With so much going on, and all the wedding shop appointments to deal with too, there’s been no time for around-the-bay photo shoots, which means I’ve had a Lando-free week. And now we’ve got a few days to pull the last details together, while working around the full day of brides at the shop on Saturday.
As always Sera has been working in her studio above the office, and on Wednesday afternoon, a week after the meeting at Windflowers, Tia texts me to say Sera’s made a pile of shorts-skirt mock ups for the girls. As Mum is out shopping and Paul and I are home with all the children, Tia offers to bring them round to the house when she finishes at the shop so Zara and Nemmie can try them on.
When Tia appears at the French windows of the kitchen and holds up a bulging Brides by the Sea carrier bag, we wave her to come in. Nemmie, Zara and I are at the kitchen island, and she hurries across to join us.
Her eyes light up when she sees what we’re looking at. ‘You’ve got the old photographs out!’
Nemmie beams. ‘We’re having the “where do babies come from” talk at school.’
I smile at Tia. ‘They’re building up slowly. Once they’ve all drawn portraits of themselves as newborns, then they get to see films of baby mammals being born, ending with a human.’
Dale calls from the sofa. ‘Bryony Simms vommed last year and they had to put down puke powder.’
‘That was because of a tummy bug not because of watching the birth.’ I’m all about the context.
Zara shivers. ‘I’m never having kids if there’s blood and guts.’
As usual Nemmie’s brushing off the drama. ‘I’ll be used to blood if I’m a doctor.’
Zara wrinkles her nose. ‘I thought you were going to be an astronaut?’
Nemmie grins. ‘I might be both– a surgeon doing operations in outer space.’
Dale calls, ‘Like that will work with zero gravity.’
Nemmie ignores that and looks down at her own photos then across to the ones of Zara. ‘I look mini in my cot compared to Zara, don’t I?’
I remind her. ‘You were extra small because you were born earlier than you should have been, but you caught up in the end.’
Zara sighs. ‘No one understands how I can be your auntie when I’m younger and smaller.’
There’s ten months between their birthdays and just like all the foster babies Mum looks after, they each have their own dedicated memory box filled with photos from their first few months.
Tia’s voice softens as she picks up a picture from the pile of prints scattered across the island. ‘That’s you in your special care cot, Nemmie. At first you needed the incubator to keep you warm.’
Looking at the pictures now I shudder as I think back to that time with Nemmie in the special care baby unit, how endless it felt waiting for her to grow big enough to come home even though it was only a few weeks. In some ways I was lucky because I had no new-mother expectations to be shattered by her early arrival, and that time should have given me chance to get used to the idea that I had a baby, rather than having to face the outside world straightaway. But looking at the pictures brings it all back, and not in a good way. Her tiny limbs, those miniature preemie nappies, the hand-knitted hats. Nurses in pink scrubs standing at my elbow as I struggled were the start of a horrible time, not a happy one.
I smile at Nemmie. ‘And there aren’t any scan pictures for you because I hadn’t been to the hospital until the night you were born.’
For the first couple of days after Nemmie arrived, I was struggling to get off the bed, and on painkillers after the emergency C section. My temperature went up and I had to be hooked up to a drip to fight the infection.
When we were home again and I was slipping downwards, I knew I was feeling awful, but I assumed it was normal to be tired and stressed. I was physically there looking after Nemmie, but my head was a dark, dark place without hope and without any future.
For a while everyone put my distress down to me not knowing I’d been pregnant, and the emotional load of having a premature baby. When I was feeling so bad it took every scrap of my energy to get through the day, there was nothing left over to put into words to talk about it to anyone. I just wanted it to go away. Once Mum and the health visitors picked up on my true state, everyone watched, some people came and squeezed my hand, and eventually I went on tablets. And in the meantime, Nemmie was at a crucial stage of development with a mum who wasn’t able to give her the right happy signals when she gave her attention.
It took us a good eighteen months to sort ourselves out.
Nemmie wrinkles her nose. ‘I look like a mouse with a nappy on.’
We’re so busy leaning in to see the photo Nemmie’s laughing at, we miss there are figures outside the door. The first we know of anyone arriving in the kitchen is when Mum calls through the open French window with a breezy shout, ‘Look who I found on the harbour!’
We turn to see her pushing her way through with the shopping, and despite my plummeting stomach I manage to cry, ‘Lando! Again!’
I lean back against the island and spread my arms wide to hide the array of pictures behind me. The last thing I want is Lando reacting to photos of Nemmie as a baby when they’re both standing here. I can’t risk him inadvertently saying the wrong thing in front of everyone, especially Nemmie.
Mum beams. ‘I asked him to help me with my bags so he could admire the new extension.’
Lando puts down his carriers of shopping by the door and gives a shrug. ‘She wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
