Still Life with Midwife

Still Life with Midwife

I was amazed by those first amphibious splashes when the baby reptile somersaults in the womb, shaking a transluscent fist at the monitor. Described by the doctor as ‘the perfect parasite… the baby has to trick the mother’s immune system into accepting it.’  An old trick—known  to many and the secret to successful relationships. Drain your partner’s resources so gently that she doesn’t even spot the jump leads stuffed inside the pillowcase.

After the death of my sister’s baby and weekly scans (when I was mistaken for the father) I  didn’t want to watch any more.  I found it  too precarious, listening hard to the synthesized whooshes and watery sounds and cooing medical murmurs – murmurs that would say just as calmly, ‘I’m afraid we’ve lost the heartbeat..’ This was a new form of voyeurism, listening in to the unborn animal, somehow indecent, to be hearing the squelch of that hungry sucker-mouth which is the heart. Can this ragged vent puffing open, grainy as footage of an underwater chimney, really be anything to place your hopes upon? While my partner was rubbing her tummy and saying ‘baby’ and dreaming of suckling a family of baby foxes, woodpeckering for her nipple and covered in red corduroy, I was looking at the doctor’s face, scanning it for the first signs of disaster.

******

Catherine wants a baby fox. At night she walks out to the primary school, a sunken concrete pit with plastic chair and fake sunflowers, where two foxes undulate through the railings, calling to each other from the swings.  She barks at them too, her nose through the railings, taking them steak. The mad pregnant lady in a Cookie monster t-shirt  and flowered up flip-flops wants to breastfeed London’s foxes.  ‘Other people must be feeding them, ‘ she says.  ‘Look how healthy they are. That nice red one must be the lady. Besides, if we throw our food away they only rip the bin bags open—this way we give it them direct.’.

            The fox tail weaving between the railings flashes through our dreams. I wake and see one waiting below the window before trotting across the road. I wake an hour later and the same thing happens as if the animal and I are in a loop.

As the nurturing instinct increases animals are attracted to us. Unfortunately, they are in distress. A baby gull lies palpitating in the gravel on the path to my sister’s, fluffy and striped, beak opening and closing mechanically. ‘Do something, ‘ Catherine shouts, ‘save it…’ My sister is watching in the doorway too. I swaddle it in kitchen towel, feel it pulsing through the bonds, darkening the towel with thick blobs of scarlet. I feed it water, talk to it under the shade of the hydrangea. Later a blue tit flies into our bedroom and bangs against the ceiling leaving scrapes of blood and feather before we trap it with  a dishcloth and release it in the garden. If we took these symbols literally things would be going badly. But we believe in enchantment. The non-rational part of our brain secretly believe our good deeds will be rewarded by a family of gulls guiding us inland when our lilo is cast adrift on the North sea.

*****

The ante-natal class is supervised by an irritating Spanish woman with a black quiff and Buddy Holly glasses, she twists and untwists her legs in drainpipe jeans making bad jokes about if in doubt, ‘ask the baby.. no really it will not know…’ Explosive shitting for a long time is a good thing. We examine diapers she doctored earlier with marmite. Baby girls may have a mini-period, both sexes can have engorged nipples. ‘Do not attempt to unscrew them.’   A Chinese woman wants to know about swaddling, how tight the bands, unaware she's endorsing a national stereotype. Everyone is punctuating their conversation with their dolls, fiddling with legs, rubbing plastic soles, helping them sit up straight.

           A blonde with glasses moons in with her reluctant Asian toy boy who smirks at the dolls and then is handed the only black one for the breastfeeding demo. ‘What we aim for is rhythmic sucking’ and Juanita fellates empty air.  ‘Try and get as much breast tissue in your mouth at once ..’  I catch another man’s eye, surely a shared teenage aim. ‘The danger of moving from breast to bottle too quickly can cause a condition known as nipple confusion.’  The toy boy takes note.

Later in Mothercare we step out of the twenty first century into a world of toothless crones and medieval women, everyone has a tip: cabbage leaves for sore nipples, rasberry tea but only in the final weeks to ease labour. I ask the crone where I can get muslin squares and she nods at the woman in the headscarf at the counter, ‘plenty around here, ‘ she says.  Catherine buys a scratch card, ‘God, we need the cash…’ Before revealing the symbols she tries a little prayer, ‘please God…’ I tell her God hates begging letters, he loves sacrifice, a slap up meal of slaughtered bullocks, trestle tables groaning with blood. ‘Can you imagine how hacked off he was when people stopped feeding him and started banging on about self-sacrifice?' 

‘Well,  if we win,’ she says, ‘we’ll offer up our first born.’