What Made You Cry

I didn't cry when my daughter was born.  Not during her delivery or when they placed her on my chest for the first time, all fingers and toes and silky black hair.  But three weeks later, I was hysterical with tears.

I had spent weeks preparing for delivery.  Attending birthing class, learning my breathing, burning the delivery CD music and finalizing the phone tree for the big moment.  I knew all about the possible complications, I had toured my delivery room and had packed all the needed items like slippers and lotion and crossword puzzles.  So when the moment came, I was beyond prepared.  But then?  Then they handed me this tiny, fragile new life and walked away.  Other mothers needed their attention now.  I was left alone with this baby.  Totally alone.

Three weeks later, the tears would not cease.  There were no classes for me to take on newborn care.  Nothing to prepare me for the constant crying, the torturous level of sleep deprivation, the horror of nursing, and the silent specter of depression that stalked me like a ghost through my ravaged house.  And the stakes were so high.  I was playing with a life.   A life that depended utterly on me.  A life that I was totally unprepared to sustain.

And I sat on the sofa, day after day, wearing the same rank night shirt, frantically rocking that little life.  And I began to cry.  I began to rant.  I began a conversation that was one side screams and wails of a colicky baby and the other my blubbering apologies and snotty pleas.  To please eat.  To please sleep.  To please.  Stop.  Crying.

And somewhere in that conversation made of screams and tears and desperation, I looked down and found my daughter looking up at me and smiling.  Her first smile.  I laughed.  And I cried.  And I smiled back at her.  It wasn't until many weeks later that I would know it would be ok.  But I think it was that moment that it was.