The Hardest Cry

Something was wrong immediately after birth. They cut me open, took Owen out and I didn't want to look at him. I didn't care. I was so so tired both physically and mentally that I just wanted to close my eyes and sleep forever. But that wasn't the movie version of how I was supposed to feel. I was supposed to look at him and feel the most beautiful, powerful love I'd ever experienced. A love beyond understanding. Angels singing, announcing that true love had arrived. The doctors swept Owen away to be examined and cleared medically first thing anyway. I feel like they may have held him up for me to see but I also may have imagined that since. Because I don't remember the first time I saw him. I do remember the first time I held him. Because I put on a show. They brought him over and as I held him, I laughed and smiled and did the things that I had seen in movies and tv and figured what was expected of me. I stared at his all-knowing eyes and thought, Why don't I feel anything?, as I continued to coo my hellos. I didn't feel anything emotionally and there was the physical aspect as well. Because I had been shaking so badly before the surgery, I literally couldn't feel my arms. As I'm sitting here in my lavender-painted studio at my desk (which is really my old dining room table from my LA apartment) I am associating a heavy feeling with the first time I held Owen. As in, my arms were totally asleep. You know when a limb falls asleep and you can poke it and it feels like a hunk of meat, unattached yet attached to yourself? That's the feeling I have about that first encounter. Owen's seven pounds felt like a seventy pound weight on my chest. My mind and my body were, quite literally, numb.

Once the doctors and nurses had cleaned us both up, it was time to transfer us to the recovery room. They propped this ginoromous weight of a baby on my chest and nestled him in the crook of my arm. I felt panic. He was going to slide out of my dead arms on the way down the hall. There was no way I'd be able to hold him and keep him safe during the transfer. So as the nurses are arranging my arms and him in them, I say, "Can't Dan hold him?" And the nurses exchanged a concerned look. One said, "You don't want to hold your baby?" Her tone was clearly worried. Which pissed me off!! Don't shower me with pity and concern, lady. It's not that I don't want to hold him - I don't want to kill him! I snapped back, "Of course I do! But my arms are asleep. I'm afraid I'll drop him." The exchanged look of concern happened again. How dare they?! The other said, "You won't drop him. Don't worry." I felt dismissed. Don't worry?? I wanted to scream, "You don't know that!!! You don't know anything!!! And stop looking at me like something is wrong with me because I don't want to hurt my baby! Or have anything to do with him!" But instead I shut down, swallowed my sobs and let the heaviness of it all lay on my chest, along with my sweet baby, as they pushed me to the recovery room. I was too tired to do anything else.

It was when we were laying in the recovery room that the sobs stopped being swallowed. And the tears stopped being faked. I was trying to breastfeed for the first time and he wasn't really able to latch on and I thought maybe if I sang it would relax us both. And I'm not sure where Dan was because my memory is not with him in it. I'm pretty sure he was standing right by us but I didn't see him. Instead it was just me and Owen and I started to sing, "Hush little baby don't say a word, Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird..." and my voice cracked. Suddenly I was crying and I couldn't stop. I tried to keep singing through the tears and I am certain I sounded like a lunatic. The enormity of singing to my baby for the first time was too much for me to handle. Maybe that sounds like a typical reaction, that singing to your baby to help calm him for the first time is a big event. And feeling emotional about it is nothing to be concerned about. But these weren't tears of joy. There was an immense sorrow that was starting to creep into the corners of my heart. The water was starting to seep under the door. I was in complete denial that I had a baby all of the sudden. I couldn't reconcile the version of actual events with my imagined version of how it was all "supposed" to happen. So the fact that I was singing to my baby for the first time didn't compute. And why did I pick this song? Is this what I really wanted to sing for the first time to Owen? No. Did I actually have a "first song" picked out? No. But he was crying and I wanted him to hush. And I wanted to eat. Oh my god why won't they just let me eat?

That is when the tears started.

***

But it was on our way home from the hospital when they reached their peak of hysteria. And it started as I was being wheeled out. Rolling down the incredibly long maternity ward hallway I started sobbing. This is not how anything was supposed to go. There were women there with family and friends. People waiting in the visitors room outside the maternity ward doors. We had no one. And I suddenly realized what a mistake that was. And what were we doing leaving with a baby? I wasn't ready. I had made a mistake by having a baby. I was trying to smile. I was trying not to cry as hard as I was crying. But I was gasping for air. The nurse didn't say anything. She didn't ask if I was ok. But that didn't matter because even if she had, I would have said that I was and blamed it on hormones. Once we were in the car, I stopped trying to control the crying. I sat in the backseat next to Owen and was a hysterical mess. Dan asked what was wrong. And I didn't know. I couldn't explain it. But I was experiencing the deepest level of grief that I had ever felt. So Dan just let me cry.

When we walked in the door to our apartment, I collapsed.

I wasn't ready. When we left for the hospital on Friday night, I did not think for a second that we would be returning on Tuesday with a baby. I wanted to labor at home, go for walks around the neighborhood, stopping and holding on to Dan as a contraction would pass. I wanted to bounce on my exercise ball and breathe through the pain. And it's astounding looking back now how important that narrative was to me. Becoming a mother was a journey and I had a way that I wanted to the story to go. And the way that it actually did go was miles away from my plan.