It Sucked and Then I Cried

by Heather Armstrong

  But I knew that if I didn’t stop breastfeeding I would be doing the selfish thing. I understood that. I understood that I had to get better for the sake of my family, and I believed that the drugs were my only hope. But I didn’t think my heart could break into so many pieces. I didn’t know how much I loved feeding my baby, how fundamental it had been to my relationship with her, how much I had sacrificed to continue breastfeeding. My God, I didn’t want to give it up.

  So one afternoon I let myself cry for hours about it, and usually when I cried Chuck would scurry out of the room to get as far away from me as possible. But that afternoon he sat on top of me, his face pressed up into my armpit, trying to get as close to me as possible. I think he knew that I needed him. I imagined he was trying to tell me, “You didn’t breastfeed me, and look how awesome I turned out.” And then he would say, “It’s going to be okay.”

  And I believed him.

  But first, there were other indignities to endure, ones that would make me question just who the hell I had become.

  Leta’s first extended car trip was a two-hour ride through the desert to some property my mother had recently bought in Duchesne, Utah. For those of you who like myself tend to pronounce words the way they are spelled, you would be wrong in assuming that Duchesne is pronounced Doo-chez-nee. The correct pronunciation is Doo-Shane, and should be uttered as if your front two teeth are missing because you were never taught proper hygiene while growing up in your double-wide down by the river.

  So we all piled into my mother’s Mormon Mobile—a car large enough to hold twenty-two children from three different wives that had enough space left over to pick up a fourth wife down at the local middle school—and headed out at about eight o’clock on a bright July morning. Occupants of the car included my mother, my stepfather, my sister, my brother-in-law, Grumpelstiltskin, and myself. The trip to Doo-chez-nee was two hours one way.

  I had warned everyone that Leta didn’t do so well when she couldn’t sleep in her crib, but they all assured me that she would have no problems falling asleep in her car seat, as if I hadn’t spent the last five months of my life witnessing just how badly Leta slept in her car seat.

  Babies are supposed to take naps during the day, which can sometimes be bothersome if you want to live a thing called life. When babies don’t nap they can become cranky and unbearable, and they send you subliminal messages that say PLEASE THROW ME OUT THE NEAREST WINDOW. Leta took three, fifteen-second catnaps in the car during our eight-hour round trip to Doo-chez-nee, for a whopping total of forty-five seconds of sleep. Her subliminal messages to me talked about the window and the throwing, but they were specific about which window and that window was the one on the passenger side of the moving vehicle.

  She was not happy. And no amount of yummy teething biscuits or rattles or soothing rubbing of the infant feet could calm her down. Again, she did all of the screaming for all of the babies in the world and continued to do so even when my beautiful, tan sister tried to comfort her. My baby could not be comforted by a beautiful, tan, flaxen-haired babe with big boobs. WHAT WAS WRONG WITH MY CHILD?

  In the middle of the trip we stopped at a greasy burger joint in Roosevelt, Utah, so that the other members of my family could eat hamburgers WITHOUT THE BUNS, because they’re on That Diet. I had to sit in the car for several minutes so that I could feed Leta, and in the middle of the feeding she shit neon orange poop out the back of her infant jeans and up to her shoulder blades. It was the type of poop that could glow in the dark, one that required a fire hose to clean up. Since it was blisteringly hot I did something that I promised myself I would never do: I left her in nothing but her diapers and socks and went into a public establishment. And she looked like a hobo baby.

  Not surprisingly, my shirtless baby was the most civilized creature in that restaurant, as everyone there looked related, in the sense that everyone seemed like brothers or uncles or BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. That didn’t stop my Grumpling Wonder from grabbing hold of my large Sprite and tossing it to the floor in a thundering explosion that left the floors, walls, tables, and neighboring counties covered in carbonated stickiness.

  Was that really me? Had I gone that far? Was I really carrying around a sticky, shirtless baby? At least she had socks on!

  The last thirty minutes of the drive home were perhaps the most horrible thirty minutes of my mother’s and sister’s lives as Leta, sitting between them, screamed at the top of her lungs all the way from Park City to our neighborhood. My mother asked me if I understood her different screams and what this one could possibly mean, and for the first time in my life I didn’t hesitate at dropping The Mother in front of my mother and I said, “Leta is saying, ‘GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THIS CAR.’” And then my mother said, “Well, I guess she means business.”

  During Leta’s fifth month of life we spent an entire day at various government institutions renewing my driver’s license and procuring Leta’s birth certificate. I was supposed to get my driver’s license renewed the week we moved to Utah almost a year previously, but doing so would have been lawful and responsible, and I’d left that church a long time ago. Plus, the picture on my California license was one of the only pictures of me that I actually liked, one in which you couldn’t really tell that my left eye drooped more than my right eye, and the look on my face seemed to scream YOU PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA HOW STUPID YOU ARE TO LET ME OPERATE A VEHICLE.

  I just want to point out that I aced the Utah written driver’s test. It was the old anal-retentive valedictorian in me clawing its way out. Forget about the fact that the test was open book, and that the book had a table of contents that said, “The answer to question #5 can be found on Chapter 3.” I don’t want to point out that I failed the California written driver’s test four times, and that the only way I actually got my license was to promise my firstborn child to the enormous Latina woman giving the test. I had no doubt that Leta would lead a long, fulfilling life once I stuck her in a UPS box and shipped her to Torrance, CA, where she would remain under the watchful eye of an enormous Latina woman and her friends at the California DMV. Sorry, kid! Mama had to drive!

  The kind people at Delta Air Lines informed us that if we ever intended to fly with Leta we needed to have her birth certificate in order to prove that she was under twenty-four months old, which made sense considering that Leta sometimes looked like a balding sixty-four-year-old plumber from Bucksnort, Tennessee, and God knows he shouldn’t be allowed to sit in anyone’s lap. We spent the better part of the afternoon standing in line at the Department of Health in the company of the Dregs of Humanity, people who hadn’t bathed since Reagan left office. More than a few women were wearing house slippers and pink curlers in their matted hair, unaware that they had gotten out of bed, left the house, and were standing in public.

  Jon and I seemed to be the only people in the room who still had our original teeth, and just when I couldn’t feel more high and mighty about how much better of a person I was than these stinky, primal swamp monsters, my baby started throwing things ACROSS. THE. ROOM. None of the other swamp babies were throwing things, but my baby—the baby of two educated and recently showered parents—refused to keep the toy in her hand and insisted upon projecting the toy with much latitudinal oomph at innocent and polite swamp people. I may have been the only woman in the room wearing clean underwear, but I was also the only woman in the room whose kid needed to be duct taped into submission. Is there any force more equalizing and humbling than parenthood?

  On the morning of Leta’s last breastfed meal she slept in a half hour later than usual, so I lay there awake waiting for her morning noises, little grunts and sighs and gurgles that say, “Please come get me now because I am awake and very, very cute.”

  I tried not to think about how that morning was going to be the last time I would ever breastfeed her, but of course that’s all I could think about. Both of my boobs were leaking, and the pain of not feeding in over twelve hours was settling in my chest and making its way up
to my neck. I secretly wished that she would remain sleeping all day, perhaps forever, so that we would never have to have a last feeding. Sometimes I felt this way about her developmental stages, like why did she have to grow teeth? Couldn’t she be gummy forever? Life could be lived without teeth, just ask my Granny. And crawling? Crawling is so overrated. It’s hard on the knees.

  I’d been bound to this child for six months without any break, and that morning as she snuggled in my arms and ate her last boob-delivered breakfast I sobbed and gushed tears on her porcelain soft cheeks. And when she was full I held her close a few extra minutes so that she could lift her arm to my face and pinch my nose. And then I put her whole hand in my mouth to nibble on her fat fingers and to muffle my weeping.

  I won’t ever forget the way she constantly moved her hands and feet while she ate, grabbing at my shirt and scratching the Holy Living Shit out of the back of my arm. She would use whichever hand was free to pound my chest, or to seek out my face, or to stick straight up in the air like an empty flagpole. Sometimes she would cup her face or her head and sigh as if to say, “God, this job is hard, but somebody’s gotta do it, I guess.” And I’d always respond, “Leta, there are children somewhere in Africa right now who would LOVE a clean boob to suck on.”

  In the weeks leading up to that morning she had become easily distracted while eating and would stop mid-suck to see who else was in the room or to study the pattern on the pillowcase or to scream at me because I was watching Pyramid without her. One afternoon I was feeding her on the couch while cleaning off the TiVo hard drive, and I started an episode of Pyramid. The moment she heard Donny Osmond’s insipid, robotic clucking her eyes got as big as hubcaps and she stopped eating, whipped her head around, and stiffened her body like a plank of wood, a recent trick of hers to signal TOTAL AND UTTER DISSATISFACTION, as if the CONSTANT, INCESSANT, NEVER-ENDING BLEATING wasn’t getting the point across already. How could I watch our favorite game show while she was facing the other way, oh horrible, mean and unloving beast-mother?

  I’d received a lot of advice about drugs and breastfeeding and weighing my options and making sure that I wasn’t weaning unnecessarily, but I knew it was something I had to do, and although it was ripping me apart inside I actually felt comforted at having made the choice. I believed that this was the first step toward me getting better, toward me remaining alive and not leaving my daughter without a mother, or leaving my husband without a companion or lover.

  Leta spent the next three days with my mother, who got her to take the bottle on her very first try, even though I had warned her that she would be dealing with the most stubborn force in the universe, more powerful than gravity, more toxic than nuclear radiation; she’d be tending Leta, God’s Revenge. And every night when she was returned to me she acted like a totally different kid. She’d sit there like normal babies just sit there, making normal baby sounds, sounds that weren’t goatlike or torturous. And her smiles were even bigger than before! HUGE SMILES. It was like she was so goddamned relieved that she didn’t have to suck on that stupid tit anymore.

  Dear Leta,

  You turn six months old in a few days. I would normally wait until the actual day of your six month mark to write this, but we’re going to be at a family reunion all week and my hands will most likely be tied behind my back so that I don’t CHOKE ANYONE TO DEATH.

  Six months. Good gravy, child. That’s as long as the same-as-cash financing plan on our warshing machine. Yes, that’s right. Your mother pronounces washing as warshing, and SO WILL YOU. Your father may try to convince you otherwise, but crayon is pronounced as crown, ruin as ru-een, and iron as arn. Speaking this way will endear you to others and will also beguile and distract anyone in law enforcement who is giving you a hard time. Remember this, Leta, when the DNA governing your driving skills kicks in and you find yourself trying to outrun Utah Highway Patrol after a hard night of partying in Park City: the key is to stretch every single-syllable word into three or more distinct syllables. Oh, and showing some cleavage works, too.

  This month you have spent most of your waking hours grabbing things and shoving them into your mouth. There is nothing in this world off-limits to your grabbing and eating. You’ve gobbled other people’s hair, the wireless phone antenna, ceramic drink coasters, the dog’s tail, and both of your feet AT THE SAME TIME.

  I’ll never forget the first time you took hold of your right foot and pulled it to your mouth. You were lying on the changing table getting prepped for bed, and you snatched up that foot like you were stealing food off someone else’s plate. And then you stuck it in your mouth, and the stunned look on your face seemed to say, “What is this? A third hand? To chew on? You mean I have three hands? Why have you been hiding this from me, this third hand to chew on?” I could see the cogs in your brain clicking and clacking as you suddenly realized that if there was a third hand, THERE JUST MIGHT BE A FOURTH ONE AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE! And there you were, my chubby, naked baby contorted like a pretzel on the changing table, all limbs of your body in your mouth. You looked up at me as if to say, “This, this is the American dream.”

  Last week you spent three days with Grandmommy who introduced you to a bottle and to the joys of artificially flavored suckers. She would return you home every night before bed and I honestly thought that she had returned the wrong baby. Something changed when you started taking the bottle, something wonderful happened. It was as if we had unmasked A BABY! You’ve been WONDROUS this week, making all these happy noises and smiling and laughing your ass off. Where have you been? Why have you been hiding from me?

  Sadly and tragically the bottle has also changed the substance that comes out of your hind section. For six months you were exclusively breastfed and the poop that came out of your butt was just a liquid that sometimes possessed an interesting color and texture. It never had an offensive odor. But now, now that you’re taking formula and eating food, that inoffensive liquid has turned into ACTUAL HUMAN FECES. You have SHIT coming out of your ASS! And I have to clean it up! With my HANDS! I am having a hard time reconciling the fact that my precious punkin buttercup could manufacture something so foul and revolting. You no longer poop in your diaper. Now…now you crap your pants.

  This month I also got you to fall asleep on my shoulder, FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. It was no small feat, and I had to walk up and down the length of our house and sing Morrissey OUT LOUD (“America, you know where you can shove your hamburger!”), but you eventually gave in to the exhaustion and passed out in the curve of my neck. That was one of the most beautiful moments of my life, having you there motionless and heavy from sleep, the smell of your powder-fresh head smeared across my cheek.

  Leta, you are so lovely. You have made my life so complex and crazy and intense, but recently I have been waking up really early and counting the minutes until you wake up. I get so excited to see those Armstrong eyes and that Hamilton chin, and I want to rush in and ask you if you want to play. I’ll hold your feet while you eat them!

  Love, Mama

  P.S. You rolled over today! TWICE! And then immediately looked up at us like “WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Finally, Proof That I Was in the Room When She Was Conceived

  A few days after Leta turned six months old we packed up the entire house and spent the next four days in the mountains with my side of the family, a raucous group of people that includes my sister and her five kids, my brother and his three kids, my mother and stepfather, and my stepfather’s bologna. My mother thought it would be fun for all of us to spend ninety-six hours in a small cabin with no air-conditioning at an altitude so uncomfortable that it regularly squeezed out the oil from my teenage niece’s pimples.

  I was surprisingly excited about this trip if only because I would be getting a much needed break from the minute-to-minute upkeep of the wee one. On the first morning of this retreat we joined the entire family for a short hike just a few miles away from our cabin. This decision w
as a big step for me because the hike would interfere with Leta’s sleeping schedule, and I was a bit of a stickler when it came to Leta’s sleeping schedule. Interference caused screaming. Have I ever told you about the screaming? I don’t know if I have ever mentioned the screaming, but in case I haven’t this is all you need to know: You wouldn’t have liked Leta when she screamed.

  The previous day Leta had taken three thirty-minute catnaps, and that was all the napping she did for the entire day. It was partly her fault because she was very stubborn and found her mama’s anxiety attacks somewhat amusing. But her catnaps were also the result of the family in the cabin directly next to ours, a family who thought it was perfectly normal to rev their ATVs all day long outside our window. If that family was missing their sixteen-year-old son who had a bad attitude and needed to stand up straight and button up his shirt, the sixteen-year-old kid who based his entire self-worth on how loud he could gun that engine, I can honestly say that I MOST CERTAINLY DID NOT strangle him and throw him in the river.

  So I woke up Wednesday and thought to myself, why am I sitting around this cabin being held prisoner by an unbuttoned sixteen-year-old? And when Leta woke up I informed her, “It’s your turn to work around MY schedule, and we are going to go on this hike and you are going to LIKE IT whether you want to or not.” And then she burped and shit her pants. I took that as a sign that all systems were GO.

  The family drove up to the trailhead in three separate cars. We would have taken four cars but that seemed excessive. The surrounding scenery was indescribably beautiful, a portrait of snowcapped mountains and acres of pine trees dotted intermittently by tiny streams.