Jacob was snuffling again. She hauled her weary limbs out of bed and sat up on the side, her heart thumping. Was he all right? She looked over at Rex. How can he sleep? How he’s not awake with this tiny angel next to us in the crib is unimaginable. What if it’s the first signs of cot death? Is he still on his back? She shook Rex awake.
‘What is it?’ Rex was drowsy with sleep.
‘Jacob seems to be a bit sniffly.’
‘OK, darling, well we’ve been through this before. He’s nearly four weeks now so let’s pick him up and let’s see if that makes a difference.’ He yawned.
Suzie leaned over and looked at him. He was swaddled tightly in his little blue blanket, with his tiny head poking out. She’d done it just like the YouTube demo had shown her, a neat little fluffy blue bundle. Her bundle.
He looked so fragile it almost made Suzie cry. She had been overwhelmed with emotion since she’d had him home. Nobody told you. Nobody said what it was really, really like to have a newborn in your arms. She couldn’t let him out of her sight. Couldn’t stop licking her finger and holding it under his nose to check he was breathing. Then there was the crib monitor, which she was constantly checking.
She leaned over him and smiled, let her fingers stroke his tiny, downy cheek. He was making small movements with his lips, twitching in the dim light of the nightlight she insisted they have in their bedroom so she could look at his little face. Was he dreaming? What was he dreaming of? She gingerly picked him up and held him close. She could never get enough of his smell, that intoxicating mixture of baby lotion, milk and sweet, pure baby. He was hers. Hers! She carefully laid him down again.
The urge to pick him up all the time was very strong indeed. The health visitor had insisted she stopped picking him up so much after her last visit – but what did she know? This is my baby, my baby… She still couldn’t really believe it, couldn’t believe how lucky she and Rex had been after all the years of waiting, of longing. She was finally able to hold her own baby in her arms, dream of birthday parties, first steps, baby yoga, his graduation, and his organic-only diet.
She gazed at his minuscule fingernails, smiled and thought about yesterday. She’d passed the mothers in the playground at the local school yesterday with Jacob in his pram. It was all she could do not to shout out: ‘This is MY baby!’
One of them had been leaving the school and clicked the gate shut. She had bent over and looked at Jacob in his pram. Suzie’s heart had nearly burst with pride. She had brushed over the birth questions, but was able to talk to her about colic, about feeds, about how he was sick – she loved it when he was sick, because she knew then that the milk had gone down, that she was doing the bottle-feeding properly.
She’d talked to the woman for ages. She hadn’t wanted to leave this hallowed Mothers’ Club on the pavement, a club she, until recently, could only watch from the sidelines. Standing, talking to another mum about her baby. A few months ago, it was just a dream. Now, an amazing reality. She looked over at Jacob again and had to sit on her hands so she didn’t pick him up.
It hadn’t been so easy for Rex; he adored Jacob but was just that bit more removed from him because he was away from the house so much; he was either in London working or on overnight business trips. And when he wasn’t away, he seemed to be spending all his time on a bike, or at those stupid spinning classes. What was wrong with him? Weren’t they the perfect family now? She couldn’t understand why, now that they had got exactly what they wanted, he wasn’t more pleased. She adored Jacob. Why wasn’t Rex happy with their cosy family unit? What else was missing?
She pushed the nagging doubts to the back of her mind. She glanced at her sleeping husband, at his handsome face; even in sleep she loved looking at him, the dark eyelashes resting peacefully on his cheek, the way his thick hair framed his face, those lips… what he’d done with those lips. She smiled at the memories. And yet they’d had another row yesterday; they were having endless rows at a time when they should be so happy. But she didn’t want to analyse her feelings, the ones where she was feeling slightly guilty about how much time she was spending with Jacob. Rex can look after himself, can’t he? Isn’t it what we always wanted?
She thought about her appointment with Annie that was looming in a few weeks. It was too soon! Her heart lurched. Rex thought she was ready to discuss going back to work; Annie thought she’d been looking at nurseries, that everything was sorted. But she hadn’t waited nearly eight years to have her own child to give him to someone else to bring up, had she? Ramone was great, but she wasn’t going to leave her precious baby with him all day, was she? What if his first word was ‘Hola’?
She would just go to the meeting, see how she felt; maybe it would all seem more possible when she got there, when she walked back into that building maybe she would feel her old self flooding back with the desire to nail the best possible deal for her clients. She tried to summon up those feelings, that hunger to fight for her clients, to get the best outcome, to fight off the competition, the desire to stay into the small hours to get the pitch absolutely right, to not eat, to drink endless coffee, that determination – but instead she found herself wondering if there was enough non-biological washing powder to wash the crib sheets later.