In the Beginning
by Z.M. Spalter
Sleep when the baby sleeps, lay him on his back, no, lay her on her belly, but only if you are in the same room. Read books about sleep, as if you haven’t been sleeping, every single day of your entire life, since the day you were born, all without giving it much thought. Wonder if you should hire a sleep consultant. Sleep with baby beside you, not down the hall, and never, not ever, on the couch, but also not in the same bed as you, unless you decide to, but only after you’ve read all the things and determined you’re not putting any lives at risk. Get a co-sleeper, get a crib, get a Moses basket, get a bassinet, get a bigger bed, and then get another, even bigger, one after that. Swaddle baby like a burrito. Or don’t. Get hit, in the face, with a toy car, when baby becomes a toddler, who sleeps recklessly, beside you, feet ever poised at your ribcage, in your bed, never his. Become confounded by the expression “sleep like a baby.”
Breastfeed on demand, breastfeed through the night, supplement with formula, or just use formula, or just breastfeed, join La Leche League, hire a lactation consultant, consider becoming a lactation consultant, start, and abandon, lactation consultant certification classes, buy formula, drink fenugreek tea. Refuse to use pacifiers, rethink prior refusal, lament nights cosplaying human pacifier, revel in the days you glow like a radiant Earth mama goddess. Adhere to baby-led weaning, reverse course, wear a Victorian-style nightgown with hundreds of tiny buttons up to your chin, dab lemon juice on your nipples to hasten night weaning. Leave baby in your mother’s care. Fortify further, your decidedly not cute, albeit super supportive, several vowels and consonants beyond the letter D (iterated in triplicate!) sized bra, with breast pads. Go on your very first, very fancy, postpartum date. Bring a manual breast pump in your big-enough-to-carry-a-manual-breast-pump-sized purse, to use, just in case, (hopefully, not in a bathroom stall) during intermission. Weep through the entirety of Madam Butterfly at The Metropolitan Opera.
If you get mastitis, rather, when you get mastitis, chill delicate pale green cabbage leaves in the refrigerator, place them gently over your breast(s). Each leaf will mold to your engorged breast like some wondrous, bespoke, intimate garment crafted by fairy folk. You’ll be amazed to discover cabbage works, until that one time it doesn’t. Get antibiotics. Also, get a fine-tooth comb, the kind you know better than to use in your tightly curled hair, and therefore don’t own. After acquiring such a comb, take a near scalding shower while baby is asleep. If you are alone, and baby is awake, put baby in some sort of baby-holder, position said contraption in the bathroom doorway, ensure baby is secure, in your line of sight. Get in the shower. Drag the row of teeth gently over the flesh of your breast, until it softens and your expressed milk intermingles and flows with the water. Repeat as necessary.
Don’t read What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Manage to own multiple copies anyway. Read everything. You will never have time to read anything ever again, but you will (mostly) relish reading bedtime stories. The number of books you’ll read is incalculable. Go to all the story times, and all the parks, and all the play spaces. Don’t forget Music Together. You will be so eager to get a library card for your baby that the librarian’s eyes will soften, and she will smile at you when she gently explains that your six-month-old’s date of birth is not yet a selectable option in the library’s computer system. Get one issued next spring. Be astonished when decades later you can recite The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, by heart, in your sleep.
When he is little, wear the baby over your belly, tender and soft, pressed firmly against your newly utilitarian breasts. Use modern takes on old necessities, baby carriers in the form of slings with rings and straps and wraps with knots and buckles and clasps, or just use a stroller, or both. When baby gets bigger, wear her on your back. Bind your belly after you give birth, purchase a waist trainer off the internet. No one warns you about diastasis recti. Random people will congratulate you on your emergent second-trimester baby bump. That bump is, in fact, a squishy, rotund, defiant paunch caused by an egregious umbilical hernia, and abdominal muscles, laid waste, separated like a chasm only surgery can repair. Insurance will not cover it. You’ll be accused of vanity. But you don’t know any of this yet.
Think of all the diapers, purchased last century, when your own mother was a new mother, not decomposing, in a landfill, or the ocean. Vow to use cloth diapers. Search desperately for a cloth diaper service in your zip code, find that your zip code is in the right area code, but the wrong neighborhood. Such services will arrive shortly after you move. Consider connecting a DIY hose to the toilet in your rental. Find instead a hybrid quasi-cloth, quasi-disposable solution. Discover just how expensive diapers are. Learn to accept diapers however they may come. Muddle through as best you can. Donate to environmental causes.
With time, you become expert, (more or less), at whatever stage he’s mastered. You’re triumphant. Or perhaps defeated. No matter, she’s already on to something new. He will change and grow. You will too. There will be moments, when you can see clearly, and simultaneously, his tiny toddler self, standing before you, even though he’s grown bigger than you can carry, and taller than yourself. It is unnerving. It is glorious. This being, can break open your heart, if you allow it. Sometimes, this breaking, will be against your will. Her beginning creates anew countless opportunities to grow, to be brave. To love. To let it go. To get it right. To get it wrong. And, hopefully, to try again.
ZM Spalter is a Brooklyn-born writer living in Tokyo and mother of four. She is a Kimbilio fellow and a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She writes the Substack “Occasionally Impervious.”
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