Chapter 5 Gwen
Gwen
The day Gwen and June came home from the hospital, Gwen was overcome by the sheer unoriginality of her feelings.
She thought what every new mother thinks: How did they let me leave the hospital with her?
I am not equipped for this. It was an avalanche of self-doubt and dread that, despite its unoriginality, caught her by complete surprise.
She had done so much research, so much prep work, for this.
She had assumed she would transcend the usual insecurities by being so ready.
But, of course, the things she was ready for were not the things that had happened.
She had a mental list of everything she needed to recover from a vaginal birth—witch hazel sprays and hemorrhoid cream, just in case; a freezer full of pads to stuff in her underwear; a donut-shaped pillow to sit on while the tender life-delivering parts of herself recovered.
She did not know the first thing about recovery from a C-section and hysterectomy.
It hurt to move, but she hadn’t wanted to take the painkillers since discovering that they made her extremely constipated.
Two days into being home, her incision opened more than it was supposed to.
She stared at the ooze and thought of herself as a filleted fish.
She needed to go in and have the stitches reinforced.
With all the stress to her body, her milk production waned.
Or she assumed it waned. There was no way to tell exactly how much she was producing, which was maddening.
Why hadn’t anyone invented a pacemaker-type object that could be implanted to measure the ounces?
Was she supposed to just trust that her body was meeting her baby’s needs?
She didn’t see how trusting her body would ever be in the cards again.
All she knew for sure was that June was inconsolable. She cried constantly. All mothers said this, but Gwen knew they didn’t really mean constantly. They were exaggerating. But with June, it was constant.
“Do you think she’s hungry?” Jeff asked on one of those first days home.
Do you think your body is failing her . . . again?
That was the question Gwen heard.
When they took June to her first pediatrician check-in, the doctor said, “Well, she’s not back to her birth weight, and we like to see that by this point.”
Gwen had selected this particular pediatrician, this Dr. Goodall (as in Jane), because she had excellent reviews online and was known to be very holistic and pro-breastfeeding and not the type to condemn co-sleeping. But now she hated this doctor.
“Her birth weight?” Gwen said, rage simmering inside her body. “You mean the weight she was when they cut her out of my body.”
“Hon,” Jeff said, putting his hand on her thigh.
Gwen stared at his hand there, atop the same sweatpants she’d been wearing for days. It didn’t seem like her thigh, but like someone else’s thigh, attached to her body. She stared and stared.
The doctor clasped her hands in her lap and said, “Mom, maybe we need to talk about how you’re doing.”
Mom.
Gwen wanted to slap her.
“I’m fine,” Gwen said, nearly spitting the words.
The doctor cocked her head, considering, then took a deep inhale.
“I want you to come back at the end of the week, okay? I want to keep a close eye on June’s weight . . . and on you.”
Gwen said “Fine” again and stood up, clutching June to her chest. As she stomped—yes, stomped—out of the exam room, she heard Dr. Goodall say to Jeff, “Do you mind hanging back for a second?”
Gwen paced the waiting room with June for five minutes, waiting for Jeff to emerge.
She knew they were talking about her—how inept and irrational she was.
She had lost control of her own existence ever since they’d wheeled her into that operating room.
Since then, she had become someone to be managed, someone who required the imposition of a stranger’s expertise.
Jeff looked apologetic when he came out. She didn’t ask him what they’d discussed because she didn’t want to know.
Gwen scoured the internet for tips to improve her milk supply.
She ordered a bulk pack of fenugreek tea from , paid an additional $2.
99 to have it delivered the same day. She filled two sixty-four-ounce water bottles and made sure she drank both of them every day.
Hydration was key, Google said. She offered June each breast whenever possible, whenever June was awake and alert.
When she dozed off, Gwen used the pump, watched how little was trickling out through the tubes, furious with herself.
Other women were producing so much that they had to buy an extra freezer to keep in their garage to store it all.
They posted photos of frozen milk pouches literally tumbling out when someone opened the door in search of a popsicle.
Insurance paid for a lactation consultant named Mary to come for a half hour twice a week.
Mary was fifty years old and talked very slowly.
Gwen couldn’t tell if she was talking slowly in an attempt to calm Gwen’s noticeably anxious energy or if she was talking slowly because that was just the way she talked.
When Gwen said that she didn’t think her body was making enough milk, Mary did not disagree.
Instead of assuring Gwen that her body was magical and that it knew exactly what to do to nourish June, Mary said, “Give yourself grace, dear. How is your body supposed to focus on producing milk with all you’ve been through? ”
Mary suggested that Gwen consider supplementing with formula. Jeff was sitting on the opposite end of the couch from Gwen when Mary suggested this, and Gwen could see him nodding out of the corner of her eye.
“I’m not doing formula,” Gwen said.
It was the first thing she’d said with any kind of conviction in days.
“It’s just something to consider,” Mary said.
“I’ve considered it,” Gwen said. “I considered it throughout my pregnancy and read every fucking book on the planet and educated myself about every single benefit of breast milk.”
“Babe,” Jeff said.
“Everyone is acting like I don’t know anything,” Gwen said.
She stood then, June resting on her bare breasts, her nursing bra folded down over her possibly still-infected incision, and left the room, even though there were ten minutes left in their consultation session.
She didn’t want them to see her cry.
She didn’t want them to know that she was starting to realize that she actually didn’t know anything.
It was sometime in the blur of these first days home when Angeni Luna began to feel like a beacon in the darkest night, a friend whispering in her ear, saying, “Dearest, you are her mother. Do not let the medical establishment and your clueless husband lead you astray. You know everything you need to know.”
You know everything you need to know.
She began to whisper it to herself like a lullaby to soothe herself when nothing she did seemed to soothe her baby.
Miraculously, by the next appointment with the pediatrician, June had gained weight.
The incessant feeding and pumping and fenugreek tea had worked.
Gwen had never felt so fulfilled. The rush of dopamine that came with this accomplishment was unlike anything she’d ever felt in her high-achieving life.
With just her body, she had corrected their course.
June was on her way to thriving, which meant that Gwen was thriving too.
Until she wasn’t. Again.
It started with June developing daily diarrhea that had a greenish tint to it. Per Dr. Goodall’s instructions, Gwen scooped some of the poop from June’s diaper into a Ziploc baggie and brought the sample to the doctor’s office.
“You’re eating something that doesn’t agree with her,” Dr. Goodall said.
Because of course it was Gwen’s fault. Again.
“Do you drink coffee?” she asked.
Did she drink coffee? Who did this doctor think Gwen was?
“Um, no,” Gwen said.
“Good. That’s the issue for some moms. The caffeine, the acidity, it doesn’t agree with the baby.”
No shit, Sherlock, Gwen wanted to say, but instead: “Yeah, I know.”
Dr. Goodall gave her a paper that had clearly been xeroxed about a billion times, with the title “Elimination Diet for Breastfeeding Mothers” at the top.
The idea was to eliminate one common food culprit at a time, wait awhile to see if symptoms improved, then eliminate another food.
This could go on for weeks until the offending food was identified.
“You can start with dairy. For most people, it’s dairy.”
Gwen thought of all the pizza she’d been consuming.
Jeff had been ordering delivery regularly, multiple boxes, so they’d have leftovers for days.
She thought of how she’d been starting every day with an organic yogurt smoothie that she’d mistakenly thought was healthy and nourishing.
All that protein, all that calcium, all those probiotics.
At night, as the sun set and she braced herself for sleepless dark, she dipped her spoon into a carton of ice cream as a sort of salve.
It was a reminder that she was capable of experiencing pleasure.
Dr. Goodall was reminding her that she was a mother now; pleasure was not a priority.
“Can’t I just remove several things at one time instead of doing this drawn-out thing?” Gwen asked.
“You can. You have to consider how limited your diet would be. I know you want to keep breastfeeding, which demands a lot of calories. You have to think about your own health, not just your baby’s.”
She was using that same tone as when she’d said Mom, maybe we need to talk about how you’re doing.
“I’m savvy with nutritional stuff. I can figure it out,” Gwen said.
“I’m not just talking about physical health.”
Gwen felt the rage simmering inside again.
“Thank you for your concern,” she said.