On Friday, February 18th, I have the day off work. I go to my 39-week doctor’s visit, and it’s uneventful. The OB listens to the baby’s heartbeat, and tells me it’s just a waiting game at this point. Afterward, I have a little burst of energy, so I do a big grocery shop to prep postpartum freezer meals (after a frustrating bout of Braxton Hicks contractions, I’m convinced that I will go past my due date). That night at 11 p.m., my water breaks. By 3 a.m. we’re headed to the hospital, and even though I’m doubled over in pain from contractions, I bemoan to my husband that I didn’t get to prep all those ingredients I just bought.
***
Driving to the hospital when the rest of the world is asleep feels like a strange dream. We enter through the emergency room. As soon as we get settled in the labor and delivery room, I throw up. No one really talks about how much you might vomit during labor — it feels particularly unfair during contractions. As my contractions pick up in intensity, I become only peripherally aware of the other people in the room, including my husband. He keeps stroking my head and saying my name, trying to make eye contact with me, but I feel like I’m looking at him from the bottom of a swimming pool. I ask for an epidural. When it sets in, it’s the best damn feeling. My body unclenches and I can focus on my husband again. “Hi,” I say.
***
We spend the next few hours of labor waiting and resting. We chat with our birth doula. I listen to my Harry Potter audiobook. At one point I observe to the room, “This is like being at the airport: hurry up and wait.” Our doula laughs.
***
When it’s time to push, I’m excited to have the finish line in sight. Then I end up pushing for almost three hours. At this point, I can feel the urge to push during my contractions, even with the epidural. It’s exhausting and somewhat scary to push and push and wonder why this baby won’t just come out of me already. I’ve sailed past any physical limit I thought I had, but I have no choice other than to keep going. My baby gets stuck crowning, and the midwife calls in the OB (not good, I think). One small episiotomy later there is a slick, blue baby on my chest. I’m stunned. Immediately, the nurses begin roughly rubbing him down. He takes a breath and begins to cry. It’s startling how quickly he turns pink. My brain is still catching up with my body, but my first thought is, his name is Malcolm. One of the nurses calls out his time of birth: 4:49 p.m. on February 19th. Three days after my birthday.
***
If getting an epidural is like waiting at the airport gate, then staying the hospital’s postpartum recovery room is like being stuck inside an airplane for days. It’s cramped, the air is dry, you have no sense of time, and the food is terrible. People come in and out of room every few hours to take vital signs, run tests, hassle us for paperwork and so on. David and I both feel totally clueless about what to do with this infant. He needs to eat, but he won’t latch so I clumsily hand-express colostrum and collect it in a plastic spoon. We siphon it up into a plastic syringe and squirt it into his mouth the first night. Every time a nurse comes into our room, they tell us to rest. I find this ironic because they are literally interrupting our rest on a regular basis. All the same, I develop an intense appreciation for nurses during our stay.
***
The first week home is chaotic and exhausting. I had no concept of how much time it would take to care for a newborn. Just keeping him fed is a full-time job, and at our first pediatrician appointment, we don’t even seem to be doing that very well. He’s dropped a lot of weight and he’s practically glowing yellow from jaundice. Meanwhile, my nipples have begun to crack and bleed from breastfeeding – every time my son latches I suck in air at the sharp pain. I begin to think maybe this is not normal? By my third day home, the stitches in my perineum feel like they are on fire. I can barely sit, it hurts so much. We need to take the baby back to the doctor to check his bilirubin level, and I try to rally. But when my husband finds me crying in the bathroom in pain after trying to poop for the first time since delivery, I tell him he’s on his own. I lay in bed and cry on the phone with my dad. Taking care of my son and taking care of myself at the same time seems impossible.
***
Two weeks after our son is born, I’m sobbing in bed while my husband tries to comfort the screaming baby in the other room. I’ve been trying to breastfeed for days and I’ve hit my breaking point. We’ve been supplementing with formula to help the baby gain weight and recover from his jaundice, and he’s already so much healthier. But we can’t seem to reestablish breastfeeding. I’ve tried everything – treating his tongue tie, different breastfeeding positions, nipple shields, pumping to help my milk let down – and every time my son starts howling and pushing himself off my chest. I try to be patient and calm, but I feel like a failure. I think I must not be trying hard enough, there must be some magic trick to make this work. I miss my dead mother so badly it hurts. I look at my husband and say, “I feel like I’m in my own personal hell.”
***
Parenthood sheds new light on common cliches, including the phrase, “It takes a village.” We would be drowning without help from family and friends. Home-cooked meals and food delivery gift cards pour in. Our parents come to help us get organized and catch a few more precious hours of sleep. I spend hours on the phone with different women in my life — other mothers will never fill the hole left by mine, but I still find comfort in their advice and camaraderie.
***
Three weeks postpartum, I’ve decided to let go of trying to breastfeed and pump all hours of the day. It’s not easy to pick apart whether I’m grieving the loss of the experience or feeling shame for not being able to make it work. Either way, I can tell that maintaining the pressure to breastfeed is a slippery slope to postpartum depression, and that makes my decision for me. During bottle feedings, I notice the way my son’s toes curl up when he eats. I realize I’m finally relaxed enough during feedings to really see him. Plus, I can actually sleep for more than two hours at a time because my husband is able to split nights with me. During one of my feeding shifts at 3 a.m., I rewatch Ali Wong’s stand-up special “Hard Knock Wife.” She has a lengthy, funny diatribe about the difficulties of breastfeeding. I feel seen. It helps.
***
Watching Malcolm grow is astounding. He changes daily, rapidly becoming stronger and more alert. Soon when I hold him against my chest to be burped, he can hold his head up for a few seconds at a time. When he bobs his head around, neck stretched out and forehead wrinkled, he looks like a baby bird. To be honest, I used to think newborns looked a little funny. Now that I have one of my own, I think he’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. My camera roll is exclusively baby photos.
***
During my pregnancy, I worried that I wouldn’t bond with my baby. I spent months feeling overwhelmed, uncomfortable and sad. At times, I wanted to go back in time and become un-pregnant. I wasn’t sure I would be OK with the sacrifices and responsibility of motherhood. I was terrified of losing myself. Now that Malcolm is here, I reflect wistfully on what it was like to sleep for eight hours, but mostly I don’t think about what life would be like without him. His existence is an overwhelming, relentless fact of my life, and I’m surprised to discover that being in the moment with him is often deeply pleasurable. I sit and watch funny facial expressions flit over his face in his sleep. I’m delighted when I see him begin to study my face. I love to rub my lips across the soft, downy hair on top of his head. One night, I have him pressed against my chest and feeling him breathe fills me with the same kind of awe I get when I’m out in nature. I can’t believe he came out of my body. It’s beautiful and terrifying at the same time.