Felt so full for awhile there. As if I couldn't take another bite of life. As if it didn't matter if I would ever see a friend again. Shades up, sporadic sunlight peering through, solitude surrounded me.
Sleep-deprivation had pushed me into another realm of self-abnegation. It was no longer important to do hygiene for myself. It was for him. I woke in the night terrified that I had fallen asleep while nursing him; certain I'd dropped him, only to find him safely cradled in his crib. I would stare: longingly, anxiously, full of anticipation. He wouldn't stir. I would drift into another pang of fitfulness. Time for another nursing. This is how it went.
I curled him in my arms in the shape of a comma. I stared at his mouth in horror. Those gums were annihilators, like piranhas to a cow. His lips would twist sideways, creating the "rooting" effect, and I would cringe, become an overly stretched string, ready to break. I would attempt to breathe, and tell myself if other women could do it, so could I. I would hold my breath and feel the hair get stuck to my neck, the sides of my face, with sweat. Panic would rush through, and then I would recall my husband's words: "Is this yet another thing you won't follow through with?!" I would push through, my comma-shaped baby would latch on, and I would bite my lip, because he nursed on open wounds.
It didn't feel like we were bonding. It felt like masochism, a self-inflicted torture with an oppressive, timed recurrence.
I would lay my head facing him and drift off to sleep, content and atwitter to see him at peace again. I woke with the push and pull of his spastic fingers at dawn. We greeted the sun in each other's embrace swaying in rhythm to Nat King Cole and Nora Jones tunes. I let myself get absorbed by his searching, partly unseen eyes, his shallow, timid inhales, his awkwardly elongated legs. Love flowed around us. We bonded. I felt elated. Until the next feeding, when terror and inadequacy tore into me.
Away from him, I would feel the push of clouds hanging low above ground, and ache for the impossibility to have been better at delivering him, at nursing him. I wept bitterly, desperately.
The days, weeks, and months dragged on. We moved to another home -- bigger, darker, remote. Comma-shaped infant was growing into a healthy, curious, lovely baby. Our nursing time improved. It was no longer an epicenter of existence. It was now only a small part of the routine. My desperation morphed into resentment: of suburbia, of the isolation, of our dependence on a car. Enamored by the mental and physical energizing a city walk of exploration would bring, I longed to replicate the same experience in the suburbs. A limited availability of sidewalks, however, meant that my son and I would loop around in parks like two mice trapped in one of those exercise wheels. It didn't achieve the desired effect - for me, anyway. I could see his fascination with every moving object, from the breeze-rustled leaves, to the darting children on the playgrounds. He looked almost always quietly content. It amazed me.
Back home I would close the door to his room and lie on the floor next to him. My eyes would close, and I would only hear the little noises he would make as he went through his little conglomerate of baby chew-ons. The sounds would be so soothing they would put me to sleep, a coma-like state that would last for mere minutes. I would come to with a start, with an abrupt onset of panic, having realized that I'd lost track of his movements. He would look just as serene as ever. So easy-going, so the opposite of me, it seemed.
The cloud would hang lower. It felt like my husband was never there. It felt as if he didn't care. I felt as though I talked to no one, but my child. A keen awareness of my need to connect with other creatures of similar headspace only led to more agony. Thoughts, emotions smashed against the confines of my ribcage. They would twist and turn frantically trying to escape. Instead I would suffocate, strangle them ardently, methodically. But they would still reside stoically in the abyss of my soul. A struggle of life and death.
Then a childhood friend came from across the pond. My heart fluttered, and new brand of thoughts sparked my brain.The clouds began to shift. A glimmer of hope shone in. I came to. Enlivened.
What do you recall from your early #parenting days? We would love to hear below, or here.
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