Rosie Lewis - Taken

Her reticence worried me slightly, but it was Megan who was at the forefront of my mind when I went to bed that night. Whenever I thought of her I felt an irresistible itch to get back to the hospital – I just couldn’t wait to hold her again.

It was another week before Megan was able to cope without the methadone. Her cot was set up beside my bed, the newly purchased sleep suits were all freshly washed and folded, and a steriliser filled with bottles and teats ordered from a specialist supplier over the internet sat unplugged on the kitchen worktop next to the kettle. We were excited for her to join the family, but the midwives had reported that she was frequently uncomfortable and, according to Angie, feeding remained a challenge. There was also some concern that, due to frequent vomiting, she might fail to thrive. She had already lost two ounces since birth so in some ways it was a relief to know that she was in the hands of experts and getting the best care possible, and that when she finally came home, she’d be that little bit more robust.

During the day, whenever Emily and Jamie were at school and my mum was free to spend some time with Zadie, I drove to the hospital and sat in the low chair, alternately feeding and holding her. With small fists tucked beneath her chin she gazed at me as she fed, occasionally stretching out her short arms towards my face. Her cheeks were still red and blotchy; her mother’s struggle with addiction leaving its trace on her skin, and often she cried, her knees drawn up to her chest as fierce abdominal cramps gripped hold of her – yet another unwanted legacy from the womb. After each dose of methadone she lay peacefully, gazing ahead with quiet self-possession, but when the drug wore off she screamed herself breathless. I felt awful when mid-afternoon came and I had to leave.

Contact for Megan’s birth mother had been arranged for late afternoons to reduce the likelihood of any further upsets, but the midwives had warned me that Christina had a habit of turning up randomly, banging on the security doors and hollering demands to see her daughter. I felt sorry for the nurses; they did their best as stand-in bouncers until hospital security staff showed up, but physical tussles with relatives were way outside the remit of their job. After extracting themselves from the fracas, they then had the task of soothing the other parents on the ward who wished for a gentler introduction to the world for their own babies.

Fortunately there was only one close encounter between us during that first week: Christina climbing the stairs to the third floor as I made my way down. Hands held out in front of her in a position of prayer, as she neared I saw that she was clutching a phone between them, her thumbs running speedily over the keys. When she looked up I slowed my step and steeled myself for introductions, only to find that her eyes drifted over me unseeingly, without a flicker of recognition. Half a second later they fell back to her phone.

I had no idea what she was really like, or how well she handled Megan during her supervised contact sessions, but somehow it was nice to know she was close by, and that there were only a few hours during the day when the chair beside her newborn daughter sat empty.

The day of Megan’s planned discharge, the third Sunday in July, was clear and bright. With record high temperatures forecast for midday and no air-con in my old Fiat, I set off early, keen to avoid getting caught in another snarl-up. Mercifully, with only DIY store enthusiasts, football mums and committed members of the National Trust on the roads, the morning traffic was light. By 11 a.m. I had completed the mandatory infant resuscitation course hosted by the hospital and packed the few bits that Christina had bought for Megan in the little Winnie-the-Pooh case I’d bought especially for her homecoming. A small white rabbit went in there as well – a gift from Angie, and some beautiful sleep suits that the other parents on the ward had clubbed together to buy.

Midday found us back on the ring road, Queen Charlotte’s Hospital shrinking in the rear-view mirror, the precious cargo secured in her car seat beside me. Driving along, I was struck by the number of speed bumps between the city centre and my house, something I rarely noticed before. I cringed every time we went over one, holding myself stiff as if the effort would somehow lessen the impact on Megan’s tiny form. She seemed unconcerned though, alternately dozing and then staring with curiosity around the car, tongue darting out through her parted lips.

There was a welcoming committee waiting at the door when we got home, Emily clasping and unclasping her hands and Jamie making a poor job of maintaining his cool. There was no sign of Zadie, I noticed, as I walked up the path with the car seat resting in the crook of my arm, which was probably just as well because by that time the baby was shrieking, the skin on her face a deep, blotchy red – not the gentlest way to make a first impression.

My mother was standing behind her grandchildren. Shorter than both of them, all I could see of her was an arm resting on each of their shoulders. ‘Oh, look at the little love,’ she said reverentially, peering around Emily’s shoulder.

‘Me first!’ Emily trilled, on her knees in front of the car seat as soon as it touched the floor. Carefully, almost in slow motion, she released the wide straps and laid them gently to one side before reaching in and lifting Megan out. I resisted the temptation to offer any advice; the mother of one of her school friends recently came by a perimenopausal surprise of her own and Emily had been over to babysit quite a few times in the last few weeks. She knew what she was doing well enough.

With Megan secure in her arms she turned away and walked slowly into the living room, the three of us an eager entourage behind. We spent the next hour passing the blanketed bundle between us, already enchanted. When it was Jamie’s turn to hold her he sat with rigid arms and scrunched shoulders, as if she were made of the most delicate silk.

Sometimes it took time to encompass foster children into our home and feel completely at ease around them, but we seemed to mould ourselves easily around the under-fives, I suppose because our family dynamics remained largely unchanged.

What with visits from Peggy, the community midwife and our health visitor, plus an unexpected dash to Accident and Emergency one night after Megan suffered convulsions (a frightening but rare symptom of withdrawal) the next few days alternated between frenzied activity and dazed sleeplessness.

The jarring cries of a newborn were such a foreign sound in our house that when I woke during Megan’s first night at home, I lay still and staring into the darkness, thinking that perhaps foxes were getting acquainted outside my bedroom window, or that next door’s cat lay injured somewhere nearby.

I knew that babies born with substance addiction sometimes suffered a range of health problems, and Megan seemed to have more than her fair share – if anything about neonatal abstinence syndrome could ever be described as fair. Violent stomach cramps left her crying piteously for hours at a time, interspersed with bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea, and then periods of the jitters, when her hands, legs, and even her lips trembled. Clammy to the touch, her chest rose and fell at alarming speed and when I sat still with her in my arms, I could feel her body vibrating, almost like a toy that was running low on batteries. If I placed my hand flat on her tummy her insides trembled against my palm, something that caused my heart to lurch.

The emergency doctor suspected that reflux was partly responsible for her frequent vomiting and prescribed Infant Gaviscon, an antacid in powder form that was to be added to her formula milk. The thickened feed was more likely to stay down, so he said, but he told me that I shouldn’t expect her symptoms to disappear overnight.