Alone

by Michelle Parise

  Being married is awesome.

  After a year in the basement, we’ve saved enough money for a down payment and we buy a condo right downtown. At eight hundred square feet, it feels palatial compared to the basement apartment and my little bachelor before it. And it’s warm. We spend three years there, happy, comfortable, carefree. That is, until the ultimatum.

  THE FEELINGS I DON’T FEEL

  The ultimatum comes after a huge fight. We’ve had this argument before, but tonight he’s even angrier with me. Tonight he has had enough, enough, of waiting for me to have “the feeling.” You know, the feeling. The way women talk about how much they want to have a baby, how much they can’t wait to be pregnant, to be a mom. The feeling I don’t feel.

  He says, “You said you wanted to have a baby!” And I say, “I do! I’m sure I do … but I just don’t have the feeling yet. I’m only thirty-one, we still have time —”

  He cuts me off: “We’ve been married for four years!”

  “I know, and it’s been awesome! What’s the rush to have a baby? I’m just not ready yet!”

  I’m not ready yet. Or actually sure I will ever be ready. I’ve never had the feeling or anything close to the feeling. Not even a twinge. I haven’t felt the magical desire to be pregnant, to give birth, to care for a baby who will turn into a child and then into an adult, and for the rest of my life be tethered to me. And I worry. I worry that a baby will change everything between us; that once we have a baby, our carefree, comfortable, love-drunk feeling will be gone. We won’t be able to go to the movies on a whim anymore, or eat in restaurants four nights a week. Or be able to sleep in, or sleep at all! We’ll no longer be a nation of two.

  But he wants to be a dad so badly. I remember when we first met, he said, “You are the mother of my children.” The funny thing is, I had that same feeling about him, this strange biological imperative, that he was the father of my children. Even before we were a couple. But the idea was more romantic than real for me.

  His jaw is so tight, and he grits his teeth at me in the way he does when he’s angry. His face is so close to mine, his finger pointing right at my chest but not actually poking me, just close, so close, and he says through clenched teeth, “I never would have married you if I knew you weren’t going to have a baby.”

  “WHAT?” I say. It comes out like a croak. And then tears, so many tears. He never would have married me? Does he mean he only did it so I’d make him a dad?

  He asks me to get off the birth control. He says he’s done waiting for me to have “the feeling.” I cry and cry and say, “Okay, okay …” because I think I will lose him if I don’t do this. I reason with myself: I may never have the feeling, so what the hell, why not just get pregnant?

  After the tears, the long awful night, he’s back to his kind, funny self. I feel better, too. I’ve resigned myself to the idea that my body, mind, and life are all about to change forever. I’m committed to doing it. I mean, babies are cute, aren’t they? Sure. And they become funny little children eventually, and I definitely like those. Maybe “the feeling” is bullshit; maybe all those other women are just making it up! Maybe this is just another thing I’m afraid of. But I never let fear stop me, so why would I now?

  I go off the birth control. My doctor warns me that since I’ve been on it for so long, it may take up to a year to conceive. So, I approach getting pregnant like I approach most things in life — I produce the shit out of conception. I go online and learn how it all works — how long the egg lasts once it’s released and how long sperm lasts once it’s inside of me. I figure out when I’m ovulating next, plus or minus three days. Then, based on how long the egg and sperm are supposed to last, I come up with a plan: We need to have sex eleven days in a row, with my approximate ovulation date somewhere in the middle.

  “As long as we do that, we’ve got to hit it!” I say, and The Husband is pleased with my calculations. He kisses my forehead, and I feel amazing because if he’s happy, I’m happy. And I love when he’s so admiring of my ability to estimate numbers quickly and accurately — how long it takes to get somewhere, the gratuity on a restaurant bill, the price of an item that’s 65 percent off, and now, what the formula is to make a baby on our first try. Which is exactly what happens.

  On the calendar in our kitchen, I plot the eleven-day sex-a-thon. And we have fun, excellent sex on each of those eleven days. One month later, we’re driving in his parents’ town, and suddenly I feel so tired. I’m a little dizzy, and I just feel weird. And then I know. I’m pregnant. Just like that. Just like that, driving in our little car it hits me: I’m pregnant. I don’t know why I know it, but I do, and it’s the most certain I’ve ever felt about something I have no proof of.

  I see a drugstore and pull the car into the parking lot. “What do you need?” he asks, and I tell him. Fifteen minutes later, we are back at his parents’ house, up in the bathroom together with the door locked like two teenagers hiding something. He sits on the edge of the bathtub while I pee on a stick. He reads the instructions fifty times, even though I tell him not to worry, I’m a pro at these tests.

  He looks at the stick. He looks at me. I’m pregnant. I’ve just given him the thing he wants most in life. He looks happier holding that positive pregnancy test than I have ever seen him, before or since.

  BUILDING

  When I’m six months pregnant, we sell our awesome downtown condo and buy an old house in the north end of the city. People will dispute “north end” and they’re right, but to this downtown girl? It feels like we’ve moved to the treeline.

  The reason we’re here above the treeline is me. Even though I’ve lived downtown since I was nineteen. Even though I love living within walking distance to everything and being in the centre of it all. Even though I love living in an apartment, I am the one who pushes us to buy a house away from it all. Me. I know. It’s like I’m a totally different person now that I’m pregnant. A person who thinks “the right” thing to do is to live in a house because a baby is coming. Even though we could have made do in our condo, or just bought a two-bedroom. For some reason, I’m stuck on the idea of a house. A baby needs a bedroom! A baby needs a house! And it should be quiet, so a baby needs a detached house! With a backyard! And a driveway. With a garage! Make it a double!

  So this is why we’re here, in an eighty-year-old house, with a leafy backyard and a double garage, nowhere near downtown. Nowhere near any of our friends or favourite restaurants or parks. Nowhere.

  There are only two things I enjoy about being pregnant — one is that my hair is as shiny and curly and healthy and beautiful as it’s ever been or will be. The other is that I can feel her moving around inside me. And she moves a lot. “What’s she building in there?” I always say, quoting a Tom Waits song and imitating his voice as I do it, which always makes The Husband laugh. I just can’t believe how much activity there is in my own body! Sometimes, I’m lying down and part of my belly just changes shape as she jabs some appendage into the wall of the sack she’s growing in, which just happens to also, miraculously, be part of my body. Beside me is her dad, as silly and adorable as ever. He grabs at the appendage and manages to hold it for a second, and I feel her fight to free herself from his grip. It’s like they’re playing together already, even though my body is between them, and I feel increasingly removed and lonely.

  How can I be lonely with another human being inside of me? I mean, you can’t get closer than that can you? I also have a husband who’s wanted to be a father for so long. He’s so jazzed by the whole thing, but my body hurts. It’s uncomfortable, and now I can’t play soccer anymore.

  I play in a co-ed league every Thursday; it’s the thing I look forward to most each week. I love my team and the way everything disappears while I’m on the field. Now that I’m pregnant and can’t play anymore, I feel like a huge part of my life is missing. Instead I sit at home on Thursday nights with my uncomfortable new body, eating too much while trying not to think about soccer, or ho
w once the baby comes, it will be my hormones that go wonky, not The Husband’s, so no wonder he is so excited. It will be my body that will have to feed her, and before that, she’ll have to come out of my vagina. I have no idea what any of that will be like. Let alone being a mother for the rest of my life.

  I suppose you might be rolling your eyes at me right now. Go ahead. Being pregnant isn’t always this blissed-out Earth Goddess Instagrammable wonder-show that it’s often presented as. For some of us, it hurts and sucks to be pregnant — your body is stretched and pulled and your pelvis is actually tilting and your hormones are all wacky and you can’t sleep. People give you all kinds of unsolicited nutritional advice about nitrates and soft cheese. Strangers touch you, because as a pregnant woman out in the world you are now somehow public property, like a park bench or a new city-approved sculpture. Everyone can just put their hands on your belly and congratulate you or comment on how huge you are. So I am here to say unequivocally: I don’t like being pregnant. And I know I’m not the only one. Why can’t we say that and still be good mothers? We can. I just did.

  And yes, being pregnant is a beautiful thing, too. You’re making a life. There’s a body inside of your body! How crazy is that? It’s like you’re a human matryoshka doll. I mean, that’s pretty amazing, even if it’s uncomfortable.

  One requisite of being a human matryoshka doll is reading parenting books and magazines. I flip through pages and pages dutifully, although they’re filled with things and people I feel completely disconnected from. I’d rather be reading an article about the latest Radiohead album, not “The Top 5 Pregnancy-Safe Cleaning Products.” But, I do happen upon one article that piques my interest, all about decorating the nursery. It suggests you paint your baby’s room your favourite colour, since you’re going to spend so much of your life in there for the next few years. Don’t paint the room for the baby, paint it for you.

  So that’s what I do. I find painting very relaxing, and although I’m uncomfortably pregnant, I paint her entire room over the course of a few days; three walls mandarin orange, and one wall cream-coloured with giant hand-painted circles in mandarin, lime, and brown. When I’m finished, The Husband installs the mobile he bought to go above the crib: a complete solar system that orbits a bright sun. He’s a scientist, what do you expect? It becomes my favourite room in the house.

  I may not be in the best headspace while pregnant, but The Husband is really, really happy now. And he’s been growing a beard. Or rather, trying to grow a beard, since he’s one of those men who has zero body hair and not quite any facial hair either. It comes in scraggly and patchy, and the beard and moustache don’t even touch in the places they should. Still, I find him impossibly adorable. I call it his “playoff beard,” since he is determined to keep it until the baby is born. Just like hockey players vying for the Stanley Cup, he will not jinx the proceedings by shaving his face. It’s quite a superstitious thing to do for a scientist, and I love him more for his contradictions. Still, part of me feels him slipping away from me. Everything is about the baby now, and it’s like our relationship has shifted into a business partnership. The business of baby.

  Almost every night now, The Husband rests his head on my giant belly and shouts “Hey!” She responds by jumping all around like an excited puppy in my uterus. He pokes my belly hard and says, “Whattaya at?” and she pokes back at him immediately, every time, and hard. They go back and forth like this, already communicating, and I feel more and more removed from things. More and more like a vessel, a host that will usher in his greatest relationship, making me insignificant. Which is exactly what happens.

  FULL MOON, FIRST OF JULY

  Dear White Shirt,

  Tonight, we talked and talked, all the adults, once the kids finally fell asleep. We drank wine around a bonfire and then more wine and we talked about how the moment is life. How isn’t it funny that the things you can’t plan for often turn out to be the best things? If we let them.

  We had more wine. We talked about death and fear. We talked about risk and love and gratitude. We talked about how our parents fucked us up and what ways we would inevitability fuck up our own kids. We laughed so much, even when what we were talking about was painful.

  We smoked weed. We talked about how our lives are half over now — if we’re lucky — so our goal is to have more fun and to feel more present in the now, in the here.

  We talked about you, because everyone always wants to talk about you, and I always talk about you anyway because how can I not? You’re so woven into my life in a way that I’m not always sure I understand but also in a way that strangely makes sense.

  And I wished you were here. Because we’re at a rented cottage on Canada Day and we ate ribs for dinner and homemade biscuits and beets and all that made me think of you and how you love to eat and would enjoy it — like, really enjoy it — and you’d say something quirky and funny because that’s how you do, and I would look at you and be melty, because that’s how I do.

  I thought of Birdie’s face and how it lights up around you. How she’s always the kid with the single mom when we’re doing things with my friends with kids. The other kids have siblings and two parents and she whispers wishes to me sometimes while she’s falling asleep, things like “Mom, sometimes it would be nice to have a brother or sister to play with. But that’s okay, I understand.”

  And I lie there very still beside her, because when I had her I wasn’t sure I had “the feeling,” you know? The right feeling I thought I should have about being a parent. But being her mom turned out to be the one truly good thing in my life. The one easy thing. And now that I’m approaching forty, “the feeling” is so strong in me I can’t think of anything else sometimes. How my body seems to want another baby. Yours.

  I would do it in a heartbeat now, no question, but time is running out, and you can only be occasional to us. You are not here lighting sparklers with her, or singing duets with me as I play guitar around the fire. You aren’t worried that time is running out. You’re trying to make sense of your own life. You’re trying to be good and true to you. Your free spirit is what I love about you, even though it’s the thing that keeps you from me.

  And I crawled into bed now and I’m still wearing your Adidas jacket and it still smells like you somehow and it’s like I’m flooded, but not with anxiety or sadness at what you will and won’t be.

  No, I’m flooded with good clear thoughts of all the things you already are.

  xo,

  mp

  July 1, 2014

  BIRDIE

  Spring 2007. I’m eight months pregnant and I’m a giant, swollen mass. The doctor has put me on bedrest because my blood pressure is constantly through the roof. My feet have gone from a size seven to a size nine. For the last month, each night before bed, The Husband has wrapped my forearms in ice. He does it with such care and a lot of little jokes. I feel lucky to have a husband who wants a baby this much. The ice sort of helps with the agonizing pain, but nothing helps these ankles. I can’t even see them anymore.

  Basically, the last month of being pregnant totally sucks. When I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant, The Husband drives me to the doctor for an ultrasound. The high blood pressure and swollen limbs have the doctor concerned I might have pre-eclampsia. She does an ultrasound and declares there to be very little amniotic fluid. She looks at us and asks, “You have any plans today? How do you feel about just having this baby?” and I am so relieved. Yes, please, take this baby out of me, please.

  I’m induced. Thirty-five unbearable hours later, the next night, after so much pushing and no success, they wheel me into the operating room and do a C-section. The Husband has been at my side every step of the way, and neither of us has slept for what is nearing forty hours. I can barely see Birdie when he brings her to me. My eyes are crossing and I see two, three babies, all blurry.

  “Is she okay?” I ask and he says, “She’s perfect.”

  “Oh, good,” I say, and pass out.
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br />   While I’m passed out, they finish up the operation. The Husband takes Birdie out into the hall where his mother, my family, and my best friend all meet her. Seven people meet my baby before I do. They all see her face clearly and touch her. I wake up an hour later to a nurse pushing the baby onto my breast, so I still can’t really see her face. And I’m so full of drugs I can’t make out anything that’s happening, least of all that I am now a mother.

  After five days in the hospital, we head home. My mother comes to stay with us at first, to help out. She argues with The Husband constantly. Every breath the baby takes is something for them to disagree on; they both have an opinion on everything, a low-level battle in the background of this new life. I’m too exhausted to have my own opinions. Not that anyone’s asking me.

  I feel completely dissociated. Like if anyone were to look at me, they’d know something was wrong. I feel like an alien. I’m sad, exhausted, and freaked out. I know nothing about babies. And this one is now killing me twelve times a day when she’s meant to be fed by my body. There doesn’t seem to be enough milk to satisfy her, so she’s ravenous, and tearing chunks of flesh off my nipples. It’s the most natural thing for a woman to do, we’re told, but it’s awful. It’s the most physically painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I would rather have the thirty-five-hour labour again, or have my appendix burst again, or break my leg in two places again — anything, anything, would be less terrible than this.

  The Husband and my mom fight all the time, but on this they agree: stop breastfeeding. But I feel like a failure of a woman. The Husband is understanding and kind about it. He says, “You couldn’t have the baby naturally either, remember? So, don’t worry about it.” And he’s right. The baby isn’t growing; after three weeks she is still under her birth weight. So I give up. We put her on formula, and she becomes a plump, relatively happy baby.