witness – seven weeks
What do you do when you’re a writer who is taking care of your baby all day? Write, right? During nap time, while nursing, in the middle of the night when you can’t fall back asleep? The problem is that there is nothing to write about. My interiority has vanished. Temporarily, I’m sure, but it’s still jarring to lose one’s mind. Every day is the same, and includes very few original or even diverting thoughts. If you watched me, I’m not sure what you’d see. For someone who is a poet, my life becomes shockingly unpoetic. I suppose it always was, but I used to be able to spin all this straw into gold somehow. That used to be my straightforward work. Now I look at all the straw around me and kind of just want nothing to do with it. Let it pile up, walk around it, sweep it out the back door. These days are made to be taken away, pulled out from under me like a rug. Babies are magical and so quickly gone. They grow very gradually – you’re shocked when the tiny shirt is suddenly tighter than it used to be. So quickly, all meaning nothing, all meaning everything.
My days are oriented around ritualistic tasks and little else. I putter around. I hold Tommy while he eats, while he burps, while he fusses. He is seven weeks old. I am seven weeks his mother. Sometimes I lay him down to “play,” or really just either lay on his tummy or his back looking at things. It seems that what he likes best is when I walk him around. I carry him facing out so he can watch the house pass by, and he is content. Am I content? My mind either can’t focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds, or latches onto something with a hyperfocus that is almost unbreakable. I catch up on the last season of The Bachelorette, watching only ambiently but with relish. I fall down rabbit holes – obsessively reading posts on the Dairy-Free Breastfeeding Facebook Group with a gnawing dread. I cut dairy out of my own diet because Tommy produces a succession of terrible green mucousy diapers that don’t let up, becomes progressively more gassy and uncomfortable. In the group there are thousands of mothers like me, grasping at straws, similarly obsessing amidst the monotony of infant care, trying to help their babies feel better, grieving the loss of comfort foods, trying to find alternatives and sharing frustration at the inevitable “slip up,” often not the mother’s fault, that sets back the detox clock and temporarily brings the baby’s symptoms back. I read the group like it’s a dishy novel or an HBO drama. It stresses me out but I can’t stop, all these disembodied moms trying to figure out what to do, asking questions that have already been answered a lot of times. I’ve always been one to excessively research any problem that pops up in my life that I don’t understand. I read the group so much that I could begin to answer people’s questions myself. That’s probably a red flag! Meanwhile, I hold my baby as he struggles to poop or burp. I change his strange diapers. It is what it is. I do what I can do. I could think about it all so much less than I do. But what else is there to think about?
What does all this time mean? How am I wasting it?
I love holding his hands. I love hoisting him up on my shoulder. I love his body, his physicality. Of course I do, I gave birth to him. I will love his body forever. And right now his body is really all I have of him, the most vivid part. Soon his mind will blossom too, his selfhood, his soul. But right now he is his body and his body is my work. I tend to his body, keep it clean and warm and growing. It’s his body I hold, his skin I touch. I talk to him, but he wouldn’t mind if I was silent. He is mostly silent except for occasional coos that make me melt with maternal pride and wonder, and cries that make me grimace in pain with him, on his behalf. Language will mean something to him soon but it doesn’t yet. It’s all music. It’s all noise.
And I am my body. My body is all that means anything to him. His whole life, my body will have always been the most important part of my having been his mother. My physicality, the fact that I exist and am for him. It doesn’t really matter who I am, not now at least. I am my face, my warmth, my arms. I am hands and scent, eyes, hair falling to tickle his face. Fingers snapping him into his sleep sack, signaling that it’s time to sleep. Motion. Walking, rocking. He’s heavy, and growing heavier. I struggle sometimes to move him smoothly, feel my own body’s fatigue when Isaiah comes home and he’s in someone else’s arms for a while, or when I lay him down in his bassinet. Little sack of potatoes, little sandbag, suitcase. He’s a load I carry around. I won’t call him a burden, but what is a burden but a small heavy thing to fling over one’s shoulder?
I feel an urge to document everything. I take hundreds of pictures of Tommy and it never seems like enough. I post too many of them on instagram, oversharing I’m sure. But what else to do with them? What to do with the desire to share something, anything, about the magic of an infant’s incidental moments? Each moment vanishes. I’ve forgotten entire days. He keeps getting bigger.
My breasts fill and then empty. I worry about oversupply and undersupply in turn. It feels impossible that it’s working, and that it will keep working. Sometimes breastfeeding feels effortless, sometimes I look at the baby’s latch and wonder – is this right? It must be because it doesn’t hurt and he’s gaining weight, but the mystery of it all. I resent his dairy allergy, the fact that it turns my milk sinister for a while, hurting him from within. I read on the facebook group that it’s recommended to breastfeed through the detox process, but this means there’s a lag time before the improvement as the proteins work their way our of my body then his. I feel some unhelpful self-pity. Why this issue, why us? Most babies can digest breastmilk just fine no matter what the mother eats. So, why? A fluke? In the hierarchy of things that could go wrong this is so minor, so small, but it’s still a deviation from the norm.
In my most pitiful moments, sometimes I think to myself, “I’m not having any fun!” This isn’t entirely true, of course, but it’s mostly true. I wouldn’t call this a particularly fun moment of my life. There isn’t much pleasure beyond the pleasure of my baby’s body – holding him close day by day, feeling myself sustaining him and that work sustaining me. I can’t go anywhere or do anything. There’s not really anything I’m looking forward to. Time stretches ahead of me, all full of all the same things I’m already doing, all filled with Tommy growing in tiny increments. It is tedious. Wonderful but tedious. So, no, I’m not really having any fun. And I’m not sure when the fun will come back to me. I don’t know how it would, what form it would take. I’m assuming that I’ll enjoy taking Tommy places and doing things with him when he’s a little older. Showing him new things, planning outings or activities. But is that my life now? Will I really enjoy that? What is fun? What do I like to do?
The future will mostly be filled by taking care of Tommy. It’s time consuming. Right now it consumes almost all of my time. And caring for your baby does not at any point feel optional. That’s something that I didn’t know or couldn’t quite expect before experiencing it. Due to hormones or biology or just pure love, you are compelled to respond to your child, to do whatever they need you to do. When they cry you can’t ignore it – you don’t want to, even in your darkest moments. To care for your baby is to care for yourself. Even something like cutting dairy from my diet, something I sincerely didn’t want to do, became such a natural choice. If the toss up is pizza or the health of my baby’s developing gut, I have to choose my baby. But it isn’t fun! I love pizza! This love is sacrificial which is a pithy and even cozy thing to say until you are the one making the sacrifice. I hand over my time, almost all of it. Lay it down, watch it be carried away. The sacrifice is easy to make, and it feels good because I have to make it. But I have no other choice. I already can’t remember how I felt before.
Tommy is right now one of those magic babies that can be laid down “drowsy but awake” and fall asleep. Apparently this is some sort of holy grail for baby sleep, and though sleep trainer gurus try to tell you that you can make your baby be one of these babies, it seems like it’s really just the luck of the draw. There’s nothing I did to make this happen (other than repeatedly putting him down for naps in the same way in the same place at the same regular intervals, the very simplest of sleep strategies), the kid just likes to sleep! I got lucky, at least for the time being. I’m afraid that even writing this down will jinx it and suddenly Tommy will become a screaming banshee every time I try to put him to bed – it could happen. Sometimes it does happen. Babies are so changeable, like the weather. But I’m writing now during one of these magic naps where I lay him down and snap him into his expensive wool sleep sack that really does seem to help him settle better and his eyes are blinky but open as I walk away. He fusses and wiggles for two minutes, and then conks out and sleeps for at least forty minutes, usually more. Incredible. I’m so happy for him when he sleeps, his hands in two tight fists flung up above his head. I’m so happy he’s getting what he needs, rest, warmth, an hour or two in his little secondhand bassinet. A safe place separate from me where he’s okay. Hard to articulate how good it feels.
The nights are still awful though. They could be much worse, but even the good nights feel bad. It’s terrible to be woken up by crying, even when you know it’s totally normal and developmentally appropriate, that it’s what’s supposed to happen. It jerks you awake, and you lay there for thirty seconds or so hoping it will stop. Sometimes longer, and then you feel terrible, so you jump up and soothe and apologize to you poor sad baby. Every so often Tommy cries in his sleep and then quiets again, so I lay there, horizontal, wanting to sleep, waiting and listening to try to figure out what kind of cry it is. Isaiah doesn’t wake up, he’s a heavy sleeper. I wake at every peep.
Right now the bassinet is on Isaiah’s side of the bed, which just makes sense given how the room is arranged, but which is terribly annoying for me, the main night carer. Anytime I have to tend to Tommy I have to stand up, walk around the bed, do what ever needs to be done, and then walk back around and get back into bed. We really ought to switch him over to my side of the bed, but I’m worried about two things.
One: If we change anything, even where the bassinet is located in the room, will it ruin the very tenuous things that seem to be working? Will Tommy be jostled out of his tiny sense of sleep consistency?
Two: If he’s on my side of the bed, will I sleep even more poorly, listening even more closely, watching even more vigilantly? Will I lose even the small sensation of autonomy I feel by not being the closest adult to him at night time?
Despite these two worries, I’m working up to the idea of making the switch. It’s amazing how much I think about it, like all the other worries. It should be a very simple decision, but it isn’t. I keep thinking, I’ll do it now, for this next nap! and then I don’t. When something is working, it’s terrifying to mess with it. But “working” is a relative term. Tommy wakes two to three times each night, needing to eat. He usually also poops (because of all his weird poop problems, most babies start to grow out of overnight pooping around this time) which means I have to change his diaper, which wakes both of us up more than either of us wish. He usually falls back asleep easily after eating a little more, but by that point I’m usually sort of wide awake. You know, all the walking around the bed. It’s weird to be wide awake multiple times each night. It makes the nights feel much longer than they ought to feel. In the night I feel so sad, so lonely, especially when I can’t fall back asleep though I’m exhausted. I rarely sleep for more than three and a half hours at once. A handful of times Tommy has slept for five hours straight – waking up after those stretches felt incredible.
This morning I bought expensive baby lotion. I don’t buy myself expensive skincare, but I hardly think twice about buying expensive skincare for my baby. There is a very weird pleasure in buying things for the baby, one I’ve never experienced buying things for myself. I always feel guilty when I buy things for myself. Somehow it feels noble to get him things that he needs. (“Need” – another relative term.) I noticed a patch of extremely dry skin around Tommy’s eyebrows and realized that I have never ever put any soap or lotion on his face. I’ve used coconut oil and baby soap on his body and have wiped him all over with washcloths in the bathtub, but I’ve never moistureized his face. It almost seems wrong to, but now it seems like I must. The horror of seeing his perfect skin peeling! The worry that somehow I’ll make it worse by trying to make it better! It’s things like this that surprise me with their simultaneous gravity and uselessness. The dry skin isn’t necessarily hurting him. It isn’t a big deal. It may resolve itself on its own! But it’s up to me to do something about it. I have to always figure out what to do. The constant “figuring out” begins to wear on me. I expect it will wear on me until he’s an adult.
I talk about my baby’s poop on the phone with a board certified lactation consultant who tells me that the dairy might not be the thing after all. I’m not sure I believe her. She tells me to do stuff that conflicts with what the moms in the facebook group say. I probably should listen to her — she’s a breastfeeding “expert” after all — but for some reason I feel a sense of solidarity with the facebook moms, with their war stories, their homegrown research, their links to studies and advice and faq’s, their pure commitment to their babies and to other moms, like me. It seems to me that no one on earth knows more about cows milk protein intolerance in babies than these moms, not even lactation consultants, not even pediatricians. There is something I am coming to learn, something I already know – a mom on a mission to do what’s good for their baby becomes one of the most powerful people on earth. This can be dangerous. This can be amazing. It’s hard to determine the line between the two.
Despite my growing fascination and wonder at these facebook moms, I still consider listening to the lactation consultant because I don’t want to be the kind of person that does something because someone on facebook said to. That’s too akin to qanon conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism for me to feel comfortable, especially in this political and cultural moment. That’s exactly the kind of thing I am against, right!? I still believe in authority, in truth and clarity! Sure, why not! I am a thinking woman! But I find myself in a position that thousands of moms have been in, probably the reason for the facebook groups in the first place (and honestly for a lot of political hysteria too for that matter) – the lactation consultant said one thing, the pediatrician said another, and I’m caught somewhere in the middle with loose threads of conflicting information and a blistering need to help my baby.
Again, I think far too long about what to do without making any clear decision. I continue not-eating-dairy (because why not, I guess?), continue lurking on the facebook group, continue poring over Tommy’s poops as if they’re some sort of oracle that will reveal to me an ancient truth. I postpone any decision-making, any official alignment with any one opinion. It seems to me that we’re all just throwing darts. None of us know, none of us are sure. The facebook moms like to say to people in situations like me (conflicting advice from various care providers, all sort of murky and incomplete) “you’re the mama! you decide!” Well I don’t want to be the decider! I’m terrified by the responsibility I am suddenly carrying, this delicious burden, this suitcase, sandbag, sack of potatoes I’d probaby die for if needed! I don’t want to be the mama if this is what being the mama means! I want someone to tell me what to do and I want it to be simple. But it isn’t simple. And no one can perfectly tell me what to do. And I am the mama for this one little boy, and I guess I’ll just keep doing my best, trying to do no harm, trying to act and react without falling down too many rabbit holes, never to return.
Amidst all this, Tommy keeps growing, eating, sleeping, pooping, looking around, gaining neck strength. We rarely leave the house, and the days become a whirligig of sameness. I eat the same lunch each day until I run out of some of the ingredients and have to plot a grocery pick up. This too becomes fraught in my mind – each decision difficult to make. When will I regain my mind?
One day, a mom in my neighborhood that I’ve never met starts a group text with about six other moms that live very nearby – all of us either with newborns or pregnant. Each of us send texts with little introductory paragraphs about ourselves, which street we live on, some biographical info, and pictures of our husbands and babies. I suddenly feel this warmth, this excitement. All these people with tiny babies nearby and I had no idea! Even just knowing that each of us on this group chat are, in our own respective houses in our little neighborhood, waking up in the middle of the night to feed babies and change diapers, makes me feel suddenly reconnected to a feeling that got stolen by the pandemic. Community! It’s so simple! So pure! And so surprising! Of course there are young families in the neighborhood, it’s exactly the sort of place that would have them. But I had no idea.
I imagine all our babies playing together, a little crew all around the same age. I imagine block parties, or park visits, or stroller walks. This is new territory – the prospect of knowing our neighbors, the idea of my kid having friends. I feel nervous in a good way, like will they like me? Who knows whether anything will become of this neighborhood mom group, but I’m so thankful that this other mom started a group chat that it makes me want to don my mask and parade my baby down the street in his stroller shouting, “yoohoo, moms come out!!!” What is this feeling – hope? Whatever it is, it’s good and energizing. It reminds me that becoming a parent isn’t only domestic, private – it’s cultural, interpersonal. It reminds me that someday my mothering will be witnessed by others, that in this little neighborhood mom group that’s forming we can see each other and be seen. I think I really need that. I think that’s why it feels so exciting. The pleasure of doing something hard together, simultaneously with others. Elbow deep in something side by side. Doesn’t it take a village? I have felt so alone, like a castaway on an island. And I am, and I’m not. I know now I could probably wake up at three am and spy someone else’s kitchen light on, know they’re warming a bottle, walking a baby around the house until they nod off. That’s important. That’s good.
It occurs to me that the urge to write is about witnessing too. There’s something in me that needs all this quiet work to be seen somehow, even in this small way. This peephole, this spyglass. If I write my motherhood, my own small life, will I then be witnessed? Will someone see my kitchen light on in the middle of the night, my blurry human form wrapped in bathrobe, drinking water, going very quietly back to bed?
And I witness my baby. I watch with with a focus that is more than focus, a tenderness that is more than tenderness. This is something new, this way of seeing. I watch him and wish I could memorize each movement, remember perfectly each day of him. No one will ever be able to see my baby the way I see him. As if my seeing him will take care of him. As if my witnessing were enough.