36 No Recovery
THIRTY-SIX
No Recovery
I was in surgery for three hours after Kaya was born.
My blood wouldn’t clot during my C-section, so doctors had to close up the blood vessels in my uterus to prevent me from bleeding out.
I had seven transfusions and ran a fever the entire time.
My uterus had become infected, and the antibiotics I’d been given during labor hadn’t been strong enough to lower my temperature.
When I woke up in the recovery room, I was exhausted, disoriented, and racked with pain. Wlad was in the room, holding a sleeping Kaya, and he brought her to me and perched on the edge of my hospital bed.
“She’s so little,” I said, noticing her delicate fingers. “How did I get so big if she’s so small?”
Wlad smiled. “She’s eight pounds and twenty-one inches long. That’s about half the size of you.”
Between waves of burning pain, I cracked as much of a smile as I could manage.
“You need to rest, so I’ll hold her,” Wlad continued, pulling up a chair so he could sit next to me with Kaya.
If I hadn’t been so weak, I would have taken her in my arms and tried to nurse her, but I didn’t have the energy.
The anesthesia was still wearing off, I was exhausted from over half a day of hard labor, and my body was adjusting itself to seven pints of new blood and who knows how many stitches.
I watched Wlad rock her gently, putting a pacifier in her mouth as she started to whimper, and then placing her back into her hospital bassinet so she could sleep.
The nurse soon came in to take my vital signs, and when she asked me if I was okay, I nodded my head.
I wasn’t okay. Kaya was gorgeous, with blond peach fuzz covering her head and wide, pink lips that curled up as she slept, but she seemed like someone else’s baby, not mine.
I had always heard that mothers feel an instant rush of love the moment they lay their eyes on their baby, but I felt nothing.
Kaya was just there, and now I had to figure out how to bond with her.
It felt like an insurmountable task, and I was only on the first day.
About a month later, I walked into the bathroom, where Wlad was giving Kaya a bath.
After we left the hospital, her first bath had been in his hands, which were so big they easily doubled as a Kaya-size bathtub, but now she was reclining naked in what can only be described as a long, plastic dish.
She was waving her chubby arms and kicking her little legs as Wlad rubbed soap onto her belly.
“That thing looks like a plastic La-Z-Boy,” I said, taking in how sweet and gentle he looked with her. “She seems so happy.”
Wlad smiled, and I watched his eyes travel down to where her diaper had been. As his face fell, I knew he’d realized that it was going to take some real muscle to scrape away the poop that had accumulated in her skin and fat folds.
“Look, Mama is here!” Wlad said to Kaya as the thought of washing her nether regions receded. Then he turned to me. “You can finish the bath. A baby needs her mother.”
I rolled my eyes, but not so Wlad or Kaya could see.
Wlad was a few days away from leaving for Germany so he could train for a fight at the end of April, and I wasn’t sure how much I’d miss him.
The reason was that—even when he was present—I felt like I was raising Kaya alone.
Wlad was helpful, but overall he seemed to be taking traditional parenting roles a little too literally, seeing the mother as what a baby needed first and foremost. I didn’t understand it.
My dad had always gone above and beyond with me and Jansen right from the start.
“In the first few months,” Wlad had said not long after she was born, “a baby needs milk and a diaper. They need their mama. When they have a personality, they need papa.”
I completely disagreed. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the mental or physical energy to argue with him.
I took Kaya out of the bath and wrapped her in a towel, and her head bobbed forward and nestled in the crook of my arm.
God, I hope that didn’t hurt her, I thought, suddenly convinced she was broken.
I remembered what my doctor had said the last time I’d seen him, when I told him how much I worried about her.
“After all you went through before she was born and during the birth, she’s fine. You don’t have to panic anymore.”
But it wasn’t panic that was sitting in my chest. It was nothing. A total blackout of emotion, like my soul was dead. I wasn’t myself, yet the problem was I didn’t know what I was supposed to be.
I put Kaya in her bassinet and walked into the living room. Wlad was sitting on the couch holding his phone.
“It’s a good thing you’ll have help when I leave for Germany,” he said. We’d hired a full-time nanny, and she was doing a great job helping me meet most of Kaya’s basic needs. “I’ll be back when you and Kaya really need me.”
“Okay.” I smiled, but it didn’t mean I was happy. Quite the opposite. I felt terrible.
Ever since Kaya’s birth, all my natural optimism and pep had vanished.
The three months I planned to take off seemed like an eternity, with long days of nothingness stretching before me.
When Kaya cried, I struggled to soothe her, feeling desperate, inadequate, and out of control.
When I took her out in her stroller, walking seemed pointless.
If I turned on the TV to relieve the boredom, I never smiled or laughed.
Television reminded me of Nashville, and on Nashville, I had no friends.
If I went outside, it was gray, and that was because it was January, the month when everything’s dead.
Now Wlad was leaving, and my anger had morphed into resentment.
Small slights that had never rocked me before no longer slid off my back.
God, I’m still so angry that Wlad left me all alone to finish Kaya’s bath, I thought. What kind of father does that?
I used to be a fierce lioness, ready to fend off anyone who crossed me or made me feel like less of a person. Now I was anxious and afraid about everything and around everyone, including myself.
A few days later, Wlad left town, and I was so lonely and depressed that I called Luana back in Hawaii for moral support. She’d been an angel when I was there before Kaya’s birth, and—as a mom herself—I knew she’d be able to help me navigate the minefield of emotions that new motherhood can bring.
“So,” she asked. “How’s mom life?”
“Not great,” I answered. “Wlad’s gone, so it’s just me, our nanny, our black ops security guard, and all the friends I don’t have at the set.”
“Hayden,” she said sweetly. “I know it’s hard. When do you go back?”
“In about two months. Big, fat Juliette Barnes, carrying twenty extra pounds. I can’t wait to see how they’re going to work that into the plot.”
Luana laughed. “Oh, be quiet. You look great. You’ll start training soon, and you’ll get your body back. You’re so young.”
I winced. When I went back on set, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fit into any of my costumes.
And while I loved Nashville’s costume department and had never felt any shame being half-naked around them, I couldn’t stand the idea of their hands all over me during fittings.
It had been bad enough standing in my bedroom, looking at my fat, bloated body in the mirror.
Now I was going to have to do that in front of other people.
“Luana, I’m having an issue,” I finally said, deciding to get straight to the point.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I’m just not happy. And when I say ‘not happy’ I really mean miserable.”
I could hear Luana sigh. “What do you mean? Is it Wlad?”
I looked down. “Yes, sort of. He’s back in Germany doing his thing, and he has to be there because he has a fight in a few months.
But it makes me feel like I’m raising this baby alone.
I also don’t love my life right now. I love Kaya, but…
I don’t know. I thought having a baby would be this miraculous experience. It’s not. It’s hard.”
“Honey,” Luana said, “I didn’t bond with my daughter right away. It’s natural. It takes time. You have to get to know her.”
I paused and thought about what she’d said. Maybe I did just need time. Maybe I was overreacting and rushing what was a totally natural process. It takes nine months to grow a baby, so maybe it takes that amount of time—or even longer—to grow a mother.
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “You know me, always wanting to be fun and spunky. I live to make everyone happy.”
Luana laughed. “I’ll love you no matter how boring and unhappy you are. I’ll love you even if you have a fat vagina.”
I laughed, and suddenly I felt a rush of something I hadn’t experienced in over a month.
It was euphoria, cutting through the numbness.
With one rush of dopamine, I’d wiped out my anxiety and replaced it with all the light I’d been struggling to find.
If I could have more of that, I knew I could be myself again.
A thought hit me. I’m an actor. If I can manufacture tears, I can manufacture happiness.
Then I remembered the line that Wlad loved so much he made it his email signature: If you control your mind, you control everything.
I was tough, and I was in control. More than that, I was a fighter.
If millions of women around the world could be mothers, I could be one, too.
There was just one issue: I needed more of those happy hormones. Dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins were the gas that could power my engine and push me to be myself again. But just how was I going to get them?
I looked around my kitchen and saw a bottle of wine on the counter, unopened.
“Luana,” I said, “I love you. Can I call you later?”
“Of course,” she answered.
Then I hung up the phone, grabbed a corkscrew and a glass, and poured out so much wine the glass almost overflowed.