Motherhood by Taslin Pollock

Winner, Family Rammy, Writing Rammy 2021

She held her baby to her breast and hoped he would feed. While he latched on, she looked over towards the bag attached to the pram. Did she have everything? She ran through a checklist of items in her head: nappies, nappy sacks, wipes, muslins, two sets of spare clothes, his comforter and her purse. She glanced anxiously at the clock then down at her now sleepy baby and reluctantly broke their contact. She sat him up on her lap and rubbed his back, relived when he burped. She laid him slowly on to the bed and carefully pulled his arms through his coat the way the midwife had shown her how to do. He began to stir. She carried him over to the pram and placed him very carefully in the pram and once she had made sure all the straps were secure, she covered him with his blanket. Lastly, she put on his white and blue knitted hat. She quickly put on her coat and reached for her keys. She was ready.

He began to cry. So did she.

She reminded herself of the telephone conversation she had had the night before, with Stacey, the breast-feeding support worker, encouraging her to try and take the baby out now. She said he would stop crying by the time she had reached the bridge. The bridge was only five minutes walk away. She would try, she said. She began to push the pram out of the flat and pressed the button for the lift. She wiped away her tears and she pressed the button for ground. Why was he crying? Was he hungry? But she had fed him. Did he have wind? But she had winded him. Did he need his nappy changed? She had changed him. Would she ever be able to recognise his different cries?

Before they reached the bridge into town, he had quieted. So had she. He was so beautiful. She could stare at him forever. She looked down at her hands and she was reminded that they were different. She was South-Asian, and he was mixed race, but he didn’t look anything like her. She began to worry that the other mums at the group might mistake her for his nanny, not his mother. A single tear fell down her face. By the time it reached her cheek, another thought had occurred to her. Her baby would never experience racism as she had known it, her whole life. Children wouldn’t shout horrible words at him. He wouldn’t be chased down the road by a man threatening to hit him with a hockey stick. He wouldn’t have to come home to find his mother beaten in the front of their shop by a neighbour because the colour of her skin was different. What a gift she had given him. The cost was worth it.

Much later, she would realise that she was wrong on both counts.