I thought I did not want to be a father and I was frightened and angry when Christina became pregnant. I punished myself and I punished her. I withdrew into myself and, when I did communicate, I was critical and unclear. I refused to explain things, I behaved like a spoilt child, but I was frightened and uncertain what to do. We can talk about my subconscious motivations - I did not wear a condom, Christina was not protected, we chose this - I know about biology and, yes, somewhere inside me I was fascinated by the prospect of having a child. However, the world seemed a fearful place during Christina's pregnancy, albeit punctuated on occasion by a faint sense of joy.
| I was frightened and uncertain what to do |
I believe many anxieties can be traced back clearly to one's own experience of being parented. My birth father, though gentle, is not a great emotional or physical communicator. I yearn for explanations, talking, but my dad does not put a lot of store by feelings - 'best left alone', and all that. I love him, but closeness is not his game.
Nothing, however, creates as much anxiety for me as losing control. And that was what was happening to me. It was out of my hands. So I was panicked at the prospect of my child's impending birth. First, I convinced myself that he would be a girl. I'm less anxious about relationships with women; I can rationalise their different needs and remain more easily separate. A girl, then, I thought maybe I could cope with. I did not let myself imagine what life would be like with a son. I thought I would somehow have to take less responsibility if we had a girl. Christina could be her main support and I could offer occasional words of wisdom. Very stereotyped I know, but under pressure my defences exerted their own authority and the most basic of these for me was avoidance.
The nature of my relationship with Christina was changing because of the impending birth. A lot of questions continued to arise. Would I want to see the pain, the base and primeval nature of childbirth? Would she want me to see her in that situation? Would I still fancy her? Would she still fancy me?
When contractions began, I coped brilliantly; I was calm and supportive. And, by this time, almost excited. If I had not exactly worked through my anxieties, I had begun to accept responsibility for the nature of the coming relationship with my child. Or maybe it was a time to be practical. Hot water and soap. Contrary to my expectations, I did feel very much part of it all. I couldn't cut the umbilical cord - as is now the practice for fathers - because the baby got stuck in there and had to be forcibly evicted. I watched my baby's entry into our world holding a drugged and tired Christina upright to enable gravity to assist us. And there he was. A purple colour, alive and well.
In fact, it was wonderful. Every bit as awesome as my fantasies. Only our child was a boy, and that meant I would bring up and nurture a man. A man child, able to cry, shout, hug me, show me his world with open-hearted love and uncompromising joy. When he was born, at dawn, I began to cry. I carried on crying for most of the day. I shed a lot of pain that day. Since then, I often sit and cry a bit when he's just being beautiful. All my worries about boys or girls suddenly seemed to have no basis.
Christina and I have a kind of unspoken system which involves her doing most of the childcare. We were at home with him together until he was three months old. He slept next to our bed. When he moved into his cot and I started work again Chris got up for him. Now she is working too, we both get up but she does more than I do. I will tend to leave him for longer if he is shouting, hoping he will settle again. She will tend to get up. We share nappy changing and bathing but, in the division of labour, I will tend to do almost all the cooking whilst, say, she will dress Oliver. Is this fair? I do not know. I do know that the time I spend with Oliver tends to be good time. And we do spend many hours with him together.
Now he is eighteen months old I ask myself will I be the one to close him down emotionally? To tighten him up? Make a man of him? His rites of passage, will they be my responsibility? Will I clam up when I really need to speak with him? Or can I do as he does? Shout when I'm angry, cry when I'm sad and hit myself with my bottle when I'm frustrated. I feel he is very like me and seems to have little of Christina. He must have of course, but I know he is a boy and that between us we nurture the 'boy' in him.
Only now I make the choices about how to parent him; my dad would shout - I can ask; my mum would say 'stop it' - I can explain. When he cries, do I get annoyed? Sometimes, but I don't close him down, try to make him feel bad for it. I will do things that are wrong in his eyes, but I won't make him feel bad for feeling the way he does. My parents were under more pressure than I am and their parents more brutal; I am changing that heritage.
Looking back now, I needed the nine months of pregnancy that Christina went through. I needed it in order to be terrified. She needed me behaving like that like she needed a hole in the head. But it worked. When people found out about our child to be they said 'how lovely', 'how wonderful'. When I explained that it was not wonderful, they looked at me strangely, unable to comprehend my terror.
I was in a room recently with a group of men. One said in passing that 'of course the children come first; that's the one definite thing in my life'. The men without children raised an eyebrow, blinked and glanced aside. And there you have it, the power of these kids. I would die to ensure his life. And there my fears are crystallised. This is in some way my power, my knowledge. I have seen parents hold their children to ransom - 'all I did for you' - and for that emotion of mine, he must never have to pay.
The trauma of these events have only recently begun to settle. We have our systems now and my life with Chris is far more calm and fulfilling than ever. Having a child has brought up so much that most of it only gets dealt with when it arrives. The experience was and is both intensely personal and shared together.
Discovering that I was pregnant elicited mixed emotions: I was happy, confused and surprised. Overall, however it was not a particularly happy experience: emotionally it was extremely gruelling. I was scared. My partner was not overjoyed at the news and spent eight months coming to terms with it whilst I attempted to suppress any negative feelings I might be experiencing and was rarely able to enjoy any positive ones. The conflicting and confusing feelings I had during this period were the strongest emotions I have ever felt and I spent at least three months regularly experiencing frightening and uncontrollable panic attacks. My own feelings of ambivalence were heightened. I had always assumed I would have a child but was never actually prepared to make the decision. I felt responsible for the devastating and irreversible impending event which was hurtling towards us, rarely able, except in my more lucid moments, to remind myself that we were both aware of the possibilities.
The birth itself was a wonderful experience. It was empowering and healing. My partner was fully involved and emotionally supportive. The healing process had begun but there was a lot of suppressed anger which I felt towards him to come out first. The first days of motherhood were blissful but I soon began to notice a difference in my social status. I became public property, people apparently felt they had the right to ask me exceedingly personal questions, make assumptions about how I felt and what I wanted. But one of the biggest shocks for me after Oliver's birth was the feeling of being watched and judged. I felt I was being scrutinised for any sign that I wasn't coping. Not having done the washing up from breakfast, for example, was a sure sign of impending post-natal depression. (Since my interest in things domestic has never been great, having rushed to wash up the breakfast dishes would have been a more accurate sign!)
| One of the biggest shocks for me after Oliver's birth was the feeling of being watched and judged |
The unquestionable right people assume to make comments about mothers also extended to observations about how I'd changed, for the better, of course. I was apparently more content, happier in myself and there's only one explanation, the soma of motherhood has worked. (Or could it really be that I'm tired most of the time?) It became the explanation for everything. I am now a mother, which is not necessarily the same as being a person. Comments about my mothering became commonplace. The concept of the 'good mother' was one I had to learn quickly. If anything goes wrong, like forgetting to buy the nappies, it's fine for others to 'joke' about you being a 'bad' mother. Initially I was extremely sensitive to this attack but I have since worked out that, colloquially speaking, a good mother is one whose children always have clean clothes on and a big breakfast in the mornings. Whereas a good father is one who takes the kids to the Natural History museum. Of course, both attitudes ignore the complexities and vagaries of good parenting.
My anxiety levels still ran high. I wanted to be the 'good mother' but I also wanted things to be 'normal' (i.e. how they had been before). My partner's expressed fears around parenthood were, as I interpreted them, about life not being 'normal'. Therefore I spent the first months of my son's life trying to maintain normality and ensuring that he was as unobtrusive as possible. Whenever he cried I picked him up and fed him, I was up several times a night as soon as he squealed in case he woke my partner up. I got up early and took him to another room or out so that my partner could have a lie-in. I went out and learnt that breastfeeding in public could be done discretely and quietly, I had to ensure 'normality'. I was totally physically and emotionally exhausted. I took responsibility for a situation I felt guilty for and tried to make it bearable. Even the anger I felt towards my partner I almost completely suppressed.
Now, a few weeks after my son's first birthday, thinking about the preceding period of adjustment, I realise that we have reached a new normality. The baby has become incorporated into our lives and we still do go out. By my own choice, I still take most of the responsibility for childcare, by other people's assumptions and my own desire. (which is another complex and interesting subject), but the anxiety has considerably lessened and a new equilibrium has evolved. My partner accepts and deeply loves the newcomer in our lives. I look back on my pregnancy and the immediate post-birth period with a bleary amazement.
I still feel very angry with my partner at a deep level for not being overjoyed at the notion. I guess part of me wanted to be the heroine in a Doris Day movie, you know, sitting up in a huge pink bed eating chocolates whilst someone brings her cold kippers and custard for breakfast. I feel angry that he expressed himself so overwhelmingly negatively that I felt I had to totally subsume my feelings. But I also feel lucky to live with an honest man. One I know will never lie to me about how he is feeling (no matter how painful) and one who worked through all the feelings before the time when not only I really needed him but also when our son did. I realise in writing this that the feelings of hurt and anger are still unresolved. But I now believe that I have a more respectful understanding of the loss of control that he was experiencing during that period, something I tried to do at the time but in a angst-ridden rather than constructive way. Most importantly I treasure the joy both the men in my life bring me. The main lesson I have learnt is that there is no such thing as normality, there is simply adjustment to change and how we deal with it.
Having written these articles separately and then discussed them together, we realised how little we have talked about some of the important and unresolved issues that they have raised. Issues reflecting feelings we have been aware of but that perhaps were too raw to deal with at the time.
| In our own ways we retreated to what had protected us as children |
Whilst there is little doubt that much of what we have experienced since the birth of our son has been a very healing process, writing the articles brought up for us the scars that we carry. Any event as momentous as a birth will always trigger the responses, defensive or otherwise, we have learnt in our growing up. One's primary defences lie dormant and take over at certain crucial times, whether in response to a need to control one's environment or as a reaction to attempts to assert one's feelings and be less inhibited.
Whatever the reasons, what seems to have happened is that we both became quite isolated. In our own ways we retreated to what had protected us as children, brothers, sisters. Neither of us had been given any real training in the complexities of our situation. When we needed to share we were too frightened. Only now sixteen months later is the light beginning to filter through. Trust, that most precarious of emotions, is oblique in our human condition. Something has worked. We have a wonderful happy little boy and can share our thoughts in this article but the struggle goes on. Quite what 'resolved' means we don't know. It is our ongoing discussion.
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