by Ariella Papa
I cried because when Oprah was over it was still another two hours until Steve came home and took over for me. When he took over I could lie down for maybe two hours, maybe two minutes.
When Abe first came out and they wiped him off and handed him to me, I looked down at him, with Steve right beside me, and I couldn’t believe anyone so perfect could possibly have come from me. Every mother supposedly thinks this about her kid, but he really was the most beautiful baby ever created. We were so happy. Steve and I both cried and cuddled him. We spent the entire first night in the hospital examining him. We concluded that he was flawless.
Abe had been the perfect little angel for the first two weeks. This is a breeze I told myself. We had a constant stream of guests Steve’s parents, his sister, my parents and my best friend, Liz. They all came and cooked and marveled at what a perfect little peaceful creature Abe was. He slept so much at first.
And then right around when Abe should have been born, the day before his due date, the shit hit the fan. He cried and cried. And I thought I was going to try to feed him on a schedule, but it is impossible. The only thing that keeps him quiet sometimes is eating. My nipples are cracked and bruised.
I think I’ve tried everything. Everyone’s got an opinion. Everyone’s told me about the guy who wrote the book about the happiest baby on the block. I’ve tried all that. I’ve gotten the article The Times did about colic forwarded to me six times. At the park, the one day it seemed Abe might be asleep for awhile only to wake up and wail, a Caribbean nanny told me I needed to make the baby some sort of tea that I couldn’t understand so I nodded and then fled. I’ve tried the vacuum cleaner. I’ve tried running water. I’ve heard about the clothes dryer, but I live in an apartment, so I subjected the patrons of a wash and fold to Abe’s cries for a half an hour. Then a crazy homeless guy offered to rock him, and I fled again.
Fleeing and crying-that’s what I’ve been doing. And nursing. Always nursing. And rocking. Constant rocking.
It’s easier to stay home now, to put the TV on mute and watch Law & Order close captioned as I rock and nurse and weep and rock.
So it is a pretty amazing feeling to be here at the doctor’s office lying back not having him with me. Even though my legs are up in the position, I am actually more relaxed then I have been in weeks.
Time has been doing crazy things. Sometimes, I don’t understand how a day can move so slowly. The minute hand creeps. I try to keep it together when Steve calls; I know he is worried about me. I try not to cry on the phone with him, even when I really, really want to. I only will cry on the phone with my mother, because she will say, “Oh, honey” and that will make me cry harder, but it feels okay to cry with her. I wish she didn’t live in Massachusetts. I wish she was the one who was closer instead of my mother-in-law. When Steve’s mother came to watch Abe this morning, I rushed out of the house before I broke down in front of her because she wasn’t my mother.
I just feel so tired. It’s not that I do anything that challenging all day. In fact, at the end of the day, I can’t remember what I’ve done. My day goes by in three-hour intervals that seem to be days in themselves. By the time Steve gets home, I feel as though I’ve lived ten days.
I thought I would read a lot. I subscribed to two magazines that I haven’t read. I thought I would catch up on the classics, but I can’t read, even on the rare times when the house is quiet. I watch TV. I switch the baby into different positions. And of course, I cry. Sometimes, I cry right along with Abe. He is oblivious to my tears, while all I want to do is make his stop. He seems so unhappy. I have bred an unhappy baby. The unhappiest baby on the block. The unhappiest baby ever.
And sometimes, he falls asleep right on me. He sighs in his sleep. And then, only then, he seems peaceful and happy. And I cry then too, because, my God, he really is the most beautiful baby ever. It isn’t hit fault that he drew the short straw and got me for a mama.
Dr. Kim pushes her stool away from me and stands up. I take this as the sign to get my feet out of the stirrups. Dr. Kim offers me her hand and pulls me up into the sitting position. I close my legs and try to be as casual as one can be when they aren’t wearing any panties.
“Well, everything is healing perfectly. You can go back to doing everything you were before.” Everything? “Exercise, tampons, sex.”
“Everything?”
“Yep, you can do anything,” Dr. Kim said. “It all looks beautiful.”
“Great, maybe we’ll try some things we never thought of before,” I joke. The very idea of it makes me ache a little in my nether regions.
Steve deserves sex. He needs something to make our life seem normal again. I owe him that much.
He is doing his best. I know he is mystified. Before this he had never seen me cry, not at our wedding, not even during labor. Not until the moment Abe got here. He keeps telling me that he is in awe of me for the labor and everything. Steve says he knows that he is lucky he gets to go to work. And I think he is, too. Sometimes I cry that he gets to leave and sometimes I cry because I am mad at him.
We don’t even really get to talk; we stare at each other over the crying baby’s head. I feel delirious and half drunk all the time and not in a good way. I had Steve bring home six-packs, because I heard beer was good for milk production and also because I needed something to lighten the mood. I took a few sips and felt as if I was going to pass out. I used to drink like a fish. Nine months off will ruin your tolerance.
I didn’t believe anyone when they said it was tough. I didn’t understand moms who looked at me when I was pregnant and told me I should be taking a nap. I had no idea what tired was. I thought tired was being seven months pregnant and having to walk down five flights of stairs during a fire drill. But you know what I did when I was seven months pregnant? I got a pedicure. I got a bikini wax. I went to the movies. I went on a date. What I did not do is cry. What I did not do is know what every day’s episode of Oprah was. I did not reheat a freezer-burned piece of bread that I didn’t even know I had and slather it with butter. I did not not shower for days or wear clothes with a drawstring. I did not pull the drawstring out of my favorite jammies accidentally on purpose to give myself more room.
“Are you okay, Ruth?” Dr. Kim asks.
“Yeah, I’m great,” I say. She looks at me for a minute, trying to gauge if I am telling the truth.
“Okay, well if you have any kind of pain or trouble let me know. Oh, and just as before, do your kegels. Lots of women have trouble with incontinence after a baby.”
“Sexy,” I say. Dr. Kim looks over her glasses at me.
“You sure you feeling okay?”
“Super. It’s everything they said.” I nod vigorously. My head is about to fly off from so much enthusiasm.
“And you’re breast-feeding?”
“Of course.” I say. Breast is best, isn’t that right? Isn’t that another thing that they say?
“That going okay?”
“Great.” I feel my breasts ache a little. The whole thing really still grossed me out.
“No pain?”
“A little pinch here and there, but nothing I can’t deal with.”
“Okay, well let me know if it gets worse. You can call the office anytime and they can page me. And if you ever need a referral for a lactation consultant or a counselor or anything let me know.”
“I’m totally fine,” I say.
“Great, good to see you again, Ruth. Give that baby a kiss for me.”
“I sure will and thanks for you know . . . getting him out okay.”
“My pleasure.”
I left her office through the waiting room with all the other expectant moms. They look like they have no idea what was coming. Someone needs to warn them. I wish someone had warned me six weeks ago when I was sitting there in the waiting room not knowing that I was going to go in for my thirty-six week checkup only to be told I had to be induced that day. If only someone would have said, “Hey, you with the perfectly coiffe
d hair and designer shirt that doesn’t have large wet stains on the nipples, get out now. Run, Ruthie, run. You are not prepared for this.”
But ignorance is bliss and there is no way those soon to be moms with their faces made up in ways only someone with time could do would listen to me. I am just a woman in her husband’s baggy T-shirt and a skirt with an elastic band that would only be fashionable on a sixty-year-old school librarian. My stomach no longer looks pregnant in the tight healthy way. Now I have a belly pouch that slithered next to me when I lay down and took up its own space in the bed.
These ladies wouldn’t heed my warnings. They were rubbing their bellies and trying out names in their heads. They were imagining how nice their husband’s push present would be. They wouldn’t accept that they should be home, studying their vaginas because they would never want to look at them again.
“Buy yourselves a doughnut seat, a sitz bath and some ice!” I consider screaming, but I don’t.
I let the elevator doors close and ride down to the street. My gynecologist is right in the heart of Soho, and I remember how I used to enjoy coming to appointments from work, grabbing an iced coffee and window-shopping, imagining clothes I could some day fit into again. To think, I believed I would be shopping with a baby in tow.
Now I look around, realizing it is a beautiful early June day in New York City. It’s the kind of day people wait all winter for. All around me everyone is dressed up and in sunglasses. I feel so out of place. I feel invisible. How could I have become invisible in six weeks?
My mother-in-law told me to take my time, but we both know that I am on the clock because of my breasts. I stand on the corner of Prince and Broadway for a minute before going down to the subway. If I had the time, there is nothing I feel I can do. Even though Abe isn’t with me, I feel helpless. Regular life is impossible. I might as well go back to the safety of my apartment.
On the subway, I want to read the magazine I have in my bag, but instead I stare at the few passengers on the subway car. Where are they going? Their unknown lives are full of freedom I don’t have. What must it be like to not have to return to a baby who doesn’t care about you unless you have your boob in his mouth?
I think I’m losing it.
I actually have to really think about what I am doing when I transfer at Canal Street. This is a change I’ve made countless times, but each step seems confusing. It’s the first time in six weeks I have been without Abe and it was something I was looking forward to, but now I feel so conflicted.
But back on the subway above-ground, over the Manhattan Bridge, I stare at the city and the East River. The city is full of people who are alive. My eyes fill up. Oh, no! I can’t cry on the subway. I will not. But then I feel more wetness. I look down. There are two dots on my shirt over each breast. One slightly larger than the other. Ugh, breast milk. I forgot to put breast pads on. I didn’t think about leaking and how embarrassing it would be in public. Abe was constantly on me, getting whatever came out. Sometimes it was hard for me to believe anything was coming out, because he never seemed satisfied, but now the proof is right there on my shirt.
I cross my arms over my shirt, but I am sure that the twentysomething across the subway notices. By his quizzical expression I am pretty sure he has no idea what it is.
I get up two stops before my stop and stand by the door with my arms crossed in front of me, awkwardly. There is no way to make this look natural and still cover up the stains. Yuck!
I dash up the stairs and practically run home.
When I open the door to our apartment, Abe is screaming. My mother-in-law, Pam, is walking him around, bouncing and humming and saying, “okay, okay.”
I toss my bag on the front table. My shirt is now completely soaked through, but there is no time to worry about that.
“I’ll take him,” I say frantically. I should probably wash my hands, but I don’t have time.
“Don’t you need to do anything,” Pam asks. She knows it takes me a few minutes to get set up on the couch with my water, my nursing stool and my nursing pillow. But he is screaming and there doesn’t seem to be time. Abe’s scream is more shrill to me because someone else is here.
“No, I’ll take him,” I yell. I surprise both of us by my tone. I feel as if I am always trying to prove myself to Pam as the best wife and mother her son could have ever chosen. My breasts are swollen and full, the skin seems like it is going to explode around them. And simply hearing his cry hurts my brain. If it weren’t for Pam’s presence, I would weep. If my mother were here, maybe I would feel like I could get set up comfortably, but either way his cry puts a layer of urgency on my arrival.
Abe is so worked up that I can’t get him right onto my breast. And I know sometimes, I need to force him on, but Pam is staring at me. I am like an animal at the zoo. She never breast-fed her kids, so I try to do it more gently and it doesn’t work. Abe lets out a real wail. His face gets redder. I curse. I see Pam start to lunge to grab him but think better of it.
I force him on, and he makes angry grumbles for a while as he starts to suck. And then he really latches. I take a deep breath as I feel the milk release. It is such a relief for both of us. I want to sink into it, but I still have to talk to Pam. She took the train down from Connecticut so she could help out.
“I’m so sorry,” Pam whispers. “He was so hungry and there was nothing to give him.”
“He’s okay now,” I say in my regular voice. I am putting on a brave face, because I constantly feel this passive and sometimes not so passive aggression that I decided to breast-feed. I am determined to breast-feed exclusively. I may have needed help with getting pregnant and I may have been too much of a chicken for natural childbirth, but I am going to give this child nothing but breast-milk.
“You know, if I had a bottle for him, I could have,” she is still whispering, but I cut her off.
“Yeah, I haven’t started pumping yet.” I know that I should have, but the apparatus scared me and so did the idea of nipple confusion. No one can really explain nipple confusion, but it seems to be another dangerous thing I am supposed to worry about. There is a chance my kid could confuse my nipple with the one on the plastic bottle. And no surprise he would prefer the one that wasn’t me. “I’m going to have to do that.”
I keep looking at Abe, trying to convey to him and Pam how much I love him, but I really hate that he couldn’t let me have the two hours away without a complete freak-out. Why did he have to be such a baby?
Pam stands there in front of me for a minute. I want her to sit down and relax, preferably on a train away from us. I am awful for even thinking this.
“Do you need me to get you anything?” She is still whispering.
From my mother I would need water and Motrin and the television remote, but I only ask for water. Pam goes to get it and comes back with a glass and some hand sanitizer that I might want “because of the subway”.
I suck down the water. I didn’t realize how dehydrated I was. Pam goes to refill my glass, and I am grateful that she for a moment has something to do. It’s only 3:30. She is supposed to stay for dinner. Steve promised to try and leave early. He said I didn’t have to worry about dinner. We were going to order in. And I know that whatever we get I will feel that Pam is not satisfied. She doesn’t understand our life here. She can’t quite get why we wouldn’t want to live in the suburbs. There’s a lot about our life that disturbs her.
It occurs to me that I am going to have to miss Oprah today. I am addict who needs her fix, and it would certainly eat up some time with Pam.
“He’s still eating, boy is he hungry,” Pam observes several times. And I may be wrong to read between the lines that she thinks he should get a bottle of formula. But even in the hospital she said (as she would say many times), “We didn’t breast-feed. The formula worked great and filled them up. I don’t know how you guys do it.”
When Abe is done, he slides off my breast, his eyes squeezed shut. Quiet, but for how long?
“Is he done,” Pam whispers immediately.
“For now,” I say. “I’m sure he’ll be hungry in a minute.”
I want to prove that I know my kid. Like nothing he can do will surprise me, because she may have the experience of the three kids she raised, but I have this one and I know him and I am never overwhelmed. Ever.
“Are you gonna burp him?”
“Um,” I hesitate. I know I should burp him, but he is so quiet right now and it’s nice to have a moment of quiet. Setting up in the burp position might wake him up.
“I think he might be a little gassy and that’s why he cries so much.”
“Really.” Does she think he cries too much? Is he, as I suspected, an abnormal crier?
“Maybe it’s different with the breast-feeding, but we always burped our babies after a feed.”
“Well, usually I do too, it’s just he’s sleeping.” Pam doesn’t say anything. Oprah, rescue me! We sit quietly in my living room. What did I talk to her about before Abe? At least now there is something, even if I hear judgment in every word.
I decide to burp Abe, after weighing my options and of course that wakes him up. He starts to wail. This time I get all set up with my nursing pillow and stool. I put Abe on the other breast. Pam takes the initiative on the water and when she brings it back in I am momentarily happy to have the extra hands, but the moment doesn’t last. Pam looks around our apartment. I wonder what she thinks about it and what passive-aggressive comment she will make about it later.
“Well, it sure is quite an undertaking, isn’t it?” I don’t really know what it she is referring to. Maybe it is my whole life choice.
“Do you want to watch The Oprah Winfrey Show?” I ask. I have to have it. I can’t fight the urge.
“Sure.”
And so Oprah saves the day again. Luckily it’s one of her home-makeover shows and nothing controversial and we roll right into the evening news until Steve gets home with Indian food.