Always the Last to Know(36)

As always, my fault.

“The worst of both worlds,” the nurse chuckled. I was too exhausted to answer. They took me to the operating room and stabbed my back with a needle that felt as big as a chopstick and then, when the epidural had taken effect, sliced me open.

It hurt. They say you’ll feel nothing, and they lie. As the doctors yanked and pulled, elbows-deep in my body, tears slipped into my hair. Those were my insides they were jerking around! How would the baby be healthy after such a battle? How could I love the little thing when all I felt was failure and exhaustion, literally torn apart by the savagery of childbirth?

“It’s a girl!” Dr. Haines said, holding her up for a glimpse. I saw a huge, whitish baby with dark hair before they whisked her off.

“Is she all right?” I asked.

“Looks perfect to me!” said the jolly nurse.

John was crying with joy. “Another girl!” he said. “Oh, honey, I’m so happy.”

“Nine pounds, nine ounces! She’s a bruiser! Apgars are all nines, too. Guess we know what your lucky number is, guys!”

Another daughter. I’d been so sure it was a boy. I closed my eyes, so wrung out that I started to fall asleep.

“Barb, look! Our little girl! Isn’t she beautiful?”

I forced my eyes open.

She wasn’t very pretty, her head tubular from all that time stuck in the birth canal. She seemed giant compared to how I remembered Juliet, who’d been seven pounds even. The baby’s eyelids were bruised and her face looked swollen. Her little rosebud mouth moved, and she opened her eyes.

I loved her. Oh, thank God, I loved her.

“Hello, little one,” I whispered. John kissed her forehead, and put her face against mine, and the softness of her cheek was so beautiful. “Hello, sweetheart.”

Then she started to cry. She started to scream. I had to turn my head away, because she was right against my ear.

“Sounds perfect!” said the irritatingly cheerful nurse.

It was startling that a newborn could make that much noise. “There, there, little one,” John said, holding her close, and just like that, the baby stopped crying.

“Aw. She loves her daddy,” said Dr. Haines. “Barb, I’m stitching you up, but you can snuggle her in a few minutes, okay?”

John was crooning to the baby, telling her she was beautiful, Daddy’s little angel, and I fell into a deep, black sleep, unable to wake up for her first two feedings.

Having a C-section is much worse than giving birth the other way. With every move, it felt as if my insides were going to spill out onto the floor. Flashes of white-hot pain seared through my abdomen. When they made me get out of bed, I fainted. They made me pedal my feet to avoid blood clots, but I got one anyway, which they said was because I didn’t get out of bed soon enough (ignoring the fact that unconscious people do have trouble on that front). My leg throbbed and burned. I couldn’t hold the baby by myself for the first two days, because I was too weak. All I wanted to do was sleep, but they kept waking me up to feed her. I had to have a pillow over my stomach to protect my incision.

She didn’t want to nurse. She screamed and screamed, her body shaking with rage as I tried to offer my breast again and again. They brought in a special nurse who was an expert, and she wrestled the baby close to me. When she latched on, I gasped in pain. My entire body was drenched in sweat as my sutured uterus contracted.

Juliet came to the hospital to meet her new sister. That was the bright spot of my six days there. I got mastitis, the cure for which was nursing more. My incision got more sore, not less, but I couldn’t take any effective pain medications because I was nursing. My nipples started to bleed. That was the last straw. She could be bottle-fed. It was fine.

John picked her name. Sadie. Like a factory worker in World War II. He suggested Barbara as a middle name, to which I said, “Don’t curse her with that.” I know it was meant to be a compliment. But honestly. Sadie Barbara Frost? How would that look on a diploma?

And so her middle name was Ruth, after his grandmother. It was fine. It would grow on me, hopefully. I didn’t have any other suggestions.

Looking back, I realize I had postpartum depression. In those first few months, however, I just thought I was a failure.

When she was asleep, I loved her. When she was awake, it soon became clear that she didn’t prefer me. She wanted John, and he took a partial leave so he could work from home to help. When Juliet was born, he’d taken all of two days off.

But for Sadie, he was here, and it was helpful. He’d make me lunch and feed the baby, walk the floor with her, take her for a ride or put her in the carriage and tell me to rest and bounce back.

I didn’t bounce back.

I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep. The surgery and its complications took a lot out of me, and I just didn’t bond with the baby the way I wanted to. The way I had with Juliet. I had a coughing spell a few days after I came home and tore my stitches, so that fun event had to be repeated.

I started to resent Sadie, the way she wouldn’t be comforted by me, the exhaustion from the moment I woke up, dreading the long day ahead. When John went back to work full-time, I held Sadie as she cried and fussed—colic, teething, always something—and I’d look at the clock and count the minutes until Juliet would get off the school bus. Then I’d feel that love. I’d find enough energy to make dinner and pretend I was fine, because when my older daughter was around, I did feel so much better, gosh, yes.