This week’s Dispatches from New Motherhood piece is the wonderful BED by Julia Hunt. In tender, intricate prose Julia takes the reader into intimate spaces both in hospital and at home, capturing her feelings with precision and elegance.
Julia says, ‘I knew that I wanted my piece to focus on the birth of my daughter, primarily because it is this final part of my journey to motherhood that I remember most vividly. From waiting on the induction ward, to holding my daughter’s hand for the first time in the operation theatre to those tentative few days on the maternity ward and then at home trying to figure out how to be a mum, feeling so overwhelmed, it all seems like yesterday even though it is over two years ago now. It was only after I had drafted my piece that I realised that I had, quite literally, a supporting character present throughout the prose, so I called my piece ‘Bed’.
Enjoy Julia’s beautifully moving piece here.
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Bed
Julia Hunt
It's late. In the cubicle next to me they are trying to find a baby's heartbeat. They've been trying for some time. I feel sick. A helpless bystander to a moment I don't want to witness. I hear the door click and they’re gone. I try to sleep but can't. I feel the comfort of you, pushing and stretching.
I'm so hungry. I’ve eaten nothing since a ham sandwich 24 hours ago. At 5.30pm the nurse rushes in and now it is finally my turn. 'Let's go and meet your baby,' she says brightly and suddenly I am not ready, not prepared. We walk slowly along forgettable corridors. I feel self-conscious in my thin dressing gown and surgical socks. Inside the theatre, it seems overly full. A needle in my back while they talk about their holidays. A flimsy screen separating me from the mysteries of my insides. I hear a sound and some instinct makes me reach through to this forbidden zone. 'We have a hand!' says an agitated voice and it’s swiftly pulled back.
You are born from me but without me and when I hear you for the first time, I cry.
It’s night again and I’m on the ward. Trapped in this prison bed by a catheter and weighed down by leaden limbs, I hold you. I can't stop looking at your fingernails, so tiny and perfect. There is a part of me being washed away by the rain streaking down the window.
Our first dawn cracks grey and sombre. I wanted it to be better than this. To be brighter.
For the first four weeks you don't want to sleep in your crib at night. Propped up by pillows, I sit up all night with you, terrified I will fall asleep. My bed becomes milk blistered, twisted and desperate. Will it always be like this? The Health Visitor tries to be helpful: 'Your baby has been in the darkness of your womb, listening to your heartbeat. It is not unusual that they don't want to be on their own.’ I’m overwhelmed by what I don’t know.
My bed, a world of secrets, where I used to dream of you. Now there are no dreams, only you.
A year has gone by and now you are in your own bed: a cot. Some nights are better than others. Teething and fevers, colds and growing pains. Patience strained; nerves taut. One day you won't need me, I tell myself, but for now you do, and I try. I glimpse my bed in the room across the landing. Bathed blue in the twilight like a fairy realm, enticing me to fall in and lose myself forever. But when I do finally slip under the covers, I wrap myself up in clouds of anxiety and I long for the morning. I whisper into my pillow, 'Tomorrow I will be better at this, I promise.'
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Bed by Julia Hunt appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.