Good Enough Page 3

  That night, while all the other newborns are angelically sleeping lined up in their plastic bassinettes, Cella is in my arms screaming the place down until the early hours of the morning. The following night, she does it again (she actually does this for a solid year, but I don’t want to break the narrative) and the nurses eventually intervene and suggest they take L’Hysterical One from me so I can try to get a little rest. I’m shell-shocked and teary from sleep deprivation so I agree, only to have a screaming Cella returned some 30 minutes later. ‘Ooh, she’s a real live-wire, this one,’ says the Irish nurse whom I immediately want to strangle. ‘I’m so sorry, love, but we just can’t seem to calm her down and she’s waking up all the other babies in the nursery.’ My heart sinking, I grab my broken baby off The Scorpion Woman and attach her to my breast in an effort to shut her up. It works a treat but I’m so exhausted by this point, I fall asleep holding her and when I wake up, I find she has fallen down the side of the bed. She’s fine, but the shock of it jolts me into a dark, dark place and I begin to cry. ‘I’m a shithouse mother,’ I whisper to no one in particular. ‘WAAAHHHH,’ agrees Cella. She’s onto me and I know it.

  The ‘baby blues’ often hits new mothers on Day Three and for me, it commences like clockwork. I literally open my eyes in the morning (if I even slept at all) and I feel so sad I immediately begin bawling like it’s the end of the world. ‘Waaahh!’ I cry when a visitor brings me flowers. ‘You killed them!’ I sob. ‘These flowers were alive and you killed them with your selfish consumerism.’ My visitor looks positively baffled and takes off to find a vase – or a noose to hang herself with – while a nurse does her best to reassure me I’m perfectly normal. ‘It’s just your hormones, dear. You’ll be fine by tomorrow, I promise,’ she says, patting me on the back. ‘Waaahh!’ I sob in agreement and Cella just looks up at me as if to say, ‘What the hell, woman? Don’t you dare crash my party.’ I spill chocolate mousse down my top, I cry. The smoked salmon in my private fridge runs out, I cry. Dave couldn’t find his socket wrench in Packed to the Rafters and I howl like a bitch. AND OH MY GOD, WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ME? ‘You heard what the nurses said, you’ll be fine by tomorrow,’ says Lee, giving me yet another cuddle. ‘It’s just your hormones are all out of whack.’ Amazingly, he escapes with his balls intact after this exchange and I settle in for another sleepless night.

  Remarkably, despite my clearly unsound mind, the hospital discharges me several days later and I’m free to roam the streets with baby in tow. I’m incredulous this has been allowed. ‘Shouldn’t someone be stopping us right about now?’ I ask Lee as we drive homeward-bound doing all of 20 kilometres per hour. ‘Because it’s clear we have no idea what we’re doing.’ I’m beside myself with anxiety. On Day Five, not only have the Day Three Blues NOT disappeared as promised, but they’ve been joined by a new sick feeling in the pit of my stomach I can’t quite articulate. When we get home, I immediately lock myself in the bathroom and slide down to the floor. I’m absolutely petrified of being alone with her and I don’t quite know what to do with myself. After a good 20 minutes of biting my nails as I stare at the bin, Lee knocks gently on the door. ‘Honey, are you okay? I need to head over to the shops to grab some things for dinner.’ HELL NO! My heart leaps into my mouth and I throw open the door in a panic. But what if she wakes up? I want to scream; instead I feign illness and plead with him not to leave me (with her) so I can get some rest. I crawl into bed but sleep does not come. Why do I get the feeling like I’m trapped in someone else’s life?

  Somehow the next couple of weeks roll on, but they pass by in some kind of strange, sleepless blur as I try to both anticipate Cella’s needs and navigate my new role as a caregiver. From what I can tell, all the other mums I see around me appear to have wonderful babies who sit quietly and sleep for hours at a time. This is evident from the way they all enjoy mammoth coffee sessions with friends as their little bundles of joy snooze blissfully in their baby carriers. Of course I don’t know what really goes on behind closed doors with them – but for me? My life has become 24/7 hell.

  A DAY IN THE LIFE OF YOURS TRULY

  6am: Wake up filled with awful realisation another full day is ahead of me. Cella squawks for milk and scream-fest begins.

  8am: Cry in shower. Can still hear Cella crying in living room and Lee rapidly losing his patience. Amazed he’s not crying yet.

  10am: Cella unconscious (relax – of her own will), and I’m not far behind. Remember to finally eat something – one whole muesli bar.

  1pm: Go for a walk, sit down at a cafe and leave five minutes later after she makes huge scene. Consider throwing myself off bridge onto Cross City Tunnel.

  2pm: Offer to do laundry just to get some ‘me’ time. Cella cries in Lee’s arms until she falls asleep.

  4pm: Become convinced Cella has wind. Send Lee to chemist to buy every single product ever made for babies. One of them is bound to work, surely? . . . None of them work.

  6pm: Begin three solid hours of constant rocking, patting and shh-ing to get Cella to sleep. White noise is played, small radio tuned into talkback has been attached to her bassinette. We get nowhere, and I become convinced that with Cella’s early introduction to shock jocks, she will grow up to become a right-leaning xenophobe. I cry some more.

  9.45pm: Cella finally asleep on my breast as I recline on couch with exhaustion. Attempt to eat twice-reheated dinner and drop pieces of food all over her. Don’t even get me started about tea.

  11.30pm: First panicked phone call of the night to Karitane’s Careline (Karitane is another, equally wonderful, version of Tresillian). Me: ‘She won’t sleep.’ Them: ‘Have you tried wrapping her tightly and patting her?’ Me (exasperated): ‘YES!’ Them: ‘Okay, try doing it again but a little less crap,’ (I’m paraphrasing here) ‘and don’t be afraid to call us back.’

  1am: Second phone call to Karitane. Me: ‘She’s STILL not sleeping.’ Them: ‘Have you tried introducing a gentle shh?’ Me: ‘I’ve been doing that and the bloody kid still won’t sleep!’ Them: ‘Hmm, you’d be most welcome to come along to our sleep classes, please call us in the morning to make an appointment.’ Dial tone. Me: ‘NOOOOOO!!!’ Drop to knees and smash receiver into head repeatedly.

  3am: Third phone call to Karitane. Me: ‘Look, I’m pretty sure my baby is autistic.’ Them: ‘You can’t diagnose a two-week-old child with autism.’ Me, hysterical: ‘WELLTHERE’SSOMETHINGBLOODYWRONGWITHTHISKIDBECAUSESHE’SNOTNORMAL.’ Them: ‘Why don’t you check in with your GP tomorrow morning and see how you go?’ Me: (inner dialogue) ‘FUCKFUCKFUCKETYFUCKFUCK’.

  3.20am: Lee and I get dressed and push pram around the local park in effort to get Cella back to sleep. It works but she wakes the minute we bring her inside.

  3.40am: Send Lee out into street to collect sticks to place under Cella’s rug. Place Cella in pram and commence rocking pram back and forth over bumpy rug until she falls asleep again.

  4am: Cry, fall asleep.

  6am: Another day starts all over again. And again. And again.

  Initially, I try to make things work. I single-handedly keep the publishing industry alive by buying spirit-crushing books by the truckload. I mostly stick to memoirs written by mothers about their child who has autism/cystic fibrosis/severe brain damage, and sometimes I mix it up a bit with volumes of the Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes variety. At least my kid is merely vehemently opposed to happy, harmonious living and not fatally ill or injured, I tell myself, and these books will put my life into perspective. And for a day or two, they do – until that familiar feeling starts creeping over me again and I have to go out and buy more soul-destroying books (if this isn’t depressing enough, it’s a pretty freakin’ huge category so you’re guaranteed never to run out of books to read).

  I put on my red lipstick every morning and rush out to meet the other mums in the park in an effort to pretend everything is okay, but as the weeks pass, my mask begins to slip and I become angrier and more vocal at my utter mi
sery. How do other mums make this look so easy? Why do their babies do what they’re meant to when mine’s so broken? And why the fuck is Cella’s behaviour robbing me of the motherhood experience everyone else seems to be enjoying so much? My closest girlfriends do not have children at this point so appear to be at a loss as to how they can support me, so they deal with the situation by ignoring me completely. There are no phone calls to see if I need anything or visits laden with baked goods; I am completely on my own and I rage against the sense of betrayal and perceived abandonment. But all hope is not lost because offers of help begin pouring in from a most unexpected place – my mothers’ group. ‘We know what it’s like to have a demanding new baby, and well, yours is a corker!’ they tell me as they offer to take Cella for an hour or two here and there to give me time to rest. I am not offended by this: I know my kid is certifiable and I’m almost relieved other mums can see it too because it means I’m not going crazy. Other mums bring bags full of food and flowers to my house so I don’t have to cook. Inside, I’m yearning to accept their help: YES! Take her PLEASE! Just let me sit down with a cup of coffee for 20 minutes in silence, but my foolish pride takes over and I flat-out refuse. ‘It’s not like I have twins or a disability or anything, people,’ I chide. ‘We’re fine, everything’s fine!’ Which is completely bullshit by the way, because everything is not fine. When Lee gets home of an evening, he usually finds me sprawled on the kitchen floor bawling my eyes out and Cella doing much the same in her cot. Welcome home! ‘She’s fucked!’ I eloquently yell as I pick up my house keys and run out into the street. Night after night, I walk over to my local supermarket and just stand there in a random aisle, staring at products on shelves but not really seeing anything. I just enjoy the sensation of being out by myself – no nappy bag, no BabyBjörn, no screaming mess – where everything is perfectly still.

  Anne, my early childhood nurse, eventually sees the writing on the wall. How could she not? Anne: ‘How are things going at home?’ Me: ‘It’s horrendous. She’s like Satan and she won’t stop crying and mostly I just wish I could drive my car into oncoming traffic – that’s how we’re going.’ Her response is swift. She sends me to my favourite people over at Karitane to do a sleep and settle class and when this doesn’t work, she dispatches a nurse to come to my house to teach me how to settle Cella in our home environment. It works brilliantly while the nurse is there but as soon as she goes home the wheels fall off and I immediately begin to despair. Anne, who can only be described as an angel of God, finally suggests a five-day residential stay at Tresillian. ‘The only thing is there’s a good six- to eight-week wait at the moment and you’ll have to do a phone interview with a counsellor.’ I sigh heavily at the news of a two-month wait but know I don’t have any choice. ‘Sign me up.’

  Fortunately, the Tresillian nurse calls me a lot earlier than expected for my admissions interview. Not surprisingly, it is disastrous from the get-go as she struggles to hear what I’m saying over the phone, so gargled and muffled are my words through my sobbing. ‘And how would you say you feel about your baby, Ms Yasa?’ she asks. The question catches me unaware and I stammer for a moment as I try to collect my thoughts. Knowing how awful the truth will sound, I almost shift into my now perfected default line of, ‘I’m fine! We’re fine!’ but I know if I do so, I may prevent myself from getting the help I so desperately need. ‘I would never actually harm her . . .’ I tell the nurse quietly, ‘. . . but sometimes I just want to punch her in the face repeatedly until she’s quiet.’ My words hang heavily in the air and I’m instantaneously filled with guilt and shame as I imagine Sydney’s biggest DoCS file with my name being stamped all over it. But I also feel something else I wasn’t quite expecting – a huge sense of relief.

  ‘That’s great!’ says Anne, in an inexplicably bubbly manner as I convey my disastrous phone conversation to her an hour later in a deep sense of panic ‘Seriously? Have you been smoking crack?’ I hiss. ‘They’re going to come and take her away from me!’ As we speak I hear sirens in the background and I’m sure they’re coming to lock me away. ‘Dilvin, calm down!’ yells Anne, which as you can imagine, does absolutely nothing to calm me down. ‘You have to think of it this way – you spoke up and that’s admirable because women in your situation so seldom do.’ I stop homing in on the sirens for a moment and think about what she’s saying. One in seven women are affected by depression in the first year after giving birth but no one’s speaking up? Why the hell not? Anne is clearly not only an angel of God, but also a mind-reader. ‘Mums are afraid if they admit they’re not coping their baby will be taken away – it’s a very common fear,’ she tells me. No kidding, I think as I ponder gaffer-taping Cella’s mouth and hiding her in the cupboard until the sirens stop.

  I hang up the phone and sit on the couch in a daze wondering what the hell is going on with the world. So let me get this straight: We’ll talk about everything from vajazzling to who we’d turn gay for, yet still baulk at publicly admitting we’re not enjoying the mother hood experience quite like we’d hoped? The people at Australia’s national depression initiative, beyondblue, reckon they have the answer for this. It’s the stigma surrounding the words ‘postnatal depression’ that keeps two-thirds of us from picking up the phone, according to their latest research. It makes sense I suppose, when I really think about it. Surely it goes against nature to say you’re not really into this whole motherhood malarkey? And isn’t this meant to be the best time of your life? Isn’t that what the books told us? Maybe admitting you find motherhood difficult, even if your baby is perfect and sleeps all night (it’s true, I can’t quite believe it in my hazy state, but PND can strike any mother, regardless), will be misinterpreted by people to mean you don’t really love your baby as much as the world deems you should? The fact is, we all want to be good mothers and we want to be seen as being good mothers – let’s face it, no one goes into this thinking, to be honest, I just want to be perfectly adequate. No, we want to be great and when we find we’re not, we draw the curtains tightly around us and hope to God no one else can see. And besides, NO ONE ELSE IS TALKING ABOUT IT SO IT MUST ONLY BE ME.

  ‘Of course there’s also the fact that some people don’t really view it as an illness,’ says my friend Amy when I bellow down the phone line to her about my findings. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, all dark and defensive. ‘Of course it’s an illness!’ Amy sighs. ‘You and I know that, but you have to admit there’s a general feeling or at least an assumption that depression isn’t anything serious.’ She’s right of course and I know it. Want to tell the average Joe you’re depressed? ‘First-World problem, love!’ you’re likely to hear. ‘My aunt has cancer of the brain – now that is an illness.’

  Just how long postnatal depression will remain a taboo subject is anyone’s guess. At least celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Alanis Morissette have started talking about their own experiences publicly, which has had a flow-on effect through mainstream media and into people’s living rooms. ‘This is a great start!’ enthuses the odd spokesperson every now and then, but it’s not enough. Yes, it’s great there are high-profile women talking so intimately about their pain and a dialogue is being created but again I can’t help thinking, Oh come on! They’re celebrities! These women have nannies, flexible work arrangements and untold fortunes to pay for the best therapy and A-grade pharmaceuticals going. Their courage in speaking out about a topic that is kept so hidden has to be admired, and I’m certainly not diminishing their undoubtedly painful experiences, but I still don’t think it’s the same as trying to hold down a nine-to-five job, mortgage and daily family commitments. Until your next-door neighbour or your best mate starts making a bit of noise themselves, this situation is not going to get any better.

  Astoundingly, the cops did not throw me head-first into a paddy wagon as I’d feared and Today Tonight did not turn up on my doorstep (one of my biggest fears). But by making a little bit of noise of my own, I was rewarded in the greatest way possible: by driv
ing to a large suburban house in the lower north shore suburb of Willoughby to commence my residential stay at Tresillian. Although, as Anne said, the average waiting list to get into this program is six to eight weeks, my ‘punching’ comment has earned me the dubious privilege of skipping the list altogether. With Cella magically sleeping in her baby seat, I feel a sense of hope for the first time since she was born. Maybe this motherhood experience won’t end in death or prison after all.

  The Tresillian house is divided into three sections: one for newborns, one for babies three to twelve months and the other for tots up to two years. Cella and I are staying in the newborn wing with three other mums and as with the other mums, I’m given a private room with basic, clean furniture including a double bed (partners are welcome), cot and change table. Once I’ve checked in, I’m asked to fill in an Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale checklist (see page 32) and I figure I’ve done pretty badly on it because soon after I submit the form, a nurse comes scurrying into my room with a contract asking me to promise I will not kill myself on their premises. This amuses me no end. Not only do I not have any plans to harm myself, I fail to see how they could hold me to such a contract should they find me hanging from their shower at first light. I laugh about this with the nurse but she doesn’t share my sense of humour. Her head swivels between me and Cella in horror and when she opens her mouth to speak, words fail her.