In five weeks he grew three and half inches. With no stretch marks or anything. Everything grew, his ears his legs his fingers. Or everything except, Rosie promises she learned in Science class, his eyeballs, which will stay the same size his whole life.
THIS is three and a half inches.
That’s an extra length of half his leg that he sprouted right before my eyes.
Because just as it seems like I cannot be separated from reality anymore, that I cannot exist like this for one more day in still-too-tight sweatpants with dogs eating pacifiers and laundry rotting like compost piles all over the house and my oversized t-shirts smelling like sour milk and sitting one more time in baby pee on the bed, things shift.
Ten pounds, my mom said, is the magic number. I’ve also heard six weeks is the magic age. Maybe we’re born just a bit too early, I’ve read that. With such large heads, we need to get out still all a little premature. The fourth trimester is what I’ve heard it coined — those first three months when the baby is still just trying to establish equilibrium.
Ten pounds last week and six weeks old in a few days, I made dinner and did laundry for something other than the baby’s bum. For four nights in a row Henry has slept — though intermittently, as babies should so that they can be fed — for over seven hours. Last night he fell asleep on my chest at 10:30 and didn’t wake up until 3. Four! and! a! half! hours! straight! We nursed and shifted around for an hour, his eyes so beautiful and dark in the dark room, then he was back down again until 6 for half an hour, then down again until 7:30. And in these four nights, Steve has only gotten up only once to change a diaper. I am knocking on wood, of course, but four and a half hours straight of sleep!
And at this point babies start to smile: there have been hints, I feel so shy when they happen, maybe-maybe smiles, especially in the morning after he’s slept and eaten. Even blind babies smile, I’ve read.
There are cardinals in the dawn redwood in our front yard.
He just makes more sense now. I can read him better. What is it my love, I say. What is it my sweet love, my good boy. He looks more and more beautiful to me now. These days it’s still so early in our new life, but we’ve passed a point, we’re no longer so divorced from reality. Yesterday I ventured out to the mailbox, all the way to the end of the driveway and back! with the boy in my arms, and Steve gone for five hours, me and the boy out in the world together, and I didn’t fear he was going to explode.
I shouldn’t complain because I slept, intermittently, seven hours last night, but he hasn’t slept more than five minutes today and now it’s after 4. We woke at 8 and went for an hour walk with him strapped to me, and he slept for that. Then we took him to his craniosacral therapy session to try to help him use his tongue more efficiently, and then we went to officially look inside several houses in town that might inspire us to move, and in each house he fussed and cried while I rocked him and nursed him and shushed him as we walked through these houses and tried to picture our lives inside of them. This is the room that you’ll play in, Henry, and this is the yard that could be yours. Then I nursed him as we ate our lunch, but he still didn’t sleep. So I nursed him as we researched houses by our fireplace, but he still didn’t sleep, until I was raw and Steve took over and walked him at last to sleep. Steve put him in his chair, I took this picture
and he woke within a minute. Now Steve is walking him again in the dining room, circles and circles around the table, playing the Pixies on the stereo, which seems to work. For me, what works is singing to him “Three Blind Mice” because it’s so sad and aggressive, their tails chopped off and their blindness and the harmony of the tune with an absent melody. My new favorite sound is the house quiet, Steve walking Henry to sleep, the floor boards creaking underneath his feet here and there in circles.
He can see me now. He stares right in my eyes. I find myself feeling shy. It’s 2am and my hair is in my face. My hands are so dry from washing them all the time, they scrape on his softest skin. He stares with complete fascination and I think, these are the moments that will define for him beauty, mother, love. We’re vulnerable and raw.
If I were not there at the birth of this boy, I don’t think I would believe that this is the person who was inside of me. If I didn’t have one image in my head of his body curled up under my left leg on the birthing table, I don’t know if I could correlate my swollen belly to the baby I hold.
Maybe I haven’t known enough births, maybe I have a disconnect with my own body. But still, after 40-plus weeks and seeing the baby come out with my own eyes, I can’t believe that I grew and housed a human, this human.
Henry is a baby, not a scrawny infant, and in a way he’s merged with all babies. He’s cute, he’s soft, he wears really cute clothes and hats (thanks, gift-givers!). He’s removed from the abstraction of birth. He’s been named and clothed, his hair has been combed. He’s gained 1/3 of his weight since he was born (from about 7 pounds then to about 10 pounds now). I rarely see him without his clothes on. When I do, when I give him a bath, I have flashbacks to that birthing room that night he was born.
It makes me think what I suspected when he was inside of me: a uterus is a sort of purgatory, a place where there is a soul sometimes but it hovers, not quite inside the body. It’s not that I’m a visual person and I needed to see him for myself. I really do think that his spirit lodged with his flesh when he began to breathe. When he was being born it really felt like he was born.
It was the sixth day of scarcity. I had just enough milk to give to Henry through a complicated system of shields and pumps — a system that doesn’t produce as much milk as the boy would for himself if he could just suck. The body is smart that way. But it meant that at 11pm when I was putting him to sleep, I would wait until he was really hungry, then give him three ounces and hope that would put him to sleep, even if I had four ounces in the bottle: I needed that last ounce to tide him over at 1am or 2am when he would wake famished and Steve would feed him that last ounce while I pumped some more, stopping every few minutes to pour what I had into the bottle in Steve’s hands, again and again, several times a night.
We drove this weekend just before the storm to see my parents in Pennsylvania (our plan was to drive to Philadelphia, but about 28 inches of snow stopped us). We arrived in my hometown just as the snow began. In the car, squeezed in the backseat with the boy and his car seat and the bulky pump device and the diaper bag and my coat and some food, I would plug in the pump every two hours for the seven-hour trip and I would pump on demand, never an ounce ahead or behind.
And then by nighttime we were exhausted and the boy had slept for the car ride and wasn’t going to sleep despite the darkness, no way, and it was midnight, then 1am, then 2am and still he was awake, then 3am. And he was hungry, and I’d pumped all I could and fed him through the shield and I was bleeding and raw and my whole body felt like a toothache. I gave him that final ounce in the bottle and still he was hungry, or anxious, or whatever makes babies cry, and I had nothing to give him. I had nothing to feed him or soothe him. Scarcity. A baby crying, when it’s your own baby, it feels like all this time there have been strings knotted to all your organs and suddenly the ends of the strings are being pulled, tugged, do something.
The next day I tried to make up for the deficit by pumping every hour and a half instead of every two hours, squatting in the corner of the bedroom with that ugly device that hurts, it feels like it’s breaking my heart. Still not enough. There with my family in the house of my childhood, I felt vulnerable. I felt like I might have a nervous breakdown if I couldn’t feed this baby. And I wasn’t even feeding him: I was pumping so much that it was Steve who was feeding the baby each time he cried for food, not me. I was starting to not remember the last time I held Henry.
I bought formula. I went to my hometown’s only natural food store and bought what they had, and then I drove to another store to compare it with other brands there, and then I drove back to the natural food store and then I drove home. I was shaking in my lungs, this is how much I didn’t want to do this. I feared allergies and food intolerance and another night of an upset stomach and crying I can’t assuage.
I fed him one ounce and he lapped it up with his voracious clicking and sucking. I fed him another ounce and he did the same, with no sign of upset. The next night I fed him one more ounce, by the nightlight of outdoor lights reflecting off of snow. I was suddenly three ounces ahead. And by morning I had pumped more than I had ever pumped before, my body relaxed, my anxiety diminished, energy flowing again.
Through all six lactation specialists that I’ve met with, not one ever said to me that, look, I’m stressed enough, I’m doing everything I can, I could supplement just one day, just an ounce or two, so that I could be a calm mother with a supplement instead of a frazzled mother who lets my baby starve for my morals.
But also oh my goodness that formula is a slippery slope. Because the next night I was thinking, I could really use a strong drink, I could just give him this formula… though of course I didn’t. And I started thinking, I don’t have to be stressed like I was last week about going out to get my hair cut and leaving Steve with barely enough milk, he could just give him this formula… And then I started thinking about going to Mexico, just for a weekend. And pretty soon I felt expendable, even just in theory. Three ounces is enough formula for a while.
Snow falling. We are quiet, too. The sky is quiet. The trees are tentative. The boy is strapped to my chest as we walk. I get to walk again. He falls asleep every time.
Most of the time we are inside. Steve wakes early, sees Rosie off to school while the baby and I pretend to sleep. Some nights sleep is scant, some nights I wake feeling like all I do is lie in bed with a tiny boy pressed against me. He doesn’t — he shouldn’t — know how to roll but he rolls toward me. He reaches his arms out their full six inches to feel if I’m there. Steve runs on the treadmill while the boy and I move in and out of sleep. When Steve opens the bedroom door, sweaty and calm and very awake, I’ve done a morning feeding and am off to take my shower. When I come out, the boy is changed, dressed, and Steve is making juice or already at work from home, the baby in his left arm, tapping away at his keyboard with his right index finger.
Then Steve goes to work — last week only for two-hour stretches, to see that I’m okay between tears with the feedings. This week he’s been gone for four-hour stretches. Four hours with the boy and the snow, sitting in our chair by the window, walking around the house with him strapped to my chest. He’s not the kind of baby who likes to be swaddled. Rosie was, still is. This boy takes a minute of grunting strapped to me before he submits to the contours of the sling.
He likes to flail his arms as he sleeps. He wakes and stretches, his back arched, his chin doubled, making grunting sounds, his face turning red in a flash. I hold him in my hands and he stretches past 180 degrees, his eyes looking upside down at the world. Just now he is stretching. If he wakes in his sling, he lets out a wail, strapped and unable to stretch. Whatever did he do inside of me, both of us so squished.
What I love is when he wakes, stretches, his face assuming one hundred or so expressions before he settles on calm awake. I love his hands, how he doesn’t really know they’re his but he’s learning, he holds onto me as he eats. I love changing his diaper, seeing him as he was born, his chicken legs kicking. At first he cried loud enough you could hear it in Ohio when we changed him, but now, sometimes, he seems to like it. He stretches out his legs, he makes cooing sounds, he stares at the fascinating wall. He stares at light. When he’s crying and life seems too hard, I tell him that it’s still better that he’s out here in the world because, look, out here he can see.
People have been asking how it’s going, and they ask if he’s a good baby. How it’s been going: of course it is wonderful, our boy is alive and we have a roof over our heads and our world has sprung open. And also of course it’s difficult, as it would be for anyone: there’s just so much to learn, and our life change is huge. Is he a good baby: of course, he tells me when he’s hungry, as he should, and he tells me when his stomach hurts and when he’s cold, and he tells me clearly and often. Is he an easy baby? I wouldn’t say so, but I’ve never had a baby before. Does he sleep through the night? No, but he’s not supposed to. These people mean well who ask these questions, but I have no idea how to answer any of them. Our life is good and beautiful and plentiful, so we are well. And also having a new baby is hard — all this work, day and night, to keep a tiny groaning human alive, and in repayment not even a smile yet. It’s a complicated and beautiful time, inside this house that looks unchanged from the outside, surrounded by snow.
If the auditory world is measured not by what is said but how loud, and if time is measured in two-hour increments (give or take an hour or fifteen minutes or a minute depending on the baby’s needs), not by whether there is light in the sky, then the substance of these weeks is measured in milk and whether or not there’s enough of it. Milk.
Like kangaroo milk, mine is pink for a reason: the boy developed early on, we’ve just learned, a bad habit of pinching with his tongue instead of lapping, digging craters at the source. So if we keep going as we have, there will be no skin left. Instead, we use our bpa-free plastic bottles and I wear the sorry silicone nipple shield, the one that looks like a thimble with an orb around it. Out of it he gets such a little amount of milk that I have no idea if he’s crying because of hunger or some other need. We are so early in learning how to read one another. Crying is a language, I’m learning that. I’m sorry, boy, that milk comes out of a piece of plastic that won’t stay in place instead of skin. I cry, too.
Milk pooling, dripping, leaking, staining, spilling. Liquid gold, that’s what Steve calls it, and I measure time by how long it’s been since I’ve pumped and how long the milk has been sitting in a bottle. I measure temperature by the thermometer that tells me if it’s reached warm-enough: milk out of the body is, to me, surprisingly warm. But if the boy is crying, then, tapping my foot at the stove, room-temperature milk will do, but no colder, or okay not much colder, or okay right out of the fridge. In the cost-benefit analysis, I can’t bear his tears.
Milk coming out like a broken ATM machine. Like swiping the credit card at the grocery store and not seeing my favorite word in that moment: Approved. I am never more than an ounce ahead of his needs. I am teaching him already about not-enough.
Milk spilling. Last night, sitting in the living room with the boy, I hear the sound of something drop out of the fridge and Rosie is very sorry. I say a word like milk, in that it has four letters, then I say another. I am up every two hours in the night making up for the deficit, trying to wake before he does, to pump very quietly, to feed him — the most basic need.
If I’m not pumping I’m preparing to pump, I’m washing bottles I’m counting time, if I’m not counting time I’m feeding him quarter-teaspoonfuls out of a thimble that pinches open the wounds: fresh blood every time. If I’m not breathing yoga breaths over him as he eats through the silicone thimble and if I’m not pumping then I’m crying about milk. If I’m not crying about milk then I’m googling tongue-thrust and baby latch problems and occupational therapist and craniosacral therapy.
Last night, maybe it was the spicy seafood salad we had for lunch, the boy was inconsolable, except if he was drinking milk, from 6pm to 11pm. He pounded on my breasts which would not with the silicone thimble let him latch and if he couldn’t latch then he couldn’t get even a drop. The milk I had pumped before dinner I couldn’t use, I didn’t want to risk that he would feel sick any longer with whatever spiciness it might contain. I couldn’t dump it. Liquid gold. Dirty money. I gave it to the dogs.
Babies aren’t perfectly quiet, even when they sleep. I can’t figure out how to take this baby to church and not feel like I’ve sneaked in a noisy ticking time bomb. There was another baby beside us on Sunday, and together our babies disturbed the peace with tiny sounds that wouldn’t have mattered inside our house — grunts and coos and burps and farts.
When Henry lets out an explosive fart in our house — sometimes it can last five seconds, and sometimes there are several in a row, I say we can’t take him to church just yet and laugh as I picture that sound echoing in a moment of silence. But while he’s actually there in church with us, it’s not funny. Church is now organized in my mind into the parts that are loud and the parts that are quiet. I have no idea what readings occurred or which songs were song.
On our first Sunday with Henry, he fell asleep and didn’t wake for the whole service, but he grunted in his sleep at one point, the tiniest little baby grunt, and two older women whipped there heads around to see what had caused the commotion.
Last Sunday the woman with the baby beside us seemed unphased by her baby’s sounds. She had her other two young daughters with her, too, and they were no quieter — though certainly they weren’t loud. And she nursed throughout the service while I, still not graceful with nursing, had pumped, and Steve fed Henry from a plastic bottle.
NOT SIMILAC, I wanted to write in red on the bottle. STILL HAVING TROUBLE NURSING. FORGIVE ME. I have so much to learn about forgetting what others think. This baby is going to have to teach me so much about disregarding the opinions of others — as we flail our way to enlightenment in the very last pew.
