I just couldn’t cope with the screaming. I couldn’t cope with her not eating. I couldn’t cope with the constant pacing and rocking back and forth to make sure she didn’t start crying. I was sick with anxiety. I wanted to throw up all day long. There were moments during her screaming when I had to set her down and walk away and regain perspective on life, because in those very dark moments of screaming I felt like I had destroyed mine.
The anxiety robbed me of all sleep. Every day as the morning turned into afternoon I started to get sick at my stomach with the prospect of what the evening brought: screaming and feeling totally helpless, my boobs filling up with milk that she wouldn’t eat.
Most of the literature I’d read about depression medication and breastfeeding indicated that the benefits of breastfeeding far outweighed the possibility of the baby receiving small amounts of the medication through the breast milk. I also thought that it was more important that my daughter have a mother who could cope—a mother who wasn’t sobbing uncontrollably during diaper changes—than it was for her to have a mother who was too proud to admit defeat.
I was throwing up my hands. I couldn’t do this unmedicated, and it was a decision I did not make lightly. I’d read everything I could get my hands on concerning postpartum depression in the mother and how it affected the development of the baby. I’d talked with my doctor and friends who had experienced the same debilitating feelings. Going off depression medication before my pregnancy was so awful that I didn’t ever want to have to face that nightmare again. And for weeks I had been silently whispering to myself, Fight this! Fight this! But I lost the fight, and I was really scared.
I was scared that the meds might not work. I was scared that the side effect of fatigue combined with my already near deadly sleep deprivation would render me as useless as I was off the meds. I was scared of what it all meant, about me, about who I thought I was.
But I felt like I didn’t have a choice, the hopelessness was just too overwhelming. I wanted to look back on that time fondly and remember her smiles, not her screaming. And too often I didn’t even notice when she was smiling.
During my pregnancy I saw signs that I was turning into my mother when instead of using free time to sleep I spent it folding socks and washing the bathroom mirror. But I thought that I was just experiencing a nesting instinct and that I would go back to my usual low-energy self once the baby was here.
The baby’s birth, however, seemed to have tripped a latent portion of my DNA that caused at least half of my brain to be consumed at all times with the thought of chores that needed to be done. In the time it took Jon to change Leta’s morning diaper I could have the dishwasher unloaded, bagels toasted, coffee brewed, bed made, and dog pooped, and that was only if the diaper hadn’t leaked. On the frequent occasion that she was covered in pee and Jon had to take a few extra minutes to change her clothes, I could wallpaper the living room and mow the lawn.
When I was a kid I hated this about my mother, her constant need to get something done around the house. If she was talking to a friend on the phone she was also dusting the living room or hauling dirty clothes to the washing machine. On Saturday mornings she was up at the crack of dawn vacuuming her bedroom or scrubbing the tiles in the shower, and I remember thinking, doesn’t she know the Smurfs are on? How could she mop the kitchen floor when Gargamel was chasing Smurfette with a stick?
Once I became a mother I realized that free time was one of the many luxuries people give up when they decide to procreate. I kind of understood this going into parenthood, but it’s not something you can TRULY appreciate, like everything else about parenthood, until it drops on your head like a piano shoved out of a window eighty stories high.
Free time was the four minutes it took Jon to change Leta’s diaper; it was the one minute I had to use the bathroom after I set her down in the crib; it was the thirty seconds she would remain calm in the car seat after we returned from the grocery store. On the infrequent occasion that she remained napping for longer than twenty minutes I felt like a teenage boy who had just locked himself in the bathroom with a stack of porn magazines, like OH MY GOD, THE POSSIBILITIES. WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN?
Before Leta was born I used to hate to run errands, and I would put off going to the grocery store until the milk was so expired that it had grown arms, legs, and a fully functioning liver. But all that changed, and I wanted to go to the grocery store every day if only to see other human beings who spoke in sentences and could wipe their own asses. It reassured me that there was living, breathing life outside of the twilight zone existence of taking care of a creature whose primary means of communication was through her bowels.
One night Jon let me go to the grocery store alone, something a new father should be very wary of letting a new mother do, because once I was behind that steering wheel I became drunk with the freedom. I honestly thought that the car might sprout wings and take off in the air, and I was flooded with grand ideas of escaping to Montana where I could assume a new identity and drink martinis and sleep in until 8 AM. It would have been so easy to have kept driving, forever. Maybe no one would notice I was gone!
But five minutes into shopping at the grocery store I started to miss that little screaming baby at home. WHY WAS I MISSING HER? That was MY time. Why was I thinking about her little cold feet and her fuzzy hair and the yummy creases in her baby thighs? WHY WHY WHY?
So I didn’t gas up and drive to Montana, but instead came back home and immediately went into the house to smell the back of her neck. And while she was still under Jon’s watchful eye I landscaped the backyard and remodeled the basement.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and after several days of Leta’s unwillingness to eat a full meal during the day I found myself on the phone with La Leche League, otherwise known in this household as The Boob Nazis. I was worried about my milk supply, that somehow my boobs might dry up because Leta would rather stare at a blank wall than eat, and I needed some professional advice.
Nikki, the La Leche League leader in my area, assured me that my milk supply would be fine, as long as Leta was eating at some point during the day, and the only thing I should worry about was becoming engorged because then my boobs would tell my body to stop producing so much milk. I asked her if I should just pump if I became engorged, and she answered in all seriousness, “Why, certainly, go ahead and pump, and store away that milk in the freezer so that in three years when you decide to give up breastfeeding, you’ll have some extra you can give your baby.”
Blink.
Blink, blink.
Three years?
Blink.
Three as in the one that comes after two?
My baby would be walking and talking in three years, and walking and talking might not be the perfect ingredients for a comfortable breastfeeding relationship, at least not for me and my boobs who didn’t want to be walked up to. Many kudos to the woman who could continue breastfeeding her child through toddlerhood, but in my household there was only one person who was allowed to have a nickname for my chest and that person finished teething over thirty-eight years ago.
During Leta’s first physical therapy session we got a better diagnosis for her head and neck condition and were instructed to give her a lot of tummy time where she’d lie on her stomach and lift up her head to strengthen her abdominal muscles. Leta, unfortunately, had been cursed with two parents who suffer varying degrees of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and she spent two weeks of her life on her stomach, her mother and father cheering maniacally from the sidelines. That exercise was a mixed blessing, however, because not only did she now know how to hold up her head, but she also knew how to HOLD UP HER HEAD, DEAR GOD.
Apparently, there is nothing more exciting or fulfilling in this world than to hold up one’s head, and why eat or sleep when you could hold up your head? When I tried to feed her during the day she’d stop after maybe a minute and then look at me like, WAIT! You tricked me! A minute ago I was holding up my head and
now I’m not holding up my head and I need to hold up my head! And then she’d root and contort her body in an attempt to get into a position where she could hold up her head. And her thundering sigh of relief could be heard in Minnesota.
The good news was that Leta wouldn’t have to wear a helmet. We’d been so overzealous with her neck exercises that the therapist projected that the shape of her head would resolve itself within two months. Hoorah for OCD! The bad news was that in the next month or two she’d be learning how to reach for things and how to sit up on her own, and OH MY GOD, she’d never eat or sleep again because she’d be reaching and sitting and holding up her head. I had a decision to make, did I want my child to develop normally, or did I want to sleep? AND I WAS HAVING A HARD TIME CHOOSING.
One Saturday afternoon my mother agreed to take Leta for a few hours so that Jon and I could go see a movie. A movie in a movie theater. A whole movie with opening credits and a plot and closing credits with actors and music and a life lesson and everything. A MOVIE!
Jon and I hadn’t seen a movie since Leta was born, not in a movie theater or even in our own home, as that would have required a huge chunk of undivided attention. I hadn’t been willing to make a commitment to a one hour and forty-eight minute story line, not when there were four loads of laundry to do and the bathroom sink needed to be scrubbed.
Plus, it was almost impossible to time any sort of outing with Leta’s feedings, especially since her relationship with the bottle was sort of sketchy. Sometimes she’d drink from one, but usually she’d scream as if it were trying to drink her.
We decided that we wanted to see something memorable and worthy of the effort of arranging an outing, because OH MY GOD THE ARRANGING, so we chose to see a movie based on a book. Timing everything so that we could make that movie on time was like planning a wedding, and in case you don’t remember, my husband and I eloped because I didn’t ever want to have to plan a wedding. YUCK.
We had to get ourselves showered, the baby dressed, the bags packed, the milk pumped, the bottles ready, the car seat base ready to switch cars, and then I had to feed the baby while my mother and stepfather waited in the living room. And I really, really hated it when people were waiting on me while I breastfed—I’d get performance anxiety and start to worry that maybe right then, RIGHT THAT SECOND, my boobs were going to dry up and everyone’s day would be ruined! Ruined because of my boobs!
With twenty minutes until show time, Jon and I kissed Leta good-bye (and there were four whole seconds there when I honestly thought of backing out of the whole arrangement, the thought of being away from Leta for four whole hours made my soul shrivel up), climbed into the car, and headed downtown. We rolled down the windows, opened the sunroof, and turned the stereo so loud that we couldn’t hear each other screaming WE ARE GOING TO SEE A MOVIE, AMERICA!
I had never been so excited to see a movie in my entire life. I had probably never been so excited about a car ride in my entire life, a car ride with no car seat and no screaming. Well, there was screaming, but it was celebratory screaming, not the type of screaming that can’t be consoled with rocking or walking around or turning on the hair dryer or PUTTING THE BABY ON THE WASHING MACHINE AND SHE STILL WON’T STOP SCREAMING.
We were screaming and singing, and the wind was flowing through our hair, and we were going to see a movie. (A MOVIE!) Maybe life was looking up. Maybe we were going to come out the other end of the dark cave that had become our home, and life was going to be really, really good. Maybe.
But four blocks from the movie theater we ran into a police barricade. And they wouldn’t let people through. So Jon turned the car around to head up a different street, another street just FOUR BLOCKS AWAY FROM THE MOVIE THEATER, and that street was blocked, too. So he turned again, and we couldn’t get past another police barricade because that day, that one right there, THE DAY WE ARRANGED TO GO SEE A MOVIE, THE DAY I HAD TO BREASTFEED WHILE MY MOTHER AND STEPFATHER WAITED IN THE OTHER ROOM, that day was the Salt Lake Marathon.
And we couldn’t get past that barricade.
And we were stuck in traffic.
On our movie day.
And we couldn’t go forward and we couldn’t back up and my soul shriveled up into black nothingness and was wearing black tights and black mascara and started listening to The Cure.
We spent the next forty-five minutes IN OUR CAR, four blocks away from the movie theater. Every fifteen minutes or so Jon would turn and ask me, “I shouldn’t talk to you right now, huh?”
I’d never been so devastated.
When we finally got to the movie theater the only movie we could still see in time was a romantic comedy, and it was terrible and awful and made me cringe in so many places, but it was the best movie I had ever seen.
Dear Leta,
I have fed you twice a night every night for the past eighty-four days, and I have to ask you: aren’t you full yet?
This week you turn three months old, and your father and I can’t believe we have made it this far. The past few weeks have seemed like some sort of hazy acid trip, not that we would know what an acid trip feels like because we would never drop acid, no not ever. Drugs are bad and you should say no to drugs, but Advil is totally okay, and can I tell you how happy I am that I get to take Advil again? When I was pregnant with you I wasn’t allowed to take Advil, and whenever I had a headache or a sore muscle your father would take a handful of Advil and stand close to me in hopes that his nearness would soothe me. Now I just sprinkle a few capsules in my breakfast in the morning.
Things have been hazy because we’re still trying to figure out your sleep schedule. We’ve made huge progress since last month, at least in terms of night sleeping, but the day sleeping thing is causing your chemically imbalanced mother to hide in the closet and scratch sores that don’t exist.
We put you to bed every night sometime between 6 PM and 8 PM depending on how you’ve slept during the day, and we always go through the same ritual of bathing you, dressing you, and feeding you. This ritual is our favorite part of the day, and one night last week your father was late coming home from work and I had to bathe you by myself. I have never seen your father so devastated! He missed bathtime with his little Thumper, a nickname we’ve given you because whenever we lie you down on the changing table you immediately begin thumping it with both of your legs so violently that the whole changing table shakes.
You LOVE the changing table. You love it more than the swing or the bouncy seat, and sometimes you love it more than being held by me or your father and we promise not to hold that against you, at least not until you come home with piercings in your face and then I WILL TOTALLY HOLD IT AGAINST YOU.
During the night you will usually sleep in stretches that last anywhere from three to five hours, and you will also go right back to sleep after you eat. When you wake up in the morning at about 7 AM you are always smiling, and Leta, those morning smiles are the reason your father and I decided to have kids. Your smile is brighter than the sun, the most beautiful addition to my life, and I would forsake all the Advil in the world to see it every morning.
And then there is the day-sleeping, or more accurately, the complete absence of day-sleeping, and when you don’t sleep during the day you are the crankiest baby on the planet. So cranky, in fact, that sometimes you scream. Can we please talk about the screaming? Is the screaming really necessary?
I have received a lot of advice concerning your screaming, people who think you might have reflux or an ear infection, people who think I need to stop breastfeeding you, people who think I need to start feeding you Cheerios already. And I think this may be the first instance where I take a stand as your mother, the one person who knows you best, and declare that the only reason you are screaming is because you are tired. Your little body needs rest, and when you take naps during the day you are glorious, the most precious and wonderful and awesome baby that ever came out of a womb. When you don’t take naps you are HORRIFYING and there isn’t a window in the world
that I wouldn’t throw you out of.
For the past five days you have slept well both at night and during the day and you have only screamed ONCE, and that was yesterday when I tried to put you in the BabyBjörn, the contraption that holds you to my chest so that I can walk with my hands free. I couldn’t figure out how the straps worked, and you were being very patient, and then somehow I flipped you upside-down and the strap wrapped itself around your face, and I would scream, too, if my mother mushed my nose between two metal snaps.
We love you, little Thumper.
Love, Mama
CHAPTER TEN
Your Biological Clock Is a Dumbass
One of the saddest endeavors I’d ever been a part of was packing all of Leta’s 0–3 month clothing into labeled boxes and storing them away in the basement where they’d remain until we had another baby—HA! ANOTHER BABY? The logistics of more than one TOTALLY BOGGLED MY MIND. Leta would never be able to wear those clothes again, and as I folded each nightgown into a box my heart broke just thinking about how much money her father and I would be spending on clothes in the next eighteen years. And I suddenly realized, HOLY HELL, this baby will one day turn into a teenager, and why didn’t anyone tell me?
Why couldn’t we have her go from toddlerhood straight to self-sufficiency and bypass all the bad hair and braces and lessons in menstruation and endless nights of crying because her boobs aren’t big enough?
And what if she wanted to have her own blog? I HADN’T THOUGHT ABOUT THAT. Dear God, the Internet wouldn’t be big enough to hold all her complaining, and I could totally see her getting kicked out of school because she’d written stories about her teachers, and what would I say? I would say If you’re going to write stories about your teachers at least make them unrecognizable, for crying out loud! And then we’d go shopping for a padded bra.
It Sucked and Then I Cried Page 12