At first, it really was very easy.
In the first few days that Sabina was in our home, once I’d had some advice about newborn stomach volume, she just slept most of the time. I caught up on some reading and gardening, and enjoyed the early spring sunshine. I quickly got used to changing her nappies and keeping on top of the laundry.
And initially, I was actually amused by the sudden change in my husband. It wasn’t that he’d been unhappy before Sabina arrived, but he was certainly much happier now. He came home for lunch and made it look easy to eat a messy salad sandwich with one hand while he nursed her with the other. He often got up to her when she cried at night, and every day he came home with something from the stores . . . generally toys, which I continually told him that she would not need while she was with us, but he just shrugged and said she could take them with her when she went to her real parents. Grae kept the house stocked with formula and nappies and had some kind of automatic instinct about caring for her. If she was unsettled, he somehow seemed to know why.
As the days stretched into a second week, I began to suspect that somehow, I was lacking that instinct. Sabina was awake more, and unsettled much more, and I found that those lazy hours to relax or even keep on top of the housework disappeared overnight. Grae could walk in and hear her crying and he’d go right to a bottle or her nappy or pick her up for a cuddle, but for me it was a process of painful elimination. Sometimes, when she was really upset, I’d get so flustered that I’d forget altogether about even the obvious things. Grae came home from work on Friday afternoon to find Sabina and I both sobbing, and within two minutes he had me settled with a glass of wine on the deck while Sabina greedily drank a bottle of milk in his arms. Apparently, I just plain forgot to give her lunch.
It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy having her in our home. Emotions dawn slowly in me, and they build by degrees over time, but I’ve always been like that. I didn’t fall in love with Graeme, so much as inch toward the edge of love, and then lower myself in gently over months and years. It was the same with Sabina. In those very early days I could quite easily hold myself at a distance, doing the job I’d committed to: acting as her professional and temporary nurse.
And there’s no sugar coating it: they were difficult days. She was not an easy child to care for, she suffered terribly with reflux and I rode the waves of her pain with her. She’d go from screaming with hunger to screaming in pain in only a few minutes, and I could never really tell what it was she was looking for – was it more milk? Less? A burp? A nappy change?
Or . . . her mother?
Sometimes, I caught myself wondering if a child could even love me the way it should. Was it karma? Or some kind of universal truth? My body was not conducive to fertility, maybe that extended to how I would nurture – maybe Sabina saw the deficiency in me, and that’s why she was so miserable? Graeme said it was because I got so upset around her, and in time I realised there was some truth to that. On the bad days it was like she was tied to me and I couldn’t put her down, but the more upset I got, the more upset she got. We fed off each other, and as soon as Grae walked in the spell would break, and she’d be contented again. I could see the logic and rationality in all of that, but in the thick of it, it was impossible to stop myself from taking it personally.
I’d remind myself that this was only for a little longer, and I planned to spoil myself when Sabina finally went home. I intended endless sleep-ins, trips to the beauty salon, and reading . . . day after day of blissful reading in peace and quiet. I had to keep adding to that list though, because for a while it seemed like every new day was worse than the one before. Sabina soon slept and ate on her own schedule and day or night she was squirming and grunting as if she was in pain. I made a few frantic trips back to the hospital, where the midwives and doctors would check her over. Mild reflux, the doctor would say, and the midwives would tell me to hang in there and send me home.
I had no idea what sleep deprivation could do to a person’s state of mind, but Sabina quickly taught me. I found myself walking around the house in a fog of exhaustion, barely meeting my own basic needs. The occasional flashes of tenderness I felt towards Sabina reminded me somewhat of Stockholm Syndrome – I was trapped with and by her, and that thought alone made it easier to resist any chance I might bond with her. It was with a kind of desperate longing that I looked forward to the day that Lilly would call to ask for Sabina. I couldn’t wait until my life became mine again.
When the phone rang early one Monday morning and I recognised Lilly’s voice on the line, I watched the fog recede and I stared towards a window, where the day instantly seemed to have brightened.
‘Is she okay?’ was Lilly’s first question, delivered both with fluency and desperation.
‘She’s just fine,’ I assured her. ‘You’re discharged?’
‘They made me stay a while, the doctor wanted to make sure my body was healing okay. But yes, I’m out n-now. I had to go home to my family.’ Her words were increasingly uneven. ‘It’s horrible, Megan. I can’t even look at Tata, I’m so angry with him. But the solicitor said our easiest shot at the marriage licence was for Tata to give his consent, so I had to come home and try to convince him.’
‘So, that’s the plan, then? Have you talked to him yet?’
‘I’ve tried, but he’s still so mad at me, it didn’t go very well. And James had to go back to university while we wait, he has exams coming up so couldn’t miss anymore school. But he’s back in a few weeks and we’re going to try to talk to Tata together then.’
‘Another few weeks?’ I repeated, and glanced down at Sabina, who was finally asleep in my arms after a marathon night of wakefulness. The fog rushed back in at me, thicker than before, and my living room seemed to darken and shrink in around me.
‘Is that still okay?’ Lilly asked hesitantly. ‘I appreciate everything you’re doing for us, Megan. I really . . . can’t thank you enough, honestly. If it’s too much . . . I mean, I can try to speed it up, we can apply to the court for a licence but the solicitor said that would take a while and without Tata’s consent it might not work anyway.’
‘No, no it’s fine,’ I cleared my throat. ‘You just call me when you’re ready, and let me know if I can do anything to help the process along, okay?’
‘Okay.’ I heard the smile leap back into Lilly’s voice. ‘And is she well? Is she sleeping for you and growing and . . . is she okay?’
‘She’s doing beautifully,’ I said. ‘Actually I think I hear her waking up so I’d best go, good luck with everything and keep in touch, okay?’
I managed to hang up just as the sobs bubbled up, but they were mine, not Sabina’s. I was disappointed and confused, and so tired that even the effort required to get Sabina back to the bassinet in her room seemed beyond what I could manage.
I sank into a chair and looked around my living room through my veil of tears. There was a huge pile of clean nappies and baby clothes on the floor near to the laundry, and groceries by the door that I still hadn’t unpacked from the previous day. Something about the chaos made me suddenly, irrationally furious and I felt the muscles in my arms contract as if I might squeeze the baby in punishment.
And then, of course, the tears came faster and harder because I realised that I was blaming an innocent child for the state of a house and none of that really mattered and none of it was her fault at all. What kind of monster did that make me?
It was my darkest moment, wedged tightly in a period of so many dark moments that I’d look back on it for years and wonder how we both survived. I was more than ever certain that I was not cut out to adopt a child. Surely all of this would be easier if I actually had a baby of my own, my own flesh and blood. Those fleeting glances of affection I had towards Sabina would surely be more steady and solid if this were my child. The instinct that I lacked would come naturally if only I’d been pregnant and given birth myself.
I’d love my baby, instantly and automatically. Maybe I was growing to love Sabina, but it was happening too slowly . . . she’d be surely back with Lilly before I even came to like her.
But, as difficult as it all was, I was stuck. What choice did I have? I had committed to helping Lilly and James, and I couldn’t very well return the baby to the hospital and say it was too hard, I’d changed my mind. I had to stumble and fumble my way forward, and wait for Lilly to return to be a real mother to her daughter.
The most frightening part of the whole affair was that this was my first taste of motherhood, and it was not what I thought it would be. I expected it to be joyous and transformative.
I did not anticipate endless, monotonous days which blurred until life was both unenjoyable and unrecognisable.