Beauty from Ashes

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

So Grandma Lucy’s done praying, but she’s still got the mic, and now she’s droning on about the day of salvation. I can tell she’s super spiritual because she’s using all the right phrases, the kinds of things Sandy and her women’s Bible study ladies used to gab about. Redemption and sanctification and glorify this and magnify that. Some people really need to get over themselves, know what I mean? I’ve been staring at the time on my phone now for seven minutes straight, and Jake hasn’t made an attempt to move. Seven stinking minutes, but it feels like an eternity. And after an eighty-six-hour long labor, I know what an eternity feels like.

I’d already been in the hospital on bed rest for four weeks. I was so stoked when I finally went into labor. I couldn’t get her out fast enough. Deliver the baby, wrap her up in a blanket or two, and finally go home. Home, where you can watch whatever shows you want instead of giving yourself carpal tunnel clicking the hospital’s stupid remote looking for something decent. To binge-watch a whole season of CSI in one sitting, no commercial breaks. No interruptions from well-meaning nurses jabbing their fingers inside to check your cervix and see if you’re dilated.

I knew it wouldn’t be easy with a newborn. I wasn’t that naïve. But Jake and I had been getting along ok. It helps that I wasn’t so hormonal toward the end of the pregnancy. I was actually looking forward to being a mom. I mean, you already know about the woman who brought me into the world. It’s not like the bar was set uber high.

So I was going to push out my baby, and I was finally going to leave that stinking hospital. Breathe the fresh air again. Urinate without having to measure it down to the cc. Man, I was ready to go home. Jake was too. I mean, he stopped by the hospital every day, but there’s just not that much to do there. I mean, what do you even talk about?

“How was your day?”

What would I have to say? “I peed out 400 cc’s this morning.”

Looking back, I can see that our relationship was getting a little strained during that time. Whose wouldn’t be? I just figured we’d get home, we’d have our daughter to take care of together, and life would go back to normal. Or maybe even better than normal, because all that extra time on bed rest got me thinking. Imagining. Planning. I was never much of a reader, but the hospital had this crazy huge stack of pregnancy magazines to flip through. I swear there must have been a whole decade’s worth or more, a long enough span that the newer ones started contradicting the older. The Baby’s First Step cover might have an article that tells you to nurse your baby right before bed so she’ll sleep through the night and won’t wake up hungry, but then when you get to the Taking Time for Mama issue, it’s all about training her to go to sleep on a slightly empty stomach so she doesn’t have to feel full to get rest.

I wasn’t looking forward to breastfeeding if we’re going to be totally honest. I’d read enough about sore n*****s and mastitis to realize it would be uncomfortable at best. I figured I’d try it out for a few weeks, see how it went. But it’s not like I had this romanticized notion of smashing my baby against my boob and falling in love and nursing her until she started kindergarten. I guess I was curious, though. Wondered what it would feel like.

Natalie’s sixteen weeks old, and I still don’t know what it feels like to nurse a baby. I’m positive it’s more comfortable than a breast pump or else the human race would have died out before we ever evolved past living in caves. I hated pumping, but at least it was something I could do. Something that only I could do is a better way to say it. I swear her grandmother jinxed her or something, because the whole time Natalie was in the hospital, she handled my breast milk just fine. Then we took her home, and within twenty-four hours, Patricia showed up on our doorstep, suitcases in hand. Four days later, Natalie was so uncomfortable the pediatrician told us to take her off breast milk completely. Natalie takes this predigested formula now, nothing but nutrients and amino acids with this sickening sweet vanilla scent. You know what it smells like? Those disgusting diet drinks I used to take in junior high. The thing about formula is that anyone can prepare it. You don’t even have to mix in water. Just open the bottle, measure out the right amount, and dump it into the feeding pump.

Jake couldn’t understand why I was so upset after that appointment with Dr. Bell. He knew how sick I was of pumping. Who wants to feel like a dairy cow five times a day? So in his mind, getting premade formula and having Medicaid pay for all of it was great news.

Only it wasn’t. I don’t think it would have been half as bad if it weren’t for his mom and her smug smile. “Maybe something you’re taking doesn’t agree with her,” she’d suggest, and that’s just how she’d say it too. Something you’re taking. Which I’m sure in Patricia’s lingo meant drugs. Which I wasn’t on, by the way, not during the pregnancy or now.

I think Patricia was secretly thrilled about it all, really. Because now there isn’t a single thing I can do for my child that she can’t do better. She has her nurse’s training to thank, even though that woman hasn’t worked an actual nursing job since Bush was president. The first Bush, I mean, not the second.

That’s what makes me think about leaving sometimes. I know it’s the deadbeat thing to do, but given my family history, would you have expected me to stick around this long? If Natalie needed me, that would be different. Can you believe I waited sixteen days in the NICU just to see her open her eyes? And you know what? She didn’t even notice me. I was no different to her than any of the nurses in their colorful scrubs. When Jake holds her, I swear something clicks in that injured little brain of hers. She seems comfortable. Even tried to scratch his chin once. When I hold her, she’s completely oblivious. Even Patricia claims Natalie smiled at her. I’m sure she’s lying, because my child doesn’t smile. At anyone. But that doesn’t change the fact that my baby doesn’t even know I’m alive. I hate to say it because it sounds so stinking cruel, but I’m not sure she knows much of anything. Sometimes when Patricia’s busy in the kitchen, I hold Natalie while she’s getting her tube feeding, and I watch. Waiting for something to happen. Even when she’s got her eyes open, she never looks at me. Never. Looks. At. Me. And then she gets fussy, so I put her back on her little wedge, and she finishes her feeding in peace and quiet. What kind of baby doesn’t even want to be held?

I had such high hopes for myself as a mom. I had it all figured out. I was going to stay at home for the first year or so. Maybe take in an extra kid or two for babysitting. I was going to give Natalie everything I never got at that age — a home, a sense of belonging, affection.

I remember laying around on bed rest, flipping through those mommy magazines and daydreaming about story time. That’s the one thing the articles always agreed about, even the older ones. Read to your kids from the day they’re born. I had the picture squared away in my brain. Me on the couch, with Natalie nestled up against me. In my imagination, we always read Dr. Seuss because honestly, I didn’t know any other kids books, but I was going to learn. I’d get a library card. Check out books there. And we’d cuddle and read, and it would do wonders for her development. Wonders for our relationship. That was the plan.

And now look what I’ve got. A kid who doesn’t even recognize me. A kid who can’t make eye contact. A kid who won’t even live to see her first birthday.