TIME

It’s taken 19 days but I’m finally in the swing of things.

I can tell what cries mean what. The hungry cry. The tired cry. The attention cry.

It’s as though all the pieces fell into place one morning. Suddenly I could understand what he was saying when he wasn’t saying a word.

Little rascal is now so tired that he won’t sleep. This is the most frustrating of cries because you know the solution is a simple as him closing his eyes. But he hasn’t learned that yet – instead he just looks at me all confused and frustrated wondering why I don’t fix what’s wrong.

Time cures this cry.

Time cure all.

As for getting my head around the trauma of the birth – I’m slowly coming to terms with that. I don’t feel as angry as I did in the first week. Perhaps the anguish and the nightmares heal just like the wound. Each day the pain is a little less.

I’m getting more sleep. That always helps. I’m also being treated for anemia which was making my life just that much harder.

For now though, Boy and I are getting on pretty well. I no longer look at him and wonder where he came from. I no longer look at him and think he would have been better of with someone else as a mother.

Snuggled now in his dads arms I know that the tough newborn days will pass but that they’re preparing Boy for something wonderful.

HELP

The spitting image of his father, Boy already has a receding hairline and a thinning patch of hair on the crown of his head.

His face is round and when I watch his small mouth pucker I wonder what it is he’s so desperate to tell me. His lips making a perfect O shape as he stares straight into my eyes.

No eye-brows to talk of – that’s my trait – just thin wisps of white hair. His ears are small shells that serve only to pick up that stray sounds and startle him while he sleeps.

He doesn’t so much cry as squeal and even while I was in hospital I could easily identify his cry above the hundreds of other babies in the ward.

But what’s disturbing me most is that link.

I honestly thought it was a bunch of crap. I honestly thought it was something new mothers just said they felt because they loved their kids. But it’s true. He knows me.

When I cry he cries. When I’m calm he’s calm. When I’m angry he twitches with anger.

Just another thing I’m to blame for.

When he’s upset I get the tilt of the head from who-ever is there at the time… At the hospital the midwife flat out told me “he was in you for nine months, you think he doesn’t know when you’re in pain? Since the day he was born he’s been able to tell that you’re no longer with him and it scares him. He needs you now, more than when you were pregnant.”

Who asked for that? I honestly thought when he was born that Tom would be able to share the burden equally but he can’t. Even without the umbilical cord Boy is connected to me on a level that, for now, can’t be shared by anyone else.

How much more pressure will be put upon me?

And I’m fighting again with my beast. Depression. Only now it’s officially “postnatal depression” like it wasn’t there long before I fell pregnant.

But I refuse to surrender. I refuse to give in.

I spend my night marveling at what Tom and I have created and I know that no matter how dark I feel there is one undeniable fact – Boy needs me.

I can’t afford to be self-indulgent. I can’t afford to let the beast win.

So I’m swallowing my guilt – one green pill at a time – and chasing the darkness from my head. I’ve called out and found that the support available to me is endless. I am not alone and I won’t isolate myself as I’ve done before.

Boy deserves more than a hollow shell of a mother and I’m doing all that I can to make sure he gets that.