naturally to you.’
‘I’m so sorry you felt you couldn’t tell me.’
‘You don’t need to apologise. And I don’t mean to make you feel bad. I’m just trying to explain …’
Three months might have passed since Rosie’s birth, but sometimes it feels as though Kate is still there, stuck in those moments she has tried so hard to forget. Poised with her arms outstretched for her child, waiting to feel everything she had dreamt of and that had kept her going through her labour.
‘Do you remember when your parents came to visit shortly after she was born?’
Jay nods.
‘They kept telling me how Rosie was the spitting image of you. “She’s all Jay,” your dad said.’
It’s something people have kept saying to her ever since Rosie was born. The first time she heard it, from a nurse on the maternity ward looking from Jay to Rosie and back again, Kate had wanted to say,But I grew her! Then, as time went on, she stopped fighting it. Because Kate can see nothing of herself when she looks at her daughter.
‘I remember,’ Jay says quietly. ‘I didn’t even think what that might feel like for you. I’m so sorry.’
‘And then there was this moment when your mum had been holding Rosie for a while but suddenly handed her back to me, apologising for hogging her. “I remember when Jay was a baby, I never used to let anyone hold him,” she said to me. “I just couldn’t stand it if he wasn’t with me.” And there I’dbeen, happily letting Rosie go to your mum for as long as she wanted.’
‘You know Mum didn’t mean anything by it. She didn’t mean to make you feel bad.’
‘I do know. No one has meant to make me feel bad. The people who stop me in the supermarket and tell me to cherish every second with my baby because it goes so fast. The friends who tell me how perfect she is. My mum and sister for adoring her as much as I always hoped they would. But it has all just made me feel as though there’s something wrong with me.’
‘But, Kate, there’s nothing wrong with you.’
