THIS IS HOW I LOVE YOU
I write this on behalf of dads like me, who engage with this thing mentally, from the day we are told – sometimes in the middle of a meeting we thought we were deserting for a few seconds to tend to a routine enquiry from sweetheart – ‘I’m pregnant’. Boom! People wear different faces. So, on behalf of dads like me, who when they feel that kick in their chests, the one the heart does when it begins to race, first upwards in hope and excitement, then downwards in fear and trepidation, are still able to respond very evenly, and maybe even a little flatly, ‘Ok’. On behalf of dads like me, I write this.
Yes. I may be tight-lipped. But it’s because silence is how I deal with freaking out. Do you understand? So, when you say your bones feel out of joint, or that the taste in your mouth is driving you mad, or that you lie awake all night because you cannot find a position that extinguishes the pain in your back, I say, ‘Ok.’ I say, ‘Sorry.’ I say, ‘Just endure it. It will soon be over.’ Then I turn around in bed and draw silence like a blanket over me. Because I do not even know how to pray about this. That’s how much I’m freaking out. And when work makes it impossible to follow you to every check-up, I keep looking at my phone, wondering why you haven’t called yet. Is the news that bad? I do strange things to keep calm. And when the phone rings. I watch it for a few seconds, wondering if you will change my world with what you are about to say. Do you understand?
And if you spot – if you wake up in the morning, and while wiping yourself after that morning wee, call out from the bathroom, ‘I am bleeding’ – I freeze. You never see this. I shoot up in bed, like I’ve just been stung, swing my legs off, but once my feet connect with the floor, I freeze. I do not want to hear this. I do not want to see this. I do not want to go through this. No. God, I want to lie back down and go to sleep. Wake up from this dream. But you say it again. And I know you are looking to me. So, I push myself up from bed. And push my terror deep deep down into my belly. So my voice is even, slightly disinterested even, when I say, ‘Ok. Should we go to the hospital?’ Do you understand?
I sit through every second, every minute, every hour of every wait. And wait in every gap between test and result. You see? You lean on me when you cannot walk, but who do I lean on when it breaks my heart seeing you so unable to walk? Do you understand? And I cannot feel Braxton Hicks, or any of the contractions I know, but I can feel you. I know you well enough to know when you can bear it, and when you can no longer bear it, when you are still here with me, and when you are so distant it is as if you are about to leave me forever. These are my fears. But the nurses and midwives they refer to me in the third person, you know? I must stay out of the way. Only appear when they say, ‘Come and hold her hand. Tell her to bear it. Baby is coming.’ As if I have not been bearing it myself every second, of every minute, of every hour of every wait.
True. I know labour. It contracts my heart in every way possible. This will never compare to what you go through. But at its end the exhaustion I feel is deep. This is the time when you fall asleep – you deserve it – and in gratitude to you, the mother-ship, for docking safely, I keep vigil still, over you and over our baby. Sometimes, I lie on the cold floor, near enough so you can wake me with no more than a whisper. Sometimes, I lie in a chair, with the cot on one side, and you on the other. Often, our baby will sleep on my chest in her first few nights. You know? Even though the nurses say that this is wrong. But she cries every time I put her down. You know?
And – in that most cruel of fates, I tell you – when she dies before she is even born, you are supposed to mourn, but me? Me, I am supposed to comfort you. Yes. I will see the same facts with you, watch the same unnervingly still image on the scanner with you, listen to the same doctor reel out the same options with you. But I am not supposed to cry. I am supposed to put my arm across your shoulders and tell you not to cry. You see? And after they put you to sleep, it is my duty to stand in the theatre alone and watch our baby suctioned out of you. I know. When you wake, I know, you will ask me how it was. But me? I will never tell you everything I saw. Yes.
This is how I love you.