Douglas Kennedy - A Special Relationship

'I presume your local health visitor will be calling on you tomorrow', she said.

'I don't know - I haven't heard from anyone yet'.

'Well, no doubt, she will be visiting you very soon - so if you have any postnatal questions, she's the person to ask...'

In other words: if you're making a total mess of things, help will be on its way...

'Thank you for that. In fact, thank you for everything'.

'I hope he makes you very happy', she said.

One of the nurses helped me downstairs with the carry-chair. She also got one of the porters to call me a cab. On the way back to Putney, the driver spent most of his time on his cell phone, and seemed genuinely oblivious to the fact that I had a newborn in the back of his cab. But when he swerved to dodge an oncoming white mini-van, he rolled down his window and shouted, 'Stupid cunt! Don't you know I've got a little baby in the back?'

When we reached Sefton Street, the driver got out of the car and helped me with Jack to the front door.

'Where's your bloke then?' he asked after I settled the fare.

'At the office'.

'Guess someone has to earn the dosh', he said.

It was so strange entering my empty house with this tiny creature.

Like all of life's bigger passages, you expect a sense of profundity to accompany the occasion. And like all of life's bigger passages, the event itself is a complete letdown. I opened the door, I picked up the carry-chair. I brought Jack inside. I closed the door behind me. End of story. And, once again, all I could think was: this might have been an occasion if my husband was here.

Jack had fallen asleep during the cab ride, so I hoisted him upstairs to the nursery and unfastened the straps. Exercising the utmost care, I lifted him gently into his crib. He pulled his arms tight against himself as I covered him with the little quilt which Sandy had sent me. He didn't stir. I sat down in the wicker chair opposite the crib, my head splitting from the ongoing after-effects of the night before. I looked at my son. I waited to feel rapture, delight, maternal concern and vulnerability - all those damn emotions that every writer of every motherhood guide promises you will inhabit in the days after your child's birth. But all I felt was a profound, terrible hollowness - and a sense that, bar the fact that this child had been literally cut out of me, I had no further connection with him.

A ringing phone snapped me out of this desperate, vacant reverie. I was hoping it was Tony - sounding contrite and suitably humble. Or Sandy - with whom I could have bitched at length about my detached, taciturn husband. Instead, I received a call from a woman with a decidedly London accent who introduced herself as Jane Sanjay, and said that she was my health visitor. Her tone was surprising - breezy, pleasant, I'm here to help. And she wondered if she might drop by and see me this afternoon.

'Is there any reason why you need to see me right away?' I asked.

She laughed. 'Don't panic - I'm not the baby police'.

'But what did they tell you at the hospital?'

More laughter. 'Honestly nothing. We don't talk to the hospitals anyway - unless there's something seriously wrong. And you don't sound like the sort of person with whom there's anything wrong'.

Don't let the American accent fool you. I really don't know what the hell I'm doing.

'So', she asked, 'might I come by in an hour or so?'

Jane Sanjay was around thirty with an easy smile and an unfussy manner. Having expected a real social worker type, I was rather taken aback to see this quietly attractive Anglo-Indian woman, decked out in black leggings and electric silver Nikes. Her face-to-face manner echoed her phone style - and she put me immediately at ease, making all the right jolly noises about Jack, asking me a bit about how an American ended up in London (and sounding highly impressed when she learned about my Egyptian stint with the Boston Post), and questioning me gently about my general postnatal state. Part of me wanted to put on a happy face and tell her that everything was just hunky-dory - out of fear of looking like the height of incompetence. But who doesn't want to take another person into their confidence - especially someone who, though in an official capacity, seems to have a sympathetic ear. So after running through what she described as a standard checklist of baby care concerns - his feeding and sleep patterns, how often I was having to change his diapers (or nappies, to use the local parlance), and how to deal with standard infant complaints like colic and diaper rash - she then asked me (in her breezy way) how I was bearing up. And when I answered with a hesitant shrug, she said, 'Like I said on the phone, I'm not the baby police. And everyone who has a baby always gets regular visits from a Health Visitor. So really, Sally, you mustn't think that I'm snooping here'.

'But they have told you something, haven't they?' I asked.

'Who is they?'

'The people at the Mattingly'

'Honestly, no. But did something happen there that I should know about?'

'Nothing specific. I just think... uh...' I hesitated for a moment, then said, 'Well, put it this way: I don't think they liked my style there. Perhaps because I was a little over-wrought'.

'So what?' she said with a smile. 'You had a terribly difficult delivery, and then your child was in an Intensive Care Unit for an extended period of time. So you had a perfect right to feel distraught'.

'But I did manage to get up the nose of the consultant'.

'Between you and me... that's his problem. Anyway, like I said on the phone, I heard nothing from the hospital - and, believe me, had they been worried about you, I would have heard'.

'Well, that's good news, I guess'.

'So, if you do want to tell me anything...'

A pause. Instinctually, I started rocking the little carry-chair in which Jack was currently sleeping. Then I said, 'I guess I've been feeling a little up-and-down since his arrival'.

'Nothing uncommon about that'.

'And, of course, I'm sure things will be different now that he's finally home with us. But... uh... well, up to this point...'

I broke off, wondering how the hell to phrase what I was about to say. To her credit, Jane Sanjay didn't jump in, prodding me to finish the sentence. Instead, she said nothing, and waited for me to pick up the thread of conversation.

'Let me ask you something directly', I finally said.

'Of course', she said.

'Is it unusual to feel as if you're not exactly... bonding... with your child straight away'.

'Unusual? You must be joking. In fact, just about every other new mum I see ends up asking me the same question. Because everyone expects that they're going to instantly bond with their baby. Or, at least, that's what they read in all the baby books. Whereas the truth is usually a little more complex than that - and it can take a considerable amount of time to adjust to this new creature in your life. So, really, it's nothing to sweat, eh?'

But that night, there was plenty to sweat. To begin with, Jack woke up around ten pm and then refused to stop crying for the next five hours. To heighten the awful-ness of this nonstop bawling, both of my breasts became blocked again - and despite Jack's hoover-like jaws (and repeated uses of the dreaded breast pump), milk refused to flow. So I rushed into the kitchen and frantically spooned several scoops of formula powder into a bottle, then poured in the specified amount of water, shook it up, popped it into the microwave, nearly burnt my hand on the heated bottle, pulled a rubber teat out of the sterilizer, attached it to the bottle, raced back to the nursery, where Jack was now wailing, picked him up, sat him on my knee, and plugged him into the bottle. But after three or four slurps of the formula, he suddenly became ill and vomited up milk all over me. Then the screaming really started.