A Window Into Motherhood

I don’t know why I bother brushing the pale pink and white gingham curtain aside. The view isn’t going to have changed in the ten minutes since I last looked. Maybe I move the curtain back because looking outside gives me something to do, gives my mind a place to wander amongst the darkness of night. Or maybe I do it because although it’s only been ten minutes it feels like it’s been hours. 

I groggily look out at our backyard with the bare garden dimly illuminated by the moon, then past that to the expanse of trees that guard our property. The yard was one thing that drew me to the home. I pictured my future kids playing in the yard, growing peas and tomatoes in that little garden, and exploring the woods together. I never thought about all of the 3:00am wake ups. I didn't realize how often I’d stare into the backyard with my mind in sleepless defeat and my arms full of a deep but confusing love. 

A gentle, content sigh pulls me back to the present.  I look away from the window and down at my daughter, Bette, sleeping peacefully cradled in my arms. She must have sensed I was starting to grow weary again. Sometimes I think we’re so powerfully connected that she knows when I need her. She knows if I need her to smile, need her to coo, or need her to reach for me. In those moments she’s giving me her implicit approval. “You’re doing okay, Mom. You are enough. You’re cut out for this new role,” she reassures. Other times she screams so intensely, pushes away from me so forcefully, or cries so furiously that I cry, too. Those are the times when I don’t feel connected to her at all. It seems impossible that I carried her for nine months and it feels as if our bond was cut along with her umbilical cord. That’s when I’m at my lowest. That’s when I say horrible things I instantly regret. That’s when I have to put her down in her crib wailing because I’m sobbing that I can’t help her. She brings me so much happiness, but she also frustrates me to the point where my overwhelmed body shakes. Then when I can finally take a breath my shame weighs me down and I wonder why all those doctors thought I could ever be a good mother. That was me ten minutes ago. How could it only have been ten minutes ago? 

A clock hangs on the far wall of her nursery. I hear it though I don’t see it.  Tick…tick…tick. All of those hours I spent planning the perfect nursery, meanwhile I spend most of my time here during the darkest hours of the night. It took months to find that clock with its blush colored face and gentle ticking. They say ticking clocks help comfort babies since it reminds them of their mothers’ heartbeats in the womb. If this clock has soothed Bette for even a millisecond since birth, that’s news to me. I was so excited to find it -- the perfect piece for my ethereal garden nursery.  If I could have seen it ten minutes ago I would have thrown it in the trash during one of my moments of helplessness. 

Whenever I hear Bette’s sharp cry in the middle of the night my body goes into fight or flight mood. At first it was because I had no idea what I was doing, but lately it’s because I don’t want her to wake up Ben. It’s not that Ben is a hands-off father. Quite the contrary, he’s an amazing father…when he has the time. Ben’s a paralegal, and a third of his associates have been laid off. Luckily Ben survived, but it just means there’s more work for fewer people so he’s working longer hours. Meanwhile I’ve been a guidance counselor at the local high school for the past few years. Summer vacation started right as my meager maternity leave came to an end. Even though I’m tired after the day with Bette, if Ben’s up until 2:00am working it only seems fair that I’m the one getting up at 3:00am. I never expected there to be so much guilt associated with motherhood. Guilt that I’m not doing a good enough job keeping Bette asleep. Guilt when Ben starts to rise from bed to calm Bette because I know I can fall asleep during the day without repercussion, assuming Bette is also sleeping, of course. Guilt that I don't want to get up again, that all I want to do is sleep. So much guilt.

As I tried desperately to calm her down this time, I felt my shoulders rising in tempo with my accelerated heart rate.  “Just be quiet!” I thought as she cried.  “You’re fine! There’s nothing wrong with you! You’ve been fed. You’ve been changed. The room is the normal temperature. The clock is ticking away. What's wrong with you?" This was almost instantly followed with, "What’s wrong with me? What kind of mother can’t calm her own baby?”  I put Bette down in her crib for a minute, cursed a bit, and let out a sob. After a meager pep talk I picked her back up and tried all over again. I don’t know when she stopped crying and just let me hold her, but my body is finally relaxing again and I sense a wave of peaceful exhaustion come over me.

“I love you, sweet pea,” I whisper, looking down at Bette. She’s still asleep in my arms, and I slowly, subconsciously sway from side to side. “I love you so much. I’m trying my best. I swear I am.” My voice wavers a little and rises in pitch as I speak. Bette grows blurry as tears take over my eyes. A few escape and slide down the side of my nose before dropping onto her chest as it slowly heaves up and down. 

It took three years for Ben and me to get pregnant once we decided we wanted to start a family. After being married for two years, I saw an online listing for our house and it stirred something within me. We never had a defined timeline for starting a family, but clicking through photos of the house awoke my maternal side. I showed the listing to Ben and he agreed to go and “just look.” We didn’t need to move out of our condo, he argued, but the moment he agreed to view the house I knew it would be ours. It needed a little bit of work, like updating bathrooms and refinishing the kitchen, but its classic Colonial charm captivated me and Ben knew there was no point arguing. He also knew why I wanted to move into that house. We both thought it would be easy to get pregnant. My two older sisters had their children within a year of getting married and their second children dutifully followed a year and a half after that. Ben is the youngest of four and given the number of nieces and nephews we have on his side of the family, we were naïve.

Month after month of trying unsuccessfully blindsided us. After six months I downloaded a fertility tracking app. After one year I bought an ovulation kit and dutifully peed on sticks, following the kit’s directions down to the period. Six more months of nothing led to doctors’ visits, tests confirming we were both healthy individuals, failed IUI attempts, and then expensive IVF treatments. I always had an irrational fear of needles so I blamed myself for the first unsuccessful round of IVF. “You’re too nervous. You need to calm down.  A baby will never grow in your anxiety-ridden uterus.” After several attempts of getting pregnant through IVF failed I suddenly stopped blaming myself and looked outward for a place to share my despair. 

I wouldn’t call myself religious. I never went to church, never really celebrated any holidays either. But those years we were trying to have a child made me wonder what I had done wrong to deserve living in a family home without a family. I talked to God so frequently that I made up for lost time. In the morning I’d stand in the sunshine coming through the kitchen window and say, “If you give me a child, I promise that child will know so much love.” At night in my bedroom, I’d look up at the stars and plead, “Please give me a child. Please. I’ll start making more of an effort with Ben’s mother. She can criticize me and this house all she wants, I promise this child will be the needle and thread that stitches us back together. Please hear me. Please give us a child.” 

When I told Ben I needed a break and that we should think about adoption or decide we didn’t want children after all, he cried. I had been crying for three years, but this was the first time I knew Ben was hurting as much as I was. It’s not that I had felt alone in all that time, but I felt as though Ben wanted a child because I wanted a child. Watching Ben sob on our sofa, hearing him gulp as his shoulders shuddered made me love him even more. I sat beside him and pulled him in close, his black stubble scratching me. After an hour of sitting together in silence, I gently held his head in my hands, looked into his dark brown eyes and said, “We will have a family. I promise you.” 40 and a half weeks later Bette was born.

The first three months were a blur. Constant feeding, short stints of sleep, and never ending diaper changes played on a continuous loop. The only way I know three months passed and not a week is because of the photos we took.  See, you’re both wearing a different outfit than the previous picture. Swipe. Oh, now Bette’s wearing a different outfit, but you’re still in the same one – she must have spit up. The next two months flew by, but the days are more distinct in my memory. It’s partially because she finally developed enough neck strength so that I didn’t worry about her head falling off anymore. It’s also because she started laughing, and hearing that laugh makes me forget everything else. 

If only she laughed instead of cried at 11:48pm. And 3:09am. And 5:22am. I’ve stopped telling people that Bette doesn’t sleep through the night. When she was three months and not sleeping I started to get unsolicited advice, “Stop breastfeeding her and give her formula. Fill her up with rice cereal. Make sure you have blackout shades.” Recently when Ben’s mom stopped by to give us some six month clothing from one of the cousins she asked if Bette was finally a good baby and letting us sleep. She was appalled when I told her Bette still woke up a few times each night. “Your generation coddles too much. Just let her cry. You both need to toughen up. She knows what she can get away with, you know, so you need to stop caving in.” So apparently I have a bad baby who needs to toughen up? I remembered all my promises to God regarding Ben’s mother, so I bit my tongue.   

Despite what Ben's mother says, Bette is a normal six month old baby. She’s not manipulative, she’s experiencing new things every day. Synapses are firing and connections are being made, but not everything makes sense just yet. She needs my love just as much as she needs my milk. I don't coddle her by tending to her in the middle of the night. Her rhythmic breathing fills the room, and it fills me, too.

Still cradled in my arms, I gently nudge Bette and get no response other than a little snore. Grateful that she’s finally in a deep sleep. I hold my breath as I start lowering her down into her crib, moving so slowly that if someone were to see me I would look frozen. My arms are burning but I don’t dare go any faster. Three….two…one…and she’s down. I leave my hand on her chest for a minute. After slowing lifting that away, I wait another minute to make sure she doesn’t start stirring. She doesn't.

I slowly walk away from Bette, content in her crib, and I look out the window. I decide to take her to the store later and buy some seeds. That garden has been barren for too long, and I've looked at it but done nothing for even longer. More wakeups and meltdowns are inevitable. Maybe looking out into the night and seeing life will help lift me when I'm sinking. Maybe it won't. But at least when I feel the doubt starting to creep back in during the witching hours, there will be tangible proof that I am enough. I can care for and love something so much that it grows, right before my eyes.