Partnering

Our baby boy was six weeks early, determining his own timeline and scoffing at ours. We felt helpless and thrashed around by the abrupt change in how we envisioned the end of my pregnancy. I think I tried to exert the control we did not have at the start by micromanaging. We logged every diaper, bottle, nursing session, and nap on our shared iPhone app, and I sought to use this information to reassure myself that our course was now normal, that we have recovered from concerns about his weight, and he was indeed eating enough. On the app, ounces of breastmilk and incremental blocks of sleep sifted between my fingers as I scrolled and tried to estimate what will come next.

Peers and mentors in medicine encouraged me to be grateful that this phase of mothering a newborn. They said that sleeping up to four hours nonconsecutively each night will be good preparation for my looming night shifts in residency.

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I find it hard to recognize myself in this first month postpartum. Over a decade ago, when we first chose each other, you said my optimism and empathy were factors that brought us together, things about my personality that you admired. At 3:00 AM, when I lurch awake to the sound of our son grunting and see you continuing to sleep, I search for these parts of myself to extend to you. I notice that I am angered if our interactions feel like a transaction or a catalogue of our endless to do list. Yet I am equally annoyed when you inject your jokes into the conversation and slow our communication.    

The days and nights blur, and when we do interact, the tension is cut with words sharpened by sleep deprivation. With a perpetual sinkful of bottles to wash, laundry baskets of tiny clothing to fold, time for rest feels limited. All these new tasks compound, and soon, the clutter begins to suffocate me. There is no modulation of my tone to soften the question of what has been done, or my disappointment when I wake from a nap to see the unchanged mess. I can hear the edge of negativity slinking around the questions I intend to ask innocuously.

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He is now four months old. We have fallen into new rhythms – you do the dishes and I set the coffee maker to DELAY BREW so the smell wafts up to our bedroom at 6:35 AM. He wakes me up first in the morning, and I nudge you to change his diaper. I jump out of bed and have accepted that you will slowly push yourself up. We remind each other that we are both trying our best, yelling over the sound of his white noise machine.

I have started baking again – a simple banana muffin recipe from the back of the box of pancake mix. It allows me to use the fruit as its skin begins to turn from speckles to a peel of solid brown. You picked up a new hobby, leaving home for hours at a time and returning rejuvenated after your time wading in rivers as you cast for fish. You are running again, miles and miles even in the rain. I used to love that, too. I beam with pride after taking ten minutes to do a gentle yoga class, though I used to do hours of vigorous yoga at a time. I’m slowly regaining my skills, chipping away at the stiffness of this different body.

We do not log diapers anymore. We have grown confident and have developed our own styles to make him happy. In the evenings, I see you carry him in a grip you have coined “The Claw;” with one hand, you reach over his shoulder and cup his bottom. He faces outwards and leans back against your stomach as he surveys each lightbulb in succession. I curl around him in the mornings, relishing that I am his comfort. While I nurse him, he grips my skin with his miniature fists as if he can’t help but claw his way closer to me. I know how to gauge his remaining hunger based on these movements.

He has nearly quadrupled in size. Now, he is sturdy, hefty enough in my arms to cause wrist pain when I lift him up. His eyes match mine with a light brown ring surrounded by a blue-green sunburst. We coo back at him with contentment when these duplicates of my eyes lock on yours. A smile unfurls outward from one side of his upper lip. His tongue comes down with a click of acknowledgement, his nose scrunches up, and his chin – dimpled, like yours – juts forwards with newfound neck stability. We are all learning this new life together.