Baby Love Lite

by ANDREA SMITH

  Once dressed, I scooted into the bathroom to put my make-up on and fix my hair. As I looked up into the mirror over the sink I was startled to see the face of my mother looking back at me from the reflection. I looked around the bathroom to see where she was lurking.

  What the . . .?

  I turned back to the mirror and blinked my eyes several times before I realized that the reflection in the mirror was me - but I now looked just like my MOTHER!

  Just then I heard the muffled sound of glass shattering. It had come from down the hallway. It sounded like it came from Preston’s room. Damn! What had the little shit gotten into now? I couldn’t recall whether I'd locked the rails up on the side of her changing table before I'd left her room. I hurried down the hallway to her room. I gasped as I looked over at her changing table and saw that it was empty. My gaze lowered to the carpeted floor beneath the changing table. She'd fallen from the table onto the floor. She'd broken into hundreds of pieces like a china doll.

  Trey appeared next to me in the doorway. He was going to hate me for what I'd done. I turned to him sobbing and crying. A smile was plastered on his face as if he were a statue that had no other expression other than the one he currently wore.

  “I’m sorry, Trey! I didn’t mean to leave her on the changing table. Please, please - help me put her back together again!” I was on my knees, trying to gather up the broken pieces of Preston. Trey continued to stand there like a statue not bothering to help me.

  “Tylar! Tylar! What are you doing? Stop . . . you need to stop!”

  My eyes looked back up finding him gazing down at me. We were no longer in Preston’s room. We were on the bed in our room. His statue-like expression was gone. It had been replaced by one of fear and confusion. It was familiar to me now as I came out of my dream-like haze.

  I'd seen that same expression on his face every night for the past three nights. He reached over and flicked the switch on the lamp next to the bed. My face was covered with sweat. My breathing was quick and shallow. I looked up at him not masking my fear with the unanswered question.

  “She’s fine. She’s in her bed right where you tucked her in earlier." His tone was different. He was exasperated; anyone could see that. For the first time I noticed the dark circles underneath his eyes. He'd not been sleeping well, mostly because I'd kept him up intermittently each night with these horrible nightmares that seemed so real.

  “I’m sorry," I said softly. “It’s just that I had this horrible dream about -”

  “I know, Tylar,” he snapped in frustration. “Please spare me the details. It's just another one of your fucked-up dreams like all of the others.”

  He lowered his head, rubbing his hand over his forehead and raking it back through his sleep-tousled hair. Trey’s mom was due in the following morning to stay and help out with the baby. I knew he'd voiced his concern about me and my paranoid mental state to her.

  I couldn’t be blamed for what I'd dreamt; I did think that Trey had had his fill of me not seeing someone about them. He'd been prodding me to talk to my OB/GYN to see if the dreams could possibly be attributed to post-partum depression. He wanted me to get help.

  I couldn’t tell him that this dream was different than the others. I was sickened by it. This was the first time I'd dreamt of hurting my baby; this was the first time I'd ever dreamt that I was my mother.

  “Trey,” I said softly, waiting for him to look at me. I felt so damaged.

  He looked over at me, his gorgeous eyes tired and drawn; he was still rubbing the back of his neck in utter frustration and helplessness. He cocked an eyebrow waiting for me to say what I had to say.

  “I'll get in touch with the doctor tomorrow, I promise. I'll find out what's going on and if Dr. Addison feels that it's beyond his expertise, I'll have him refer me to a psychiatrist. I promise you that. I'm so very sorry that this has been happening.”

  “Sweetie,” he replied with a sigh, drawing me closer to him. “I'm not blaming you for this. I know that whatever is going on with you isn't your fault. I just want it gone."

  “I understand,” I choked out, tears welling up. “Can I please ask you for one thing tonight?”

  “What is it?”

  “Please can you get Preston and let her sleep in here with us?”

  He eyed me warily. I actually thought that perhaps Trey no longer totally trusted me around my baby. The thought of that crushed me into a million pieces; yet had I told him about my latest dream I could almost guarantee that he would have me institutionalized.

  “I'll go get her,” he replied quietly.

  Her bassinet was still in our room and during the days when Trey was at work, I kept her in it so that I could be nearby watching "Ellen” while she napped. I tried to make things normal like they used to be before Jean was run down and left for dead.

  Trey returned with Preston in his arms. He placed her carefully into my arms where I looked down onto her sweet, chubby cheeks and kissed them gently to chase away the memories of what I'd done to them in my latest dream. Her large blue eyes fluttered open and she gazed up at me with love. I kissed her again and again. She smiled at me, presenting her dimple which I kissed as well. Her hand reached up and grabbed onto my hair, fisting it with her tiny fingers and pulling.

  “Ouch,” I said, laughing. “You're hurting Mommy.”

  I gently pried her little fingers out of my hair, kissing them with my lips. I kissed her cheeks over and over again, telling her how much I loved her. I cradled her against me as we hunkered down and fell asleep together. She placed her tiny thumb in her mouth and snuggled against me feeling safe and secure within my arms.

  It was sometime later that I felt Trey lifting her from my arms in order to place her into the bassinet. “Please don’t take her from me. I need her here with me okay? Just this once?”

  He relented, pulling the covers up around us and enfolding the baby and me within his strong and loving arms. “I love you,” he whispered into my ear.

  “I love you,” I whispered back, snuggling against him. “I’m sorry that I’ve been so fucked up.”

  “Go to sleep, baby,” he ordered softly.

  CHAPTER 8

  It'd been three weeks since I'd started seeing Dr. Karla Hunter, a psychologist that Dr. Addison had referred me to who specialized in post-partum depression. Dr. Addison had told me that my dreams, fears and anxiety were textbook symptoms of PPD. He'd started me on a low dose of an antidepressant medication called Paxil, which he assured me was safe for breastfeeding mothers.

  As I sat in her office, waiting for her to come in, I reflected upon how things had been since Dr. Addison had diagnosed me with PPD. The dreams had continued off and on for a week to ten days after I started the meds. Little by little they'd diminished. My anxiety and fears about the baby were starting to subside. I wasn’t sure if the meds could take total credit for that because having Susan at our apartment was good emotional medicine for me as well.

  Susan had immediately put me at ease about being there to help out. She assured me that she wouldn't try and take over or get in the way of my mothering. She told me that if there was anything she did that I didn't like, I was to tell her immediately. She also assured me that she'd suffered bouts of post-partum depression after Tristan had been born and that it wasn't all that rare; that I wasn't to feel ashamed or upset by it. She mothered me as if I were her own daughter which had brought me much comfort.

  Susan and I'd developed a routine with Preston that worked out well for all concerned. Trey set up the double bed that had been in that bedroom before it had been transitioned into the nursery. It was plenty large enough to accommodate. Susan slept in the nursery with Preston. I used my breast pump in the evening so that if Preston awoke during the night or before I got up in the morning, Susan would take the feeding for me.

  I rested so much better knowing that someone I loved and trusted was sleeping close by my baby. My anxiety and stress level had been greatly reduced. My relationship
with Trey had benefited tremendously. We laughed and loved again. The dark circles under his eyes disappeared and our mutual affection reappeared with more energy than before. We enjoyed our closeness and doing things as a couple away from home like we'd done before Preston was born.

  Dr. Hunter breezed through the door just then, my chart in her hands. “Good afternoon, Tylar,” she greeted me warmly, glancing through her notes from the session we'd the prior week.

  “Hi Karla,” I replied, smiling. She'd insisted on my calling her by her first name which was fine by me.

  “Anything new happening?” she asked.

  “Everything's pretty much the same,” I replied. “I’m feeling well, sleeping well and the dark nightmares have disappeared. Susan's still with us. She's made a lot of my fears disappear just by being there.”

  “How so?” Karla asked.

  “Well, for one thing I feel better about going out without taking the baby everywhere I go. Plus, she sleeps in Preston’s room so that makes me feel better too.”

  “How long is your mother-in-law staying on with you and Trey?”

  “I’m not sure. Why?”

  “No reason. I just think that maybe we need to discuss possible reasons as to why her presence has made you feel safer, secure and well, to be perfectly blunt, sane.”

  What was with psychologists, I wondered? Did they always find it necessary to find some deep, dark hidden meaning to any inconsequential remark made? I was a new mother with no experience with babies.

  Why shouldn’t I feel more secure and relaxed having Susan nearby? It wasn’t as if my own mother had taught me anything maternal. Dear God - I hoped Karla didn’t bring that subject up again.

  “Have you given any more thought to your own mother, Tylar?”

  There it is!

  “Not really,” I replied with a shrug. “I mean, I’m not sure what you expected me to think about. I’ve told you that most of my 'mom’ memories aren't all that pleasant.”

  “I understand that,” she remarked.

  “Trust me; I'm not trying to dredge up memories that are painful to you. I just thought perhaps there might be some benefit in you and I discussing some of the issues you may have had with your mother that cause you to worry about your own potential as a mother to Preston. I recall some of your dreams dealt with your fear of harming your baby.”

  “One dream, Dr. Hunter. It was only the one dream.” I was quick to correct her and the fact that I'd not used her first name didn't go unnoticed by Karla.

  I saw an eyebrow arch upward infinitesimally at my response. Dear God, I'd probably set off some psychological “bell and whistle” with my defensive response to her seemingly benign statement. The truth was I didn't want to dwell on my mother or the fact that I'd dreamt that horrid nightmare. The pills had taken care of those bad dreams. What would be served in dredging it all back up again?

  “Did you have any luck with trying to recall your first memory since our last appointment?”

  Shit - this again. She's starting to annoy me a tad.

  “As a matter of fact I did. My first memory was at the house where I was raised; the one and only house that I ever lived in with my mother in Radcliff, Kentucky.” I replied.

  Karla nodded for me to continue, her pen poised above the lined notebook she'd been using to take notes during our sessions. Her reading glasses were perched low on her nose. She looked like she was pushing forty. Perhaps the idea of bifocals was disdainful to her. I could tell she wore contacts. I continued with my memory, as she requested.

  “I was on the swing set in my backyard. I was swinging really high on one of the swings by myself. I felt the swing set start to tip over. A man came out of our house and ran over to me. He grabbed the swing as it was going back up. He stilled the swing and lifted me from it. He placed me down beside him and told me very nicely not to go on the swing any more until the swing set had been anchored down into the ground.”

  Karla was writing furiously in her notebook. I gave her time to catch up before going on, noticing that when she looked back up at me her contacts were colored. Her eyes were blue today, matching her two-piece blue suit. I recalled last week her eyes were a dark chocolate brown matching the dark brown blazer she'd worn with her tan-colored slacks.

  “I’m not sure who the man was that day,” I remarked, answering the question I was sure she was ready to ask. “All I know was that he wasn’t like a boyfriend to my mom or anything.”

  “Why are you certain of that?”

  “He wasn’t her type, for one thing. He was in a suit and tie. And they didn’t hold hands or kiss or anything like any of the boyfriends I'd managed to glimpse after that over the years. Also, I could tell that she really didn’t like him. No, that’s wrong,” I corrected myself. “She really hated him, as far as I could tell.”

  “Why would you say that?” Karla asked her brow furrowed in her attempt to understand how as a child of perhaps four years old could read those kinds of adult emotions.

  “I guess it's because I recall seeing him a couple of times after that. I remember an argument she'd with him a year or so after that.”

  “Tell me about the argument, Tylar.”

  “I don’t know when it happened, exactly. It was definitely after the incident with the swing set. My mom had given the swing set away. She never did have it anchored into the ground.”

  I paused briefly to make the memory crisper. “She'd been pissed at me after that. I suppose she blamed me for swinging on it too high. Anyway, the next time that I saw that same man I was in school.”

  The memory became more detailed in my mind. It put a timeframe into perspective. I was in kindergarten; that’s right, it was kindergarten.

  “I was in kindergarten,” I confirmed out loud. “I know that because the elementary school that I'd gone to had a Halloween festival. It was the first time that I'd gone to it. I'd have been five years old at the time. They held it on a weekend evening, either Friday or Saturday. It must've been Saturday because it was my mom’s ‘date night.’ She didn’t want to take me.”

  “Date night?” Karla questioned.

  Here we go…

  “Yes. Over the years my mom had a date night on Saturdays. That's when she'd entertain men. As I got older, she wanted me out of the house on that night.”

  There it was; pure and simple. I'd had to explain ‘date night’ so many times over the past year or so that I'd learned a condensed version of an explanation. Karla nodded for me to continue. “Anyway, I'd dressed up in a little princess outfit for Halloween. My mom said that I could go ahead and walk up to the Halloween festival at school as long as I walked with the neighbor family that was going. My mom hadn’t really cleared it with the neighbor family that I needed to walk up and back with them. They just sort of thought that I'd tagged along on their way up to the school.”

  Karla was taking notes and nodded for me to continue.

  “Once I got to the school, I just sort of found other kids there that I knew from my kindergarten class. I got separated from the neighbors. I don’t even remember their names."

  "The next thing I remember is the school janitor shutting the lights off in the gymnasium; I was still wandering around looking for my neighbors to walk back home with. The janitor was a really nice man. He saw that I'd started crying and asked me where my parents were. I told him my story. He phoned the police.”

  I teared up as I recalled how frightened I'd been all alone like that, wandering around the school. “I was taken away by the police to the police station. I remember they'd had given me candy and were being really, really nice to me. Then some lady showed up there and took me to a family’s house where I spent a few nights. I kept asking for my mother. They told me that I'd see her soon. I didn’t see my mother for several days. When I did see her, that same man with the suit was there with her to take me back home. Mom sent me to my room. They argued downstairs.”

  I shivered as I recalled the loud voices downstairs. "
The man was yelling; he was one person that actually scared my mom. He told her she'd better get her shit together or she could consider the golden goose dead. I was never sure what he'd meant by that. All I know was after he left, my mom didn’t have any more boyfriends for a long, long time.”

  I looked over at Karla as she finished up her note-taking. For whatever reason, what I'd shared with her seemed to have rendered her usually unemotional expression null and void. She looked over at me and her expression appeared to be that of concern. I wasn’t sure why. Nothing bad had happened to me as a result of my mother’s neglect.

  “Tylar,” she said, “between now and our next appointment I'd like for you to continue to relax and focus on other memories you have similar to what you've shared with me today. These are very valuable tools in ensuring that we're dealing productively with any issues from your past that could continue to impact the present.”

  I nodded, not entirely certain as to what degree she felt my past was important to the present. I trusted Karla though, so I'd do whatever she deemed necessary. I made my next appointment and headed home to my family.

  I called Gina from my cell phone on the way home to see how she was feeling. We'd talked regularly since her break with Ian. She'd been up in Hoboken with her mom for the past several weeks putting some distance between her and Ian. They were proceeding with their divorce. Trey had recommended an attorney from his practice that specialized in domestic cases. The biggest thing was how their business would be split.

  She answered her cell on the second ring. “What’s up, girlfriend?” she asked sounding more chipper than usual.

  “Not much. Just got done with my shrink; I wanted to check in with you to see how you've been feeling.”

  “It’s all good, Ty,” she said. “I've come to terms with the fact that my marriage is over, but hey, I’m 30 years old, so it isn’t exactly the end of the world. Ian and I still have to come to terms with the division of property, so once Jesse crunches the numbers, we'll be good to make a proposal.”