Barnacle geese lay their eggs at the tops of cliffs, all blue and bleak, wind bloody everywhere. But their goslings, when they hatch, aren’t yet able to fly, and the only food is in the grass at the bottom of the cliffs. The geese brood their eggs through an Arctic summer. They lay them hundreds of feet up in the air, away from the foxes. And then they tell their babies: “Jump.” I turned off the TV then, when I saw the first chick shakily tumble from its ragged nest, smacking against a rock before floating off again into the wind. Hello, I’m back. But I’m a mother now and I’m weak.
I had some evenings at the very beginning of her when I’d realise I was sobbing. And at the time I thought it was just exhaustion. “Just”. I don’t mean “just” – I mean the crippling, furious, white-faced exhaustion that comes from being awake for three days and three nights, some of those in a room where the lights never went out. But I see now that it wasn’t only that, that exhaustion that you can almost chew on; it was something new, and it was horrible because it was love. The thing I feel for her is physically painful. It’s an awful love. A terrible love. It continues to wind me. It’s a one-inch punch. It’s not the comforting bath of love I’m used to. It’s a bruise being pressed, continually, by a strong thumb.
I can’t believe so many people do this and keep on living. Not just living – working, eating, washing their hair – when they have this much undiluted emotion swilling through them. The hardest thing about having a baby is that there is not just one hard thing. Before those long days of emotion on the sofa, there’s the leaning against the wardrobe as your body creaks open on four minutes’ sleep, and then there’s the birth itself, with all its cuts and blood and raw animal panic. A room of rushing doctors and excitable machines in direct contrast with the baby’s heartbeat, quietly slowing.
Ideally, afterwards you’d have a couple of gentle weeks with a Sports Direct mug and both remote controls. But instead you’re handed this child, and with it the rest of your life, and a new relationship with your partner, your friends, your family, your career. I thought I wouldn’t write about this, about babies and birth, but I can’t not, because right now at least it is absolutely everything. Because they tell you: “All that matters is that your baby is healthy”, but without wanting to make you feel bad, baby, asleep here next to me with your snore like a faraway A-road, that’s bullshit.
That phrase is one that works to embarrass and silence us. It doesn’t mean to, but it does. So five months on it’s considered pretty gauche to still be talking about the birth. About the depth of loneliness as your partner is ushered out of the hospital on the first night. About the worn-out fury as he’s ushered out of the hospital on the second night when the nurse realises he’s been hiding under the bed. About the guilt you feel when you know it’s not the midwife’s fault they’re so understaffed, but snapping at her anyway because you really really want your painkillers. About the love you feel that is two centimetres from grief. The judgments that swill through pregnancy and over into birth – the conversations where you need to say: “It’s fine for you to have an opinion about how I have my baby, but woman, please keep it to yourself.” The feeling that, because you got a healthy child, you should sort of shut up now, OK. All of these things matter.
And those tiny birds. Falling like snow. I realise now that the reason I’m still thinking about them is that I identified with both the flying geese and the falling babies.
And now she’s awake.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk. Follow Eva on Twitter @EvaWiseman
