In the Holles Street Hospital maternity ward I was one of fourteen women facing each other through a dense pall of cigarette smoke from our beds across an expanse of linoleum floor. The babies were rolled up like loaves of fresh bread in metal cots at the foot of each of our beds. The other women groaned and swore and swallowed codeine to ease the pain in their engorged breasts. I was the odd one out, a gormless girl who was breastfeeding her baby, despite their skeptical glances and cautionary tales. Green as grass but fiercely determined, that was me.
Angela Patten is author of four poetry collections and a prose memoir. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she now lives in Burlington, Vermont. Find Angela at www.carraigbinn.com .