For the first three days, everything is okay. Better than okay.
There are hard parts, of course. I have to figure out nursing, and it doesn’t come naturally to either Zara or me. A lactation consultant comes in, and after an hour of arranging and rearranging Zara’s little face against my big swollen boob, we finally achieve a “latch” that she approves of. When Zara nurses, I study the curve of her face with wonder, seeing hints of Kane, Amanda, and Barb in her features.
Kane has to teach me to change diapers, and the nurse has to teach both of us to give a bath. She seems shocked to discover that this isn’t a skill we were born with. But we’re fast learners and Kane is next to me every step of the way—well, except for not having boobs. He can’t help that part. But he does all the changing and burping and hands me Zara, clean and sweet, to feed.
When we take her home from the hospital, she cries in the car seat, and exhausted, I weep a little, too, not sure if she’s okay or hurting, or if she’ll ever be able to ride in the car without crying.
By the third day my boobs are as hard as rocks, but we spend the first night in Kane’s house together, the two of us in bed and Zara swaddled in a bassinet beside us, and even though I can’t really let Kane cuddle me because my boobs hurt too much—and so does everything from my waist down—it still feels pretty wonderful.
Then comes the fourth day.
On the fourth day, for reasons known only to Zara and God, she wakes up and wants to nurse loads more.
Kane keeps burping and changing her and trying to rock her to sleep, but she fusses and cries and he has to bring her back to me again.
My nipples are sore and I’m exhausted, because last night wasn’t great, either.
We run out of wipes. We both thought there were more packs somewhere, but we can’t find them anywhere. Kane has to go to the grocery store to get them. While he’s gone, I nurse Zara until she’s in a milk coma, and she conks out against my breast. I breathe a deep sigh of relief and drift into sleep myself, baby in arms. But I’m wakened by my phone vibrating next to me.
My mom.
I remember that she’s supposed to be in Portland this week, and that she said she’d stop by. For the first time in years, I feel a sharp longing for her, if only so I can ask her if it was like this for her, too. How long it lasted, how she lived through it.
My mother could be comforting when it fit her plans. I remember her holding my hair back when I was sick, cuddling me in bed.
I grab it and swipe it open. Yes, I’m half naked. No, I don’t care.
“Goldy girl!” she says, beaming at me, and I remember, with a surge of something that might be love, that once upon a time, she was the center of my universe, like I’m Zara’s now.
“Hi, mom. I had a baby.”
“So you did,” she says. “Can you turn her so I can see her face?”
“I’m afraid to move her. This is the first time she’s been calm in hours.”
“Another time then,” she says, with a small shrug. “You’re keeping her, huh?”
I ignore that—too tired to take it on—and instead ask, “Are you in the area?”
“What?” Her face is blank, like the question’s absurd. “Oh. No. I decided to skip Portland after all.”
I’m not surprised. I shouldn’t be surprised. And yet somehow it catches me like a punch to the gut.
Maybe Zara feels it, the bloom of pain in my chest, the rush of adrenaline through my veins, because she wakes up right then and starts to fuss.
“That noise!” my mother says. “It goes straight through your brain like a nail through cheese. I’m hanging up now. Call me when she’s calm sometime.”
She ends the call.
Zara chooses that moment to escalate to her fussing to wailing.
Kane
Mari nurses and nurses but Zara won’t stop fussing. Mari’s nipples are red and chafed. I bring her scrambled eggs with bacon and a tumbler of water. I change and bathe and rock Zara, and I coax a little sleep out of her, but then she’s up again, mouth open, fussing.
Mari dutifully nurses again, but after a while, tears start streaming down Mari’s face, and then she’s crying, her shoulders heaving.
“Don’t cry, you’re doing great,” I say, but that makes her cry more.
Wait till the baby won’t stop crying and you’re nursing around the clock…
Mari’s mom’s words echo through my brain. Mari and I never got a chance to talk about that phone call, because she went into labor right then, and everything since has been a blur.
Mari sounded strong that day, on the phone with her mom. Strong and certain. Thanks for the warning, Mom, she’d said. I know you’re worried about me, but I’m going to be fine.
She doesn’t seem fine right now, however. She seems anything but fine.
“Mari?” I ask. “Unless you tell me flat out you don’t want me to? I’m calling my mom and my sister.”
She closes her eyes. I take it as a yes.
I grab my phone and send an SOS text.
I need reinforcements.
Mari
“Shhh,” someone says. “You’re going to be all right.”
The same someone takes Zara from me. Lucy. She lays her down on a blanket on the floor, swaddles her with a few expert twists, and scoops her up again. A moment later she sweeps her out of the room, trailing a loud “shushing” sound behind her.
“What’s she doing?”
“Don’t worry about that,” someone else says. Amanda. “Drink this.”
I take the cup of hot tea and obediently sip it.
“It has fennel and fenugreek in it. It’ll help with your milk.”
Amanda sits on one side of me, Barb on the other. They each put a hand on my arm. Just that. No words.
After a moment or two, Amanda takes my tea and hands me my abandoned nursing bra, and I realize I’m naked from the waist up. My boyfriend’s sister and his mother are here and I’m not wearing clothes.
And I didn’t even notice.
I slip into the bra and sip the tea. I can hear Zara fussing intermittently in the other room. Every time she does, my milk lets down.
The fussing subsides more and more, and then there’s only the sound of shushing. But my tears won’t stop falling. I’m so tired.
And I’m so bad at this.
Even Kane is better at it than I am. At least he knew how to change a diaper. And he’s more confident with the baths. And he doesn’t fall apart into a whimpering mess every time she cries.
“Where’s Kane?” I finally ask. I’m not sure how much time has passed since they arrived.
“I sent him on an errand. Lucy rented a hospital grade pump for you. We’ll show you how to use it. So you can start pumping once or twice a day and Kane can give her some bottles. You have no idea how much that’ll help. I sent Kane to pick it up.”
“That’s—thank you.”
The idea of not having to feed her absolutely every time she cries? Makes me feel like weeping again, with relief.
Lucy comes back into view, Zara slumped against her shoulder.
“Asleep?” I ask.
“Asleep,” she affirms.
I burst into tears all over again. “I couldn’t calm her down.”
“It’s because you’re the milk,” Amanda says. “Sometimes someone else has to do it.”
“I couldn’t make her happy.”
“Shhh,” Lucy says. “You’re okay. You need to drink the tea and then you need to nap while we hold Zara.”
“I can’t,” I wail. “I can’t nap. She’ll wake up and need to be fed and I’m the only one—”
“You can nap. She’ll be fine for a little while. I think she finally got enough,” Lucy says.
I cry harder.
“You’re all right, hon,” Lucy says. “This is the hardest day. She’s on a growth spurt and trying to gain back to her birth weight and all the hormones go bonkers on day four. It feels impossible. You just have to trust me; it gets easier again.”
“But what if it doesn’t?” I sob. “I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, you’re going to have to tell him I can’t do this—”
A sound makes me look up. Kane is standing in the doorway, a small satchel over his shoulder. His eyes are big and shocked.
“Kane,” Amanda says. “Wait.”
But he doesn’t. He hands the satchel to his sister, turns on a heel, and goes out the door.
Amanda and Lucy exchange looks.
“I got her,” Lucy says.
“I got him,” Amanda says.
And, getting to her feet, she chases Kane out the door.