emerge as if the detective hit a button and they splatter against the wall like photographs from a slide projector: Clenched fists, legs pulled up to the stomach, a baby’s tearless rage directed towards me. My love for her powerless, incapable of easing her pain.
‘She was a colicky baby, you know, very fussy … but I would never hurt her. She was my life.’
Something in his eyes twitches, then he nods as if I said something he expected to hear.
He abruptly turns around and leaves the room, as if everything I just told him is beyond what makes sense.
Then I realize I spoke of Mia in the past tense.
Mia Paradise Connor and I were released from the hospital five days after the delivery. Jack went back to work, took over the night feedings on the weekends, and I slept, ate and showered whenever possible.
I was in awe of what I had created. I stared at Mia, her plump cheeks, her little bird mouth twitching in her sleep. I bathed her and padded her dry, gently rubbing lavender lotion all over her. By then she was far from the puffy-eyed, bowlegged newborn. Her curvy legs had straightened, her cone-shaped skull had rounded out, and her flaky skin was now pink and spongy.
I loved how she studied my face, trying to memorize it, as if I was all the comfort and love she needed. She’d wake up in my arms, open her eyes, and frantically search for my likeness, immediately settling down when she recognized me.
Mia’s cries were distinct, one seemed to complain about a minor discomfort, like a sock too tight, a jacket too warm. There was the tired cry, fussy, drawn out, telling me she was ready to take a nap. Then there was a more relentless cry that seemed to signal hunger. Nothing a bottle couldn’t fix. And then, at about three months old, another cry emerged. An abrupt cry, a cry that seemed to signal pain, as if stuck with a needle, a cry that made my heart pound in my chest, tuning out everything else. All that remained was her wailing and my pounding heart. And she suddenly shunned containment, something that had calmed her before, and protested every time I swaddled her. It seemed as if there were wires inside of her every time I wrapped her in a blanket; fists clenched, back arched, muscles tensed, limbs stiffened.
Need to make a fussy baby feel safe? How about the age old tradition of mimicking the condition in the mother’s womb? All you need is a blanket and a clever folding technique.
Her abrupt cry was not a mere request, but an urgent demand to fix whatever bothered her. Mia put more energy into her demands, cried more loudly, fed more voraciously, and protested more forcefully. If I didn’t respond to her needs immediately, she’d fall apart, come undone.
She seemed to feel deeply, and therefore she reacted with fierce power when her needs were being ignored. I went into overdrive to respond immediately and I became obsessive in trying to prevent her from getting upset. She extracted every bit of energy from me, and I willingly complied, but still, she wanted more.
I gave her all I had, yet something had gone amiss, had gone awry. I was somehow removed from the person who had entered the hospital and emerged with a baby in her arms, as if I had left one person behind and had returned home another. I woke up just as tired as I had gone to sleep and blamed it on not getting enough rest. Every waking hour was a never-ending stretch of time with the volume turned up. Chunks of sleep broken up into pieces that left me exhausted. Every day posed a new nightmare; not waking up when Mia is in distress. Jack too busy to help on the weekend. The pediatrician administering the wrong vaccine. I will feed her too often or not enough. Even though I went on with my life, took care of Mia, sang to her, gave her a bath, something felt horribly wrong. What had happened to the euphoric love I initially felt? Why wasn’t I happier? Who was this woman living inside of me?
Every morning when I woke up, before reality closed in on me, after a peaceful second or two, a dank layer of sadness wrapped itself around me. I felt as if I was playing a role and never was that more apparent than when I met other moms at the park. They seemed more cheerful, happier and content to be mothers than I ever was or ever could be. And even so, I could have adopted their story as mine, could have pretended to be one of them. I decided to accept my lack of enthusiasm as a personal character flaw, and make up for it in other ways.
One day during breastfeeding, Mia dozed off and unlatched. She had long unlocked her lips, but her tongue still made clicking sounds. I reached for my camera, snapped images of blue veins running across her eyelids, too small for even a thread to fit inside of them. There was a larger vein by her temple, like a widening channel of a river nearing the sea, its currents waiting to be met by the tides.
My camera, small enough to operate with one hand, turned into my new obsession. I photographed Mia from every possible angle, perspectives of feet, toes tucked under, spread apart, soft tiny nails, bending easily, and elfin hands grasping small objects. My lips seemed to sink into her, her limbs were malleable and soft, yet the core of her body remained inaccessible to me. I attempted to capture the part of our relationship that remained inadequate, and though our bodies connected - ears folded like rose petals moving up and down as she drank from my breast, pink lips curling around the nipple – we remained strangers.
I took close-ups of breast milk running down her cheek, towards her ear, as if the amount of milk had just fallen short of reaching its intended destination. I took shots of my engorged breasts, drops of nourishment trailing from my cracked and sore nipples.
The camera flash irritated her, sent her into a frenzy, up a notch from her usual agitated state. She cried and wouldn’t stop as if my attempts to capture her likeness repulsed her somehow. I rocked her, allowed her head to rest on my chest. Nothing consoled her, not my songs, my gentle voice, not my nipple, nothing. She cried every single day and nothing I ever did soothed her.
I sang to her, Sleep, baby, sleep, your father tends the sheep, your mother shakes the dreamland tree, and from it fall sweet dreams for thee, Sleep, baby, sleep.
In what twisted universe is a mother incapable of consoling her own child? How it must feel to live in this tiny helpless body with such obvious discomfort and your mother just looks on, incapable of easing the suffering, inept to give you what you need. It was undeniably my fault. My way of making up for my shortcoming as a less than mediocre mother was by going from doctor to doctor and the same diagnosis was thrown at me as if I ought to know what to do with it: Colic. Otherwise healthy. Cause unknown. No obvious reason.
While her constant state of crying seemed acceptable, Jack became increasingly worried about the bills and out-of-network doctors; ‘Colic,’ he said. ‘They all told you the same thing. A lot of babies are colicky. It’ll be gone before we know it.’
Jack’s objections were logical to say the least; after all he seemed so natural, capable of bouncing her on his knee as he studied case files, putting her to sleep within minutes, never a single sound of fury directed towards him. But his logic fell on deaf ears.
‘I want to take her to another hospital. Maybe there are some more tests they can do? If I can’t get a referral, we’ll have to pay out of pocket.’
I saw pity in his eyes but at the mention of money Jack stiffened. Ever so slightly, but I saw it. The way his spine straightened, his eyes narrowed. I was afraid to mention that my credit cards were maxed out.
‘Give it another month or two,’
