all, relief flooded through me. “And the two of them could have playdates. After all, they’re the same age—”
“Exactly.” Maddie nodded. “I’m sure that’s the right response to this situation. Dialogue and cooperation and good communication…What are you doing?”
I was rummaging in the fridge. “Making us all blueberry smoothies for lunch. I promised Theo I’d do it before I picked him up. It was his turn to choose.”
11
MADDIE
IN SOME WAYS, LEAVING the NICU was almost as traumatic as going there had been. The nurses and junior doctors had become my friends. But there was too much pressure on space for Theo to stay a moment longer than he had to, and eventually he met all the criteria for being moved to the special care baby unit, or the fattening-up room as the nurses in the NICU jokingly called it.
“Your baby’s a fighter,” Bronagh said as she wrote up his notes for the last time. “We’ve a pretty good track record with preemies, but I’ve never known one catch up as fast as him.”
“How’s David Lambert doing?” I hadn’t been able to shake off the sense that David and Theo were like A Tale of Two Babies—that despite being admitted on the same day, one had somehow turned left while the other turned right, their fortunes forever diverging from then on.
“Paula told me he’s on the mend. They operated on him for a heart duct that hadn’t closed, and that seems to have sorted him out.”
“I’m so pleased!” I said. “Will you tell his mother I said hello?”
Bronagh nodded. “And this is for you, Pete.” A little shyly, she handed Pete a card. On the front was written Happy Father’s Day. “We make sure all our babies give cards to their dads on Father’s Day—it’s a little tradition around here,” she explained. “But that’s on Sunday and you won’t be here, so…” I could tell Pete was touched.
We were only in the special care unit for a week. Theo continued to put on weight and sailed through the car-seat test, when the doctors hooked him up to the monitors and strapped him into a car seat for as long as it would take to get home. Pete and I were given training in infant CPR and the loan of an oxygen tank and mask, just in case he ever stopped breathing at home. And then—just like that, eleven weeks after I woke up with a splitting headache and a strange leaden feeling in my womb, and still two weeks before my actual due date—we were out of hospital, discharged, a proper family at last.
“Welcome to the world, little man,” Pete said triumphantly as we walked out the hospital doors, lifting the baby seat like a lantern and slowly spinning around so Theo could see. “From now on, things are going to get better.”
Except it wasn’t that simple. Once, getting Theo home had been the only thing I wanted. Now it was strangely disorienting. When you were used to being able to glance over and check your baby’s status on a monitor, not having one there seemed odd. The noise of the machines had become so familiar, its absence was deafening—the bleeps and chimes continued in my head, insistent as the chorus of a song. Instead of relaxing because we were home, I felt increasingly anxious. I worried that we’d scald the inside of Theo’s mouth by overheating his bottle, or accidentally push him under the water when we gave him a bath, or drop him when he was wet and slippery afterward. I checked on him every ten minutes while he slept, to make sure he hadn’t stopped breathing. And when he sniffed a few times, I was convinced he had an infection and made Pete rush us all straight back to the NICU.
The doctor checked Theo over, then said quietly to me, “And you? How are you coping?”
“I’m fine. Just a bit stressed out.”
“Depressed?”
I shook my head. If anything, I was the very opposite of depressed—full of nervous energy.
“Well, if you do get the baby blues, don’t ignore them. There are antidepressants your GP can prescribe that won’t pass into your breast milk.”
I didn’t tell him I’d already started supplementing with formula. Breastfeeding reminded me too much of the NICU. I’d hidden the oxygen tank, too. I only had to catch sight of it to feel sick.
Most of all, though, I felt alone. It was so difficult to tell Pete that I still felt no maternal attachment to