“Rule number one, feed the baby.”
Sugar can be converted into C2H5OH, CO2, and organic acids. I can’t for the life of me remember why I know this. So I wake up and feed the starter, and feed you—the baby. I re-rubberband a jar tucked into the back corner of the counter to see how much the lactic acid bacteria are growing. Feed the starter. Feed the baby. Feed the marriage. Separate but hungry infantile ecosystems, but we’re discovering that you, my dear rosy-cheeked child, are the hungriest of the three.
The starter sits next to three varieties of salt. Himalayan Pink. Fleur De Sel. Kosher. But you know what? I’m new at this whole being your mom thing, and the mere idea of eating a casserole from the freezer is nauseating. Everyone told me how insatiable my hunger would be in pregnancy, and I have two cavities from gummy bear consumption to prove it. Postpartum hunger, on the other hand, is non-existent, and yet also mandatory for survival, so I send your father out to get something fast and fried.
You can’t have salt yet, but the day will come when I introduce you to fine-mesh sodium chloride—NaCl. Hot fries from a drive-thru, coated in the alkaline stuff, with a sprinkling of sodium silicoaluminate (E554) to keep the salt from coagulating to the grease-laden potatoes.
Don’t worry, the anti-caking agents in the formula we give you from time to time use SiO2,Ca3(PO4)2, and CaSiO3. Tasteless, really, but we won’t tell anyone how you’re fed for the risk of exile from society.
“You’ll find your groove.”
Up and down the hallway at one in the morning, and again at three forty-five. The biological sway pushes my hips into an infinity loop. Always clockwise until the ache in my bursa screams at me to stop. We’re all born barefoot, I think, so what’s the harm in grounding my weary toes on a Royal Damask rug in beiges and blues—never mind the mustard poop stain on the corner—in the nursery. We bought it new, your father and I. Although he says his academic friends aren’t allowed to see it, they’ll think less of his ability to curate at the museum, whereas my colleagues won’t see me for another year.
We thought that to be good parents, we needed something underfoot to prevent an inevitable slip into making parenthood our entire personality. A synthetic, patterned thing to buffer our soles from the eventual grooves we’d create in the hardwood floor. I want to savor this, but I don’t want to get stuck.
At some point, I mumble into the baby monitor, “How much longer before she falls asleep do you think?”
Your father shuffles in, leans against the doorframe, and yawns. Aside from the few sympathy pounds he’s gained, he’s the same man he’s always been. Darker undereyes, sure, but his skin hasn’t been stretched like mine. And when we left the hospital, I was in an oversized nightgown and slippers, accepting the swell of my huge feet, and he was in his pre-pregnancy jeans; he smiled, not knowing how maddening it is to have a body riddled with indentations, channels, and marks. I didn’t find these grooves, they found their way into me.
“Here, let me take her. You go lie down.”
The closet door is a full panel of glass, which we’ll replace eventually. For now, it serves as a mirror of our daily routine, which isn’t a routine at all, more a haphazard scattering of datasets covering topics I’ve yet to research: Impacts of Sleep Deprivation—A Method Study for Postpartum. Systematic Review of Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders—A Prospective Longitudinal Observation. These in real-time experiments don’t say anything about grooves and being at the center of one’s study.
I’m guilty of scientific bias.
“Follow your gut.”
A crunchy cousin on your father’s side of the family went on and on about vaginal seeding and how, if I were to get a cesarean, to “make sure they introduce maternal gut and vaginal flora to the baby.” Swabbing my vagina and then wiping the insides of your mouth, face, and skin was supposed to help you build your immune system, but listen, things went sideways fast, and you were decelerating when I moved my body from left to right. I couldn’t help the need for brain lateralization and chirality. You don’t know what those words mean, but I read somewhere that we should talk to infants like they are grown-ups, no baby talk.
Our doula said we must move our bodies in labor and birth the same way we move our bodies in the gym. “What we do to the left, we do to the right.”
But imagine me, your mother, with a pendulous melon protruding from my body. The very belly that was guilty of rearranging all my organs to new locations to make room for you. Who’s to say where my gut was at that exact moment?
You didn’t like exaggerated side-lying. You went silent when I laid on my back. My gut was an untrustworthy guide, and she had to be cut open. Something about not tolerating contractions while in utero or a failure to progress, perhaps they are the same damn thing. Crunchy cousin-in-law could never, only the best of homebirths for her.
Your father said, “There wasn’t time for a seeding, and my cousin has always been a bit off.”
You’ll grow to love this quirk of your father’s, where he will dip his head just so to the side, and scrunch one eye into a crinkled state any time he refuses to say he disagrees for fear of appearing disagreeable. Art majors, ha. When you ask for the keys to the car or if your friend can come over, know he means well, but his face gives him away every time.
And because seven layers of my gut were cut open, I wonder if I can trust knowing when a fever is worthy of seeing the doctor. Will I let you watch John Hughes movies too early? How can I trust my gut when my low-rise bikinis won’t ever fit the same again?
“It’s the best thing you’ll ever do.”
Stopped showering. Eaten sandwich crusts and called it a meal. Let vomit slide down the back of my T-shirt and barely flinched as your father stripped me, leaving me standing topless in the living room as he mopped it all up.
Let myself go, but to where I have no idea—compared myself to every other parent online to see if I’m doing this right.
In between it all, I worry, of course I do, because the world is on fire. But you’re safe here with me—with us—in this oversized chair, where we rock for hours and hours, letting the laundry pile up, and watching the starter become more discard than not. In this chair, the dangerous pathogens are limited to whatever we introduce, and I know that’s at least one thing I can do.
Our little family is a microbial universe where we pick you up every few hours, admire your growth, and watch you stretch like a good pull of sourdough before it’s left to proof again. The pediatrician says this scrunching is a phenomenon, a gentle return to the fetal position you knew for so long. If making sure you regulate your body temperature and develop good muscle tone is the cost of doing the best thing, then I’ll accept the hemorrhoids and avoid the outside world for as long as humanly possible.
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
I go to the grocery store without you, with a belly full of glass shards, because your father insists I should get out for a bit.
“She’s got a full stomach and is napping. We’ll be okay, I promise.”
But will they?
It’s unbearable, this burning pain in my chest. I reach for my purse and dig around within its contents. Everything is accounted for—wallet, sunglasses, a teeny tiny hospital band with your name on it. I stop breathing and check the back seat, because that rule isn’t in the baby shower advice cards, but I’m supposed to always look before getting out of the car anyway.I know you’re not in your car seat, but habits help to shape muscle memory, and my brain has this thing called neuroplasticity, yours does too. It’s no wonder parents all think their baby is the smartest. From the moment you were born, you started forming a million new neural connections a minute.
You’re brilliant.
But I’m losing it a little bit, because what if the house catches on fire while I’m out buying food? I don’t need the viral mac and cheese I saw online that bad, do I? What if your father changes your identity and absconds with you to another country in the next twenty minutes? Math is hard to do when I’m tired, but I think you’ll have developed at least twenty million new connections by the time I get home. The days are long, but my intrusive thoughts are longer.
Days have passed since your arrival, and I’m in aisle four deciding between regular Cavatappi and protein-style Cavatappi. I hold each box in one hand, compare the labels, and put both back on the shelf, willing the pasta gods to decide for me. Life-changing decision if there ever was one—the way this feels beyond difficult. It’s just fucking noodles. My neck itches, and at last, I have a letdown of milk so forceful I bypass the pasta to wave down a store clerk for a foldable “Wet Floor” sign.
You’re not with me (I checked), but my body tingles and I can’t help but reach for you like some phantom limb, to scoop you up to my breast and park my ass right on the bottom shelf with the sacks of flour and feed you. Zero cortical reorganization has happened between now and when I left the house. There hasn’t been time for my brain to update—you’re safe at home. This moment is an eternity. It’s a terrible thing to have this phantom sensation and a brain misfire next to the pasta.
Did Einstein decide time was relative with a newborn on his useless nipple? Did he?
“Listen to the experts.”
A good experiment relies on the ability to eliminate what is and what is not.
Is it colic? I also cry a lot.
Is it a dairy allergy? I’ve already eliminated everything good in my life, and now the lactation consultant suggests I remove cheese, too. Goodbye, joy. Time is an endless vacuum. I’m forced to consume coconut yogurt. The consultant is board-certified, so I trust her suggestion.
Is it me? Am I the reason the baby won’t stop crying? Mom groups online suggest that it may, in fact, be me.
They did not send us home with a binder filled with peer-reviewed studies on what to do when the CDC loses its scientific independence. All we’re left with are screenshots from rogue internet experts who swiped as much data as they could before it all went to hell.
“Take breaks. Prioritize self-care.”
I pee with you on my lap. I cook dinner with you strapped to my chest. I check the front window at least four times between four and five pm, waiting for any glimpse of your father’s car to enter the driveway. It’s the same every day.
Once in college, I blew off time in the lab to follow a flash mob around town as they performed choreographed dances to a song I can’t remember the name of. The fruit flies died as a result. I said never again.
The starter on the counter dons spots of green, and the rubber band has snapped off.
“Sleep when the baby sleeps.”
But you, my darling girl, are a noisy sleeper. Grunting and squeaking every few minutes, and we room share. So I make a new starter with clean hands, eyeballing scoops of flour and splashes of water. It’s an instinctual science, the one time I do not need protective eyewear or a lab coat for accuracy. The measurements are variable at best. Being your mother is five degrees of separation from a microbiologist’s dream laboratory.
If I sleep when you do, who will conduct the studies? If I sleep when you do, when will I catch up on my reading or eat a vegetable?
If I sleep when you do, I’ll miss all of the neural connections.
If I sleep. A big ‘if’.
“It takes a village.”
This card doesn’t have a signature.
It’s just one sentence— “Let me know if you need anything.”
“It gets easier.”
When?
Results: Inconclusive.
Shea West
Shea West (she/her) lives in Oregon with her family and dog, Freddie Mercury. She has spent nearly two decades supporting families through pregnancy, birth, and beyond as a professional birth worker and loves writing about the gritty bits of parenthood. Her writing can be read in Identity Theory, Marrow Magazine, and The Twin Bill. She is busy typing away at her second novel.
www.sheawestauthor.com
Header image by Jerry Chin
