In the spring of 2004 I birthed my first child along with all happy thoughts and linear, logical, lifted thinking.

The space between my ears became jumbled like an unruly hairball with no way to expel itself. I waited for my mind to be set free from the tangle, but the painting of my life had been scribbled on with a big, permanent marker. On closer inspection the scribble looked surprisingly like an infant… and the hand that had drawn it was mine. I had done this on purpose.

What was I thinking?

I felt like that a great deal in the early days of parenting when everything was body fluids and bleak nights and baby skin and bleary eyes. My mind emptied as quickly as it filled. The aloneness and the newness mixed together and baked into a flavorless, frostingless, birthdayless pastry. The vapid feelings of  despair trapped fear, anger, retreat and hopelessness deep in the lining of my whole body. I had no idea how to release it.

But our child was beautiful.

At birth, even before the cord was cut, his big blue eyes had looked each person in the birthing room square-on to which the doctor chortled out, “Oh my! We don’t see that often. You’re going to have your hands full.” His golden hair flowed in tribute to Donald Trump. Really. It was an exact replica of his infamous hair piece and we laughed when it blew in the evening breeze. It was so wild he had his first haircut at five months out of sheer necessity.

He was a perfect infant. A cheater baby. The kind that tricks people into having more babies.

He rarely cried. In fact, the first time we really heard him cry was eight days after he was born. When he was tired or hungry or dirty he grunted. When he was held or put down he was happy. He nursed by the book. He was so easy. And it was so hard. Too busy treading the waters of postpartum depression, I missed his early infancy. I missed it, but I remember it.

He was perfect. I was not.

My mind had cleared the summit of giving birth and promptly threw itself over a cliff on the other side. My body was a ghost. A squishy, blobulous ghost. My thoughts were unzipped and turned inside out. Where was that happy girl who could do anything?

I panicked at the thought of just walking around the block. What if his diaper explodes? What if the stroller tires go flat? What if MY diaper explodes? WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?! Of course, what that something was I couldn’t tell you, but the paralysis felt insurmountable. Making food, folding clothes, going to the store, enjoying that fresh new baby smell? Forget it.

That’s for those other moms.

The ones with the post birth love rush who say they never knew love until that moment and they thought they would burst with all beauty and swollen golden feelings. The only bursting and swelling I was experiencing was from my endless milk supply that could have fed a small army of infants.

I was astonished and envious of the other mothers who, despite their wonderful or horrendous birth stories, somehow came to the other side of pregnancy with a renewed mind, filled with new lovely thoughts and strong, protective desires. I thought we all were entitled to this baby euphoria after squeezing a melon through an unfairly sized opening, but I was left empty, body and soul.

Coming home was the most startling thing to me.  On one hand I was overjoyed to leave. Hospitals are not my idea of a relaxing recovery paradise and certainly no place to be if you need rest. Every time that kid would sleep, someone would come in and start touching him and they would awaken me far more often than my tiny infant.

Between the 3am questions about “can we have permission to do this?” and the constant beeping from every possible place in the unit, I couldn’t wait to be set free. No more poking and prodding, poorly timed new baby checks and obsessive blood pressure readings.

But then came the reality check: They actually sent us away from this sterilized, hyper-despotic, bubble-world with a completely helpless, almost hairless, frighteningly floppy, miniature human. Under his skin slept the makings of a man and we were entrusted to feed and water him until fully bloomed.

A shocking turn of events, really.

And yet there we were in our little yellow apartment leaning over the crib that held the product of our matrimony. All I could think was, “How did this happen?” and, “There is no escape.”

The first bit was mostly quiet, which I needed as my mind constantly raced to keep up with the influx of body chemicals. My mother-in-law stayed for a few days and my own extended family popped in and out along with the usual string of well wishers and meal droppers.

One family dropped by that we hardly knew. They were not quiet. They brought no food. They did no dishes and did not hold the baby.

Maybe it was better that way.

Between the two toddlers and a tightly wound mother I almost completely lost it. She was overbearing and loud, pressing her children like a reamer on a lemon. Their sourness spilled across our tiny apartment in piles of books, pantry food and games of chase. I cried in the other room, claiming exhaustion, until they finally left.

My mind couldn’t handle chaos when there was so much of it inside already.

After that visit, I seriously considered a ban on all incoming humans for the next 47 years, but then I’d be alone with the little mortal and I couldn’t have that. 

That little black cloud hovered above my head every waking minute.

I logged so many miles aimlessly pushing a stroller through the neighborhoods of old Point Loma I could make a FitBit fanatic cry. It got so bad, Huell Howser became my faithful companion. We only had two and a half channels so I religiously watched his cheesy PBS program, California’s Gold, sitting cross-legged and teary-eyed on our blue polka-dotted couch as he trekked up and down our glorious state.

Slowly, and almost unnoticed, the rays broke through the greys revealing what my life had become: it was being made new, but into something profoundly old. Old as time even.

At night when my boy would wake to eat, I would push out the wearisome and worrisome thoughts by singing old Sunday school songs. As I sang I made myself think of all the thousands of women all over the world doing just what I was doing at that exact moment. I prayed for these nameless comrades I knew had to be out there.

This pulled me a little by little from the black bubble I was in the middle of, reminding me I was not alone on a grand level. It helped shrink the lie that I couldn’t handle this tiny person even when every cell in my body still wanted it all to go away.

Babies and families, poop and puke, new skin and sleepy-eyed grown-ups, even sadness– it had all been done before.

Now it was my turn.