Stick a Clock in Me I’m Pregnant 

I’m pregnant. Baruch Hashem, they said. God willing, they said. I am I am I am – a vessel. I look down at my still flat belly, imagine the poppyseed inside and how it will soon take over, push everything up and out and then there’ll be a baby and I’ll be a mother. Baruch Hashem. Tick tock. 

I chose this, and yet, with this new life inside me all I could think about was the thinning of my own. Of death.

Visions of my sister ripening and wrinkling, and my husband, Matt, greying and widening, but mostly shrinking, painted themselves when I shut my eyes. I’d hear a heartbreaking silence, too, a wild silence that I imagined to haunt me in old age. One day Matt would be gone, my forever no more, or maybe I’d go first, that’d be better, but then, but then – and I’d shake my head and knock on wood.

I was Jack Skellington, mayor of Halloweentown. Christmas Town was just on the other side, and everyone who’d see me and my belly and hug me and smile and tell me how excited they were, saw me in Christmas Town, they wanted me in Christmas Town.

When Matt would hear me moan as I’d bend to put on shoes, or sigh as I applied coconut butter to my back and belly, he’d ask if I’m okay. I didn’t know how to answer. Physically, I was healthy. Everything was going according to plan. Mentally, I wanted to cry and retreat into my mother’s womb. I’d always wanted children. I wanted to be a mother. I just wanted other things, too.

The subject of when to have kids haunted Matt and me for about one year. For me, it always came down to career success. I couldn’t imagine being happy as a mother without publishing at least one book. I’d resent my child. I’d resent Matt. The thought of pregnancy, of motherhood, conjured visions of my professional life running away from me on the track of time until it went so far it was out of sight and onto someone else. Someone else who’d have the time and capacity to grab it. Someone who was available. 

I cried a lot. I snapped a lot. I was consumed and debilitated by impatience. I waited for emails. I waited for notes. For reads. For passes. It was painful. I was desperate to have it all fall into place before I got pregnant. And then I got pregnant. 

I was the egg-shaped timer my mother kept on our kitchen counter and the top half of me was twisted all the way around. Tick, tick. I’d thought of myself as a career woman, a work horse, and now I found myself feeling more, and more reliant on Matt, my friends, my bed, grace, time off, and the permission to rest. Death was looming. 

Stick a clock in me, I’m pregnant. I woke up at five in the morning with that thought in my head. My eyes opened to those words, like a soldier called to attention, and I reached for my phone and emailed myself the phrase. I spent the next two hours opening and closing my eyes, emailing myself bits and pieces, starting a notes doc, falling asleep for thirty minutes until seven-thirty when my alarm went off and Matt grunted beside me. I envied his body. The stagnation, the consistency and predictability. 

I flipped onto my right side, pulled the pregnancy pillow from between my legs, and my dog, Mishka, jumped into her usual morning spot beside me so I could clean the sleep from her eyes. I raised onto my elbow, stared through our bedroom window and at the piece of sky I could see from my side, hearing the words sky before screen, and then, allowed now, reached for my phone.

Pregnant women in their gorgeous bathrooms made me question if I’d taken enough selfies. A photo of my former coworker pregnant and half naked on the beach with a lengthy caption about how ready she is for baby X, and how she’s never felt so powerful, so beautiful, made me sit up straighter, sip my water to moisten my dry mouth. Another woman I’d known posed with her belly in a European winter wonderland with her husband – had we traveled enough? The stretch mark eraser, the protein powder that’ll stop postpartum hair loss and the brush that goes along with it, the vitamin to stop my bones from crumbling, the new prenatal that’ll turn my seed into baby genius. Solutions to infertility, egg-freezing, charts and stats and first-hand accounts of miscarriages. Jennifer’s baby is one and he’s her soul mate. Her determined, yet sweet, sun loving, travel enthusiast and lover of figs. I deleted Instagram again that morning for the third time that month.

I was sick in the beginning, and I wasn’t quiet about my discomforts. Every morning felt like a bad hangover without any of the fun memories to ease the pain. I was exhausted, had brain fog, my nipples and breasts hurt constantly. I felt like shit. It was an indescribable shit that spread over me every day like a wet blanket. It was hard to explain, though Matt will tell you how much I tried. Good job on the easy pregnancy, I had a body worker say to me as he was pressing into my left lower back because I hadn’t slept in two weeks from sciatic pain because the baby’s head was pushing down where my slipped discs were. 

I wanted to remove my stomach at the end of each day and have a martini. I’d hear Matt complain about being sore from the gym and I’d tell myself to breathe and remind myself that he is a man. The notion that I had to wake up each morning felt rude. I’d stay in bed too long, watch Matt brush his teeth, hear him start the shower, praise Mishka. I’d been that way too, I’d think, remembering my past self, missing her, wondering if she’d ever be back. I wished I still craved coffee. I wished a few sips didn’t make me vomit. I wished I didn’t always feel like I had to vomit. Enjoy it while you’re still in one piece, my mother and her friends would remind me. That also felt rude. 

After my baby shower, Matt and I sat on the dining room floor and unwrapped presents, Mishka asleep on the swivel chair in the living room, oblivious. Tick, tick, tick. The shower was done, the baby was closer, the house was filling up with his stuff. It all already felt like a memory. Like the time before. Another dimension, another lifetime. I’ve always struggled with patience; my first thought when I found out I was pregnant was that I wished humans were see-through. Now, I just wanted things to stop. I’d imagine a freeze frame of my life and a flat-bellied me stepping out of it, scurrying off stage and out the back. That night, I stayed on the floor beside Mishka for as long my body would allow.

*

The couch arrived while we were still in the hospital and our neighbors helped set it up. It moves too much, and I think we’re missing a piece. Mishka sits edged between my feet at the end of the couch. She’s a lanky sixty pounds curled into a small throw pillow right now. The ends of her paws hang off the couch, each dipped in white, each ending in their own identifying wave. Midday April sun fights through, and the living room is bright. I’ve been sitting in this corner of the couch since seven in the morning. Our ceilings are beginning to feel high, and also too low.  I’m sipping an iced coffee that a friend brought for me. The baby is asleep. Only a few more hours until help arrives. Fleabag, my comfort show, plays low on the television. I admire the fireplace we built. The rug we found works so well with it. My mother is calling. I tell her I’m okay, that I am resting, but mostly I let her talk. An Amazon delivery guy rings our bell and I buzz him in. Mishka leaps off barking loudly, waking the baby. He’s crying. The delivery man peaks through the window, and from my corner on the couch I point him to the door. I lean up but it hurts. My vagina kills. I wonder what he sees. A woman lounging in her living room on a weekday afternoon protected by her neatly groomed dog, her show on the television, her package being handed to her. I wonder what he sees and I try to see it too. To escape there for a moment, to what it must all look like from the outside. 

My head drops toward the old iPad we turned into a baby monitor, and I put it on mute and watch him – his real, distant cry much less irritating, much less urgent. I set a timer on my phone for five minutes. He’s on his back, arms and legs kicking with a grimace on his face. His eyes stay shut when he screams louder with every few breaths which makes it more of a call, and so it is, because I stand with two minutes left. 

I have a second-degree outer labia tear. The stitches will dissolve. Don’t wipe for a month, they said. The image of Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas (this movie has become my touchstone) has moved into my mind, her stitched up wobbly body and big sad eyes live in the backdrop of my brain as the image of my labia which feels like my brain. My boobs are my brain too. I am a pulsing organism made of brains, hormones and blood. Leaky. Both ready to break and more ready to kill than I’ve ever been. 

I take small steps toward his room. It’s time to change my diaper, swap the dressings, rinse and ice again. Matt is in our garage-turned-office working with his headphones in. My mother is on her way after her hair appointment. Hannah will come at two o’ clock, Lily at four, Michelle around six but probably tomorrow, Abby maybe also at two. My sister will come whenever but arguing isn’t good for the tear. I want it all and none of it. I want to go away. 

I open his door, and it creaks – it always creaks – I think it makes things worse. He screams louder. I bend over the crib and lift him, nearly eight pounds of him, and feel the twinge. He quiets. Ever since he’s come out of me, he’s wanted to be held. They wouldn’t let me fall asleep with him on me at the hospital, though I think it would’ve been fine. We’ll take him to the nursery overnight, you sleep. I refused. My head is garbled with what I want. Keep him, hold him, love him, but careful, be careful. What if he doesn’t let go? What if he never becomes. And what if he does. 

I stand in the dark with him and sway. His sound machine is on high. Rocking is bad for sleep training, she said. Is swaying rocking? I’m dripping, my diaper is heavy, his probably is too. I set him on the changing table and he screams. I cry as I remove his diaper. Please, please, someone come. Please, please baby be quiet. I want to walk away, and when Matt peaks his head into the room, I do. 

Matt meets his screams with something loving and something teasing as he replaces me and I retreat to our bedroom. I shut the door, sit on the toilet and remove it all. I’m red. Soaked. I put it all in a grocery bag and tie it. I must get rid of it each time. I can’t stand the smell. I hear my sister’s voice, her crisp, sharp tone cuts through the walls, pings in my ear and I settle. I am distended and her voice is my anchor. My world is still here. My world. I am still here. Surely if my sister still exists, then so do I. 

I step into fresh disposable underwear, line them with a long, thick pad, dab myself and stand, slowly, and gently pull up my makeshift diaper, then my sweatpants. Turning is tough. I step first, rather than turn my torso, the twist would pull my skin and then the tear, it’d be too much. One step at a time. I reach the sink. My face is still swollen, but less, and my hands feel like mine again. Already. I feel huge, still, I look pregnant, still, but from my throat to my pelvis I am hollow. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe something had caught onto the placenta, or maybe he grabbed it, something, IT, on his way out. I’ve got a piece missing, I know that for sure. Whether it’s in my gut or my brain or my shoulder I’m not sure. 

“Someone wants to say hi.” Matt stands in the doorway holding the baby. I hold my hand up, keep my head hung. 

“Are you okay? What can I do?” He is being perfect. He is. I am lucky. I tell myself I am lucky as I step toward our bed. 

“Just hold him,” I say, “Just have him for a bit that’s all.”

“I got him.” He leaves. 

My sister creeps into the hall, saying my name softly, her acknowledgement that I am fragile. That something has happened. 

“I’m in here.” I shout back to her. It feels good to shout. Plastic bags in the kitchen, the chopping of vegetables, the coffee machine; my mother’s settling in. 

My sister peeks her head into our bedroom. Matt rushes in behind her, our baby a sack on his shoulder.

“I gotta take this call, sorry.” He hands the baby to my sister. “Sorry, thanks, I’ll be back.”

She moves like she’s been on ice. She is terrified of doing the wrong thing. It’s been many years since our family’s had a baby around. 

“You can come in. I’m not moving. Right now. I need a minute,” I say. 

“Rest.”

“I have been.”

“You just had a baby what else are you going to do. You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I know.”

“I can’t believe men can’t have babies. Or at least breast feed. Something. Literally they do nothing.” She sits on the edge of the chaise and repositions him, belly up, his head cradled stiffly in her hand. “Well, you’re lucky to be a boy, I’ll tell you that.”

“Stop. Please.” Her words, her angst; soiled boots across my just cleaned floors.

“What? It’s true. I would one thousand percent come back as a man if I could.”

If I’d been hooked up to a monitor, right about now is when it would flatline. But not a heart monitor, an energy monitor, a will monitor.

“You’re telling me you wouldn’t?” She glances over. The mud was caking, hardening all over my doughy, fresh baby. 

My baby, my boy, was not a man, another one of the men, not yet and maybe never. I wanted to grab him, wash him, wrap him and put him back. I turned onto my side and watched them in the mirror. 

“I’m going to help mom.” She looks around as if to hand him off, then pulls him close and leaves the room. 

I pull the covers over me and reach for the heating pad on the floor. Beside it is my pump. White, pink and portable. 

I listen to my mother’s footsteps in my own house. I’d listened to her footsteps from my childhood bedroom countless times. I knew her barefoot, in heels, sandals and plushy socks. She stops at our doorway and looks in, the gentle thud of her heeled boots paused. She had a sort of ginger way of entering our bedroom, which I normally appreciated, but now I wanted her close, closer, to regain strength, the kind she’d had in her youth so she could carry me. 

“I’m just resting for a second.” 

“Rest, rest, baby. You need to rest.”

I look at her from my spot in bed and she steps closer. I sit up and she walks toward and sits at the edge of the bed and I relax.

“I should go back,” I say. “The living room is my outing. It’s for the daytime.”

She nods knowingly, a smile breaking through. “This wing is for night and the other for day?” 

I laugh and it hurts. 

“Do you want to? We can move.” 

“I feel like I should.”

She tips her head, shrugs. She’s not one for should. “A change of scenery is nice. I can warm up some soup.” She looks at my pump. “You need to take that?”

“The pump? Yes. I need to take it everywhere.”

She lifts the pump from the floor, neatly wraps its wire, notes the pump cups on my nightstand and grabs those too. I follow her into the living room. I feel more like a child than a mother. I straighten as we leave my bedroom and enter the hallway. I run my fingertips along the wall for a sense of balance. 

“You know on the news you’d hear like ‘baby found in dumpster’.” I say, watching the back of my mother’s head. 

“What are you talking about?” My mother sounds offended.  

“Why are you even talking about things like that?” my sister shouts from the living room. 

“Where do you want this?” my mother raises the pump.

“Anywhere, in the living room.” I throw my hand toward the couch. “Just right there, at the edge, by the outlet.” I sit into my pillows and the couch shifts. We’re both missing a piece.  

I haven’t been able to get comfortable. My neck and shoulders are tight and sore. I know it’s the pumping, the breast feeding, but I don’t know how to fix it. My mother plugs in the pump, sets the cups beside me. 

“Just hand me that pink thing.” I point to the hot pink pumping bra draped over the swivel chair. It was pilling and soft. I was borrowing it from a friend.

My mother retreats to the kitchen as I set myself up. Milk dribbles from my nipples as I tighten the bra, attach the cups, turn on the pump, set the speed and the intensity, and feel the pull. I watch my nipples lengthen. They’re such utters. I am a cow. I am a mammal. More milk dribbles. It’s not enough. I don’t have enough. With each labored, mechanical groan I sink into existential dread. This is what happens when I pump, I’ve told my friends, I want to die. I feel this pit and I want to die. Just for a sec. I imagine it’s like shooting heroin, but the opposite. But in the same instantaneous way you watch heroin addicts release into some blissful abyss as the needle fills, I release into a realm of dread as the pump pulls.

I watch my sister watch my baby. 

“He’s so tiny,” she says. 

“But he’s not even,” I say.

“He’s perfect,” my mother says. 

I’m not sure how to take him in. He doesn’t appear perfect, or too small, he just is. I don’t know that I so much care for him as I feel deeply anxious about making sure he doesn’t break. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I need to protect him, I know, but I feel less equipped than ever. I feel weaker. More beaten. More scared. Tired. Undone. I am no one’s protector, not even my own. I am wishing myself to disappear. I’m wishing to leave this place, this moment, to stop and retreat for a while until I can handle it. But I can’t. I keep asking myself why. I had once been so sure, I had once felt the desire, the urge to mother and have my own.

He smiles in his sleep and my sister can’t take it. The one thing I am certain of in this moment is that I am not in love with him. I don’t understand him. His hands jump and expand and he relaxes again, smiles, quivers, breaths so steadily. What have I done. Tears well for him, for having a mother like this, with thoughts like this. It will get better, Matt says, you will get better. 

I turn off the pump. I release the cups and my nipples deflate. I hand the barely full cups to my mother and tell her to put them in the fridge.

“Just like this?” She holds them up, examines the milk. 

“Yes, like that.”

She never breastfed.

I pull at the velcro behind me and the bra falls off. My boobs are sore, still hard, not soft, tender like when I was in fifth grade. Something isn’t right. I put on a big tee shirt and ice them for now. I’ll deal with it, I will. I lay back. 

“Should we put him somewhere?” my sister asks. 

“You can put him here, in this.” I toss a yellow baby lounger toward her. 

“I want one of these.” She sets him down. “On his back right?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be bitchy.” She lays him down. 

“Okay,” my mother’s voice breaks as she reenters the room. 

“Mom, he’s sleeping,” my sister scolds.

My mother glances. “He’s fine. He likes the noise. Okay, so I warmed up some soup, I washed your dishes. I need to go, but I can come back. I just need to run some errands.”

“You guys can go. Matt will be done soon. I’m fine. I’ll probably nap too.”

“That’s a good idea. You should nap when he naps,” my mother says. 

“I do.”

“Just call us if you need anything,” my sister says. “You can’t fall asleep though if he’s out here, should you put him in the crib?

I could still feel the way she’d tug me in malls if I’d walk too far ahead. Or drive me as close to a friend’s door as possible. Everything was an after school special until it wasn’t. 

“I got it,” I say. 

I hear the door open on the other end of the house. 

“All good?” Matt says as he rounds the corner. “I can take over.” He sits beside the lounger. “Sleepy guy.”

“I’ll walk out with you. I haven’t been outside,” I say. 

“We can go on a walk later if you want,” he says. 

“I don’t know.”

I step into a breeze. Thank god. The pad in my underwear is heavy, again. My sore, engorged breasts lead the way. I follow my mother down the steps and onto the sidewalk and she turns toward me, holding the grocery bags she’d used to carry in all that food for me. My neighbors move in and out of their houses. Cars still drive. The play is live; life is in motion. My sister walks down the stairs with the baby. Outside I’m a little more awake and I take him. I watch a brown leaf spin along the cement. For a moment it feels like Fall. My body is bigger, more to carry than I’m used to, and I widen my stance to steady myself. He is quiet on my arm, for now, light. We stand on the sidewalk, and we talk. A man walks his dog across the street and I become aware of my hair, pulled back and knotted, and how my fitted top shapes my rounded, hollowed belly. My sweatpants are stained, and I am wearing Matt’s house shoes. More brown leaves jump and scratch past. We could be anywhere with those leaves. I could be anywhere with this body, this pain, this baby. My mother talks Passover. My sister wants her to make her famous noodles. My mother nods, our mama’s noodles, the best. I watch the leaves. It is Fall in the Ukraine. It is 100 years ago. I am my grandmother, and my baby is my mother and my sister is my sister, a milkmaid, a neighbor, a great grandmother. I never met my grandmother, or my great grandmother, or any of my mothers before that, but for the first time I know in my body that they had all stood on a street with a baby in their arms talking food and feeling worn. For the moment I am rooted. He wakes and cries and I shudder. With his eyes closed he pecks at my body. I hold up his head and carry him to where there is food because that is what mothers do.