Douglas Kennedy - A Special Relationship

Miracle-of-miracle - a no-problem flow of milk.

'Well, that's good news', Jane Sanjay said when she dropped by late that afternoon to check on my progress. 'How many feeds now without a blockage?'

'I've just done the third of the day'.

'Houston, it looks like we've got full flow', she said.

I laughed, but then added, 'Now, if I can just get some sleep'.

'Was he up all night?'

'No - just me'.

'Well, hopefully it's a one-off bad night. But you seem to be holding up pretty well under the circumstances. Better than I would, believe me'.

'You've no kids'.

'Hey, do I look crazy?'

However, by two the next morning, I was seriously beginning to wonder if I was veering into craziness. Tony had been out all evening at some foreign correspondents' dinner, and rolled in drunk around two am - to find me slumped in front of the television, with Jack on my lap, crying his eyes out, unable to settle down, and completely satiated from an extended one hour feed.

'Still up?' Tony asked, attempting to focus his eyes on us.

'Not by choice. Still standing?'

'Just about. You know what a journo's night out is like'.

'Yeah - I vaguely remember'.

'Want me to do anything?'

'How 'bout hitting me over the head with a club?'

'Sorry - a little too caveman for my taste. Cup of tea?'

'Camomile, please. Not that it'll do any good'.

I was right - it didn't do any good. Because Tony never got around to making the cup of tea. He went into our bedroom to use the en-suite bathroom, then somehow managed to end up crashed out across the bed, fully clothed, out for the count. Had I wanted to sleep, this would have presented a problem - as there was no way I was going to get him to budge from his cross-bed sprawl. But I had no need of a bed - because, once again, I couldn't turn off my brain... even though Jack finally turned off his at three am that morning.

'Two nights - without sleep?' Jane Sanjay said the next afternoon. 'This is worrying - especially as your son seems to be conking out for around four hours a night... which, I know, isn't exactly a lot of sleep time for you, but is certainly better than no sleep. What do you think's going on?'

'I haven't a damn clue - except that my brain is more than a little hyperactive right now'.

'Well, this motherhood thing is never easy to absorb. Has your husband been helping with some of the all-night duties?'

'He's been a little busy on the work front', I said, not wanting to start complaining to a stranger about Tony's disinterest in most baby matters.

'Could you maybe consider a night nurse for a couple of days, just to allow you to crash for a bit? Lack of sleep is seriously bad news'.

'Tell me about it. But I'm sure I'll collapse tonight - without fail'.

But I didn't fall asleep. And it wasn't Jack's fault. On the contrary, the little gent went down around ten and didn't stir until four the next morning. This miraculous six-hour window should have been filled with deep comatose sleep. Instead I spent it drinking endless mugs of herbal tea, and stewing for an hour in a steaming bath (laced with assorted chill-out aromatherapy oils), and watching one of those endlessly talkative Eric Rohmer movies on Film Four (only the French can mix flirtation with liberal quotations from Pascal), and starting to read Dreiser's Sister Carrie (all right, I'm a glutton for punishment), and doing my best not to disturb my sleeping husband who was spending a rare night in our bed (I sensed he was in the mood for sex, but passed out from 'night after hangover exhaustion' before anything could happen).

Ten-ten. Eleven-eleven. Twelve-twelve. One-one. Two-two. Three-three...

It became a game with me, trying to glance at my watch right at the specific moment when the time was denoted by the same two numbers. A thoroughly dumb game, only worth playing if you're in the sort of advanced exhausted state which comes with two straight nights without sleep.

And then, before I could glimpse four-four, Jack was awake, and the new day had begun.

'How'd you sleep?' Tony asked me when he finally emerged from bed that morning at nine.

'Five hours', I lied.

'That's something, I suppose', he said.

'Yeah - I feel a lot better'.

Jane Sanjay told me she wouldn't be coming in today - but gave me her mobile number, just in case I needed to talk. But I didn't need to talk. I needed to sleep. But I couldn't sleep, because Jack was awake all day. And our shared routine was repeated over-and-over again.

Into the nursery. Remove his dirty diaper. Clean his dirty bottom. Dress him in a clean diaper. Pick him up. Sit down in the wicker chair. Lift up teeshirt. Offer nipple. And then...

By the time he finished sucking me dry at three that afternoon, my vision was starting to blur. Forty-eight hours of nonstop consciousness did that. It also played games with my depth perception, and made me feel as if I was Gulliver in the land of Brobdingnag - where even a dining chair suddenly looked as tall as a church steeple.

However, I could put up with the strange re-calibration of domestic furniture. Just as I could also handle a woolly feeling behind the eyes, and the fact that everything was slightly distended and fuzzy.

What I couldn't cope with was the feeling of calamity that was seizing me - a deep dark trough of despondency which I was finding hard to resist. Especially since - as I peered straight down into this trench - the hopelessness of my situation took hold. I wasn't just a useless mother and wife, but someone who was also in a no-exit situation from which there was no escape. A life sentence of domestic and maternal drudgery, with a man who clearly didn't love me.

Then, as I mused even further on my total despair, Jack began to cry again. I rocked him, I walked him up and down the hallway, I offered him a pacifier, my withered nipple, a clean diaper, more rocking, a walk down the street in his buggy, a return to his crib, thirty straight minutes of more bloody rocking in his bloody rocking chair...

When we had reached hour three of this uninterrupted crying jag, I sensed that I was heading for a rapid crash landing - where the idea of tossing myself out of a second floor window suddenly seemed infinitely preferable to another single minute of my son's bloody yelping.

Then I remember reaching for the phone and punching in Tony's office number and getting his secretary on the line. She said he was in a meeting. I said it was an emergency. She said he was in with the editor. I said, I don't give a shit, it's an emergency. Well, she said, can I tell him what it's about?

'Yes', I said, sounding most calm. 'Tell him if he's not home in the next sixty minutes, I'm going to kill our son'.

Seven

I DIDN'T WAIT for Tony to return the call. Because - after five straight hours of nonstop bellowing - Jack had suddenly exhausted himself into sleep. So, once I settled him down in the nursery, I unplugged the phone next to my bed. Then I threw off my clothes, crawled under the duvet, and finally surrendered to exhaustion.

Suddenly it was one in the morning and Jack was crying again. It took a moment or two to snap back into consciousness, and work out that I had been asleep for over nine hours. But that realization was superseded by another more urgent consideration - how in the hell could my son have slept so long without a diaper change, let alone food?

Guilt is the most motivating force in life - and one that can get you instantly to ignore the most impossible of hangovers, or lurch out of hours of sleep in a nanosecond. Dashing into the nursery, I quickly discovered that, yes, Jack did need a diaper change - but that, courtesy of the empty bottle I saw left on top of a chest of drawers, he had been fed sometime earlier. The sight of the bottle threw me, because the only time I had ever offered Jack this breast substitute, he'd utterly rejected it. But now...