After five days in the hospital, we head home. My mother comes to stay with us at first, to help out. She argues with The Husband constantly. Every breath the baby takes is something for them to disagree on; they both have an opinion on everything, a low-level battle in the background of this new life. I’m too exhausted to have my own opinions. Not that anyone’s asking me.
I feel completely dissociated. Like if anyone were to look at me, they’d know something was wrong. I feel like an alien. I’m sad, exhausted, and freaked out. I know nothing about babies. And this one is now killing me twelve times a day when she’s meant to be fed by my body. There doesn’t seem to be enough milk to satisfy her, so she’s ravenous, and tearing chunks of flesh off my nipples. It’s the most natural thing for a woman to do, we’re told, but it’s awful. It’s the most physically painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I would rather have the thirty-five-hour labour again, or have my appendix burst again, or break my leg in two places again — anything, anything, would be less terrible than this.
The Husband and my mom fight all the time, but on this they agree: stop breastfeeding. But I feel like a failure of a woman. The Husband is understanding and kind about it. He says, “You couldn’t have the baby naturally either, remember? So, don’t worry about it.” And he’s right. The baby isn’t growing; after three weeks she is still under her birth weight. So I give up. We put her on formula, and she becomes a plump, relatively happy baby.
The thing with maternity leave is, I’m alone. Just me and Birdie, a baby that never sleeps during the day. I pace through the house like a stranger, looking at everyday objects and forgetting the meaning of them. Wine glasses. Books. What are those for? I can’t even imagine reading one book, why do I have so many? One day I open the bathroom cupboard and see a whole tray of eyeshadow I can’t imagine ever putting on again. And I have so many big, shiny earrings. Where on earth would I wear such things?
Eyeshadow and earrings seem like relics of a life I will never have again. Instead, life now is just a series of endless days and nights with nothing but her crying and cooing and the vast empty sound of the vast empty house. There’s no one to talk to, nothing to discuss. Each morning when The Husband leaves at eight, my heart sinks. I watch him drive away until I can’t see him anymore, and everything collapses.
I’m looking forward to July though. He’s a teacher so he’ll be off for the summer and home to spend time with the baby. Home to help me get some rest, some bearings. And since this is the thing he wanted more than anything in the world, I imagine how excited he must be for the last day of work so he can be home to care for her.
But instead, he goes on a trip. As soon as the school year is finished, he goes to Washington, DC, with a bunch of co-workers. He says he has to, but I can’t understand it — why would there be a mandatory work trip during the summer? Why would he go on a trip when it’s his very first opportunity to be home with his newborn daughter and his wife? We have a huge fight about it. And then it comes up again, and again and again. For years and years, it just keeps coming up during arguments about other things, because I can’t get over it, ever. I just can’t.
When he comes back from the trip, there’s finally some relief and I’m grateful to have a teacher for a spouse, so he can be there during the day to help carry the load. He changes every diaper, and shares the nighttime feedings with me. I’m able to get some sleep, and do things with both of my arms free. The help feels like a luxury after those long first months alone. But also, it’s just more fun with him around. We sit out in the backyard under the trees together, the three of us, a little family, picture-perfect. We go to Wasaga Beach, and I’m able to lie in the sun and swim, unencumbered, because he’s in his preferred spot in the shade with the baby. On a daily basis, he barbeques happily for friends and family who drop by to see the baby, and I feel more at ease in it all. New parenthood feels less of an effort for these two months. We are a team.
Once summer is over, it’s back to being alone in the big, empty house. Winter comes early and stays forever. Time moves slower than I ever imagined it could. I play with Birdie, I sing her songs, I feed her, I comfort her. I look at the clock and it’s only 9:30 a.m. God. I feel like maybe I will die from sheer emptiness, from the lack of people that aren’t babies or on TV. I miss my desk at work. I miss meetings and creative conversations and writing and … work. I miss work. I know being a new mom is work, but I don’t process it that way. It just feels lonely. I miss talking to my peers about music and art and books. I miss organizing and creating and discussing and laughing. I love my baby, but I don’t love being home all day long with her with no one to talk to, only laundry and making baby food to break the monotony.
I know what you’re thinking. You think I sound cold and distant, not like a mom is supposed to sound when talking about her newborn. Maybe you think it sounds like I don’t love my child. That I’m too busy thinking about myself and all that I’ve lost, instead of bonding with her. But that’s not what this story is about. I’m not here to convince you that I love her. Because I do. And that love grows with every year of her life. Every day, I watch Birdie become this funny, clever, kooky person. She fills my life with more joy than anything or anyone.
But right now I’m talking about The Baby. And I’m sorry if that seems cold, but sometimes, honestly, they’re two different people to me. It’s hard for me to reconcile The Baby and Birdie as one and the same. I was never diagnosed, because I never talked to anyone about how I was feeling, but looking back it seems pretty clear I had some form of postpartum depression. Maybe I just had what they call “the baby blues,” I don’t know for sure. But the pressure to love being a new mom, to somehow instantly know what to do and how to cope … it was real. We’ve all been fed the same new mothers are instinctually amazing at it propaganda, except I didn’t feel amazing at it at all. A lot of women don’t. Instead, I felt shame. And an indescribable sadness. So judge me, if you want, but I’m going to return there now, to those early days. Those long, endless days at home alone with a newborn baby.
I feel isolated. I’ve always lived downtown, but now I’m in this strange neighbourhood that seems so far from anything or anyone I know. Sure my friends and co-workers all came to visit me when the baby was first born, but after that initial rush, people stopped coming around. It’s 2007, so social media is barely a thing. Even the internet is a thing I have to go upstairs, turn on a big ol’ computer, and wait for. I don’t even have a cellphone! I’m finding it hard to connect with my friends.
And I’m having trouble connecting with new people I meet, too. The women with babies in my neighbourhood all seem so put together. Like they aren’t struggling with it at all. They probably are, in their own ways, but I feel like a disaster compared to them. They’re such naturals at being mothers, and they all breastfeed like it’s no big deal. They always talk about how they don’t want to go back to work. They love maternity leave. I just can’t relate. I’m so out of place with my bottle-fed baby and my tattoos. With my love of my job and the world downtown.
There is at least one thing I look forward to each week: soccer. As soon as Birdie is three months old, I return to my co-ed soccer team. I’m really out of shape, but I give it everything I’ve got. In that ninety minutes a week, when I’m on the field, I think of nothing but the game. I feel pure exhilaration — I’m competitive, physical, quick-witted.
For those ninety minutes, I feel like myself. Like the old me.
When it’s over, I go back home, sweaty and happy. Each week it’s the same: I come in the back door and The Husband is sitting on the couch watching TV. “How was the game?” he asks, and I excitedly recap the whole thing. He listens patiently and with interest. He knows I love playing soccer. He knows I’m mostly miserable these days and that once a week this is the thing that saves me. He goes back to watching his show, and I take a shower. The baby will wake up any minute now and will need my attention. I’ve got to go back to being a twenty-four-hour mom. At least until next Thursday