I had a baby three days shy of my twenty-first birthday. The choice to parent had been an immediate and joyful one, so my pregnancy was celebrated by the people who loved me most. Even though she was a surprise baby and her father wasn't in the picture, I was excited to be a mother. It was my #1 goal in life-- to have a daughter (or daughters, if I was lucky) and raise her to be strong, compassionate, and deeply loved. When she was placed in my arms after an easy, relaxed labor and delivery, I truly felt as though all my dreams had come true. I loved everything about her. I never wanted to put her down. She was born at 10:20 pm and I stayed awake all night just staring at her face.
And then we left the hospital and things got complicated. Contrary to what I thought at twenty, motherhood didn't magically solve all of my life's problems. I was still poor. I was still in a dysfunctional, emotionally abusive relationship. I was living in the converted back porch of my parents' house. I had no job. I'd taken the semester off from school. I had no driver's license. And every morning I watched my parents, boyfriend, and siblings eat breakfast and head out to engage with the wider world. My friends liked the baby and loved me but they were young. They were still living the life I hadn't fully realized I was leaving behind. They rarely came by to visit. And my baby had colic. She had trouble latching and would eat every ninety minutes for forty-five minutes at a time. Every second I spent breastfeeding was physically and emotionally excrutiating and I felt trapped in my home by this endlessly hungry creature-- my daughter. My much-wanted, much-loved daughter with whom I could not stand to be alone. I was afraid of her, and afraid that others could see how afraid I was.
While everyone was away at work and school, I would sit on a glider in the family room, feed her, and cry. I was so lonely. When I couldn't stand it anymore, I would sit on the front porch swing and wait for someone to come home, audibly sighing with relief when my mother's minivan would turn into the cul-de-sac.
Whenever I could, I would hand her off and run to the bathroom where I could hide and press warm washcloths against my aching, burning chest. I would stare at myself in the mirror and curse myself. "This is what you fucking wanted and now you can't even fucking do it, you piece of shit. What unfair universe gave you this precious baby when you're too much of a selfish shitbag to properly love and care for her? You have no capacity for love or tenderness. You don't deserve this baby. You don't deserve anything." At night, I would sit in our bedroom while my boyfriend slept and watch reruns of Gilmore Girls and Mad About You until the baby finally passed out, and when she woke up moments later, already needing to eat again, I would feel choked with rage and resentment. Then I would look at her little face and say, "I love you so much." I would force myself to smile.
As she got older, it just got harder. I moved out of my parents' house and in with my boyfriend. We fought all the time and I would call my mom to pick up the baby so she wouldn't hear the screaming. I wanted a happy family for my baby so we got engaged. Things got worse. They got ugly. I ended the engagement. I moved back in with my parents. Now the baby could walk and say "mama" but I was convinced she hated me. She preferred the company of my mother and I preferred sitting alone and telling myself what a horrible person I was. What a horrible, selfish person, throwing away everything she loved because nothing and no one would ever be enough to fill this ugly, gaping need for...for what? I didn't know.
Shortly after I moved back in with my parents, I started dating a friend from high school who was immediately taken with the baby. He thought she was cute and funny. He had always loved me, he said. He told me he wanted to raise the baby, adopt her, marry me. He was kind. I said yes. We moved in together and it was wonderful except I secretly knew I was a rotten faker incapable of love.
One night when the baby was two years old, my fiance and I stopped by my parents' house with the baby. I'd purchased her flower girl dress and wanted her to try it on so my family could see it. She didn't want to. I was exhausted. She kept crying and reaching for my mother, wanting to spent the night with my parents. She could see what a horrible person I was. She could see through me. She knew I was a fraud and she was showing everyone-- through her unwillingness to try on the dress-- that I wasn't a good or even decent mother. I lost it. I screamed and cried and threatened to take the baby away from my parents forever. I just wanted to punish someone. I wanted someone else to be the bad guy. My family just watched me, stunned. "It's just a dress, quit being such a bitch," my brother said. But it wasn't just the dress. It was everything.
I was getting everything I had ever wanted. A beautiful child, a marriage to a wonderful man, a chance to go back to school and finish my degree. And I was miserable. I could see my happiness as an outsider, but I couldn't feel it. In the car on the way home, I tried to convince my fiance to leave me. "I'm not a good woman," I told him. "The only way for you and the baby to be happy is for you to be away from me. Maybe I should give her up to someone up the task of caring for her. I'm ruining her life and she's only two. She already hates me." We got home. I carried her inside and put her to bed. I cried myself to sleep.
And then, slowly and all at once, things got better. I started to feel things again. I wish I could say I saw the right therapist or was prescribed the right medication, and I did try those things, but they didn't work. The only antidote for me was time. One day my daughter woke up from a nap and her bedhead was off the charts and I laughed. She choreographed a dance and I watched it with joy. She fell asleep in my arms and her weight was reassuring. I looked in her eyes and I thought I might cry, but this time the tears were tears of love, not despair. She thought I was funny. I thought she was a genius. I had another baby, a little girl, and I could handle it. I loved them. I loved my daughters.
Earlier tonight the same child with whom I used to dread being alone showed me her awesome new tricks on the pogo stick. She told me she had decided to definitely take Spanish when she starts middle school next year. She sat on the couch with me and asked me to crack her toes and rub her back. Her sister handed me an imaginary Best Mom trophy because I remembered to buy Pirate Booty at the grocery store. I reminded them they weren't allowed on the computer because they hadn't finished their chores and they got mad and then got over it. It was a totally average night for our family.
Sometimes on these boring, average nights, I think about myself at twenty-one, crying in the bath with her leaky boobs and her broken heart, and I wanted to hold her the way I now hold my daughters. I want to tell her what I now know to be true. She is doing the best she can. She does love that baby. She's a wonderful mother. It's going to get better and it's going to break her heart over and over again in the best, most unimaginable ways. She's at the beginning of a miracle, of a struggle, of a life, of true love.
