“What do you mean she left? You let her leave you alone with the baby?” I turn to scream at the front door. “How are we going to eat dinner if she left without making us anything? What are we going to do? What are we going to eat? How are we going to do this? I thought she was here for the rest of the night to help us with this!” I cry and cry and cry.
Gordon is lying on the couch on his back with a sleeping baby on his chest. He can’t get up to comfort me; he can barely raise his voice to tell me to breathe. I continue the meltdown.
“She left? I can’t believe it! What kind of person up and leaves us in this state?” I scream. It’s not a crying moan; it’s a full-pitched, volume-turned-up shriek. I pull my housecoat sleeve over my eyes to cover my streaming tears. None of your complaints and cries are valid, I hear reason whisper. In my previous life, having a short and sweet family visit during a stressful time would have been ideal. But the thought that we have been left alone to plan, prep, and execute a meal is enough to send me into a spiral; I’m completely disconnected from reason. I crawl over to Gordon and continue to cry, looking right past his exhausted face. He reaches his hand out to me, trying as best he can to stroke my leg without shuffling the baby too much.
“Please. Please calm down. It is going to be okay. I will figure out dinner. It’s okay. I love you.”
“It’s not going to be okay! It’s not! This is so very terrible,” I wail as my insides clench into an iron fist. My ribs ache from tension.
I take a breath and look down at my soaked housecoat. I’m a mess.
“Am I … going to hurt the baby?” I whimper through my sobs. It’s the closest I can get to expressing my thought: I think I’m going to hurt the baby.
“No. Of course you’re not going to do anything like that! I’m not going to let anyone in this house get hurt, do you understand? You are safe. You would never ever do anything like that.” His response is filled with love, but I hear doubt hovering in his voice. This is the first time I’ve said out loud what I’ve been thinking these last few days. I no longer have control over my thoughts or actions. I don’t feel safe with myself. Maybe the only way this narrative ends is with a tragic, horrific act. I can feel the path I’m on, and while I don’t see myself harming myself or the baby, I can’t make the thoughts stop. They are not specific. I don’t have plans or direction. But I do have the feeling that something bad is going to happen. We’ve been left alone — a brand new baby, an exhausted father, and a crumbling mother. I can’t find calm. I am genuinely terrified in my own home.
I walk upstairs and tuck myself into my home office. I close the office door and call Michelle. Last night (or was it earlier today?) she told me that when I begin to feel desperate again to phone her. I need my best friend right now to give me words of comfort. To ground me. She answers the phone after one ring. I hear a loud party in the background as I cry into the phone. I give her the frenzied details of the awful situation I’ve declared my mother-in-law to have placed us in, leaving us alone in our home with a fridge full of food but no dinner to actually eat.
“I am devastated … please tell me what to do.” I’m out of breath.
“What is your mother’s phone number?” she asks.
“What? Why?” I don’t want or need my mother here. I want my best friend to tell me I’m completely justified in being upset and, really, to tell me how to order the takeout dinner I’m clearly forgetting I have the ability to do.
“Give me your mother’s phone number right now. I’m at my great aunt’s ninetieth birthday party and I can’t get over there right now to help you. I will call your mom and she is going to come and help you right now. Okay, Amanda?” She’s exasperated by me, I’m sure. Once she has the number I hang up the phone.
This must be what I need right now, I think. I must need third-party intervention, although having my adult best friend phone my mother feels like being reported to the police. I don’t want the authorities in my home. But she must know what I need better than I do. I’m clearly losing my ever-loving fucking mind.
I’m shaking from the unhelpful phone call but pull it together and go back downstairs. Gordon asks who was on the phone, and I tell him I called Michelle. He looks concerned that I needed to go and make a secret phone call, but I can tell he’s also happy that I’m no longer wailing about dinner. He turns down the soft background music and tells me to crawl onto on couch with him and Fiona. I rest my head on his shoulder and fall asleep. A little while later he places Fiona on my chest to feed and we fall into our familiar feeding-sleeping-changing routine.
Before I settle into my regular couch, TV, and feeding routine, I decide to send a quick email to a psychologist I’ve seen off and on to help me with occasional anxiety.
Sent: Saturday, June 21, 6:38 p.m.
From: Amanda
To: Dr. Brenda
Hi Brenda,
Are you available for a phone conversation sometime soon? I delivered Fiona Adrina Munday, my beautiful daughter via breech vaginal delivery on Tuesday — avoided C-section! but I’m really struggling. I can’t sleep when I am given a break. My mind won’t stop — I can’t eat much, I’m crying all the time and I’m scaring myself. I’m trying to calm down but finding it impossible to sustain. The evenings are the hardest, when Fiona is the most awake and is currently feeding every 30–45 min. Can we talk soon please? When are you available?
Thanks, Amanda
Dr. Brenda phones so quickly in response to my email, I feel exposed. She asks to speak to Gordon and tells him to take me to the emergency room immediately. He explains that I’m only anxious because of all the visitors who have been in our home and that he’s going to prioritize my rest. He’s got it covered, but he will remain vigilant with my care and mental stability.
There’s a knock at the front door. I’m sitting topless on the couch watching Modern Family reruns in the dark. Gordon grumbles “who-the-fuck-is-that” and stands up to check it out. Then he says, “You. You wait outside. Do not come in here. Wait.” It’s an aggressive way to greet my mother; it’s clearly not just her at the door.
He doesn’t need to tell me who it is — I already know. She brought her partner, a man I can’t stand. We have a terrible history, and I’ve tried to make it clear that I want nothing to do with him. But clearly I haven’t done enough. Gordon walks back inside with searing rage across his face. He yells at me to put a shirt on.
“He’s here. And your mother, too. They have food.”
“Yes, I know,” I say, defeated. “Michelle said she was going to call my mom. I didn’t think she’d come tonight, I really didn’t. I didn’t know she’d bring him.” I start to cry. My mother walks into my living room with him right behind her. Stay away from my baby.
My mother is teary and emotional as she approaches me. “You know you can always call me. Any time! You can always call me if you need me. You do not need to get your friend to call me. You call me!”
I’m failing again. Gordon asks why they’re here so late, trying to assure them that he has things under control, that his wife isn’t losing her mind.
“I didn’t want to drive all the way here so late by myself,” my mother says. “And he’s leaving the city for work soon, so this is the only opportunity for him to meet Fiona.” She’s almost apologetic about bringing him. I stand up and walk toward the door, which to anyone looking in might look like I’m going to embrace them both, but I walk right past them. I can’t look up. I stare at my feet. I hear him sobbing and crying and saying I love you. I won’t look him in the eye. I say I feel sick; I’m definitely going to throw up. I need to get upstairs. I cannot have this man in my living room at a time when I barely have any grasp on reality.
I need to get away from him. I leave the baby in Gordon’s arms and walk straight past the bags of takeout containers to head up to my dark room. A minute or two later, my mother is standing at my bedside where I lie in the dark, crying.
“You should have called me. Don’t m
ake your friend phone me.” I don’t know if she’s embarrassed or relieved to be needed. Maybe inconvenienced? It was her Saturday night I ruined, after all. She hands me two Advil and two Tylenol and instructs me to take them and sleep immediately.
“That’s it. This is enough. You need to sleep right now. Enough of this.”
“Why did you bring him here?” I whisper.
“What?” she asks. “He’s here for me. It was too late to drive at night. Don’t think about him. Sleep now.”
I don’t know if I should run downstairs and get Fiona or if I should sleep. I cry into my pillow as I realize I’m out of options. The last thing in the world I wanted was for him to hold my child. For him to come into this hell and make it worse. Now he’s here and the only way to make it all stop is to sleep.
I close my eyes. When I wake up, it’s still dark and I hear Modern Family on downstairs. Oh, the irony of Modern Family, with all its joy and resolution and safety. My modern family has none of those things.
There isn’t anything hilarious about any of this. I am a terrible mother. I recognize the self-pity and ignore my rational brain’s requests to settle down.
I head downstairs. Immediately I spot my stepfather holding my baby while she wears nothing but a diaper. I need the baby back right now.
I want to feed her — and I absolutely need to feed her alone. I try to explain that the baby should eat immediately and look to Gordon for a plan to get these people out of my house. It doesn’t work. No one looks like they’re packing up to leave. They’re enjoying the remainder of their meals on my couch watching a pleasant sitcom while I scream and twitch inside. Without saying a word I scoop up the baby out of his arms and head back upstairs. My mother follows me up with a look of concern. I can’t offer her any comfort. My priority is to keep my baby safe. I cry in my bedroom and search for an explanation for the tears. I was broken before he got here. I’ll be broken after he leaves. But his presence doesn’t help one bit.
My mother offers an explanation. She says my lack of rest is making me fall apart, but it’s temporary. “When you finally rest, you’ll feel better.” She says she’ll be back tomorrow with Max and together they’ll make me the healthy dinner she hears I’ve been asking for. “Then you and Gordon are going to sleep for hours. I have a plan.”
I have my doubts, but I also have no control. I want to be left alone, but that’s not an option tonight.
June 22, 2014
DAY FIVE. Here we go again with the days that aren’t really days. Day implies night. Night implies rest. Sleep deprivation provides no break. My life no longer has the scope that a fully developed adult life should have. My world is my home with my baby and my nipple shield and the persistent midnight feedings.
The afternoon doesn’t progress the way a regular Sunday afternoon should. It’s a bright, sunny, and warm June weekend, with one of those sweet breezes that blows through your hair while you lounge in a patio chair. But I can’t access the joy you’d expect to feel on a glorious day like this. I am too lost.
My mother arrives (alone, thankfully) just as one of the midwifery interns is wrapping up her drop-in visit. Normally families on day five wouldn’t receive an in-home visit, but Rose thought it was important that someone check in on me, or so this intern tells me. Another sign that I’m disintegrating. My mother echoes my pleas for breastmilk-pumping strategies so I can sleep.
“She’s tried expressing milk but it doesn’t generate enough. Her husband is strongly against formula. My daughter is out of options. Can’t she just use a pump one night, so she can catch up on rest?” my mother begs this twenty-year-old student, as if she didn’t raise two children herself, in a way that suggests she’s incapable of finding the answer herself. I’m happy that my mother is respecting my desire to follow the midwives’ guidance to the letter of the law, even if it means postponing my recovery from childbirth.
“It’s not a good idea,” says the young woman with her streaked blue hair and gold nose ring who refuses to show me how to use a breast pump, insisting that it will cause painful engorgement. My mother and I look desperately at this student hoping she’ll guide us to an answer, but her advice is only to “stick with breastfeeding, it gets easier.” She must’ve missed the bleeding, bruised, and cracked nipples during my exam.
“Before I arrived,” she continues, “I consulted with my colleagues and everyone agrees what’s best for you is to avoid pumping and bottle feeding and continue with feeding from the breast until your milk is established.”
Rose has told Gordon and me numerous times that pumping after only having breastmilk in for less than a week will mean risking the entire breastfeeding cycle. I could become overly engorged, producing more milk than is required. Oversupply hardly feels like the leading crisis this morning, I want to say. Ms. Blue-Haired Intern explains that my body needs to learn to respond to how much milk our baby needs. “You cannot pump and try to sleep for more than two hours or your milk supply might stop altogether. Just hang on a little longer, okay?” She isn’t overly sympathetic, and I resist the urge to ask her if she has children of her own. There’s no winning this stupid feeding game. I must be a terrible mother for not wanting to do this.
Tears flow down my face. I have the breast pump ready to go, but I feel lost without a medical professional to show me how to use it correctly. What if I poison the baby with botulism? I leave the sterilized parts on the counter and continue to use my nipple shield to breastfeed since it’s the only form of nutrition the baby’s getting, having failed to take milk from Max and Gordon’s shot glass the other night. Your options are breastfeeding or death, so keep going.
Before social media and the iPhone made working in tech cool, being a woman who knew anything about the internet made me an outcast. Gordon was kind and patient with me from the very beginning of our friendship and put up with a lot of my hyper-organized, over-planning tendencies. We moved in together nine months after we started dating, but we waited another six years until we decided to marry. It took us a while to save for our first home, especially after our too-expensive downtown Toronto wedding.
We bought our first home in east Toronto on a stormy April afternoon. I knew it was our home when I walked out of the kitchen into the backyard to find a lush green jungle with overgrown grass and mint weaving up through every corner. It didn’t matter how much work the house needed to become a home. The backyard was the first ground-level outdoor space Gordon and I shared together, after many years of herbs in tiny planter boxes in many apartment configurations. Lately, our evening chats had turned to the idea of slowing down, maybe one day starting a family. We dreamed of a flourishing urban garden for our children to play in.
The very first purchase I made after closing on the mortgage was a lawn mower. I bought it for Gordon as a symbol we were finally accomplishing the life we’d dreamed about. He would mow the lawn while I researched the best soil treatments for tomato seedlings, and we watched food show after food show for dinner ideas. Food marks all of the important milestones in our relationship. When we’re stressed, we cook. When we’re celebrating, we eat. When we miss each other and crave a date night, we head to the grocery store.
After the garden, the next step in turning our new house into a home was a complete kitchen overhaul, a process that Gordon promised would take two months, so naturally it took four. I found out I was pregnant ten days after we finished demolition on the main floor of our semi. I lived through the first four months of my first pregnancy without running water or an oven, crying to Gordon every time he brought home another takeout meal I couldn’t stomach. I was sure that being pregnant during renovations was the worst thing to ever happen to me, and that the only way I’d feel better about our home life was to finish the construction so I could focus on the baby growing inside me.
My mother snapped a photo of Gordon and me in front of the Christmas tree on December 25. Gordon had a thick scruffy beard he called his “renovation beard,” akin to the ones
hockey players refuse to trim as a playoff superstition. He committed not to shave until the renovations were complete. In the photo I’m holding the tiniest of baby bumps, resting my head on Gordon’s shoulder in a blissful state. You can sense our nervous excitement and trepidation. Within an hour of taking the photo, I’d posted it to Facebook with the caption “our family is growing by +1” and spent the rest of Christmas morning checking my feed to read all the congratulatory messages. An endorphin rush.
Once the kitchen renovation was complete months later, my bump was obvious and my patience worn. I put off shopping for baby items until the nursery was functional. One late evening, while Gordon rubbed my back and helped me wrap my body around a full-size body pillow, I leaned over to look into his caring eyes and said, “I hope this baby doesn’t rely on me to feed it, because I haven’t even begun looking into that whole breastfeeding thing. Does that make me a terrible mother?”
Gordon laughed, shook his head and said, “You’re already the best mother I know. Let’s be serious, I’ve never seen you miss a deadline once in our nine years together. What makes you think this time would be any different?”
“Yes, you’re right. I’m being silly. This baby is going to have a great mother,” I joked reluctantly.
My mother sits on the rocking chair she’s moved into our sunny enclosed porch. The porch gets the best light at this time of day, and we are trying to combat Fiona’s jaundice to avoid needing to go to the hospital for light therapy. If my husband doesn’t want the baby exposed to the chemicals in formula, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t want her to get artificial light therapy for a common newborn ailment either. I head over to my home base, the living room couch, and search for some easy TV that might distract my mind enough to let me fall asleep. You’d think that after 120 hours with no more than ninety minutes of sleep at a time that any break from the baby would be enough to let me pass out in the middle of a crowded subway station. It isn’t.
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