During my twenties and for much of my thirties, baking was the enemy. It belonged to a type of femininity that I was furious about - domestic, cosy, twee. Baking was Phyllis Schlafly. Baking was sugary pink. Baking was appreciated by mediocre men. Hillary Rodham Clinton famously did not want to stay home and bake. Baking was the opposite of ambition. Baking was a world without constellations or New York City or Soho on a warm summer’s evening or front seats on a double-decker bus crossing the river or readings in the back of a bookshop or sticky pub floors or small towns on the border of Utah and Nevada where you meet old hippies with long grey plaits. My youthful naivety, all angry and righteous, wouldn’t have it any other way.
But for you, little one
I heat the pear and the apple. I melt the butter. I mix the oats. I watch the peanut butter slide off the spoon. I line the tray. I scrape the bowl. I set a timer.
Can you believe it? I text my friend, the one who’d laugh alongside me at all the bakers to deflect our fear that this gamble of late nights and chaotic days and dream chasing might not pay off. And now I laugh at our stupidity because you are brighter than a thousand constellations, you are madder than Manhattan, you, the greatest ambition I’ve ever had.
**
The poets might have written about love and death and the stars but none of them, not one, was brave enough to write about sleep training.
If they had, they would have realised they’d have material for a thousand sonnets. Because nothing cuts as deep as forcing your baby to cry alone in their cot while you sit on the stairs outside their room, wiping away the wrong tears. The depth of each scream, each sob, each gasp for air, penetrates that part of you that you can’t name but can locate somewhere deep in your chest, the place where thudding fear and black thoughts reside.
Over the last 14 months, my brain has literally changed shape to ensure my baby’s cry is my priority. I hear it more urgently and louder than E. This is my most primal instinct. My baby cries; I respond.
Except I don’t.
I’ve read the books. I looked up the studies. He’ll be happier and so will I which will only reinforce his happiness. But with just one glance at Instagram, I realise there are a lot of women who would burn me at the mothering stakes. I imagine some, but not all, of these women are the same women who, unwittingly or otherwise, prop up a culture that leaves new mothers raw with shame when they have a C-section or can’t breastfeed, people who use the word ‘natural’ like a password to an elite club. Some, but not all, will say Crying It Out, the method we used, is attachment sabotage. They will softly suggest I’ve abandoned my baby. (There are no long term studies that support this). It reminds me of the GP who, in a calm voice, dismissed my baby’s allergy symptoms and instead told me what this baby needs is love. Safe to say, however saccharine the delivery, these accusations awaken the part of me that would go to war. Who told you do to this? my mother asked as if I’d been led astray. You can always quit, said a concerned friend.
The first night, E wanted out. It was me who pushed on. Turns out my mothering instinct has another face; the one that wanted little A to learn the skills he needs to do things by himself - perhaps a foreshadowing to all the years to come preparing him for the world. That understanding pierced through the ground like enchanted iron railings, a life of their own, blocking me from opening the door, scooping him up and covering him in kisses - which is what I’d do every morning, begging for his forgiveness, desperate to feel his soft skin on mine, our private language.
Unexpectedly, amid the heartache, something started to happen. It was as if I began to fit into the word MOTHER. The mother I am becoming started to find its definition, its edges, limbs stretching into place, as if contorting to sit inside each letter, spelling out this new version of me. And while the agony of his cries was unbearable and every fibre of my being felt their scorn, their accusation, their loneliness, maybe there was growing pains for us both. I was becoming a mother who believed in herself and her decisions.
The internal battle that took place in the dark corridor at 7 p.m. night after night wasn’t only about whether we should be letting him cry, but also if I would find the strength to follow through on my call. In the darkest, most lonely moments of my post-natal anxiety, I wasn’t sure of a single thing: if I could take the bus; if could heat a bottle; if the bath water was too hot or too cold. But as his screams climbed the walls like flames, I quietly and steadily knew I could do this incredibly hard thing. I knew why I was doing it. I knew it was the right thing for him. And I knew these things because I am his mother. And even when I wept for my baby boy, I still knew these things. For all the uncertainty that I breathe in and out every day, for the circus of self-doubt I clown around in and can’t escape, regardless of what someone else, someplace else, might think or say, I knew. I knew I could hold the jagged shards of my heart, let his cries engulf our house and guide him to safety.
And now the flames have cooled. Now there is so much progress. Now we have found our way and his smile is still like the sound of a brook, his energy boundless, his giggle outrageous, his affection a shower of gold dust. It was the most painful couple of weeks. But would you look at us now?
One great thing (because life hasn’t let me read so much lately).
I’ve been consumed by Lucy Jones’ Matrascence. I honestly think it should be given to every new mother and health professional in the country. I cried to E because I felt so validated, so very seen. Such an important book.
P.S) Is there anything worse than someone on the internet writing ‘Some News!’? Yet here I am: Some news! I’ve been named an ambassador for the charity Surviving Economic Abuse. As the name of this newsletter suggests (not to mention my book) women’s stories are the stories I care about the most. I think I search for something in them, answers on how to live and how to be. I’m fascinated with how much women overcome, both the big and small stuff, but how often those things are connected and can be universal. I’m forever in awe of how women fight back, push on, despite how much they endure. I came to Surviving Economic Abuse because I’d never heard stories quite like the ones the women they work with tell - stories of such cruelty, so deliberate and devastating, a slow strangulation, control and fear attempting to steal a woman’s life and all that makes it worth living. And yet here these women are, still standing, telling their stories to fight back. As a journalist, I wanted to share these stories with as many people as possible. I also worked with the charity, helping to shape these stories so that other journalists might also share them. I am at my most earnest when I say I believe in the power of storytelling. The power of telling the stories of survivors can be life-saving - both for the storyteller but also for someone who might hear it. I urge you to follow the charity here or here. Read up on economic abuse. Someone, somewhere in your network is, or was, a victim. Find me a woman who hasn’t got a story to tell.
Thank you for reading
Until next time
M
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Oh Marisa, you have written so beautifully about the pain of listening to your baby cry through a closed door and hoping you are doing the right thing.