Birth and the Black Heron
BY COLLEEN TIRTIRIAN
Photo Courtesy of Colleen Tirtirian
It’s 4 a.m. and I am sitting in the corner of the room in an armchair. My son is in my arms and he is getting closer to sleep. I will myself through each moment of rocking him as I fight heavy eyelids. The ache in my body is deep and I feel it in every crevice of this newly complicated body I inhabit, likely a result of the hot incision on my low abdomen a mere week prior.
After what feels like an unbearably long time, I maneuver my way out of the chair the way a contortionist would. “Please be asleep,” I whisper. His eyelids open a sliver and I rock him some more, standing at the crib. When I am finally certain he is asleep, I lower him down next to his sister. I heave a sigh of relief as his eyes remain closed. Asleep. At last.
I tiptoe backward, my eyes on the crib — my bed, a mere two feet behind me. I reach my hand back for bed and lower myself, my eyes still fixed on the sleeping babes. My head is a mere inch from the pillow when another set of eyes catch mine. My daughter. Instinctively, I am back at the crib and lifting her out for her feeding. I hobble my way back to the chair in the corner of the room, hoping that this time, she will latch.
I curse myself as I slowly lower into the chair; the one that I purposely chose so that I would not fall asleep in it. I make a conscious decision with each feeding not to get too comfortable. No more feedings in our cozy bed, no. Not after that last time when, in my sleep-deprived haze, I woke up thinking a baby should have still been in my arms; panicked, I searched the sheets, certain I had done the unthinkable. “Oh thank god,” I whispered when I realized both babies were in the crib.
I sit in the simple chair and attempt to feed her. No latch. I carry her out of the room and to the kitchen. Time to mix some formula. When I am sure she is full and content, I put her back to bed. Just as I am entering a restful sleep, my son begins to cry out. And the cycle begins again.
People always say you forget the newborn phase. But I will never forget it. When I look back on those newborn, middle-of-the-night feedings, the ones the nurses told me to make certain occur every two hours, I am taken straight back to a state of desperation. My body responds as though I am right back in those moments. The internal drive to help my babies thrive at the cost of my personal health was my trademark of new motherhood. My body went into overdrive. I knew I would hit a wall, and I knew in my bones that I could not keep up at the same pace. Between the pain I felt in my body and the constant worry that occupied my mind, I was certain I would crumble. And I did. Over and over, I crumbled. Yet, I kept going. I am still not entirely sure how. My body screamed “Give up!” and my mind said, “Power through.”
I remember asking my husband one night, “Is it possible to die from sleep deprivation? Because I am sure that sleep deprivation is going to kill me.” To me, the lack of sleep was solely to blame. But anxiety and depression are cunning. In those early postpartum days, they lurked, pulling me into the cover of dark at every chance. They were the black heron wrapping her wings around a weaker creature, blacking out the world.
My perception of reality in those hazy, early days of motherhood was that I was meant to do everything. I spent years of my life mentally preparing for motherhood. I nested for months, trusting that one day, I would hold a baby in my arms. Even throughout my pregnancy, I did not believe we would come home with two babies. The prior miscarriages told me to keep my heart guarded.
Gratitude spilled out of every pore when I began trusting they’d come home with us. And on the day they were born, I held one in each arm, immediately wanting to feed them, to bond, to experience skin-to-skin contact. But those three days in the hospital were a tug-of-war between fulfilling the role of mother, and of allowing others to take care of me. My body was a working contradiction, both ridding itself and producing. Ridding of drugs that were pumped into it during the induction and, ultimately, the c-section. Producing milk to support life.
It was a blink of an eye and an eternity, and then we were home. After a few days, the guests and well-wishers dwindled. Soon, my husband went back to work. And we were alone, the three of us. My head entered a dreamlike state. My feet were no longer planted on the ground and I was floating through space as I acted out the moments in my life with our babies. Sleep deprivation. Anxiety. Dissociation. Depression. Assigning names to summarize those moments normalizes it. Yet, four years into my motherhood journey, I am still left wondering why I thought I had to power through and do it on my own.
The version of me before motherhood believed that it was my sole responsibility to be in control at all times. That, should anything happen to my babies once they were born, only my misgivings would be to blame. I created a one-man show in my mothering.
Now that my children are well out of the newborn stage, I believe a level of conditioning happened beforehand that made me voraciously buy into the idea that because women give birth, women are meant to do it all. So, when unpredictable things happened like my son needing surgery for his ears, I blamed myself. Or when my daughter needed extra feedings to maintain her weight, I blamed myself. But blame is a disservice to every mother. Society bores the weight of raising children on mothers. When you are pregnant, people dote on you, or, conversely, bother you with unsolicited comments. When babies are born, people flock to the mother. They want to meet the babies and do everything for you as you attempt to navigate your new reality.
And then, as quickly as it started, as quickly as you were overwhelmed by the mass of other humans offering help and advice you didn’t ask for, they are gone. And you are utterly and completely alone. And, if you are like me, you said, “Well, I’ve got this. This is what I have been waiting for.” But the truth is that we are not meant to do it alone. But that is a paradox of motherhood: to simultaneously need others while pushing them away.
COLLEEN TIRTIRIAN is a mother, writer, editor, and New Jersey native, currently writing from her home office in Hoboken. She believes that sharing the journey of motherhood, especially taboo topics, can help to normalize the difficult moments we all feel from time to time. When she’s not writing and juggling mom-duty, Colleen enjoys playing guitar and crafting (specifically, miniatures). Some may say she’s a bit quirky, but she chooses to embrace her eccentricities and channels them into her creative endeavors.