She loved the feeling of her darling daughter; loved the glorious softness of that baby skin, the scent of a tiny baby, the beauty of those big eyes.
‘You know everything, don’t you, darling?’ she crooned as India looked up at her wisely.
Sam wanted time to stand still so that this moment of perfection could be hers forever.
Then, the nurse had returned for the breastfeeding session. There was a lactation expert, Zendaya, but she was sick, the nurse said, looking tired and harried.
Instantly, Sam’s anxiety racketed up. From thinking she knew how to be a mother, she descended into thinking she had no idea whatsoever. What had happened to her? It was like she’d morphed from a woman utterly at peace into a bundle of nerves in an instant.
The nurse manoeuvred one then the other nipple into India’s deeply uninterested little mouth.
India made little mewling noises like a kitten but refused to drink.
‘Oh India, it’s all my fault,’ murmured Sam, feeling tearful.
‘Zendaya would kill me if she knew,’ said the nurse, ‘but let’s make up a bottle until we have more time. We’re so short-staffed today. You should express some milk if you can for her next feed. She’ll get it next time.’
Sam nodded. She’d failed at the first hurdle.
As India gulped the milk from the bottle, Sam swallowed back feelings of hopelessness. She knew nothing. All the nurses and the other women on their second and third babies knew it all. But not her.
The nurses whizzed in and out of the ward, whisking back the curtains on her cubicle, checking her and the baby, handling India with ease.
Apart from that time when India had lain on her, Sam still wasn’t sure how to hold her daughter. Her arms ached from desperately trying to protect India’s fragile head. Why had nobody told her babies’ heads looked so fragile? She could recall how the bones had not fused totally in the baby’s skull, which meant she could be hurt so easily.
How had nature let such a thing happen? How could so many animal babies be born and be able to run immediately, while baby humans were so delicate that their tiny skulls were a risk to themselves?
She said this to Ted.
‘It’s because humans have such big brains,’ he said. ‘Human babies wouldn’t be able to pass through the pelvic canal if their skulls were fused.’
Sam stared at him.
‘You knew that?’ she said, looking at India in anxiety. ‘I didn’t. When does it fix? It must be so dangerous ...’
She felt overpowered with anxiety until one of the nurses calmed her down and told her it was normal.
‘Babies are hardy little things, you know,’ she said.
‘No,’ whispered Sam, ‘they’re not.’
She whispered all the time now. Ted did too. Even now, he was murmuring incredibly quietly to Sam because they were both afraid that the slightest noise would wake India up.
They had both read that it was important to make lots of noise so the baby got used to it, but neither of them could bear to do it. Sleeping, India felt manageable.
Awake, Sam was terrified of what needed to be done. The initial joy she’d felt at her baby’s birth was overcome with the fear of her own inadequacies as a mother.
Why was the baby crying? Were her nappies OK? Surely this colour of baby poo wasn’t right?
There was an enormous gap between the concept of reading something in a baby manual and then trying to put it into practice.
A head poked itself round her cubicle curtains and in marched her sister, Joanne, beaming and holding her arms out: ‘Show me her! I can’t wait to see her. She’s been out in the world since late yesterday and I can’t wait to see her. The hospital visiting rules are murderously cruel.’
‘Shush,’ said Sam automatically.
Ted looked proud, but Sam stared at India in her tiny crib beside the bed as if waiting for her tiny blue-veined eyelids to open.
‘Ohh ...’
