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Teresa opened a bottle of wine. She had stopped breastfeeding Annabel. Even though the Internet told her it was okay to breastfeed three or four hours after having a drink, she didn’t feel comfortable drinking.
Now she had finished, and the arguments with William had been getting worse. He was working late every day, and when he got home, he didn’t seem interested in her. Within minutes of walking through the door, he would have found something she had done wrong and berated her for it. Teresa got to the point she dreaded him coming home and opened a bottle of wine so she could have a glass or two before he arrived. He would complain about the cost of the wine, but she knew he was having a sneaky drink or two on the way home. She could smell it on him.
She did not know how much money he was spending. Whenever she challenged him about it, he would huff and puff and then show her a complicated spreadsheet which she could not understand after a few glasses of wine.
Annabel was still struggling to get to sleep, and she rarely slept right through the night. Because William had to work in the morning, it was Teresa who had to get up and change the nappy or attend to whatever it was Annabel needed. Often Teresa would bring her daughter back to bed with her and William would complain that Annabel was getting used to sleeping in their bed.
Teresa felt so tired. Even when she got Annabel off to sleep, she struggled to get to sleep herself. Even when she dropped off to sleep, she would often wake up because of a nightmare.
In one dream, she was in a hotel with Annabel when a strange man came into the room saying that the hotel was full and so the manager told him to take one bed in Teresa’s room. The man refused to leave until Teresa called the manager to explain why the arrangement was not acceptable.
Her tiredness led her to become irritated, and she even caught herself blaming Annabel for her bad temper. This made her feel guilty, and she found herself in a constant state of anxiety. She worried about everything, not just about Annabel. Was she doing anything that William would get upset about when he came home?
She felt alone at home in the flat all day with Annabel for company. She hadn’t returned to work because she couldn’t agree with William about childcare. He promised to get Annabel enrolled in a nursery close to where he worked, which would enable Teresa to go back to work at the coffee shop, cleaning, or even find a new job. Teresa had the accountancy qualification she completed at the language school before she married William, and the pregnancy became too advanced for her to focus on anything else. She lost interest in studying or in anything else that wasn’t involved in making sure Annabel was fed, clean, and entertained. Teresa couldn’t remember the last time she played any music and her music had been the reason for going to England.
William insisted they use real nappies, so there was an additional wash to do every week on top of the usual clothes. Teresa squirmed at washing nappies, but it hadn’t turned out as bad as she had imagined and the rainbow-coloured wraps which went over the nappies were so cute.
The time she got out of the house was to pop out to the shops every once in a while, but even this she found herself sometimes unable to do when a sudden panic attack would grip her, and she would remove all the outdoor clothing with which she had just spent so long dressing Annabel. Occasionally, she would burst into tears with no immediate cause, and she would find it difficult to focus on even the simplest of tasks. The situation worsened when William arrived with his constant questioning, and this would make it even more difficult to do things when she doubted her every move.
Her respite was on Sundays when she would go to the local church. William would be down at his allotment, and so she would have a few hours with a new group of friends and no one looking over her shoulder to check whether she had done everything.
Teresa lost her appetite, which she thought just as well as it allowed her to lose much of the weight she gained during the pregnancy and had just poured herself a glass of wine when Annabel began calling for her. She sighed. All the other Babies from the antenatal group Teresa attended were having afternoon naps. Why couldn’t Annabel? She placed her glass on the counter and marched into the spare bedroom which they had converted into a nursery.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” Teresa demanded, her annoyance clear in her tone.
“Mamae,” Annabel pleaded, stretching her arms out to be picked up.
“You should have your nap, or you’ll be annoying later,” said Teresa and marched out of the room, picked up her glass and marched through to the living room where she slumped on the sofa.
Annabel began to cry. Teresa tried to ignore her, but Annabel was loud, and Teresa could not ignore her. She marched back through to the nursery to shout at Annabel, but when she came face to face with her daughter’s pitiful expression, her heart melted, and she found it impossible to be angry with her daughter and picked her up out of the cot from where Annabel was trying to escape. She held her close.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said over and over.