Thursday, July 22

Pottering this morning down the overgrown garden path enjoying the smell of imminent rain, I plan a trip around the corner to the vegetarian co-op before the predicted thunderstorms set in, and later, possibly, a batch of cinnamon bread. Then realise with a guilty jolt that I'm actually enjoying myself. Bad, bad feminist! Not supposed to enjoy being homemaker! Or am I turning into an Alice Munro character - one of her wide-footed, herb-garden-growing, silver-jewellery-wearing earth mothers? Hmmm. I have started wearing more turquoise...

I wake. First light, and already I'm doubled up with shame. What obscenities, what accusations did I hurl at my husband at 3.00 am when he brought me my baby? Like a remorseful drunk, I can't remember what it was that I shrieked, but suspect that it was bad, bad. I can hear birds outside and sun is already streaming through the bay window of my neat suburban cottage, illuminating a narrow strip of polished floorboards. I turn to steal a glance at my husband, bulked in on himself, face towards the alarm clock, giant child. I feel tenderness, self-loathing. I will be a better mother, a better wife. I will appreciate how lucky I am. I will stop complaining. Then I hear the thud of feet and our three-year-old appears at our bedroom door, which doesn't close, scowling in her pyjama top and baggy nighttime diaper. Another overgrown baby. Eyes still puffily half-shut, perfect pink mouth already opening into an O of complaint about something or other. I feel a sick thrill of resentment Oh for God's sake Rowan, stop whining, I say before I can stop myself, and watch her face crumple with a secret, petty satisfaction. My husband, groaning, rallies, soothes, changes her soggy diaper, takes her next door to read a story in bed so I can lapse back into uneasy sleep before the baby wakes for her next feed. And I accept it as my due: I'm not even grateful. He did this to me; he owes me.

I wake. The baby is screaming. Again. Dizzy, I hoist myself up onto my elbows in the dark. No idea what time it is, or how long since I last fell face first into sleep. Not long enough, I know that for sure. And suddenly I am corroded with resentment. I imagine my head severed like a cockroach's, lifted clear of from its thick, tobacco-stained carapace, and the hot, rusty, pungent stuff inside welling up and dribbling out, burning sizzling holes in the futon and floorboards. I imagine myself, quick as a cat, flipping over and delivering a sucker punch to my husband as he dozes lumpishly beside me. That is for getting me into this fucking awful mess, I will shriek at him. I want to stuff underwear and books into a sports bag and flee with my booty, board the ferry for the midnight crossing, stepping up the gangplank on silent feet, toting my possessions lightly, tightrope artist smiling grimly into the dark, to resurface somewhere way down south to begin life under a new name. But then the story runs dry: what happens for the days, weeks, rest of my life? Who will I be, there forever in exile, without my babies, hiding in plain sight?

I wake. Oh how I love my children, my two girls, my angels, both of them perfect beauties, healthy, bright, engaging: everything a mother could want and I love them, oh how I love and love and will always love them, that sucking chest wound of motherlove that leaves you sobbing for air in a sort of ecstatic asphyxia; that ferocious, crushing joy.

I wake. Another morning. Enough now, I tell myself, I've made the decision: I do want to die. I imagine myself in the garage, sitting in our ugly station wagon, bottle of whisky and Temazepam on the passenger seat next to me, windows cranked open. I reach gratefully for the ignition. Pause. If I do this now, then I will know, as my life ebbs away, that when I saw my husband and children this morning, it was for the last time. And I can't do it. But the fantasy is comforting and I resurrect it many nights to send myself to sleep, replaying it as some women, I know, replay their weddings, or episodes of tenderness, real or imagined, with a new, or ancient, lover. I take the Temazepam out of the medicine cabinet and hide it in my underwear drawer. And I know, for now, that the fantasy is enough to keep me going from one day to the next.

Misery makes people ugly. This is why people, even those who love us, avoid our company. This is why we hide it, why we buckle in shame and self-loathing when we can no longer keep it inside ourselves, when we let our ugliness slip out. Because what in this world is uglier than an unhappy mother? So when, months after the birth of my elder daughter, I begin to fall apart, I reflexively present an appearance of happiness and fulfilment with my new life as a first time mum. I keep up a wry, chirpy blog for friends and family 12,000 miles away about the 'quirks' of new motherhood. Recreate amusing vignettes which I present as hints for the hapless: what to do when, as you struggle one-handedly to unfold the heavy, three-wheeled buggy while balancing baby and groceries on the opposite hip, one wheel comes adrift and rolls gently across the car park. I don't tell them that when this happens I take it as a sign that I myself am wrong, physically wrong, that I don't even fit into the physical world, let alone the realm of motherhood. I don't mention that, alone with my baby, breathing in carbon monoxide in the parking building, I muffle my shrieks of rage and despair by biting into the webs of my hands until they are scored with livid teeth marks. I don't mention that, in my kitchen during the day, I punch myself in the head, hard, over and over, weeping, because I must be punished. That I choose this punishment because my hair hides the bruises. That, alone with my baby, I am at my ugliest.

Sometimes, unable to keep it in, I betray myself. I go out to dinner with a friend and, on an impulse, open up. I'm off the booze, I explain casually, ordering a fake beer. Oh really – why? Deep breath. Gruffly casual: I'm on Prozac. PPD. Her reaction is gratifying. Astonishment, laced with admiration: I hid it so well, she never would have guessed. Why didn't I say anything? And my response is to feel flattered. Dropping me home, she thanks me for telling her, and I feel a swell of contempt for her cow-eyed sympathy. Nevertheless I want more, and, hand on the car door, I recite my woes in a self-conscious monotone, proud of my entirely fake stoicism. And yet at the same time, ashamed: such a phony, such performer – I can almost hear a small, wry voice from behind by left ear quietly critiquing my performance.

I half-convince myself. And I pick up and move on. Because that is what depressed mothers, most depressed mothers, do. I put the wheel back on the buggy, and take my baby for long, long walks around the flat, wintry town. I talk to myself, over and over, about how to be kind to myself. My baby grows into a toddler. And gradually, I begin to heal.

We decide that we have had enough of Britain, that we will move back across the world to be closer to our families. We pack up, move, resettle, buy a house. My husband finds a job, and having found a daycare place for our daughter, I too can start working again. I continue to take my long walks. I breathe.But now that we are settled in our home country, the question of a second child arises, and it won't go away. So, despite misgivings, I get pregnant again. And after the initial triumphant shock – we pulled it off again! how did that happen? – I am horrified. What on earth was I thinking? Just when I had finally put myself back together after the last baby. Weeping with resentment, for nine months I vomit, and curse my husband. I see my doctor, who warns me of the 90 percent likelihood that my depression will return. It's already here, I want to tell him. Then my second daughter is born, three years and two months after the first. And I am overjoyed. And I know that this time, everything is going to be all right.