A little lodger who moved out

The gentle curve of her eyelashes, the tiny fists that always had a strand of my hair, her mouth in a small ‘o’ as she slept, her gigantic yawns and trumpet farts - everything felt miraculous around our baby girl. I read somewhere that a baby is surrounded by a special energy that can nourish anyone who tunes into it. For me, this energy took on a magical quality. I didn’t expect this to happen. She seems to now be magically erasing all memories of life before her. The other day I caught myself wondering who we had left her with when we were walking along a cold, rainy beach in Rye, 6 years before she was born. 

She’s been with me for nearly 2 years now - 9 months in my tummy and 12 months out. I’m trying to remember what these months were like, before she makes sure that I completely forget.

Early in my pregnancy, a lovely neighbour asked me how the ‘little lodger’ in my tummy was doing. I found the idea adorable. A little lodger had indeed made my body her home. And she had plans to redecorate the place. News that a lodger had moved in did not spur an immediate reaction out of me. It was very much anticipated but when two blue lines did appear on the stick, I found myself simply blinking at them. The two little lines failed to capture the scale of the news they were reporting. On some days in the first trimester I might have even forgotten that I had a lodger on board. I was in the midst of a job search for a major career transition. My world was full of deadlines and the dense fog of imposter syndrome. One morning however, on my daily commute I sniffed the air at the train station and wrinkled my nose. The smell of coffee from all the cafes, usually a delightful aroma to me, smelt yucky. The little lodger had done her first bit of remodelling. 

When she was a few centimetres in size we had our first ultrasound scan. The moving image of the tiny creature achieved what the two blue lines had not. I cried as soon as I saw her on screen, and a few weeks later when we found out it was a girl, I felt some excitement. She became notorious at our scan centre for refusing to reveal her heart. On one visit I was scanned by five different people to capture all the cardiac images they needed. The little one was literally turning her back on the scanning probe. Once she even kicked a midwife exactly where she placed her hand during an examination. As she grew more, she’d kick me in my ribs every morning as though excited for the day and then some more after every meal. But overall, she required little attention from me and did not prevent me from doing anything. I traveled to four countries and a town in middle-of-nowhere England for work, with her hidden away in my tummy. I was able to walk uphill for my commute and continue pilates till she was born. A lot of people, including our antenatal caregivers, told me how wonderful I was doing in my pregnancy. I learnt though, that an ‘easy’ pregnancy is a deceptive thing. 

The little lodger’s redecorating gave me the best hair I’ve ever had. Barely a strand would fall when I washed it. This could perhaps conceal other everyday agonies but could not really make up for them. When I look around our house now, I sometimes see little reminders. We have about eight different kinds of moisturizers and oils because my skin was unbearably itchy at night in the last weeks of the lodger’s stay. We also have a tiny step stool that didn’t exist before the lodger moved in. This is thanks to a pelvic health class I took which explained how putting your feet up on the little step, helps you poo. Sounds hilarious now but it was such a lifesaver when my second trimester began. Getting dressed in the morning was a huge ordeal. Clothes that would work one week would fail me the following week, and expanding trousers with the elastic band trick only helped for so long. I am rediscovering sandals and shoes that I had forgotten I had because my swollen ankles and feet allowed few options back then. There was a period of a few weeks when I had to appear before real and mock interview panels for job applications, but I could barely stand straight. The reason was something I had never heard of before - round ligament pains. They are ligaments around the uterus that stretch as the baby grows and for some lucky women like me, they cause tremendous pain. Paracetamol and yoga poses helped me through that, but soon I was in for a shock in front of the mirror. Stretch marks like deep fissures were now running along my tummy. I practised not looking away from them as much as I could. Some things do get easier with practice. There was a sharp pubic bone pain that was easier to deal with if I practised keeping my knees together when I got out of bed or out of a car. I had strong calf muscle pulls every morning, but I learnt to flex and not point my feet when I woke up. However there are other tiny agonies that you can’t really practice or prepare much for. There’s that look from people in the workplace when they give your tummy a startled stare and avoid eye contact because they don’t know what to say. Or stray comments from the boss about how much maternity pay costs, just as you’re grappling with the impossibly complex world of parental leave.

Despite all the little and big things going on, I was determined to greet ‘moving day’ (the day the lodger would inevitably move out), as calmly as possible. I was lucky to start mat leave 2 weeks before the day. I was able to spend some time happily nesting. And in a bid to increase my oxytocin (they taught us in antenatal classes that labour starts when this ‘feel-good hormone’ goes up), I went for a leisurely facial and pedicure the day before my due date. Either that was incredibly effective, or our baby loves being on time, because my waters broke that night. Looking back, I’m glad I had had my ‘spa day’ because the next few days were a rollercoaster.

While we were waiting to be admitted into the labour ward, I sat in a hospital coffee shop sobbing to my calm, always present and loving husband, that I couldn’t possibly go through with this. Those early labour pains had me terrified. The next 18 hours proved that I was right to be. Before I knew it, I was fitted with a cannula, an antibiotic drip and a monitor around my belly. Every time I felt a contraction that night, the midwife would look at the monitor and assure me that it wasn’t the real thing, because when it’s a real contraction everyone will know. She was right, and how. There were other women in the labour ward who seemed to manage their pain in dignified silence. There are no prizes for that. I was screaming. The midwife was surprised by how quickly I was in full labour and the pitiful paracetamol she was giving me might as well have been breath mints. I was 8 cm dilated before breakfast, and changing into a hospital gown was the hardest thing as the contractions came fast. The laughing gas they gave me to manage the pain was a joke (no it did not make me laugh). Finally, by lunch time, my saviour the anaesthetist arrived and administered an epidural. What a magical potion. But the action did not cease.

There was confusion about our heart rates - was mine too fast and baby lodger’s too slow? So the operating room was to be prepared in case I needed to go there. This meant no food for me, and plenty of inspections from a rotating audience of doctors, nurses, interns and midwives. I lost all sense of shame but was glad I got that facial and pedicure. I was after all the local celebrity for the day. When I was fully dilated, I was instructed to start pushing the little lodger out. Forceps, that couldn’t possibly be for use on a living human, were on standby. The lodger started making a reluctant, slow exit until she decided to stop. Probably because I had kept her so cosy, and the noise and lights coming in from the outside world were not appealing at all. So they tried grabbing her with those forceps that belonged at a construction site. She was not interested in being disrespectfully pulled out like this and made sure they couldn’t grip her head. And so it was. We were wheeled into a bright and sunny operating theatre where a huge audience of approximately 17 doctors and midwives awaited us for an emergency c-section. More epidural was pumped into me, I shivered uncontrollably on the table, they sliced me open and brought her out. I burst into unstoppable tears when I saw her little startled face appear, blink twice and then contort into a wail. She lay quietly next me for the rest of my surgery, held by her dad and staring at the theatre lights while I was busy vomiting and bleeding profusely as they stitched me up. This concluded the full tasting menu of birthing that I was served - natural, assisted and surgical, and our life as a new family of 3 could begin.

Our first family residences were three different recovery rooms in the hospital. There wasn’t much space in any of them. The decor comprised of pigment blue pleated curtains that served as walls, a purple recliner sofa chair (when the husband was lucky), a large hospital bed, a little bassinet and our carefully packed hospital bag spewing its contents. The days in hospital were objectively tough but now I remember them with a nostalgic tint and a warm happy feeling of cosiness. Of course, the lack of space did not matter much to me because I couldn’t move. I was sort of a stationary octopus on the hospital bed with tubes and wires going everywhere. I had BP cuffs on my legs and arm that squeezed me every few minutes to take a reading (and wake me up, just in case I wasn’t exhausted enough). There was a catheter, I could see a bag, but I could feel nothing. I was managing my pain after the epidural wore off, by drug dealing with the midwives. What would they shell out today? Paracetamol? Pfft. Codeine? Hmmm. Morphine?! That was the best day.

There are sights and sensations from that time that are hard to forget. One night I was feeding little baby girl and I felt a warm stream on my arm. Oh, she’s peed, I thought. But it was a warm stream of my blood from a leaking cannula. I still remember the blood slowly spreading across a lovely patchwork blanket the baby was wrapped in. Another day, I had to have a CT scan done to confirm that the surgery had not injured my ureters. They inject a contrast dye into you for this. It gave me the strangest cold sensation in my throat and it also makes you think you’re peeing. Well, maybe I was peeing into the catheter bag? It was kind of nice to not have to worry about that, to be honest. When I finally did manage to stand up and go to the bathroom I was greeted by what could only have been a toddler toilet. Why was the seat so low? How is a woman who just gave birth expected to squat that far? After the stinging removal of my catheter, I had to pee into a paper trough and prove that my bladder was working well. My first submission got rejected for low volume. A few hours later I managed to have my second pee submission approved. Once I got better at hobbling down the corridor, I also wanted to bathe. The only catch was that you have to be both Einstein and Hercules to operate the shower knob in the recovery ward bathroom. Turns out, freshly minted mums can be both. 

Being a superhero who defeated the shower knob, and being surrounded by loving and supportive family could not prevent me from also feeling incredibly fragile as a freshly minted mum. Out of hospital, back in my original context, my new self took a while to acclimatize. We had brought home a lovely, sleeping baby in a car seat but with her also came a bag of medicines and injections for me. There were several moments when I found myself standing in the bathroom in utter despair. It had been a while since I had seen myself in the mirror, I looked different, I couldn’t really see my surgery scar under folds of numb skin or tell what the forceps had done. It felt like I was receiving my body back after someone else had borrowed it. Simple things seemed impossible to overcome. The postpartum underwear I had pre-ordered were painful against my scar. It felt like a disaster to discover this upon arriving home from hospital. How would I find the energy to figure out the right ones? Every movement was an enormous challenge for me and a boring, slow motion action sequence for anyone watching. I had proven myself a bonafide peeing expert in the hospital, but I was terrified of doing a poo. What if my abdomen split open? And then of course there was the heartbreaking despair of not being able to soothe my crying baby or worrying about feeding her enough. When at last I thought the gruelling ‘fourth trimester’ was over, one day I got up from the dining room chair to find its back completely covered in my hair. The hairfall was unstoppable for the next few months, a cruel turn of events for my head after its glory days of pregnancy.

As physically and emotionally painful as those weeks were, funnily enough, I find that I have to actively try to remember them. Otherwise the prevailing memories are of snuggling and singing to an adorable baby in warm winter blankets. My phone’s photo album is certainly biased that way. It feels vital to remember the pain, though. I want to honour what my mind and body were able to do, and I’d like to record the full truth of what bringing a beautiful new thing into the world can entail.  

It is impossible to predict how things will play out, how any of it will feel or what will impact you most. I had decided early on that I wanted to feed the baby both breastmilk (if I was able) and formula (if we found one that suited her). I was going for a practical approach. If the task of feeding the baby did not fall entirely on me, then I might get more rest and life would be more bearable for everyone. This turned out to be a good plan because no matter how much tried, my breastmilk was never enough for her. Our little one did admirably - seamlessly transitioning between both types of feeding, attacking both breast and bottle like a tiny feral creature. She even added comic elements to feeding time. She would shield her head with both arms while breast-feeding, as though fighting off littermates. And later she started to do a rapid, fake panting noise as soon as we put on her bib. There is plenty of judgment toward women who don’t or can’t breastfeed, and I certainly received unsolicited comments for not exclusively breastfeeding. These stung for sure, but something else unanticipated grew out of our practical feeding approach. It hit me hard that I am no longer indispensable to this little being. We were so inextricably linked for a time, but now someone else could easily care for her. Indeed, today my little creature squeals happily and leaps toward her friends and minders at daycare. 

My little lodger has moved out. She returned my body to me, but she took my beating heart with her. When she smiles at me bright and cheeky every morning, it’s almost as though she knows she has stolen something. I sleepily smile back at the little thieving lodger. My heart and the thief that stole it don’t belong to me anymore. I have unwittingly gifted them to the world. How shall I grieve such boundless joy?