Raw Motherhood

He’s not doing it right.  It’s as if he is modeling the what-not-to-do soothing technique on the warning film that I nodded off to in the hospital. 

“Wake up,” the nurse prompted. “We cannot let you leave until you watch this.”

Why? Of course you don’t violently shake a baby. This feels like putting a warning label of ‘hot’ on a coffee cup.  Yet here we are.  A screaming baby and my husband.  The desperation on his face as he hops up and down seeking a simple second of quiet. I know he just wants to give me a moment to sleep.  But I don’t need sleep. I need a shower. 

Torn between maternal instinct and personal need, I stand impassive in the doorway to the bathroom.  I dread what I will see when I get in there.  Not the witch hazel pads and adult diapers. Not the shower full of the shedding hair and the taunting bubble bath soap that must sit idle for another six weeks. But the shiny terror above the sink.  The menacing glimpse of reality. 

When he is on my breast, I can envision myself as the life-giving goddess that I am.  Rumina tending to the sucking child, the child who is helpless without her.  I am a tree of life. I am powerful. But the mirror reveals the erroneous nature of my imagination.  My belly is still ripe with the fruit it bore for nine months.  If it weren’t for the fierce, yet muted, gasping cry from the room next to this, I would think that I could press into the protrusion of my stomach and feel a gentle kick back.  The breasts that were full, and the constant source of my husband’s attention, just a week ago, are now sagging unevenly- flattened by the insatiable appetite of my little boy.  Was my last shower at the hospital?  I smell of the sweet rottenness unique to breastmilk and yeasty odor that somehow has taken its place in every aspect of postpartum life.  No, I am not a goddess. Athena holds the place of strength while my skin bears the signs of trauma.  

“Are you sure you want the epidural? You said you wanted to do this naturally.  You told me to remind you how so many women have done it the real way and you are strong enough to be among them.” 

One glance was all it took.  Moments later the nurse is draping me over her shoulder and asking me to resist the primal need to arch my back in response to the next contraction.  The needle is quick and the relief is immediate.  I wish I had a little of that now. 

My stitches pull as I step cautiously over the edge of the tub and stare listlessly at the shower head.  I don’t feel like bending over to turn it on.  Where are those blessed nurses now?  Everyone keeps asking what I need.  I have so many frozen meals that I think I may need to finally get that extra freezer.  I suppose I can’t tell them that what I really want is to have someone else bend over and pick up the blanket I dropped.  I want to eat without anyone around so I don’t have to think of the flabby skin that I feel on every part of my body.  I want someone to say that I am amazing for nursing through chapped nipples and utter exhaustion.  They could exclaim, “You are incredible.  I could never do that.” But of course they can. They have.  They seem to think what I did was no big deal.  Yes, I do want them to adore my baby, but I feel that perhaps there should be an allotted time period where we all praise what I accomplished.  I suppose I didn’t do it the impressive way. Perhaps I am unworthy.  But I still am keeping this little person alive despite the amount of sleep that, in any other context, would be a reportable offense- torture of the most twisted variety. 

The water feels like it is restoring my humanity.  As it rolls down my aching back, I feel as though I am identifying the existence of my spine for the first time.  I elongate each vertebrate slowly, regaining control of the body that has not been mine for the majority of the last year.  Now I get a few hours throughout the day where I get to remember what it's like to feel like I control the features of my body.  It is brief and soon forgotten when I again need to lend my body to another, but it’s a start.  

Do other mom’s think like I do? It feels wrong to wish for some level of freedom from the being that I love more than my own body.  From the child who, until 5 days ago, was literally tethered to me.  He, a part of me, and I, a part of him.  But, I so desperately want to stay in this shower for hours.  I want to reawaken every muscle and bone that I had surrendered to this incredible challenge.  This life-making and life-preserving challenge.  This all-consuming and identity-shifting challenge.   This self-sacrificial yet self-gratifying challenge.  I thought it ended at birth.  I thought that was the moment that others began to join in the process and I was able to regain my independence. 

Yet I can still hear him screaming through the cracks in my shower tile.  Milk trickles down my breast and pulls in the deep rifts that run from the bottom of my stomach to the place where the skin somehow escaped the stretching inevitable with pregnancy.  

Sighing, I wrap my hair in a towel, peeling the excess fallen strands off my hands. How is it everywhere?  I don’t bother with a towel for my body.  

My husband looks defeated.  “He doesn’t like me.”

“He doesn’t like those,” I posit, as I gesture to his worthless nipples. I crack a smile as I slip this inconsolable baby onto my forearms, hold his tiny head delicately in my hands. He instantly settles, with just a slight quiver of his lip and a flutter of his chest- a distant echo of the trauma experience in the last 20 minutes.  

I glance up at my husband.  Exhaustion reveals itself in his sunken eyes and ruffled hair.  His beard is unkempt and his shirt is covered in unknown substances.  He tries not to look hurt by our son who is now completely still in my arms.  “Let me get you some water, I know how much breastfeeding takes out of you.” 

My body may have been the only one stolen in this process, but, I ashamedly consider for the first time, this man has also sacrificed in so many ways.  He never pressured me for sex, knowing that I was constantly uncomfortable.  He took over everything at home; as well as, the pressure of figuring out the financials of my soon to be stay-at-home status. He allowed me to complain relentlessly and never corrected. He could have just reminded me of how blessed I was.  I was able to have a child when so many cannot.  This baby would be a blessing in his own right; as well as, a healing from the loss the months before.  I would have a connection with him that my husband could only see glimpses of.  But he didn’t speak these truths. He just loved me and heard me.  

I move my son toward my engorged and painful breast and wince as he latches. He drinks quickly and drifts into a sleep that only one so free of worry can experience.  I sway gently as I shift him into the bent portion of my arm and hum softly.  How could I have been envious just moments ago of those who did not have this burden attached to them? How could I have longed for separation? 

My husband slips silently onto the couch next to me and wraps his strong arm around my waist.  With his other hand he gently smooths the small wisps of hair down on our son's head.  “I rock him too hard, don’t I?” I shrug slightly in reply. “Do you think that messed up his head or something?” he continues anxiously. 

“No,” I say truthfully.  “I know you were supporting him fine.  I just don’t think he likes going up and down that much.”

“Do you think that he’ll ever like me the way he does you?”

“He is a part of us.  I had a nine month headstart, that’s all.”  Suddenly I understand that with each glimpse of independence that I gain, I open the door for someone else to fill my role in in my son’s life.  Panic rises rapidly from my core. I feel it clutch my throat.  Then suddenly my husband slips our baby out of my hands and into his own, swaying gently to his own song.  He hums different melodies than me, but the effect is the same.  As our son settles into his chest and breathes the deep air of solid slumber, I feel my body relax. I don’t have to do this alone. I am still me but a better version, I think. I need to reorient myself to the person I am now, but I don’t have to do it alone. 

As I feel a blanket being placed over me, I realize that at some point I shifted into a lying position on the couch.  The pendulum swing of emotions begins to quiet itself. My mood is no longer bouncing dramatically up and down, but rather swaying only slightly to the rhythm of my husband’s movement.  As my eyes flutter to sleep, I see the gentle sway of my two boys and know that I am not lost- just temporarily on hold.