“One final push,” Dr Govski said, with the infuriatingly collected tone I had grown accustomed to in the last few hours. In fact, I could barely hear him above the screeching pain ricocheting through my exhausted body. I longed for the moment: the moment I would hold my baby boy in my arms and this bloody ordeal would be over.
And just like that, as if my body had a mind of its own, it performed one last thrust, propelling my baby out of my body and into the world. After a second or two of painful silence, a mewling cry cut into the room, setting in motion a sea of chaos, of weighing and checking and poking and prodding. I lay there on the rickety hospital bed, limp and listless, trying to catch a glimpse of my newly born baby, already wrapped and swaddled and practically concealed from sight. James leaned forward to me, pressing his forehead against mine. “Well done,” he whispered, his voice full of something I couldn’t recognise. I gazed into his eyes and tried to focus, tried to pinpoint my attention onto something, anything, that was familiar. But he drew away from me, joining the collection of nurses and doctors gathered around my son in the corner of the room.
“Premature,” “ICU,” “Oxygen,” “Survivor” were all words that floated in and out of my consciousness. Yet, what shocked me most at that moment, amongst the bustle of the delivery room, was the deafening silence within me. Expecting an outpouring of love, a waterfall of emotion, I was left with nothing. I poked around in the recesses of my soul but felt not even a trickle, the spring of my heart an arid desert, with no oasis in sight. I strained my eyes to reach the bundle in the corner of the room, waiting for that life-changing feeling of joy and love that would, no doubt, overwhelm me any second. Just as I thought I could feel something, the slightest bubble within, he was whipped away, wheeled down to ICU in a flurry of confusion. Now it really was silent. Alone in my hospital room, I was left pondering the aching emptiness I was feeling, the onslaught of text messages and congratulatory phone calls only confirming my innermost fear: I was a monster.
After many hours of agonizing waiting, we were finally reunited. Here was the moment I had been anticipating, the long-awaited confirmation that all my deepest fears were unfounded. As he was pushed into my room I couldn’t help but hold my breath. I peered at the lifeless bundle that had been placed next to me and, again, I waited.
“Should I feed him?” I asked the nurse, desperately hoping for an excuse to wake him from his slumber, to look into his eyes and feel what I knew, with all certainty, any normal mother would be feeling.
“Oh no, he’ll wake when he’s ready. He’s had a long day, and so have you. Best you get some rest whilst you can.”
I almost laughed, then, at the absurdity it all. Rest? How could I rest when this feeling of numbness was burning an ever-deeper hole within me? How could I rest when I was waiting, waiting for a sign, some signal of assurance that I could be the mother I had so desperately longed to be?
And so, again, I waited.
Stumbling into the bathroom, legs still unsteady, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. This was the first time I encountered this stranger, one that would continue to haunt me, for many months to come. I peered at the cracked glass, pocked and browned with age, searching for something recognizable. My once luminous and glowing pregnancy skin had been replaced with a ghostly translucency. My hard, full breasts bore no resemblance of the soft femininity of times past and my stomach, that only a few hours ago boasted the pride of impending motherhood, was now deflated and hopeless. But more shocking than that were my eyes. Eyes that once held the excitement and promise of youth, were now filled with nothingness; a brilliant green dulled to nothing more than murky grey, sunken and rimmed with black. I gripped the basin, shooting my face forward to the mirror, desperate to find myself in the stranger that looked back at me. But soon my hot breath clouded the reflection, and I could see even less than I could before.
Whilst the mayhem of the delivery ward did something to drown out the cacophony of fear, returning home amplified my worst nightmares. Left alone to negotiate my new role, I was soon flailing in the murky seas of motherhood. I threw myself into establishing a new identity, committed myself to this new task. Ever the perfectionist, I vowed to succeed. Yet, the shadow of my former self lurked around every corner. It could be found in every crevice of my new life, haunting and taunting the stranger that I had become. My mind became a battleground, forces of old and new wrangling for occupation. Thoughts that felt so foreign – so invasive – were ready to pounce on any moment of weakness or doubt. I was drowning, choking and spluttering, trying to reach the shore of sanity that seemed, for a long time, to be receding further from view.
It took me many months before I could bear to look at my reflection in the mirror, before I could confront the stranger staring back at me; many months before I could even begin to tease out the tangled web of thoughts and feelings that felt nothing like my own. It took me much longer to get to know myself than it did my newborn son. But once I had begun, I came to realize that strangers are not always to be feared. Some strangers may not be invited, but they can be accepted, lived with, and maybe – just maybe – loved.