Babymaker

Storytelling

I.

So I didn’t choose this life. Somebody else chose it for me.

I wanted to be in music, but my parents wanted something else. My dad forbid me to go into music, and he kept saying music is a hard life, that you always think success is just around the corner…it’s just around the corner…but it never happens. My mom, little did I know, had other plans. She would periodically pressure me into going into Job’s Daughters, going to get my ears pierced (because it would look so cute), dress me up to look so pretty and presentable in uncomfortable dresses, tights, and shoes to go to church on Easter Sundays (even though my parents weren’t religious and my dad even said he was agnostic). One or two times, she told me to sit up straight at the dinner table. A couple times, she showed me what a soup spoon was and what a regular spoon was, what a dinner fork was and what a salad fork was, which side of the plate the spoons, knives, and forks went, and so on. I didn’t care.

One day, we went to a garden party outdoors in somebody’s backyard. All the adults were dressed up semi-casually, with the kids running around here and there and supposedly having fun. My parents were there talking to a small group of other adults in a tight circle, wandering every once in a while meeting up with some other people throughout the day. Mom, as usual, was well-dressed and presentable, dressed in such a way that she reflected status and refinement. And she projected an air of sophistication to deliberately make others admire her. Me? I stood alone, walked slowly around here and there, occasionally talking to people for short periods of time, but not being too engaging because I couldn’t relate to them. I was bored.

My mom found what she thought was a good-looking young man a little older than me with money (almost everyone there looked like they had money) and took me over to meet him. I had already made small talk with him earlier in the day, but she made me go over and talk to him further. I didn’t want to. But she optimistically pressured me to do it anyway. So I did with discomfort. We had a pleasantly acceptable conversation, but that’s it.

Fast forward a year later, and we were getting married. All the trappings, the best men and bridesmaids, the church and the invitees, the ceremony and the reception. It was all nice. It was what my mom wanted and my dad couldn’t wait to get rid of me and get me out of the house so he didn’t have to financially support me anymore. We had the cake and the dance, the wedding gifts and the limo, the honeymoon and the house, a two-story Victorian house with the garden and the trees and the well-manicured lawns. It was nice.

My mom would be delighted.

We had food and we had a roof over our heads and we had nice clothes and nice furniture. Except for the house, which was beautiful, everything we had was nice. He had a nice career and a couple of nice cars, he had good friends and a nice family. The winters there were snowy and cosy and the summers were nice and enjoyable. We had a nice fireplace and a nice patio. Everything was nice.

It wasn’t long before I was pregnant. I didn’t want to be pregnant. My mom did, but I didn’t. I had to endure feeling trapped in a body where I was watching slowly morphing into a distended state, feeling sick during the second trimester, feeling sick from the fumes from passing vehicles, feeling irritable from things my husband said or did, wanting to get out and escape. What I wanted was an abortion, but the church I was attending was against it, my mom wanted to be a grandmother, and I felt there was no way out.

It was already enough that my church disagreed with me marrying a non-Christian, but now that I was married, I had to be under my husband’s authority and serve the role as the wife. I was the housewife. My husband worked. I cooked, cleaned, tended the garden (although my husband hired a gardener to take care of the yard around the house and the maintainance man to take care of the upkeep), washed the clothes, managed the kitchen supplies. I did what wives usually did. I didn’t have a job. Being a housewife was the job.

I was at a baby shower and had just got done receiving gifts (from some unapproving women when the time for me to go to the hospital had come. I couldn’t drive my own car because I was starting to go into labor, so one of the women got me into her car and took me. The hospital wasn’t too far away.

They got me into a wheelchair and wheeled me away.

It was a short labor. Before I totally knew it, I had a baby.


II.

I was holding a naked newborn. I didn’t know what to do with it. He was tiny, fragile, and helpless. It really scared me. I also felt helpless. I didn’t know how to take care of babies. I was holding something I was afraid could die from something…an accident, an illness, something. I didn’t want to be responsible. I didn’t want to be held to blame. I didn’t know what to do. But here I was, lying on my back in a room made to look like somebody’s home, holding a life I was terrified of losing.

I slowly reached up and lightly embraced the small person. I was supposed to do that, right? That’s what every new mother does, right? I was so scared. I was supposed to be an overwhelming amount of love for this little being, but all I could feel was fear. What if I do something wrong? What if I accidentally poisoned him? What if he died in the night while he slept? What if something happened while I walked away for a short time? What if he got injured?

There was no love there. There was fright.

In time, somebody…the nurse, the doctor, took the child away (I guess I was supposed to bond with the child) and wheeled me into another room. This room looked like a normal hospital room. It was there I spent the next…what, forty-eight hours? so I could rest and recover, with the nurse coming in with nourishment or with the scary life form for me to be with for a short time. The first time, I held the newborn in one arm and bottle-fed him with the other. Afterwards, it seemed something was wrong. He started crying and I didn’t know what to do. I looked at the nurse terrified. She smiled, took the child from my arms, and left the room. I wasn’t informed on why he was crying. Now I was really scared. I was alone. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what was happening to him. I was in the dark in a room with light.

The second time a nurse came in with the child once again. This time I was given the child and the bottle, but she left afterwards. I fed the child alone, but once again after he was finished, he was crying again. I was scared. I didn’t want to call the nurse, but I didn’t know what to do either. I held him against my chest and patted him on the back. I patted him on the back three times and suddenly he burped. Loudly. His head hit my chest and he was out like a light. I was shocked. Is that all he needed? A few more minutes passed by, and the nurse came back into the room to retrieve the sleeping baby.

In time, I was let go from the hospital (too soon in my opinion…I felt like I needed at least one more day) and in the blazing hot sun. I was carrying home an unknown extra person in my arms, not knowing what to do, where to go from here, how to take care of him. I was lost.

III.