21. Eden
Eden
It takes exactly two months and six days for our daughter to transform me into the kind of person who hoards single-use coffee cups in the glovebox of our car like a neurotic squirrel, just in case I need to chug caffeine at a stoplight.
Welcome to the Sawyer-Bishops, circa eight months post-babyproofing. The bubble wrap has fallen off all the corners, the baby gates are a source of athletic contest, and our formerly pristine walls look like a Jackson Pollock but with more bodily fluids.
Sloane and I are still together, still in love, but our nights of slow-burn sapphic drama have given way to something more feral and, honestly, kind of inspiring. I call it survivalist romance.
Our daughter’s name is Olivia, a lovely, graceful name, but I have a growing suspicion that it’s only to lull us into a false sense of security.
Sloane insists it’s a “classic,” something with gravitas, but I know better.
This is a baby who has been plotting our downfall since her in-utero days, and the second we brought her home, staged a bloodless coup.
Every twenty minutes she shrieks her demands, and her mothers jump to comply.
Olivia’s demands are simple, and non-negotiable:
1. I will be held by a person at all times, even if that person is actively trying to shit.
2. I will only nap if you walk in circles at a specific cadence, one that would flummox a metronome.
3. When awake, I am to be entertained constantly. If you flag, I will deploy The Cry. It’s not a sound, it’s a sonic weapon, engineered to break the will of the sleep deprived.
4. Every surface is a potential snack. This includes your hair, my own fists, and, on several occasions, the cat.
It is a miracle Sloane and I have not been institutionalised, or at least placed under gentle supervision by our friend group.
I say “miracle,” but really it’s the predictable result of lesbian stubbornness paired with a child that looks like a baby animal from a Pixar short.
Her eyes are so comically enormous that even Bella admitted she would “probably take a bullet for that goblin.”
If this sounds like I hate motherhood, I don’t.
I fucking love it. But nobody tells you that parenting is less a fulfilment of your deepest self and more an elaborate game of Whac-A-Mole, where the moles are your own emotional triggers.
Every day Olivia exposes my soft underbelly—my need to be perfect, my refusal to ask for help.
The thing is, Sloane is good at this. Not in a perfect Pinterest mom way but in an instinctive, sturdy way that makes me want to punch anyone who ever doubted her.
She’s the kind of mother who knows how to wrap a baby burrito so tight it could survive atmospheric re-entry, and she never complains when Olivia barfs directly into her cleavage.
I, on the other hand, am the mother who googles “how to not accidentally emotionally scar your newborn” at 3 a.m. and still manages to project the existential dread of a tax auditor at all times.
It’s Tuesday. It is always Tuesday somehow, in the sense that time has lost all meaning.
I am pacing the kitchen with Olivia in my arms, trying to remember if I already made coffee or just thought about making coffee so hard that I tricked myself into believing I drank it.
Sloane is at her laptop, hunched over a work call, projecting “help me” with her eyes while her left hand deftly bounces a baby toy on the table to keep Olivia from detonating.
The house is quiet for once. The sort of quiet that suggests a catastrophic diaper situation is about to manifest. I check the baby—nope, not yet, just a prolonged fake-out. I turn to Sloane, who’s muted herself and is now using the break to laser-eye my face.
“You look…” she starts, but loses steam.
“Awful? Like a Tim Burton extra?” I prompt.
She considers. “Yeah, that.”
“Did you sleep?”
“Three hours. Consecutive.”
“We’re so close to a record,” I whisper, and she laughs, quietly so as not to jinx it.
Olivia burbles and glares at her hands, as if furious with the evolutionary betrayal that put her tiny baby hands so far from her mouth.
The hair on her head is starting to show a wild streak—it’s a weird mix between my dark mop and Sloane’s radiant gold.
Makes guessing which of our eggs she spawned from more interesting.
We are always low-level arguing about who the baby takes after.
Sloane claims “she has your resting bitch face,” while I maintain that Olivia’s frown lines are pure Bishop.
It’s too early to tell, but my money is on her developing the worst of both lineages and running for evil genius in her kindergarten class.
It’s time for the mid-morning feeding, which, for the record, is a lie. There is no “mid” anything, just a rolling sequence of snack times, each more urgent than the last.
I plop into the armchair, haul Olivia into position, and brace myself. Sloane brings over my coffee (which, it turns out, I did not make earlier) and sets it within reach, because she’s the kind of wife who anticipates small disasters before they happen.
“How’s she doing with the bottle?” Sloane asks, gently.
“She’s like a piranha,” I reply, but it comes out weirdly fond.
“Attagirl, Liv,” Sloane says, kissing the baby’s head and then mine, in that order. “I’m so glad I don’t have to breastfeed all the time. I’d feel like a dairy cow. You’re doing a great job, babe.”
This is the part I’m still adjusting to: the fact that the love of my life thinks I am not only competent but thriving in this bubble of sleepless, milk-soaked motherhood.
I want to tell her she’s wrong, that I’m one missed nap away from crying in the cereal aisle, but the words get stuck.
Instead, I drink my coffee and watch Olivia’s dark-lashed eyelids flutter as she eats, and it hits me again how much I love them both, and how fucked I would be if anything ever happened to either one.
Sloane’s phone pings, and she groans. “It’s a work thing. I’ll be back in ten?”
“Take your time.”
After she’s gone, I’m alone with the baby and my own swampy thoughts. I trace my finger over Olivia’s impossibly tiny hand, and she grabs it with shocking strength, like she’s anchoring me to this exact moment.
Olivia’s eyes close, her mouth going slack, and I know I have maybe three minutes before she wakes up with a fresh set of grievances. I finish my coffee, not even tasting it, and sink back into the chair.
This is it. This is the dream. Not the one I had at seventeen, or twenty-five, but the one I never thought I wanted.
But here it is. Olivia. Sloane. Me. A kitchen that smells of burnt toast and the faint, metallic tang of baby wipes. A thousand moments, none of them perfect but all of them real.
I close my eyes and let myself drift for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. When I open them, Sloane is standing over me, hair falling in her face, smiling like she’s never seen anything more beautiful than her wife passed out, drooling on a newborn.
“Do you want me to take her?” she asks.
“No,” I say, holding on a little tighter. “Just let me have her for a while.”
There are a few things nobody tells you about new motherhood, probably because if they did, the species would never propagate and the planet would be inherited by cats.
The main one is that no matter how many books, blogs, or unsolicited advice bombs you receive, nothing will prepare you for the psychic warfare of a two-month-old who senses, with predatory accuracy, the exact second you think you have a handle on things.
Take diaper changes, for example. In the prenatal classes, they have you practise on a plastic doll that doesn’t wriggle, scream, or launch liquid projectiles at your face with the accuracy of a naval cannon.
The instructor gives you the “three-step method” and says things like “diapering is a beautiful bonding experience.”
Lies!
Olivia, a.k.a. The Tiny Dictator, views every diaper change as battle.
I have learned to unstick those little tabs and swap a loaded nappy in the dark, with one hand, while balancing a half-dead baby wipe in my teeth.
If there were Olympic medals for one-handed containment of a Level Three Blowout, my face would be on the Wheaties box.
Sometimes I challenge myself by attempting the change without opening my eyes, as a way to keep my senses sharp for when she inevitably tries to escape mid-change.
This morning is no exception. Olivia has spent the last forty-five minutes serenading us with her “Not Quite Dying, But Will If You Ignore Me” wail.
At 3:44 a.m., Sloane rolled over, nudged me, and muttered “Your turn” before collapsing back into the void. If I didn’t love her I would have smothered her with the burp cloth already.
That’s how I ended up in Liv’s room staring at her crimson face as she pierces the sound barrier with her lungs.
Sighing, I scoop up the baby, do the Sway of Suffering down the hall, and land on the changing mat with the precision of a Navy SEAL.
Olivia is mid-scream, but the second the cold air hits her butt she goes silent, eyes bugging out like I’ve betrayed her in the worst possible way.
I hum an off-key version of “Twinkle Twinkle” and she stares at me, unblinking, until I tape on the new diaper and lift her to my shoulder.
She’s not done, of course. Olivia operates on a principle of delayed retribution.
Thirty seconds after I lay her back in the crib she detonates again, this time with the high-pitched shriek that can only mean gas pain.
Or hunger. Or perhaps rage. Sometimes I think she does it for the drama, and frankly, I respect that.