Our First Month

"Where is her head?" 

"In the bassinet." He says. 

I sit up like a flicked spring and begin searching the blanket for my baby. "I know her head is in the bassinet, but where is her face?" I beg. 

"Her face is with the rest of her...in the bassinet." Scott says, grabbing my hands. 

"Stop it! Help me!" I shove him off.  

I pick through the covers with careful fingers. I am poor of sleep. He understands. This isn't the first time I've woken -or half-woken- in a panic, thinking her cries mean she's suffocating beneath me or fallen onto the floor. 

"She's in her bassinet." He says again, waiting for me to wake. 

I turn and watch our daughter wiggle in the dark before standing to take her in my arms. 

Hormones host nightly parties for my fears. There is dancing followed by feasts of violent thoughts where accidental injuries, SIDS and sickness poison this fledgling mother's mind. If she's making lots of noises, I worry. If she is silent, I check her chest for breath. During her first week of life, I hear an erratic, spontaneous soundtrack of the noise her floppy body would make if she fell from my hands to the floor. When this happens, I grip her little limbs and sit surrounded by pillows and soft furniture until the falsity fades. This baby's helpless fragile form has transformed our home's floor into a slippery, widespread wooden weapon.  

"Please promise that you'll be really careful on the stairs." I say to Scott who holds the baby in his lap at the computer late one night. I'm sniffling having just witnessed the two of them falling in my calamitous/nasty/uninvited imagination. He has her so that I might sleep, but I can't sleep, not with a flight of stairs between us. 

"I will." He tell me. "Though, I'm not the one who falls down stairs." He teases. [I fell three times last Fall before finally ordering $40 worth of sticky carpet slabs from the Internet.] Scott is strong and agile. He will not drop her, especially now that I have reminded him to be careful. I tell myself before picking up an old, never before read collection of Jane Austen novels. I bought it in Boston years before, but found the first pages too dry to be absorbed. Below in bed, I open the bulky blue binding and begin reading for boredom. Social etiquette, an old man's will, expired class structures and first born sons, I slog through two pages twice before dropping the classic paper stories to follow sleep. 

The second night we are home with baby, my breast milk arrives in bulk. Bouncing from my puckered breasts, unable to latch, she fits for hours. She must be starving. I rock her while her wails pluck dissonance into my heartstrings. 

"Scott." I whimper. 

"What's up?" He asks, sitting out of sleep. 

"Can you call the pediatrician?" It's late, but there is a nurse on call. "She hasn't eaten for hours." I tell him. "I don't know what's wrong." In the kitchen, he stands squinting in the light. The nurse suggests warm compresses to soften me. I stand over the sink, dripping milk and steaming teapot water for twenty minutes. She then successfully nurses, suckling for an hour. I lay her down and quiet falls, seemingly from the walls, as forgotten dreams, cool sheets and relief welcome me.  

When the dog comes home from the kennel, she smells the dirty diaper bag. She brings me her fur face to be pat, while I sit holding the baby who is no longer in my belly. The dog ignores the infant. When we carry Amelia toward her muzzle, she skirts away, scared. Eventually she goes to her, smelling the umbilical cord -the drying meat at her middle- and the diapered waste on her bottom. She whines the first few times and I fear she's going to hump her, but she doesn't and soon the whimpering is replaced by excessive licking, which we allow a little of.   

Birth was wild, violent and raw -a hunt in a hospital room, but now her gummy grins fill me with this fleet of microscopic endorphins that trample all remaining regret with something reminiscent of a revolutionary spirit. My body made a body and now my body feeds that body. She is real, -alive with eyes like the Atlantic, hair feather soft and a beating heart full of blood and soul. She has a little liver, lungs, light brown lashes and creased legs; pink peach skin that pimples when she sweats and miraculous mammalian instincts to root and stretch. She is a brand new person with purple veins, perfect joints and bone, vocal chords and a rounding belly. She needs me, cries and coos for me. My body made her body and for that we are more than love. We are family.