Arrival, by Water

He arrived in the early morning the day after my due date, just as the other two had. I was in a tub in the birthing center at the hospital, leaning back against D’s arm, and the midwife put him on my chest after he came out underwater. He was still attached to the cord inside me, and the two of us floated, wet and naked, him wailing, me in a state of extreme relief that the last twenty minutes of pushing was over. The three hours of contractions beforehand had been less painful than I remembered, but the pushing was worse by far, partly because the midwife talked me through doing it slowly to avoid tearing—which was more than worth it afterwards, though I wasn’t thinking that at the time.

He pretty much looks like how our other two looked when just born. In fact, I did a line-up of their newborn photos and D scored less than fifty percent correct.

Life since his arrival has been a long, meditative walk through a hazy landscape marked by three-hour feeds, chronic sleep deprivation, and physical soreness. There is an element of refreshing simplicity, where I just exist and enjoy remembering the things I had forgotten about newborns: their involuntary facial grimaces. The way their lips open and twist diagonally when rooting. The way their hands float around, disconnected from their bodies; the lint that gathers between their fingers. The fine coating of hair over their bodies; the boniness of their butts.

But then it’s easy to feel lonely and down. The constant head-achy lack of sleep can make anything look dismal and irritating, and it’s easy to complain about the constant throbbing discomfort of engorgement, the soreness that makes me wonder if my pelvic floor will ever return to normal, the strange waterbed-like quality of my deflated stomach. And it’s a bit scary to wrap my mind around taking care of all three by myself eventually.

The baby has been surprisingly easy to take care of: he falls asleep on his own without a fuss, already gives me four hours between feeds at night, rarely cries during the day. The other two have been much harder. They have both gotten sick with fevers during the past week. It’s been harder to meet E’s particular demands and answer her million questions when I’m tired. E.e. is clearly going through adjustment issues, crying when I can’t hold him due to my chest hurting or having to nurse, acting up with whomever else is taking care of him.

It’s a day-by-day thing at this point. I try to be thankful—that I have milk, that the soreness has been better than in the past, that the older two have been nothing but affectionate and loving to the baby despite their lives being upturned. That I have plenty of support from parents and D. I take showers, which as my surgical resident once said, really does equate to an hour of sleep. And I remember, for better or worse, that this stage will pass soon enough.