It Sucked and Then I Cried

by Heather Armstrong

  And everything in the unlocked unit was more tolerable. I would have even called some things wonderful. I took a nap that afternoon—a nap with dreams and slobbering drool on my pillow—and that was a sign of healing if there ever was one. A nap!

  My new meds seemed to be working in the sense that I hadn’t had any horrifying side effects, and I was able to sit down and read two whole Us Weekly magazines. TWO! I knew more about the cast of The O.C. than I EVER WANTED TO KNOW.

  Jon visited me at least twice a day and we had several meals together. One afternoon he brought a runny-nosed and grumpy Leta to lunch and we fed her mushed croutons and refried beans. Sadly, Jon had to change the refried bean diaper the next morning. I think he may have described it as UNPLEASANT.

  Jon was a Superhero throughout the whole thing, and I was once again reminded that I scored the Best Husband in All the Land. He was so supportive and giving and so very, very hot. I missed him so much that I physically hurt, and when he visited I plunged my face into his neck so that I could smell the shaving cream he had used earlier in the day. That was my favorite smell in the world, right up there with the smell of Leta’s head and the smell of bacon frying.

  When my friends and family said that they couldn’t believe I was being so open about this, I wanted to ask them WHY NOT? Why should there be any shame in getting help for a disease?

  If there is a stigma to this, let there be one. At least I was alive. At least my baby still had her mother. At least I had a chance at a better life.

  Being in the hospital was strange if not incredibly boring. There were only two televisions for a group of over thirty people and the channel was always turned to the Olympics. I had nothing against the Olympics; in fact I found the little platform divers very cute in their little Speedos, and I loved it when they flipped off those precipices and made cute little splashes with their cute little selves. I found myself wanting to pinch their little butts and to feed them a warm bottle.

  The only problem I had with the TV being permanently tuned to the Olympics was the Bob Costas factor. Please, Bob Costas, JUST SHUT UP. Why did he have to scar this precious world with his insipid voice-over? How many potentially wonderful and touching moments had been ruined by his droning commentary? It wasn’t healthy for me to carry around so much hate, but I’d been watching Bob Costas for FOUR STRAIGHT DAYS. In the loony bin. There was no better place to carry around hate than in the hospital because they were monitoring me. I couldn’t throw things in there.

  Other than hating Bob Costas I read magazines, listened to PJ Harvey, and talked to the other Crazies. I couldn’t help talking to the other Crazies because they cornered me and FORCED ME TO LISTEN. One morning some stranger trapped me and gave me his life story for over an hour. I was being nice and listening closely up until the thirty-minute mark when I realized that he was repeating himself, and for the next thirty minutes I heard the whole story of his life for the fifth and sixth time. I knew as much about that stranger as I did the cast of The O.C. My brain was verging on explosion.

  I had an incredible roommate who was sent home the day before I was, a charming twenty-year-old girl. She was starting her first year at BYU that week, and she was the spitting image of one of the roommates I had had at BYU. When I was talking to her I was reminded of some of the great times I had as a college student, times spent being creative in such an oppressive environment. My roommates and I used to drive up to 7-Eleven in the middle of the night and fill up 64-ounce Diet Dr Peppers. We’d spend the rest of the night and morning giggling while on a caffeine and saccharine high talking about the guys we’d really like to make out with. Of course, all making out would be in a vertical position, fully clothed, with no roaming hands and touching of the sacred parts.

  I knew I was getting better because not once did I try to convince her that she should run as far as she could from BYU. In fact, I told her that she’d have a blast, and I wished her all the luck in the world. DEAR LORD, WHAT HAD I BECOME? There was sunshine in my soul! I could stop exclamation pointing!

  I saw my doctor one final time for a follow-up assessment, and we talked about how common my condition is among women whose bodies are transforming from a pregnant being to a non-pregnant being, and he told me about all the chemical and hormonal things that can go wrong. He had treated hundreds of women just like me, women who had gone on to have multiple children without any relapse of depression, and I felt very encouraged. He assured me that what I was feeling was easily treatable, and he was certain that the new meds I was on would kick my anxiety and pain in the butt.

  I cannot express how much I liked this doctor. I felt a huge sense of relief and safety in being under the care of someone who knew so much about how to treat postpartum depression. At one point in our conversation he set down his pen and paper, paused, and then looked at me and said, “You poor woman. I am so sorry for what you have been through.” And I cried. I cried hard. My God, what I had been through.

  I know that people had experienced far worse pain than I had, far worse trials and lots in life. But my pain was real, and to me it had been unbearable and incapacitating. It had also affected my family, and for that reason alone I had to get help.

  I was discharged only four days after I had checked in, and it wasn’t a moment too soon. I’d missed my family. I’d missed my dog. I’d missed my daily Pop-Tart.

  I felt good about going home. I felt like there was an open road in front of me, a road to joy and happiness. I felt like I had a new perspective on things. That was what the hospital stay had provided me: PERSPECTIVE. It had also provided me an appreciation for my regular toothpaste and deodorant. The first time I brushed my teeth with the hospital toothpaste I gagged and was certain I had grabbed a tube of ointment instead of toothpaste, perhaps the kind you might apply to an open wound or a swollen anus; it couldn’t have been safe for my mouth. And the deodorant! They gave me deodorant that smelled like the shavings that line the bottom of a gerbil cage. I SMELLED LIKE A GERBIL.

  Dear Leta,

  Today you turn seven months old. Some people might say that there is nothing special about turning seven months old; you can’t get your driver’s license or purchase alcohol in a manner that wouldn’t get you arrested. But what they don’t know is that with the seven-month mark comes the POP-TART AND PICKLES PRIVILEGE. What could be more special than that?

  Just this morning your father and I spent over a half hour sharing our strawberry Pop-Tart with you, giving you little bites with the yummy strawberry filling. You gummed the pieces with sheer delight, making mmmm, mmmm noises and waving your hands like some beauty pageant winner on a float being pulled down Main Street. Several times you tried to grab the Pop-Tart out of my hand, but OH, NO, little Scooter. I didn’t want strawberry Pop-Tart all over the walls or stuck in my hair or flung through the window into the driveway. You’ve got quite an arm on you. You could break land-speed records with the toys you throw.

  I know that the Pop-Tart police are going to contact me and accuse me of feeding you something that will turn you into a homicidal sociopath later in life, because that’s what Pop-Tarts do, they corrupt and demoralize and subvert Heavenly Father’s plan, but oh how I’ll love my cute little homicidal sociopath.

  A couple of days ago we put you in the high chair and fed you Cheerios. Oh Mary Mother of God how you love those crunchy, oaty O’s. I think it may be an instinct kicking in, your love of Cheerios. There must have been a primitive form of Cheerios in prehistoric times, because I don’t know how the species could have prospered if Cro-Magnon babies didn’t have their Cheerios. What would they throw across the room or drop off their high chairs to feed Cro-Magnon puppies?

  You’re barely big enough to see over the tray in the high chair, but you’re pretty good at reaching your hands up and grabbing handfuls of Cheerios. Gobs and gobs you grab, and you bring a fistful of O’s to your mouth, but that’s where you become stumped, like, I’ve got them close to my mouth, NOW WHAT DO I DO? Some of them make
it to your chin, others to your ears, but most of them end up on the floor and in Chuck’s mouth. That was Happy Hour for Chuck, billions and billions of treats on the floor. He snarfed so many Cheerios that the house smelled of oaty dog farts for the rest of the day.

  Your relationship with Chuck is remarkable. He loves to lick your face after you’ve been fed a bottle, and you sit there with your nose scrunched up and your eyes closed in a state of half bliss and half wonder. Who is this beast that lives in your house? This beast with fur and fangs and wiry whiskers that tickle when he sniffs your face? Whenever he enters the room you stare at him in amazement and then giggle for no reason other than the fact that this creature exists. Chuck is happy to amuse you, you who have come into this house and disrupted his peaceful life as the only child, you who consume most of Mama’s attention, but I think he’s devising certain plans that involve lifting his leg and peeing on whomever you bring home as your first date. That will be his way of saying, WHO’S GIGGLING NOW?

  A few days ago I came home from the hospital after getting help for my disease. I happened to come home just as you were waking up from your first morning nap, and when I walked into your room your smell hit me like a monsoon. That was one of the most peaceful moments of my life, being wrapped with the blanket of your fragrance, knowing that I would get to spend the whole day with you. When I picked you up out of the crib you looked at me and smiled, your trademark gummy smile, and this look of recognition flashed across your face that said, “You are the woman who used to feed me with your boobs, and now you are that woman who snorts and tries to make me laugh, and you eat my feet a lot. I remember you! Hey! It’s YOU!”

  Leta, I need you to understand that I went to the hospital because something was wrong inside of me. My disease is not your fault, and you are not the reason that I am sick. When you are old enough to read and understand these things I don’t want you to blame yourself for the pain I have been through. Nor do I want you to be ashamed that your mother had to go to the hospital. I am not ashamed. In fact, I couldn’t be happier about the help that I received. I feel better, and I haven’t been able to say that in such a long time.

  I think you have noticed a difference in me because you have been utterly joyous these past few days. You are constantly smiling and giggling, laughing out loud with your whole body. And the noises that come out of your mouth span the whole alphabet. Your father and I just sit and stare at you, amazed that such an extraordinary being sprouted from the two of us. In case anyone hasn’t told you yet, you look a lot like your father. You look a lot like his father, actually, and sometimes we call you Byron Junior. When your father brought you into the hospital to see me, the staff at the front desk would say, “Oh how sweet, he looks just like his father.”

  You are my sweet Zing Zing Zing Bah, my Punkin Head Piggy. I love you, and I missed you like crazy. It’s great to be home.

  Love, Mama

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Her Screamness Who Screams a Lot Every Day With the Screaming

  It’s impossible to describe how hard it is to take care of an infant day in and day out without a break on the weekends. It’s just not something you can understand unless you’ve actually experienced it, and I like to refer to parenthood as “being on the other side.” It’s like I crossed over some invisible line, and once I did the whole world changed. Now when friends of mine have their first child I usually say to them, “Welcome to the other side. It only gets worse from here.”

  That sounds pessimistic, I know, and of course there are many wonderful things about having a baby. But when we had Leta on that cold February morning it was like a bomb exploded in our house, and we were slowly putting the pieces back together. One night in early September Jon and I were trying to figure out how we’d made it this far. How did we make it through sleepless night after sleepless night, and the screaming? THE INCESSANT, NEVER-ENDING, SKIN-MELTING SCREAMING! I don’t know how anyone could make it through this battlefield without going crazy.

  I went crazy. Somewhere along the road of putting everything back together I broke down. But going to the hospital was the best decision I had made as a mother. And I made that decision as a mother with the health of my child as my singular goal. Making that decision was as instinctual as feeding her and clothing her. I felt so much better and was sleeping through the night. Hours and hours and hours of sleeping! And when I woke up in the morning my immediate thought was BRING IT ON. Whatever the child threw at me—hours of cranky bleating, diapers with nuggets of noxious, rotting nuclear fallout, short naps and subsequent tired groaning—I could take it.

  I could take it!

  In the weeks following my hospital stay Leta and I formed a bond that was unable to take form when I was in my anxious, clenched state of unhappiness. She responded to the new look in my face, the look that said, “I am winning this war.” She was constantly giggling and cooing and slurping and kicking her frog feet in glee. And I just couldn’t get enough of her.

  Because of this new bond I had a difficult time one afternoon when the new babysitter we hired came to take care of her for a few hours. As part of my ongoing therapy we hired someone to come help with the care of Leta for nine hours a week while I worked on writing and freelance projects. It was just nine hours, per week. That was fewer hours than The Lord of the Rings trilogy. That was fewer hours than the sleep I got in one night. BUT OH THE GUILT THAT SHOOK ME TO THE CORE.

  I sat in the basement trying to work, but I wanted to throw up the entire time. How could I leave my baby in the care of someone who would play with her and feed her a bottle? How wicked and uncaring of a mother could I be? I might as well throw her in the middle of the street and walk away, OH LOATHSOME EXCUSE OF A PARENT!

  Not once did she cry; in fact, I could hear her laughing and having a good time upstairs. But downstairs my soul withered as unbearable guilt took hold of my being and twisted it like a dirty wet rag. So I tried to work, and then I cleaned the entire basement, dusting the crevices with a Q-tip to keep my mind off the fact that I had abandoned my baby upstairs with a caring, qualified babysitter.

  My friends had told me that this would get easier with time, that the guilt would fade because HEY! LOOK! Other mothers had gone back to work after having a baby! And the world still turned! But that first afternoon with the new babysitter my world stopped, and God, I missed her.

  And you know what? Sometimes it’s okay to miss your kids. I was learning to be okay.

  When Leta was diagnosed with torticollis plagiocephaly at two months old, a condition defined by the way she tilted her her head in a certain direction that caused her head to grow in a misshapen form, we began months of rigorous physical therapy with her and cured the torticollis (titling of the head) and the shape of her head filled out nicely into the round shape of a normal human skull. But when she got really tired or slightly sick she resorted to tilting her head again. This really worried me and so I took her back to the physical therapist for a reassessment.

  After several exercises and an hour of observation her physical therapist assured me that Leta’s neck was perfectly okay, but that I should be much more worried about the fact that she refused to put any weight whatsoever on her legs. She determined that Leta hated the sensation of pressure on her feet, like someone might hate the sound of fingernails being scraped down a chalkboard. She gave me a list of exercises that I had to put Leta through every day to get her used to pressure on her feet, and OH MY GOD SHE HATED IT.

  After every diaper change I picked her up, held her firmly against me with one arm, and with my other arm I forced her legs to become straight underneath her. Then I leaned forward and placed all of her weight on her legs. And she screamed. Like I was cutting her with a knife. And then she screamed more, like MAMA PLEASE STOP YOU’RE KILLING ME. I tried not to cry.

  In the middle of playtime with the elephant that rattles and the soft yellow duck that quacks I’d straddle her on my leg and force her legs to stiffen on the floor. And she
screamed. Why did I have to disrupt playtime with the elephant and the duck? The elephant and the duck were so much nicer than Mama, she who forced the chubby little feet to meet the floor. The chubby little feet hated the floor, oh hard and flat surface! The floor was hard! And flat! And extended in all directions! There was no escape!

  After a few weeks of these new exercises we didn’t see much improvement, so her pediatrician suggested that we get an MRI done on her head to make sure everything was in working order. He told me that he wanted to calm my fears that anything might be wrong because he was certain that Leta was perfectly healthy. But ordering an MRI for a child of someone in my postpartum, anxious condition was like throwing someone who can’t swim into a lake to assure them that not being able to swim is perfectly okay. And even though my meds were working I was nervous simply about the fact that I had to take my child to a hospital for a procedure.

  My mother, the Avon World Sales Leader, postponed her weekly trip to LA to be with us, and Jon took an entire day off work to give me support. Leta awoke that morning to her usual bottle, or so she thought as she grabbed it in hunger. We couldn’t feed her anything but clear liquids in the hours leading up to the MRI, which I was already skeptical about considering she’d been fed nothing but non-clear liquid every single day of her life. She hadn’t taken a bottle since 6 PM the previous night, and so she was starving like a normal baby who hadn’t had anything to eat in thirteen hours. You’d think that the taste of something delightfully fruity! and sweet! and did I mention fruity! would sit well on the palate of an infant who gobbled applesauce and Twizzlers like a starved monkey at the zoo who is just so damn cute that you can’t obey the sign that says DO NOT FEED MONKEYS TWIZZLERS. But this infant was the offspring of an Armstrong and a Hamilton, and that meant her sole purpose in life was to make everything difficult for everyone else. There should be a law against two people from Scottish lineage mating and releasing monsters into the world.