William’s Progress. Matt Rudd

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СКАЧАТЬ 27. 10.44 a.m. Second baby-group meeting. Isabel was excited but nervous. I was nervous but excited. We were running through the list of things we’d need for the birth: the nappies, the breast pads, the wet wipes, the snacks for daddy, the sanitary towels, the pumps, the nozzles, the pointless homoeopathic pills and the million other items that were all absolutely essential if things were to go smoothly. The longer the list went on, the less excited and more nervous Isabel looked and the more strongly I felt like hugging her and telling her everything would be all right, list or no list. Hugging didn’t seem appropriate, so I gripped her hand and gave her a reassuring smile. She smiled back and if, at that second, a lion had jumped over the hedge and attacked her, I would have fought it off with my bare hands. Or at least had a jolly good go. I felt like I would do anything to protect her, anything at all.

      But then we got to the very last item: an old sieve.

      That’s what it said. Not simply, ‘Sieve’, but ‘Old sieve’.

      ‘Why old?’ asked one of the more inquisitive mothers-to-be.

      ‘Because you don’t want to use your newest sieve to get all the bits out of the birthing pool, do you?’ came the matter-of-fact reply. And in that instant, I didn’t feel like everything was going to be all right and I didn’t feel like I could protect Isabel from anything at all. I wanted to smile and shrug calmly at my wonderful, brave, nervous, pregnant wife – but I couldn’t. I needed fresh air. It wasn’t so much that I was squeamish about bits in a birthing pool. It was more that it was going to happen to Isabel, and there was nothing we could do about it. In fact, it was normal. Having an old sieve on a list of things you need for a water birth was normal.

      ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ she asked during the break. ‘You look a bit pale.’

      ‘I’m fine. Absolutely fine. Just a bit airless in here.’

      

      That is all over now. Now we are postnatal. We are, as I have mentioned, all alive. And now I am here, looking at the birthing pool that never was, thinking about the old sieve we never needed. I make my way upstairs, finding more detritus of the previous two nights: half-drunk cups of camomile tea (‘It’s making me feel sick’), wet flannels (‘Get that flannel away from me’), massage oil (‘Stop rubbing me’), CDs of whale music (‘William, will you turn that racket off? I already feel bloated enough without having to listen to the mating rituals of a blue whale’). In the bedroom, I find the bed. Which I shall just lie in briefly. Forty winks, as instructed. That is all…

      Wednesday 2 January

      ‘I can’t believe you left us for a whole day. I’m still wearing the same nightdress I came to the hospital in. I’ve had to borrow some sanitary towels from the nurse.’

      ‘I’m so, so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. I got home. I had a quick lie-down. The phone was still unplugged from when you told me to unplug that (“fucking”) phone. Then it was 11 p.m. I called the hospital. They said you were asleep. I called your mobile. It was off. I’m here now. I’m so sorry. Look, I bought a cranberry, yumberry and blackcurrant smoothie. It’s very high in vitamin C.’

      ‘Thanks. Now, go and change Jacob’s nappy.’

      ‘Jacob?’

      ‘Yes, he’s called Jacob. I had to call him something because the midwives were about to call social services and report us for neglect. You had gone AWOL. So I decided on Jacob. We can always change it later.’

      Ahh, the old we-can-always-change-it-later trick. Isabel has been using this all year. We can’t agree on a colour to paint the baby’s room. I want a good, honest, sensible yellow. She wants a pinky-white, which is ridiculous if it’s a boy, but she says, on the contrary, it’s perfect because she intends for our child to have a non-gender-specific upbringing. Halfway through the standoff, she paints it pink while I’m at work. I come home and look angry. She says, ‘We can always change it later.’ Kapow!

      Also while I’m at work, she pays a proper handyman to come round and hang pictures where I don’t want them on the grounds that we’ve been in this house for over a year and she’s tired of looking at bare walls. The same happens with the placing of plant pots, the reorganisation of the kitchen and the moving of all my clothes to the bottom drawer of the small cupboard in the spare room (to make room for all the cloth nappies). But it’s okay, we can always change it later…

      We will never change it later. We could barely be bothered to change it in the first place.

      This is fine when it comes to the feng shui-ing of a living room or the buying of a girly tree for the front garden, but not so fine for the naming of a first-born.

      Jacob.

      I’m not sure. I knew someone at university called Jacob. Did philosophy. Smoked drugs. Now lives on a beach in Bali. How much of that is because his parents called him Jacob?

      It does have a ring to it, though. Jacob Walker. You probably wouldn’t get an astronaut called Jacob Walker, but equally, you wouldn’t get a shoplifter. It didn’t sound prime ministerial, but there was a certain gravitas. Broadsheet newspaper editor, perhaps. Barrister. Surgeon. Discoverer of (a) the cure for old age, (b) life in another solar system or (c) the ark of the covenant. If they haven’t discovered that already. I can’t remem—

      ‘William! The nappy.’

      THE DADDY NAPPY

      Well, I missed that one. We had given over ten minutes of the prenatal classes to the treacly first nappy. Turns out I could have skipped that bit on account of having rather tactically skipped the whole of day one. I got day-two nappy instead and, frankly, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It went absolutely fine until Jacob (see, I’m already calling him that) decided to have a wee the second, the very second, I’d finished cleaning him up. No drama. I changed him again – and that was less fine because he was screaming. And the screaming is very hard to cope with when you’re trying to work out which way around the nappy stickers go and how you wipe the poo off without getting it on the (pink, why is it pink?) babygro. Still, the smell was bearable, the trauma minimal. All trauma will appear minimal now that I have witnessed the miracle of childbirth.

      Thursday 3 January

      One more night in hospital on account of the whole dissection thing. This has worked out very well. Now that I have slept – and we have put the whole missing-the-first-day-with-Jacob debacle behind us – I am finding the routine of being a new dad quite acceptable. Wake up, drive to hospital, fuss over amazing mother of my child for a few hours, marvel pathetically every time child moves (‘Look, look, look, he moved his hand, ahhhhhh’), go home, watch DVDs, drink beer, watch more DVDs, go to bed.

      Today, we introduced Jacob to both sets of grandparents. We had to prise him from the claws of both mums, but other than that – and a slightly disgusting moment when Jacob tried to suckle Isabel’s mum and Isabel’s dad said, ‘Hang on now, old chap, there’s only one of us allowed to sup at that particular cup these days’ – everything went smoothly.

      Until the flowers arrived from Alex, Isabel’s best friend.

      WHY ALEX IS STILL ISABEL’S BEST FRIEND

      Alex very СКАЧАТЬ