To an outsider, it looked like I was owning this whole motherhood thing. You can see just how easily “crazy” starts to kick in. But what if I pumped and she woke up crying right after? I would have no milk left to feed her…so I’d have to give her the bottle I just wasted 20 minutes pumping, and then have nothing to show for all that “free time” I just had. I could feasibly shower, pee and eat at the same time, but if I were to pump, I might actually be able to leave the house for an hour that night to get a manicure (or cry silently in my car). If her eyes stayed shut, I would have some decisions to make: Do I pump or shower? Do I shower or pee? Do I pee or eat? She would either sleep for 15 minutes or 50 minutes, so it was a total coin-toss. I rocked her back to sleep, which usually took about an hour (if it succeeded at all), and then placed her in the bassinet before silently hovering over her for 10 minutes, willing her to remain asleep. If I managed to get out of our bedroom before 11 a.m., that was a huge victory. I spent most days alone with a beautiful little baby who I couldn’t seem to make happy. If someone was trying to gaslight me, well…success!
It was just me, my fussy newborn, lots of tears, very little sleep and the newest Taylor Swift album. My husband had been back at work for nearly six weeks my mother, who had come to stay for the first five weeks, had to return to her own life and the parade of well-wishers who poured through the door those first few weeks had come to a shrieking halt. I had, apparently, reached my breaking point. If it hit him, I could feign ignorance and frustration: I meant to hit the wall, why did his head have to get in the way? If it didn’t, I always meant to hit the wall… so don’t try to paint me out to be this psycho! I was half aiming at his head, and half aiming at the wall behind his head. Who did he expect to put them away? The magical shoe fairy who tiptoes into our house every night to quietly store his shoes, the balled up socks and the rogue belt slithering around the bedroom? I grabbed a shoe-and I’m not talking about no Nike Flyknit here I’m talking about a clunky ass retro Air Jordan 2-and chucked it with fierce dedication. Contagious, nonetheless, with the flu prohibiting him from his nightly “dream feed” duty-his to-do that allowed me the one thing I looked forward to all day: five straight hours of sleep.Ī pair of Nikes were lying on the closet floor-approximately 12 inches from where they easily could have been put away. I had a 7-week-old baby who hadn’t slept more than three consecutive hours since being born and a soon-to-be blistering case of mastitis, and my husband had the audacity, the absolute carelessness, to go and get sick. As I covered the distance from the window to the closet, I, at the very least, had the awareness to recognize that I was a walking, talking one-woman promotion of the “crazy bitch” stereotype.īut, in my defense, it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t the response I expected-or really even wanted. He looked at me in astonishment, but said nothing. I pushed the screen out of our second story bedroom window, grabbed my husband’s iPhone and tossed it onto our very brick, very hard patio 20 feet below.
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