get some sleep, and do things with both of my arms free. The help feels like a luxury after those long first months alone. But also, it’s just more fun with him around. We sit out in the backyard under the trees together, the three of us, a little family, picture-perfect. We go to Wasaga Beach, and I’m able to lie in the sun and swim, unencumbered, because he’s in his preferred spot in the shade with the baby. On a daily basis, he barbeques happily for friends and family who drop by to see the baby, and I feel more at ease in it all. New parenthood feels less of an effort for these two months. We are a team.
Once summer is over, it’s back to being alone in the big, empty house. Winter comes early and stays forever. Time moves slower than I ever imagined it could. I play with Birdie, I sing her songs, I feed her, I comfort her. I look at the clock and it’s only 9:30 a.m. God. I feel like maybe I will die from sheer emptiness, from the lack of people that aren’t babies or on TV. I miss my desk at work. I miss meetings and creative conversations and writing and … work. I miss work. I know being a new mom is work, but I don’t process it that way. It just feels lonely. I miss talking to my peers about music and art and books. I miss organizing and creating and discussing and laughing. I love my baby, but I don’t love being home all day long with her with no one to talk to, only laundry and making baby food to break the monotony.
I know what you’re thinking. You think I sound cold and distant, not like a mom is supposed to sound when talking about her newborn. Maybe you think it sounds like I don’t love my child. That I’m too busy thinking about myself and all that I’ve lost, instead of bonding with her. But that’s not what this story is about. I’m not here to convince you that I love her. Because I do. And that love grows with every year of her life. Every day, I watch Birdie become this funny, clever, kooky person. She fills my life with more joy than anything or anyone.
But right now I’m talking about The Baby. And I’m sorry if that seems cold, but sometimes, honestly, they’re two different people to me. It’s hard for me to reconcile The Baby and Birdie as one and the same. I was never diagnosed, because I never talked to anyone about how I was feeling, but looking back it seems pretty clear I had some form of postpartum depression. Maybe I just had what they call “the baby blues,” I don’t know for sure. But the pressure to love being a new mom, to somehow instantly know what to do and how to cope … it was real. We’ve all been fed the same new mothers are instinctually amazing at it propaganda, except I didn’t feel amazing at it at all. A lot of women don’t. Instead, I felt shame. And an indescribable sadness. So judge me, if you want, but I’m going to return there now, to those early days. Those long, endless days at home alone with a newborn baby.
I feel isolated. I’ve always lived downtown, but now I’m in this strange neighbourhood that seems so far from anything or anyone I know. Sure my friends and co-workers all came to visit me when the baby was first born, but after that initial rush, people stopped coming around. It’s 2007, so social media is barely a thing. Even the internet is a thing I have to go upstairs, turn on a big ol’ computer, and wait for. I don’t even have a cellphone! I’m finding it hard to connect with my friends.
And I’m having trouble connecting with new people I meet, too. The women with babies in my neighbourhood all seem so put together. Like they aren’t struggling with it at all. They probably are, in their own ways, but I feel like a disaster compared to them. They’re such naturals at being mothers, and they all breastfeed like it’s no big deal. They always talk about how they don’t want to go back to work. They love maternity leave. I just can’t relate. I’m so out of place with my bottle-fed baby and my tattoos. With my love of my job and the world downtown.
There is at least one thing I look forward to each week: soccer. As soon as Birdie is three months old, I return to my co-ed soccer team. I’m really out of shape, but I give it everything I’ve got. In that ninety minutes a week, when I’m on the field, I think of nothing but the game. I feel pure exhilaration — I’m competitive, physical, quick-witted.
For those ninety minutes, I feel like myself. Like the old me.
When it’s over, I go back home, sweaty and happy. Each week it’s the same: I come in the back door and The Husband is sitting on the couch watching TV. “How was the game?” he asks, and I excitedly recap the whole thing. He listens patiently and with interest. He knows I love playing soccer. He knows I’m mostly miserable these days and that once a week this is the thing that saves me. He goes back to watching his show, and I take a shower. The baby will wake up any minute now and will need my attention. I’ve got to go back to being a twenty-four-hour mom. At least until next Thursday and those blissful ninety minutes on the field.
Of course maternity leave and being a mom gets easier as the months go on. Sometimes, I even enjoy it. She’s beautiful. Her head is so perfectly round and she’s got these big blue eyes and straw-coloured hair, nothing like me with my brown eyes and dark hair. But she came out of my body, and that never stops amazing me. I sing to her. I play with her. I read her books and talk to her all day long. I get a bit better at it, the maternity leave, even though I’m counting the days until I can go back to work.
But exactly two months before my return to work, when Birdie is ten months old, something suddenly and unexpectedly starts to go very wrong.
SUCK IT UP
I’m in the middle of a soccer game when I first notice it. Man, I keep missing the ball. That pass was so wide. I keep misjudging the distance between me and the ball, between me and other players. I must be exhausted. I’m seriously off my game tonight.
It gets worse. The next day, I’m driving with Birdie, and everything in my field of vision just starts jumping around. The road looks like it’s underwater. I call The Husband and say, “I don’t think it’s safe for me to drive, you’ll have to come and pick us up.” He drives me to a downtown hospital, Birdie asleep in her car seat in the back. It’s way too expensive to park downtown, and besides, it doesn’t make any sense to bring a little baby inside an emergency-room waiting area, so he drops me off with a casual “don’t worry” and goes back home.
I sit in the emergency waiting room for over four hours. A woman is howling and cursing. A sad-looking man is pacing back and forth across the room, shoulders hunched. Another man across from me is attached to his chair with handcuffs, a police officer on either side of him. I can’t read or see the TV very well, and my eyes hurt a lot, so there’s nothing to do but close them and sit with my thoughts.
The hours pass slowly. Eventually, I see a doctor and he sends me to another floor for a CT scan. Then more waiting, more time alone, with nothing to do but worry. Nothing but endless blurry hospital life all around me.
And then I hear the voice of the doctor I just met with. I get up and try to sneak closer, hiding behind a post so I can listen in on his conversation. “Female, thirty-three years old” — I’m pretty sure he’s talking about me now — “… need to send her to you for more tests … could be, but … consistent with multiple sclerosis … more tests …”
My heart tightens. Multiple sclerosis? What is that? My mind races to remember. Is it something to do with my spine? No, no, dummy, that’s scoliosis, not sclerosis!
This makes me laugh for a second until it dawns on me. Is it that thing we used to fundraise for when we were kids? Yes! The MS Readathon! I might have that? What is it? I really have no clue what MS is at all, other than I was a top fundraiser for it in grade school, which is very unhelpful information in this moment.
The doctor does not say MS to me. He gives me a bunch of forms and says the neurology department will call me in the next day or so to make an appointment for an MRI. “Good luck,” he says, and I detect something,
