Rose brings Fiona to me and says it’s time to breastfeed again. I couldn’t do this very well on my own earlier; I need Rose to show me again. I’m embarrassed that I forgot the instructions so soon after the initial demonstration. “Bring the baby to you, not you to the baby.” How could I forget? Her instructions are stern and unloving. With Rose’s help, the baby latches her mouth to my nipple, and it stings. The pinch is strong and it feels awful. Even though she’s a less-than-one-day-old human with no teeth, I swear she’s biting me. Her mouth grip is sharp. I’m scared to shift my body to ease the pain, afraid that I’ll break the latch Rose helped me achieve. I’m trapped. When I was pregnant I heard breastfeeding described as a release, a euphoric relief from engorged breasts full of milk. I hope the euphoria arrives soon because in this current feeding session I’m the furthest away from relieved as I could be. Rose doesn’t ask how much pain I’m in, or whether breastfeeding is even something I want to do. I no longer matter in this baby-midwife-mother dynamic. I’m still waiting for someone to ask me how I feel. I’m a ghost of my former self. I start to cry.
Rose finally looks at me with concern. “Amanda, this is a lot of crying. What’s going on?”
All I can say is, “She looks so afraid of me. I’m hurting her.” I say it softly to Rose, to Gordon, and to no one at all. The baby doesn’t want me to breastfeed her either. I’m sure I can sense her emotions and objections because I’m her mother. She doesn’t want to be here any more than I do. How can I be responsible for this new life? I wail a little louder. It startles Fiona, who looks up at me, wide-eyed and confused. She detaches from my breast, and we have to begin the difficult latching and feeding set-up again.
Rose responds with strong authority. “Are you crazy? You’re nuts. She’s a baby! Look at what you made! She is beautiful and she is fine. She doesn’t look scared to me. Gordon, does she look scared to you?” Gordon is the one now overcome with concern. I don’t recognize him. He’s standing there watching me crying instead of breastfeeding his child, his face filled with doubt. My vision goes blurry, my focus narrows. I only see a small tunnel in front of me as I focus on the baby, then on Rose. I no longer hear the children laughing outside or the cars driving by. It’s too quiet in this room. I only hear my thoughts, screaming, I need to get out of here.
Rose pushes the baby’s shoulders into my chest again, showing me how to lower her chin to achieve a proper latch. I have no idea how I’ll possibly hold this baby in this awkward position, lowering her chin with my thumb while massaging my breast enough to encourage the expression of milk. This job is not meant for one person. I ask Gordon to hold my breast while I hold the baby. I cry again, looking up at Gordon with hot tears soaking my face.
“This. Isn’t. Good,” I whisper to him.
Gordon wants to approach breastfeeding the way any engin-eer would. He asks for the proper procedure, the correct steps to feeding success, and then repeats Rose’s instructions back to me in his own words.
“You need to hold her level, babe.” Right. I am not a skilled mother.
I just long for uninterrupted sleep. In any other medical circumstance, from having my wisdom teeth and my tonsils removed, to gallbladder surgery two years ago, I’ve always had the luxury of consecutive days of rest after the trauma. I’ve had time to watch reality TV, read mindless chick-lit, call my friends, and joke with my younger sister. I do not have the luxury of rest any longer. I only have this new human’s innate need to survive. I cry through Rose’s physical scan of my body. I tell her that I think my postpartum bleeding is severe, very unusual, and in need of extra care.
“Can I see?” she asks, and she pulls down my hospital-issued underwear to examine the gigantic pad she provided me in the delivery room twelve hours earlier. “Oh, it looks fine to me. You’re fine, dear. Very normal. Not unusual at all.” She looks around. “Where did Gordon go? I’ll show you both how to bathe the baby. Change your clothes and meet me in the kitchen.”
My mother’s face lights up with grandmother joy. She’s here to see “Baby’s First Bath.”
Gordon runs around the house collecting soap, a towel, a foam flower to line our sink with, and a change of clothes for Fiona. I consider unpacking our DSLR camera, but I can’t remember where I put it. I’ll have to settle for an iPhone photo. I reach into my hospital bag and retrieve a swimsuit cover-up I had packed for the hospital. In my new role as mother, I assume I’ll no longer be able to wear pants. This muumuu-style dress with a deep-v neckline must be the required uniform for new breastfeeding mothers, and I imagine anything with straps, zippers, and elastic waistbands are forbidden. Anything that blocks quick access to my breasts, the primary feeding tool to keep this new life thriving. Zippers give me agency to shut out others, a luxury I withdrew during childbirth. I understand by the way my family looks at my chest that my body is a tool for them to use; it is no longer mine alone.
Rose looks at our available bathing supplies and adds to Gordon’s task list. Of course we aren’t ready for this momentous occasion either, I think.
“Go and get two receiving blankets, two washcloths, a comb, and a new diaper.” Rose suggests that my mother bring a chair for me to sit on by the sink so I can watch this activity without having to stand. Rose rushes around, bopping around our living room and kitchen, humming an energetic tune while running water in the sink. I can’t help but feel that she’s holding Fiona in a very careless way.
She’s moving too quickly. I’m overcome by an image of Fiona’s head cracking against our grey quartz countertop. Maybe she’s going to drown in this bath. Suddenly I feel an urge to hurt the baby, to squeeze her tightly, even while I’m terrified she’ll get hurt. The urge passes. I exhale cautiously. I should hold her now in case she doesn’t survive the next activity. I should say goodbye. She’s not safe with me.
I offer to hold Fiona while Gordon tries to conceal his rushed kitchen clean-up, but my mother jumps in to take her away from the shuffling bath prep. I see my mother’s embarrassment as she looks over to our sink, which is full of the weekend’s dirty dishes. Last week’s coffee mugs and a dinner plate full of breadcrumbs on the counter are all screaming at me to hide them from view. I’m convinced my mother shares my concern — Fiona could contract botulism and die during this kitchen bath. The weight of my child’s impending death overtakes me, and I start to cry. My mother hands the baby back to me, presumably thinking I wanted her. What I really want is my old self back.
Rose looks at me and says to my mother, “She has a lot going on. A lot happened.” My mother nods in subtle agreement, but I’m not sure what she’s agreed to. Before I can wipe the first tears dripping off my chin my mother has hurriedly emptied my kitchen sink and is aggressively scrubbing it clean.
“All right, let’s do this!” Rose announces as she lifts Fiona from my arms. Gordon stops trying to tidy the kitchen and joins Rose in front of our white ceramic farmhouse sink. I loved that sink when we ordered it online last fall. It was one of our first purchases for our new home. We’ve only been settled with proper heat, running water, and electricity for six months. Before that, it was suitcase living through a major renovation. I feel so privileged that we were able to buy a home at all; in Toronto, an affordable home might be the only thing harder to get than a daycare spot.
Today we are anointing the kitchen with baby’s first bath. Rose is visibly frustrated with our foam flower sink liner — “This takes too long to fill up. What is this? Silly new gadgets. You don’t need this.” — and tosses it out of the sink. My mother rushes over and shoves it out of view.
Rose scolds us for our expensive baby gadgets, and Gordon nods in a strange, shameful acknowledgement.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he says. “We don’t need that silly flower.”
I listen intently as Rose runs through all the ways a bath might kill the baby. “Now, you must collect everything you need for this bath before you begin. You can’t start to undress her on this counter and then go to get
a towel or a diaper. Collect everything ahead of time and be ready. Do not look away, not even for one second or she could go under. You should leave your cellphone in a different room so you’re not distracted by text or ringing sounds. Do not answer the door. It can all wait while you bathe the baby.”
I stare directly at Gordon. Is he listening to this new law of parenthood? Bathing the baby is no less serious than flying a plane full of United Nations officials. Who is the Designated Survivor in this scenario?
I watch Rose bathe our baby, taking in each instruction as a warning of imminent death.
“Cover her in a receiving blanket that you keep on her as you submerge her in the water. Then, gently remove the wet blanket but add a washcloth to cover her tummy. That way, she never gets too cold.”
Rose demonstrates how to hold the baby with one hand under her neck while your thumb and forefinger wrap around her tiny shoulder and under her arm to secure your grip. With this formation, she won’t slip under water. With his six-foot-two frame, Gordon needs to lean over at almost a ninety-degree angle to achieve the correct safe bathing stance. I would stand on his back to bathe her if it meant she’d be safe, I think. I’m definitely going to drop her. I can never bathe this baby.
Rose’s bathing instructions might be meant for con-venience, or for the child’s comfort, but to me they’re gospel. I don’t believe that I have any real agency in how I’ll raise this child. Who are we, mortal Millennials, to make decisions for how she will be cared for? We’ve never parented a child before. I look over to my mother, who looks as stunned and apparently as new to baby bathing as I am.
When the bathing lesson is complete, Rose styles Fiona’s hair into a spikey mohawk, and I giggle at the absurdity.
“Did you give my baby a funny hairstyle? She’s not even one day old!” I feel a moment of joy, but it leaves as soon as it arrives. Fiona looks a little stunned. I want to believe she already loves the bath. Did I see a smile while she was in the warm water? I wonder if it’s because flowing water is the only thing familiar to her. Maybe she, too, is wishing she could go back to the womb, where she was safe and contained. The smile was probably just gas. I realize that I’m hungry and craving protein.
“Do we have any cold cuts?” I ask my mother. Before I finish my sentence, she agrees to make me a sandwich.
I move away from the kitchen toward my pulled-out couch and announce that I can’t sit down without an ice pack between my legs and a pillow for my back. Gordon hands the baby to my mother, who slams the sandwich plate down with a big clank, and accepts the baby with an air of anxiety that looks like she’s bracing for impact. He’s looking out for my needs, like always. I hope we’ll still be the same couple. I don’t want us to change. Before Rose packs up to leave, she shows me one more time how to latch Fiona properly onto my breast. I start to cry and whimper that I can only feed the baby when she is here to latch her onto me.
“I’m not sure I can do this. I’m so tired.”
Rose assures me again that I can do it. But it doesn’t feel like I can keep this baby alive through my breastmilk alone. The milk isn’t flowing out of me. I don’t feel her swallowing or taking in any calories; won’t she starve? I look down and see a dark black spot on my nipple, and point it out to Rose. “Is my milk rotten?”
“No, silly,” Rose responds, shaking her head, “that’s a scab. A bit of blood. Once your milk comes in more fully and your nipples get used to the pressure, this should settle down.”
The baby is drawing blood from my nipples before she successfully draws milk. If feeding is this painful now, what will it feel like when my breasts are the size of inflated birthday balloons?
I have my doubts that feeding will get easier. It feels like I’m going to be struggling to feed her for the rest of time. My thoughts grow darker. Maybe she won’t survive — is that why I didn’t buy enough clothes for her? Do I have a psychic ability to predict my child’s lifespan? Maybe I know she won’t see her three-month birthday, because I’m never going to figure out this breastfeeding thing and she’s going to starve to death. Or I’m going to drop her on the bathroom tile and crack open her skull. Is that how she dies? Will it be horrific? If it’s horrific, I don’t think I’ll survive. I’ll have to die, too.
I sit on the couch with the baby on my breast and cry as Rose packs up to leave. My mother gets up to tidy my living room around me, and Gordon mumbles that he needs rest. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to rest again. So I sit and wait for time to pass. Hours later, as afternoon creeps into early evening, my father and stepmother arrive to meet the baby. Then Max finally comes over for hugs and baby introductions. I wish he’d been here sooner to see the baby and to hug me. And to sit with me in silence on the couch. My father has brought pizza. He apologizes as he walks through the door, saying, “I have no idea what new moms would want to eat. Here is pizza, the easiest of answers.” As if he didn’t live through this three times himself.
I love my dad with all my first-born daughter self. It was a surprise to no one when I developed a passion for technology, modelled after my nerdy, counter-culture, hacker father’s IT career. My parents ended their marriage when I was five years old, and my brother and I spent every other weekend at my dad and Jane’s house. Though the transient home life was disruptive to my childhood friendships, I’ve never felt angst about the time I spent at Dad’s house. It’s still my invitation to let loose; to laugh with my dad about the latest security fail by a too-rich corporation or the obnoxious public trust in “the cloud.” Lately we spend a lot of time lamenting about social media, despite it being my profession of choice. He teases me every time I declare that one day I’ll work for Facebook or Twitter, and I don’t really mind the jokes because I hear them coming from a place of pride.
Spending time with my dad is an escape from daily responsibilities. Visiting on the weekends always felt like a bit of a mini-vacation. I even opted to live with him instead of my mother in my preteen years, when I couldn’t peacefully resolve fights with my stepfather.
My dad’s presence brings me relief; I’m happy to see him today. Every time I see him, to this very day, I yell out, “Hey, Daddio!” So what if I’m thirty-one years old? Daddio is here. I know I should have spent more time at his place last week for Father’s Day, but I was preoccupied with the imminent arrival of his first grandchild. Knowing he’s been facing his own demons for years, I hope he’s not upset with me for not staying for a long visit last time.
And despite the fact that I’m happy he’s here and not obviously mad at me, I’m also feeling annoyed at the sight of pizza and his lack of awareness about what I might like to eat after giving birth.
I’m overcome with sadness as I look at the pizza. I am dairy intolerant and the cheese will cause me bloating and painful cramps. I don’t want to explain to my father that I’m disappointed in his food offering. My thoughts are racing. Maybe this is eventually what becomes of all parents, that we detach from our child’s needs. But surely I won’t become the parent who brings a dairy-intolerant new mother a greasy pizza. Why doesn’t anyone know the real me? Can anyone hear me? No one cares about me now that the baby is born. I’m getting hungrier thinking about food so I just pick up a slice.
My mother sits quietly, offering only one mention of last night’s events.
“If I find out that this baby was born right after I left the hospital I’m going to be angry.” Gordon tries to blur our timeline, and succeeds, at least in my eyes, because this whole week feels like a blur. I couldn’t handle it if both my parents were annoyed with me because of this baby.
My stepmother is holding the baby for only a few minutes when Fiona starts to cry. I lunge from the kitchen back into the living room. “Give me the baby,” I say rudely. “She needs to eat.”
My stepmother initially resists, saying firmly, “We need to let the baby cry a little so she learns to settle herself down without you.”
I balk at the suggestion. This child is not yet o
ne day old and already we need a tough-love strategy? Doesn’t this woman realize I’m in the depths of a new education on breastfeeding as the single solution for all child woes? Only this convoluted and painful breastfeeding procedure will calm her, not forcing her to self-soothe. Trying to soothe the baby and avoid giving her to me, my stepmother paces back and forth across the living room. Fiona’s cries get louder and I grow desperate to have my baby back in my arms.
I look to Gordon to resolve the struggle. He stands up and mumbles something about “Amanda trying to get the hang of breastfeeding.” I pull out my left breast waiting for him to hand me the infant, and once he does I start the difficult latching ceremony. Having the baby back in my arms brings temporary relief. My father instantly becomes uncomfortable, diverting his eyes and walking into the kitchen “looking for a beer.” I’ve never known him to drink a lot of beer. I feel ashamed that I made him leave the room.
I don’t like how breastfeeding feels. It’s painful, and holding her is not comfortable. I can’t believe that women do this so effortlessly. Even if I ever do get the hang of it, I’ll probably be feeding alone in closets or basements for all eternity, filled with shame about the time I pulled my breast out in front of my father and brother.
This is the first time I realize that some men don’t want to see breasts as a source of food. I’m suddenly painfully aware of all my bodily fluids, from cracked and bleeding nipples to leftover amniotic fluid dried up on my legs. I feel dirty. I still haven’t slept. I have sat still for too long. Once the baby latches correctly I exhale. Her tiny suction already feels familiar, and I allow the smallest twinge of relief. If only it was easier to get to this point, without all the blood and screaming baby and fighting to get her hooked on in the first place.
Day Nine Page 5