Chapter 1 Gwen
Gwen
Gwen doesn’t remember the exact day she started following Angeni Luna. It was during her pregnancy with June, though the real obsession didn’t take hold until June was born, when Gwen turned to her phone for companionship during the lonely nighttime breastfeeding sessions.
The sessions were long in those early days—up to forty-five minutes.
Gwen had tried reading novels, a favorite pastime in her pre-baby life, but could not focus enough to follow the simplest plot.
So she went on social media to wade through a deluge of advice and advertisements preying upon her new motherhood.
Each night felt a hundred years long, and she felt so alone, though another human was quite literally attached to her.
She should have told Jeff about those hours of despair, but she didn’t want to deviate from The Plan.
When she was pregnant, she and Jeff had had a weekly “State of the Union”—meaning their marital union.
Gwen had gotten the idea from an Instagram account called @.
official. The “.co” was supposed to stand for couples, but over time, it began to seem like it should stand for company.
They sold all kinds of workbooks and webinars to “elevate your relationship.” A previous version of Gwen would have found this eye-roll-inducing, but pregnant Gwen was tapping the little heart icon on several of their posts each week.
She wanted her and Jeff to thrive as parents as much as they’d thrived as a romantic pair.
The Conscious Couples people made it seem like this would take a significant amount of work, since “adding a child to the bond is essentially creating a love triangle.”
During their State of the Union meetings, she and Jeff discussed how they would divide household tasks during the early days, when Gwen would be physically exhausted and recovering, all while establishing a feeding rhythm with their daughter.
They decided that Jeff would act as a support to Gwen and manage anything that did not involve the baby—the laundry, the dishes, the cooking, the cleaning.
Gwen would sleep with the baby in the guest room so that Jeff could get a good night’s sleep and be rested enough to tend to his duties during the day, when Gwen would attempt to take the entire world’s advice and “sleep when the baby sleeps.”
Gwen thought this arrangement made logical sense, and “logical sense” was her religion.
She and Jeff had met in law school. When she’d gotten pregnant, they’d both been on partner tracks at their respective firms. They prided themselves on being logic-based people.
The thing is, nothing about a newborn is logical. The best-laid plans, et cetera.
At some point during her pregnancy, the Instagram algorithm realized she was pregnant, because she was suddenly following a bunch of accounts about motherhood, and suggested she check out @mother.nurture.official.
Like a good social media citizen, she tapped right on over, scrolled through a few posts, determined that they resonated with the kind of mother she wanted to be, and became a follower.
Soon after, she discovered that the Mother Nurture account was a sister account of Conscious Couples.
Members of these communities would call this alignment, and she was all about it.
The basic gist of @mother.nurture.official was that motherhood is the most important role a woman can ever have.
As a mother, a woman is birthing and raising the future of humanity, and if we want a kind, loving collective, we must give as much love and kindness to our children as we can.
This involves a steadfast connection that is best fostered with an attachment parenting style.
Co-sleeping, long-term breastfeeding, and skin-to-skin bonding are good; separation, authoritarian discipline, sleep training, and formula are bad.
A good mother is one who is tuned in to her child’s every emotion and bowel movement.
A good mother is one who is willing to set herself aside to tend to her child’s every emotion and bowel movement.
Gwen wanted so badly to be a good mother.
Gwen chose the name June for their baby the week after they found out they were having a girl.
They were not the whimsical types who wanted to wait to know the sex; they were planners.
June was Gwen’s grandmother’s name, and she liked the idea of infusing some family legacy into their child’s identity.
Plus, the baby was due in June—right in the middle, June 15.
So if she was born a couple of weeks early or a couple of weeks late, the name would fit.
It felt fated, perfect. As the baby grew in her belly, Gwen called her June Bug.
I can’t wait to meet you, June Bug. She was smitten.
Then her water broke on May 20.
She had just come back from a three-mile run.
She’d been running a few times a week throughout her pregnancy.
Her obstetrician, Dr. Blake, an exceedingly relaxed man who had been a “baby catcher” (his words) for thirty years, said, “Pregnancy is not a medical ailment. If exercise feels good, do it.” When she asked him if he was sure, he looked at her over the top of his glasses and said, “You are very type A, aren’t you? ”
Gwen had been a track star in high school and then a Division I runner at the University of Washington.
Everyone has their thing, and running was hers.
When it became physically uncomfortable—not painful, just weird feeling, as she told her OB—she got one of those belts to wear around her middle to help support the weight of her belly.
She slowed her pace, reduced her mileage, and felt grateful every day she got out the door.
She wanted to be one of those women who go for a run on the day they deliver their baby.
She thought it would be particularly spectacular if her water broke while she was on a run.
She imagined posting an Instagram story: Gotta cut this run short.
Water broke! She’d already thought up captions to accompany the expected photo of her holding June against her chest in the delivery bed—The greatest finish line of my life or I’ve run many marathons, but nothing quite like this or Labor is the ultimate endurance event, and my daughter is the ultimate prize.
The Instagram comments would roll in, many of them with that flexed-bicep emoji. She would relish all of it.
But none of that happened.
The now-infamous three-mile run felt normal.
There was no niggling pain, no tightening in her abdomen, nothing to suggest that the harmonious birth she’d planned for was about to go horribly awry.
When she returned from her run, Jeff had already left for work.
Gwen normally went into the office but had arranged to work from home a few days a week during her pregnancy.
She stripped off her damp clothes and admired her belly in the mirror.
From behind, she did not look pregnant at all.
It was only from the side or front that it was obvious.
She was one of those pregnant women who look like they just have a basketball under their shirt.
In other words, she was one of those pregnant women that other women hate.
She chalked it up to doing all the things she was supposed to do.
She took her vitamins and ate super-clean food.
She exercised. She’d started meditating to practice bringing her body to a calm state.
She was the epitome of a healthy mother-to-be, could envision herself as the smiling cover model on a pregnancy magazine.
When she reached into the shower to turn on the hot water, she felt a sudden twinge of pain.
Her first thought was Braxton Hicks, those contractions the uterus does leading up to delivery.
It seemed too soon for those types of contractions, but if anyone’s body was going to start practicing early, it would be hers.
She took deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling like she’d seen Lamaze teachers instruct in YouTube videos.
But the pain continued. Then she felt liquid running down her leg.
Some of it was clear and some of it was red, and all her meditation learnings went out the proverbial window.
She called Jeff and Jeff called her doula, because of course she had a doula.
The doula’s name was Essence, because of course her name was Essence.
Jeff had her on speaker, and she said, in a singsong voice, “Oh, my dear, this sounds like quite the emergency. You need to go to the hospital.” She then informed them that she would be unable to attend “the arrival” because she was at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.
Jeff called the OB’s office, and they said Gwen’s doctor was on vacation but another doctor would meet them at the hospital.
Gwen cried and cried because none of this was right.
Jeff ushered her to the car, and she briefly grieved her lack of a hospital bag, complete with a plush robe and her favorite organic snacks.
By fixating on this detail, she could be in complete denial of the possibility that she and her baby might die.
When she’d hired Essence and Essence had asked about her ideal birth plan, Gwen had tried to sound easygoing because she didn’t want to be one of those controlling women who demand Enya and twinkly lights and an inflatable tub.
In reality, though, that was exactly the kind of woman she was.
She had a playlist on her phone that she’d been secretly curating, and it did include a couple of Enya songs.
She’d purchased a special chromotherapy lamp that was supposed to emit green light to relax her during labor.
She had chosen her OB because he was the director of a birthing center that had tubs available.