Free Go to Sleep by Helen Walsh

and morbid eventualities. What if my baby becomes stuck? How, oh how, will its head get through? And what if its brain is starved of oxygen? Would it be, you know . . .
normal
? Might it be . . . damaged? Deformed? How would I feel? Disappointed? Cheated? Would I love it as much? As though sensing the threat of rejection, my Bean would squirm and thrash against the walls of its cell. But with daylight came calm and clarity. I would touch my sleeping Bean and be able to push these fears far, far away. Somehow I’d get through.
    But I’m thinking now that all these women, the aunts,friends, second- and third-time mothers, must be part of some sisterly conspiracy to safeguard the human race because had I known anything of this barbarity, had they even hinted at its brutality, then I would never have gone near this. Yes, my perfect little man, breaking my heart again and again as you continue in your pitiful struggle to draw succour – you might not be here right now, had I had any inkling. It’s murder but you soon forget. How can you forget something like
that
– a pain so violent one would willingly accept death as an alternative?
    Right up until my contractions I’d wanted to own that pain, or so I thought. I’d wanted to feel and breathe every pulse of it, I’d wanted it served neat. Why? Because this was the labour of my firstborn; because I was me. Rachel: tough, independent, feisty. Fuck, but I
hated
being called
feisty
! I wasn’t. I was foolish. Above all, I thought I wanted to feel the inflections of childbirth because for all I knew, I knew nothing of real life. I certainly did not know pain. Until now I’d thought pain was the moment they sat me down to tell me Mum was dying. Finding out they’d known for months; Mum even longer. Losing my father, too – losing him to his grief was pain. Losing him to Jan, pain all over again. And losing Ruben. Thoughts of Ruben always cut me deep. But pain is none of these things. Real pain is childbirth. And I have come through it.
    * * *
    Joe – Joseph Ishmael Massey – will not stop crying, has not stopped crying since we were wheeled on to the ward. When was that? This morning? Most of the babies looked half drugged, blissed out, their mothers snoring passionately, everyone dead to the world. Joe wakes the entire ward, his cries shrill enough to drill through to even the deepest of sleepers. Later, when his fury finally wore him out, the snoring chorus struck up again and I was finally able to slip away, slip under, the midwifes set about their rounds, rousing the mothers I’d slept for fifteen minutes; being dragged out of it was worse than being made to stay awake. More pain. Dull, deadly pain, the sleepless suck of bruised eyeballs and tired-out mind. Overshadowing the blind swell of love I should feel for my baby is a horrible stagnant nimbus that threatens to envelop and suffocate us both.
    Across the other side of the ward a young black girl sleeps. She is so beautiful, her eyelashes grazing her cheekbones as she rests. Her baby is sick. It is delivered to her at feeding times, then taken away. In between she recuperates, she sleeps. Oh, how I would do anything, give anything to be able to sleep. Somewhere along the jagged course of this morning I feel her standing over me, watching us. I could barely force open my eyes but I knew she was there, touching Joe.
    I sit up and try to feed. The silence of the ward slays me. Those other babies, they’re barely hours old and alreadythey’re sleeping through. How can that be? Joe fusses and thrashes. Beyond the veils of fatigue I’m aware of a puzzle of discomfort, niggling, needling me everywhere. My nipples are stinging raw from his puckering, helpless mouth seeking and probing, the slurp of his little lips followed by a piteous whimper of sorrow then a howl each time he comes up dry. It’s suck, slurp, whimper, howl, suck, slurp, whimper, howl, his slit, puffy eyes somehow pleading with me,
please
feed me –