Anyway, his wife couldn’t provide him with comfort because she was clinically depressed and taking meds for it. Joan, the cousin who I always thought was the sanest of us all (oddly, she thought the same thing about me), spent years struggling with depression. And, as a nurse, she’s also confessed that she’s spent time on both sides of the Psych Ward’s doors.
Her ex-husband, of course, used this against her in the divorce proceedings. According to Joan, “He told the court I was dangerous and got custody of my teenagers for a couple of years. Talk about total agony! Of course, ninety-nine percent of it was not true, but he used it and since most people are uneducated about the mentally ill, they fear us. People think they don’t know any mentally ill people, when really we are everywhere. Doctors, neighbors, coworkers, rich, poor. But let’s face it, you have to keep your diagnosis a secret from people until after they realize how sane and stable you are. God forbid they catch you at a fragile moment. How ironic, huh?
“There have been times well-meaning people have seen me in my full-blown state of illness and said, ‘Hey, just walk it off,’ ‘Cheer up’ and ‘Count your blessings.’ Would you tell a person with muscular dystrophy to ‘walk it off’? It’s not her fault. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t flaunt it or use it as a crutch, either, but there’s a happy medium in there somewhere.”
Joan’s story takes an upward turn. She has remarried. Her new husband is, incidentally, bipolar. And, as it turns out, so is her seventeen-year-old daughter, who now lives with her. Everyone is on top of his or her own illness, most of the time. This can always change—such is the nature of life and brain chemistry—but everyone is doing quite well, thank you very much.
For each heartwarming family story, however, there is one that is less so. Joan is the only cousin who can remember our uncle Bill, the youngest child of the W. C. Tebay line and the only male. Joan was six when he shot himself in 1970, old enough to feel the loss. I wasn’t even a glimmer in my parents’ eyes at that point and my cousin Julie, Joan’s sister, may have been just implanting herself in Linda’s womb.
I know Bill only from some faded pictures in my mom’s albums and a glove box full of his badges, pins, and aviator shades stashed in a hope chest. The photos show a sunny, blond teen with piercing brown eyes, the look of a football hero likely to snare the heart of any girl. He had the personality to match, a great guy, always the life of the party. Cheerful and productive, my aunt Linda says, just happy-go-lucky. Always. He was drafted and sent to Vietnam in 1968, which isn’t an unusual American story. When he came back a year later, he had changed. He was withdrawn, almost afraid. He was different.
No one came back from Vietnam with a skip in his step and spring in his heart. Like all wars, it was brutal and inhumane. The boys who went didn’t come back the same. Only foolish people would expect that.
The Army, however, is generally not foolish. When he returned to the base from his leave, they sent him home with a prescription for psychoactive drugs because he needed more time to get his head together. Apparently, they wanted him to be less insane before they sent him back to the front to commit insane acts.
The story starts to get muddled at this point. My aunt seems to have the clearest memory of it, since she was the one who still lived near their father and Bill in Parkersburg. “Somewhere in there, he ended up at Snooks’s house and, then, Fort Jackson,” she says. “I don’t remember whether he had transferred there or whether he had gone on his own. But he ended up there in a manic state and they put him in for psychiatric counseling. Then they sent him home somewhere around Christmas. He was on medication. He still was just not happy, not himself. He was like a different person.
“After every Christmas, Dad and Marguerite [his second wife, whom he married three years after Nell’s death] would go to Marathon, Florida. They’d stay for several weeks. So Bill went with them. When he left them that year, he was to fly from Miami straight to the base. He didn’t. He flew to Parkersburg. One night I went to my door and there he was. I said ‘Come on in’ and he stayed with us that night. Then the next day he wanted to go over to Dad’s [empty] house. So he did.
“The next night, he didn’t want to go back to the base. He said he didn’t want to go back. Steve [Linda’s then-husband] talked to him and he kept saying, ‘You know, you don’t have but six or eight months left. Once you go back, you don’t have much longer. Just stick it out and you’ll be all right.’
“Bill called sometime that morning. It had snowed and the Superbowl was that day—the Jets, because I remember Joe Namath was playing. Bill called and I said, ‘Are you going to come over and watch the game? I’m making some pancakes and eggs. Why don’t you come over?’ He said ‘I don’t want to come there. I don’t want to go out in the snow. I don’t even know if the car will start. Why don’t you have Steve come over here?’ And I said, ‘Well, okay. Steve’ll come over and I’ll come over later.’ Bill knew that Steve was coming. That’s when he did it. Steve found him.
“I swear, from that day until Julie got sick and I heard the audiotape of Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, I did not understand. I didn’t understand why he did that. I know it was a mental condition, but for all those years, what I always thought—and what your mom, Snooks, and I had talked about—we thought maybe he had gone to Vietnam and like many of the other people, had taken LSD or something that caused mental problems—that’s what we thought had caused all of this. That’s what had thrown him into doing weird things and depression. It didn’t seem important because, I mean, why dwell on any negatives? Why dwell on anything like that if it’s not important. And until Julie got sick, it just didn’t seem that important.
“Once I heard that tape and I remembered that Mother’s aunt had raised her and it was said that Mother’s mother was an alcoholic—you know, not much was said about it—I just put two and two together. After reading An Unquiet Mind and looking back in my own family, I came to the realization that Bill’s suicide was triggered by his bipolar disorder—the depression side of the bipolar disorder. I realized how this genetic chemical imbalance, which usually begins in the early to mid-twenties, caused him to end his life. Until then, I could not understand why my brother, who was so wonderful and had so much for which to live, could do such a horrible thing.”
5
The map of my undoing is difficult for me to draw. I am cartographically impaired. I can navigate, sure, but I’m not linear enough to make my own charts. Was it the baby that started the depression ball heading downhill? Or was it generations of genetics and conditioning?
We were thoroughly prepared when we left the hospital. Diapers could efficiently be changed. The cord stump could effectively be swabbed. Cuddling was a go, as was general shushing and soothing. While my breasts had yet to ooze much of anything, everyone assured me that it would all work out just fine “as soon as my milk comes in.” I expected my magical milk to arrive during the night like the Tooth Fairy, touching my chest with a magic wand. By the morning after this milkmaid’s delivery, I would be able to feed the masses.
After only three days in the hospital, our house no longer felt like I lived there. It was clean, to start with, but the stuff in it didn’t feel quite right. The cats were the most jarring. We had three at the time, which is one too many, truth be told. While pregnant, there were nights I would sob at the thought of having to get rid of them if the baby turned out to be allergic. Now, I could easily have opened the door and set them free to forage for squirrels in the garden and dodge truck-driving teenagers on the busy street. My affection for them seemed to be suffocating under thousands of layers of gauze.
It didn’t help that Scott and I hadn’t had any time alone with our child since her birth. At the hospital, nurses were always dashing in or out. At home, my mom would spend the day trying to take over. These first days home, she doesn’t want me to do anything and wants me to stay in bed at all times, no matter what, while she takes care of everything. It’s sweet, on the surface,
but quickly devolves into our usual passive-aggressive routine. Subtle power shifts are at work here, with one woman trying to establish dominance over another in a covert-ops sort of way. My stepfather, bless him, stays out of it.
Physically, I don’t feel that bad. I’m not saying that I could play three sets of tennis, but all things considered, I’m okay. The occasional Tylenol takes care of lingering aches. My brain and my bladder don’t seem to be communicating well. If I wait too long to make a pit stop, my body will simply let the urine fall where it may. My OB waves this off as normal nerve shock after pushing for so long, but it lingers. While I’m horrified by the pee, the deflated-balloon pooch of my lower body and the continual gook I’m emitting, I’m really more tired than distraught. I know that all the physical stuff will pass. By this time next year, it will all be an amusing anecdote.
I cannot seem to settle in for a nap, however. Whenever I close my eyes, I keep flashing back on the birth. My heart starts pounding. I can’t breathe. I want to flee, but have nothing tangible to flee from. My mind keeps replaying that agonizing day, trying to make it make sense. I want to call the few acquaintances I have who are mothers. “You never said it would be like that,” I’d shriek, “with the fear and the pain and the helplessness.” If I’d had the energy, I’d have written every last magazine editor and writer who has ever run a happy, sappy piece about the miracle of birth. I feel betrayed by all of them. There was no joy, just blood and brutality. I wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Clearly, if I can’t fit the trauma of birth into my head, it must be because my experience is unique—and not in a good way.
Still, it’s over. The baby is out. We are all home. Good things will start now.
Eventually, we convince my mother to give us our first night alone in our own house. She leaves but reminds us that she can be back at the house in minutes if the need arises. My stepfather all but drags her out of the door.
We settle in for our inaugural voyage as new parents. The baby grows more orange by the hour and sleeps like, well, a baby, with random gurgles and grunts but without any crying. Scott and I snuggle on the couch and watch her for a bit, then try to dig through piles of e-mail and newspapers. My life starts to feel like mine again, just for a little bit.
Until we try to go to bed, which is when all hell breaks loose. The baby wakes up just as we’re winding down. It would be difficult to describe what she is doing as crying. It’s more like she has been possessed by devils and is screaming them out. I hike my shirt, pop off the nipple shield, and jam my boob in her mouth. She sucks, briefly, then continues to scream. I try the same thing on the other side, with the same results. I stick my pinky in her mouth, which calms her down long enough to try again with the breasts. There is no change. I am now at a loss.
I change her diaper. We rock and shush. We try again with the boobs. I am sure that there are plenty of people, my spouse included, who find my breasts worthy of further exploration. My child, unfortunately, is not one of them. The hysteria continues.
Panic has a way of feeding itself. Scott is unnerved and leaps to the conclusion that she is allergic to the cats and will soon stop breathing altogether. I am convinced that she knows that I’m not overjoyed by being a mom and is venting her wee, tearless spleen to make me look more incompetent. As he gets more frantic, the baby’s volume increases and I get more frantic. After about an hour or two of this, we’re both convinced that something huge is wrong, even if we disagree on the root cause. At midnight, we call the pediatrician, who essentially tells us that (a) it’s too early for her to be allergic to anything, (b) that this is normal, and (c) to keep trying to get her latched on and sucking. He’ll see us in the morning, since we have to come in to have the jaundice checked again anyway.
By gradual degrees, everyone calms down. Not calm enough to sleep, mind, but calm enough that the freak-out ends. The baby is held in thrall by the ceiling fan. Scott drifts off on the sofa with her in his arms. I stretch out on our bed and worry. Then the sun comes up.
The next morning, we are neither bright eyed nor bushy tailed. No one is capable of rising and shining. Instead, we lumber and fade in the bright morning light. For the first time all week, it isn’t raining. Scott and I don’t speak much, because the gallons of coffee have not yet kicked in. After we fumble her into her car seat, our orange baby sleeps. It’s a good thing she was born in Tennessee. Her face is now the same color that Vol fans smear on their mugs during home games. That can’t be good.
Even though it’s a Saturday, our pediatrician is in his office. I find this stunning. I had no idea doctors would actually come in on a weekend. This is also the first time we encounter a segregated waiting room. Not “black” and “white,” even though the Halls incident isn’t that far in the past. One side of the waiting room is for “sick” babies; the other side for “well.” This is a quandary. Technically, she is sick but she’s also not contagious. To our tired minds, this is a decision of epic grandeur, even though we are the only patients there. After a good five minutes staring at both, we choose “well” but feel guilty.
The snoozing baby, the Hub, and I wait for a few minutes, then are led to a tiny room, where the baby is stripped, weighed, and poked. Through this whole ordeal, she doesn’t even make a peep, not even when her pea-sized toe is pricked for a blood sample. While you don’t expect newborns to perform great gymnastic feats, this listlessness isn’t normal. It’s like handling a hairless Oompa Loompa doll. The only thing animated are her deep blue eyes, which track our every movement, accusingly.
The nurse leaves. The baby falls back into her stupor, eyes closed. I rest my head against the edge of the exam table and count the linoleum tiles beneath my feet. Just as I start to drift to sleep, the doctor breezes in, smelling of antibacterial soap and laundry detergent. He asks a battery of questions, punctuating each answer with a nasal “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” It’s got a catchy rhythm, this Q&A, but I don’t know if you could dance to it. The end result of this routine is that the baby’s bilirubin levels are too high. It’s not quite dangerous yet, but will be if remedial action isn’t taken.
Jaundice in newborns is fairly common, affecting 50 to 60 percent of all infants. In most cases, jaundice corrects itself without intervention. An excess of bilirubin, which is created when red blood cells break down, causes the condition. Bruises from labor contain more degenerating red blood cells and increase the bilirubin as well. In older babies and adults, the liver can easily filter the bilirubin and pass it on to the gut, where it is disposed of in the normal course of digestive events. (Bilirubin is one of the main substances that turns poop brown.) Newborns, whose digestive systems are still immature, can have a problem dealing with the stuff.
The good news is that jaundice isn’t life threatening. The bad news is that it can cause hearing loss. The even badder news is that in extreme cases, it can cause brain damage, including a type of cerebral palsy that is marked by uncontrollable tremors and/or writhing movements of the limbs. Given that jaundice doesn’t reach its peak until three or four days after delivery and that the average postbirth hospital stay is down to forty-eight hours, more cases of brain damage have been reported in the last few years because extreme cases of jaundice don’t develop in enough time for experienced eyes to spot them. It’s still not an epidemic but it is on the rise.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, who know their shit about bilirubin, breastfed babies are more likely to develop jaundice, especially when they aren’t nursing well. The simplest treatment for middle-grade jaundice is increasing fluids, either through breastfeeding or bottles of formula, so that the bowel and liver are flushed as frequently as possible.
The larger concern currently is that, in addition to the jaundice, the baby is becoming badly dehydrated. We’re not certain if she has actually wet more than one diaper in the last twelve hours. (In our defense, modern diapers are so absorbent that it can be hard to tell if they’re wet when the baby is peeing in such small amounts
.) What we do know is that she is rapidly losing weight and is increasingly lethargic.
“Has your milk come in yet?” he asks.
I never knew I’d be discussing the status of my breast function with so many relative strangers. Of course, I also never thought I’d be showing my crotch to a dozen different hospital employees, so life goes on.
“Um, no,” I say, and almost add, “because I am defective.” I go on to explain about the breast reduction and my doula’s certainty that she could get milk out of me and about how all of these people seem to have faith in my body’s ability to do momlike things. And I start to go on about how important I think breastfeeding is, about how much better it is for the baby, about how much it improves IQ and overall health, about how it gives new moms a hormonal lift and helps them lose the weight, about how I’ve been warned by my granola friends (none of whom have kids) that pediatricians are all in the pockets of the big formula companies and will push the stuff even though we all know breast is best.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” he says. Then he leaves the room.
He comes back with several cans of soy formula and some bottles. I want to run out of the room and put on a hair shirt. Yet another failure. This was not supposed to happen.
“Relax,” he says, reading the disappointment on my face. “We have got to get some fluids into Madeline. It shouldn’t interfere with breastfeeding, once your milk does come in. Keep at having her latch on and nurse. This is just temporary.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. “Uh-huh.”
We’re to come back the next day, a Sunday, simply to check her bilirubin and weight again. We will discuss options if her weight continues to fall and the bilirubin levels continue to climb. Again, I’m stunned that a doctor would be in his office on a Sunday.
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