Chapter 9 Gwen #3
He moved around her in the kitchen, taking plates and utensils and water glasses to the table.
They would usually have wine with lasagna, a nice red, but he knew she wasn’t comfortable drinking when she was breastfeeding.
Her supply wasn’t good enough for her to do the “pump and dump” that other lucky moms did.
He could’ve opened a bottle on his own, indulged a bit, but he didn’t.
He was a good man, decent, and she’d been so awful.
“Who are you texting?” he asked.
“Leigh. The woman. I can’t believe I didn’t ask her baby’s name.”
“Hon, I’m sure it’s fine,” he said.
He came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her and June.
“I feel like they did a lobotomy along with the hysterectomy sometimes,” she told him. “I’ve lost all social graces.”
“You’re just rusty. And sleep deprived.”
He kept saying that he appreciated her feeding their daughter, but he wished he could help at night.
If they introduced bottle feeding, Jeff could take some of the night shifts.
But the thing was that she didn’t have a freezer stash of milk to use for bottles.
Formula was still out of the question. Even if she did miraculously increase her milk supply so that she had reserves, she wasn’t sure about the bottle thing.
There was the dreaded “nipple confusion” discussed on all the message boards.
It was possible June could love the efficiency of the bottle and refuse her mother’s breasts.
Gwen couldn’t imagine how terrible that type of rejection would feel.
She’d tried to explain all this to Jeff, and his eyes had gotten that glassy, faraway look. She exhausted him.
They sat for dinner, June in the swing next to the table. Gwen kept her phone by her plate, willing it to light up with a text from Leigh.
“This is delicious,” Jeff said upon taking his first bite.
It was good. Gwen felt like she’d lost so much competency, but she could still make a mean lasagna.
“How was your day?” Gwen asked him.
He started talking about a case he was working on right as her phone flashed, Leigh’s name on the screen.
She opened the message, though she could feel Jeff’s eyes on her as he continued talking.
She made the requisite sounds of an attentive listener—“uh-huh” and “right” and “oh”—as she read Leigh’s text:
Omg. Don’t even worry. I didn’t even think to mention her name. Lol. Her name is Belle. Like from Beauty and the Beast. I have second thoughts about it every other day
Gwen smiled.
“Is that your friend from group?” Jeff asked, giving up on the recounting of his day.
She was already tapping a response.
Aww, I think it’s pretty. My daughter, June, was supposed to be born in June, but she was born in May. I also have second thoughts
“Babe?” Jeff said.
“Huh? Yeah. Leigh. From group. Sorry. I felt so weird about not asking her daughter’s name. It’s Belle.”
“Crisis averted.”
She assessed his tone for sarcasm but found none. He was trying, so hard, to be supportive, and she loved him for it.
Leigh sent a laugh-cry-face emoji.
“It’s good to see you smiling,” Jeff said.
Gwen covered her mouth with her hand, embarrassed by this trivial thing that gave her happiness—a happiness that her husband had been trying to give her for weeks.
“I guess I didn’t realize how friend starved I was.”
Again, he could have reminded her that the support group was his idea. He could have said “I told you so,” but he just returned her smile. He wanted her to be happy, above all else, above his own ego. If that wasn’t love, she didn’t know what was.
“You should invite her over with her husband and the baby,” he said.
Gwen tried to picture it, all of them sitting together at the table, their babies in swings or loungers at their feet.
It didn’t appeal to her as much as Leigh’s initial suggestion that the two of them hang out.
She hadn’t even thought about the existence of Leigh’s husband, didn’t see how involving their respective men would be that fulfilling.
“I should probably get to know her a little first, right?”
“Sure, yeah. Just throwing it out there for the future,” he said.
Another text from Leigh:
I can’t remember if you said in group . . . are you on mat leave from work? I’m not working now so if you wanna hang during the day sometime, let me know. The days can feel so long
Leigh sent a melting-face emoji to punctuate the text. It was Gwen’s favorite emoji since she’d become a mother.
Gwen: Ya, I’m on leave for a few months. Longer if I can swing it. Would love to get together
Leigh: Ok cool. Do I sound too desperate if I suggest tomorrow?
Gwen’s fingers were vibrating as she tapped back:
Let’s do it!
Leigh quickly sent along her address, which was in Capitol Hill, the neighborhood southwest from theirs in Madison Park. It was one of the hipper Seattle neighborhoods—lots of bars and nightclubs.
When Gwen finally put down her phone, satisfied with the plan for the next day, she saw that Jeff had already finished his food.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay. Really.”
June started to squeal in her swing, and Gwen reached to get her.
“I’ll get her. You eat,” Jeff said, standing from his seat.
He lifted her out of the swing, then resumed his seat with June in his lap. She clasped his ring finger with both of her tiny hands, sucked on the gold wedding band.
Gwen took fast bites. She’d grown accustomed to shoveling calories into her face, knowing she needed them for her body to continue to make milk and feed their child. Savoring had become a foreign concept.
“You can take your time,” Jeff said. “I’ve got her.”
But Gwen was already almost done. She took her last two bites and then brought her plate and Jeff’s plate to the sink.
“I can do the dishes. Just sit. Relax.”
She sat but felt uneasy with nothing to do. Was this what life had been like before? She just . . . sat? She honestly could not remember.
Jeff placed June on her play mat on the kitchen floor and went about clearing the table.
She watched him at the sink, scrubbing the dishes by hand.
That was always his preference. He said he found the warm water soothing.
She was a rinse-and-throw-it-in-the-dishwasher type of person, trusting the appliance to sanitize better than she ever could.
She thought of Angeni Luna right then, wondered if she owned appliances.
It seemed like she would be opposed to them, though Gwen couldn’t think of a logical reason why.
Probably something about how machines made it impossible for us to go at the slower pace we were intended to go, how they contributed to our culture’s sense of urgency, prioritizing efficiency over all else.
Gwen picked up her phone and mindlessly tapped to Instagram, to Angeni Luna’s profile. The little ring around her profile photo—a photo of her and her daughter touching noses—was lit up, indicating a new story was available.
Ask me anything
Have you struggled at all with breastfeeding? I’m 3 weeks in and want to quit :(
Whenever women tell me they struggle with breastfeeding, my first question is if they had unnecessary medical interventions during labor, as that can disrupt the natural bond between mother and child and get breastfeeding off to a difficult start.
If that was the case with you, give yourself grace as you recover and know that it may be harder at the start, but totally worth it.
There is nothing more beautiful than breastfeeding, in my opinion.
How amazing that our bodies make exactly what our babies need to thrive.
It was a little before eight. June wasn’t whining to be fed, but Gwen suddenly felt like she had to feed her. Sometimes, she needed it more than June did, for the rush of accomplishment, for the reassurance that she was succeeding.
“I think I’ll go feed June,” she said.
Jeff was still at the sink. He looked over his shoulders, arms wet up to his elbows.
“Okay,” he said.
She picked up June from the play mat, took her into the guest room, the room they shared at night.
Usually, this would be her last feed before they attempted something like turning in for the night.
There was never a clear break, though. June woke up every two hours, regardless of the time of day.
She didn’t yet understand that the purpose of the night was to sleep.
Gwen changed June into a fresh diaper and stuffed the soiled one into the special trash can someone had purchased for them for just this purpose.
It was especially adept at masking odors.
It was presently overfull, and Gwen knew it would weigh about twenty pounds when she finally pulled it out—a long snake of yellow plastic filled with her daughter’s pee and shit.
She made a mental note to ask Jeff to take it out.
They had talked about that in the support group—delegating.
Apparently, many new moms were “gatekeepers,” placing themselves in charge of all the tasks because they did not trust anyone else to do them correctly, which then led to others being actually unable to do them since they’d been out of the loop so long.
The eventual burnout was, essentially, the mother’s fault.
Once she had June in her pajamas, she settled them into bed together and put June on her right breast. June closed her eyes and immediately went to work as Gwen felt the familiar tingle of the milk letting down.
Angeni Luna was right—breastfeeding was rather incredible, at least after it stopped being so torturous.
June fed for about twenty minutes while Gwen stared at the ceiling, eventually closing her own eyes. At this point, she would usually let herself doze off. June was most likely to have her longest stretch of sleep at this time—three hours, max, but it was something.