CHANNEL B

FOR THE FIRST FEW MONTHS after my son was born, I just called him “The Baby,” or sometimes “Him” with a capital H—huge proper nouns to illustrate how completely he took over my life. Is he eating, not eating? Pooping, not pooping? What color is the poop? How long ago was the poop? Did I mark the poop on the spreadsheet? I had spreadsheets. I had stuff—white noise CDs, magnetic blocks, and this super high-tech video monitor with a remote wireless screen and night vision, which made The Baby glow electric green in the dark like he was a C.I.A. target. It was a little unnerving, actually. It had two frequencies: an A channel and a B channel, in case you had two kids in separate rooms, and what’s interesting about this is that one of my neighbors must have owned this same monitor, because on Channel A, I saw my baby, and on channel B, I saw someone else’s.

And if I could see someone else’s, then someone else could see mine.

At the time, we lived in a third-floor walk-up in Uptown surrounded by other third-floor walk-ups. Jumping onto a neighbor’s Wi-Fi signal wasn’t much of a stretch, so perhaps the fact that I could toggle between babies shouldn’t have been so surprising. But it was. It was huge. I was obsessed. On one hand, it was totally creepy—stalking even—but later, after I got used to the idea… It became sort of magical, like walkie-talkies and CB radios when you’re a kid—connecting with someone across the void, adding your voice to the collective unconscious, feeling less alone in this crazy world, and who knows who might be listening?

Who knows who’s in that Uptown condo on Channel B?

A baby, to be a sure. But it wasn’t the baby I was obsessed with.

It was the mother.

My imagination went wild when I thought of the mother. Did she sit there, watching my kid in the dark? Did she question his bedtime? Wonder where I got his pajamas? How might she react if I left a sign in his crib that read: stop looking at my baby, you fucking voyeur!

Or this one: yay new friends! do you want to meet up at the park?

Or this one: i am terrified. i am so terrified that sometimes i can’t even breathe.

Any winter in Chicago is a force to be reckoned with, but 2008, if you recall, was like The Ice Planet of Hoth. Remember Hoth from Empire Strikes Back? Luke almost freezes to death, but Han Solo pushes him inside a dead tauntaun for body warmth? that Hoth, and The Baby was born right in the middle of it. My husband, Christopher, had to dig out our buried car, shovel the alley, and navigate Lakeshore Drive though a white-out blizzard. And that relentless, pounding snow stayed through January, February, March, and into April. I am part-time college teacher—no paid maternity leave—and since I’d taken the winter term off to be with The Baby, Christopher, a web designer, picked up extra projects to cover the difference. He worked all day, came home, and went back to work—sleeping three, maybe four hours a night—all while carrying the mortgage, the bills, The Baby—and me.

“Christopher,” I’d whisper, middle of the night, night after night. “The baby’s not breathing.”

We’d be in bed, Christopher lit from the blue glow of his laptop, building some website; me staring at my electric green, swaddled-up pretzel of a Baby. Ever since we’d moved him from our room to his own, that 5x5 inch screen was the center of my universe. Was The Baby sleeping? Was he moving? Was he breathing? He’s not breathing!

“Honey,” Christopher would say. He was so tired. He was trying so hard to be patient. “The Baby is fine.”

“The Baby is not fine.”

“He is.”

“He can’t breathe!”

“Megan—you need to sleep,” he’d say, which was true, of course, but have you read the Internet lately? Do you know what can happen to an infant if its mother turns her head for even a fraction of a second? Somebody’s always getting crushed under a Bungo or a Bipbap, or being abducted from their own backyard—thank you every episode ever of Law & Order SVU—and did you know some kid in the UK just got dragged off by a jackal?

I joke about it now, but the truth is this:

I was scared to sleep—The Baby might suffocate.

I was scared to go outside—The Baby might freeze.

I was scared he wasn’t eating, wasn’t latching, wasn’t gaining, wasn’t doing what the books had said he would do, and one day, after a particularly awful bout of screaming—him—and crying—both of us—I looked in the mirror and wondered who that girl was looking back. I was unbrushed, unwashed, and wearing the same yoga pants and empire-waist shirt every day. We all have things about ourselves that we know to be true, and suddenly I couldn’t remember any of them. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t laugh. I couldn’t connect with my friends.

I couldn’t see myself.

At the time, my understanding of postpartum depression was primarily shaped by Brooke Shield’s memoir, Down Came the Rain: crippling depression and suicidal thoughts. But since what I was experiencing, while heavy, didn’t seem that heavy; dark, but not really that dark; scary, but not, you know, like that—it didn’t occur to me to ask for help. I mean, I wasn’t going to hurt my kid. I wasn’t going to hurt myself.

Right?

Now, four years later, I know that the symptoms and intensity of postpartum depression are as varied as the flowers in a greenhouse. I wish I’d told someone. I didn’t need to feel that alone; just me in the frozen Chicago winter with my tiny, fragile baby.

And Channel B.

Whenever The Baby would fall asleep, I’d stare at his DayGlo body on the monitor, making sure he wasn’t suffocating—or levitating, or being dragged away by jackals, or whatever horrible thing I’d imagine—and then, once assured of his safety, I’d flip the channel to see how that Other Mother was doing. Maybe her kid was eating. Maybe she changed clothes occasionally. Maybe, for her, snow wasn’t a terrifying apocalypse but rather a Hallmark-like sprinkling of picturesque flakes—“Walking in a Winter Wonderland,” if you will. And yes, I know, it was completely intrusive and unethical and above all, ridiculous. Why was I comparing myself to this woman? I never even saw her! Mostly, there was just an empty crib. Sometimes there was a baby, wiggling and doing baby things, but the mother was a total non-entity. Until one night, I flipped over to Channel B and heard crying. Not from the baby—he was fast asleep, an angel—but somewhere in his room, a woman was sobbing. Heavy, gaspy, gulpy sobs.

They went on.

They went on and on.

I shouldn’t have listened.

But it was the first time since my son was born that I didn’t feel alone.

What finally changed things was spring. Birds! Green things! Grilling on the porch! Frozen blender drinks! Short skirts! Outdoor seating! Lemonade! Which you can get any time of year, but it tastes better in the sunshine! Sunshine! My God, how desperately I’d needed it! I’d wager most Chicagoans feel this way in spring, but for me, May 2008 was a Godsend; a great, mammoth hand reaching down out of the clouds and pulling me to my feet.

That May, The Baby became Caleb—smiling, laughing, responding; four months old and learning about the world outside my lap. I’d strap him in a backpack and walk through Uptown: Broadway to Argyle, down to the beach and back up Montrose, finding magic in everyday things. Plastic grocery bags: amazing. Tapping a glass with a spoon: kick-ass! Water in a dish: fun for hours! One morning he reached for a yellow street cleaning sign stapled to a tree, and suddenly I saw yellow as if I’d been blind to it for years:

Brake lights!

Parking lanes!

Taxis!

Flowers in a yard!

Lady in a yellow shirt pushing a stroller!

I stopped. She was pretty—early thirties, wearing yoga pants, and the yellow shirt had an empire-waist. She looked tired. And interesting, like there were all sorts of secret things about her that were set on pause for the time being.

She looked like how I saw myself.

We nodded at each other in solidarity. This, I had newly discovered, is the way moms do it: acknowledging the fact that even though you don’t know each other, you’re still a part of this great cosmic team—and then you check out each other’s kid. Hers was grabbing his toes in the stroller—so sweet. So adorable. So…familiar. I looked closer: yes, I knew this kid, and suddenly I saw him not all face-to-face on Lawrence Avenue, but electric green on a tiny hand-held screen.

I looked back at the mother.

“You know—” I started, then stopped, because, really, what would I have said?

stop looking at my baby?

you want to meet up at the park?

How about the truth: you helped save me.

“Your baby is beautiful,” she said.

“So’s yours,” I said.

We stood there.

We stood there long past what is appropriate for strangers. I like to think it’s because she was thinking the same thing I was. That maybe she, too, had flipped channels in the middle of the night, trying to connect with someone across the void or feel less alone in this crazy world. Maybe she’d overheard me crying in Caleb’s bedroom, months ago when everything still seemed so cold.

“How are you?” I asked her. I wasn’t just saying it; I really, really wanted to know.

She smiled. “I’m getting better.”

“Me too,” I said. “I’m getting better.”

It was something about myself that I knew was true.