CREATIVE NONFICTION
Motherhood in Patriarchy
A quartet of conversations
- I am standing in a hospital birthing room. I have just given birth to a healthy baby after a 30-hour labour. I don’t know it yet, but I am postpartum hemorrhaging. I watch the blood pooling at my feet, making swirling patterns as it mixes with the water from the birthing pool. My last thought before I lose consciousness is: “I’ll clean that up later.”
- Relatives come to visit. My baby is a few days old. I am living in a static caravan in a derelict cement works. My dad pulls up in his silver Jaguar, comes inside, asks me when I’m going to buy a house. Later my mother is sitting on the sofa showing photos to my partner’s mother when I pass a blood clot the size of a lemon. No-one helps. Everyone asks when I’m going back to work. My mother-in-law’s partner tells me he thinks babies shouldn’t be allowed in supermarkets.
- I am on the phone with my mother, asking her if she can be happy for me that I’m getting married. “Stop turning this into a cauldron, Caroline,” she says. I think that’s an interesting choice of words.
- I am sitting opposite a girlfriend over lunch, feeding a new baby on my lap, trying to stop my four-year-old from running around the café. My friend is telling me that I shouldn’t expect help from my husband in the mornings, even though I am exhausted from breastfeeding through the night. “I don’t think that’s fair,” she says. “He’s got a full-time job.”
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