There’s nothing like having a person growing inside of you—a clone being created within your own skin, constantly changing, constantly becoming human. What’s stranger is how that little person, the sea urchin sloshing around your insides without a thought of anything outside of survival, has the ability to change everyone else around them. Without even knowing it, without the ability to have control over it, Mary was changing our lives while she sat in the comfort of my womb. Every morning, Richard would wake me up as he went to work to make sure I was feeling okay—to make sure the baby felt okay and nothing weird had happened in the night. He came to every doctor’s visit and kept track of every milestone that occurred during pregnancy. He studied every book that my mother sent us in a cardboard box along with a Hallmark card of congratulations. She signed the card ‘Sincerely, Martha’ and enclosed a twenty-dollar bill. I told Richard that the books were twenty-five years old and didn’t make sense anymore. Besides we had our own, updated, pregnancy books to look at from the Baby Shower. But he just picked up the box and started stacking them on our empty shelves telling me that I should put my feet up, they must hurt after a long day. I did what he told me.
About the end of the second trimester when my belly couldn’t be hidden by dark, loose, cotton dresses anymore and I started wondering why women agreed to do this generation after generation—shouldn’t the madness have stopped by now? That’s when I started seeing every piece of furniture as a death trap for our baby. I would walk into the garage and be convinced that she would be born and instantly reach for the propane tank and know how to twist the knob on. The gardening tools became torture devices that the day-old Mary would grab onto and wield it until she pruned herself to death. I would run the faucet in the tub for a bath and see little Mary turned face down into the inch-deep pool of water. My wrists would sweat and my peripheral vision would go black at just the thought of it. I had to make myself sit down wherever I was so I wouldn’t accidentally fall down in a fit of absolute fear. The baby meant more than anything.
Richard told me to try and relax, that it was all in my head and if I just didn’t think about it I wouldn’t have dizzy spells. The doctor ordered me to be on bed rest for the final trimester, both to calm my nerves about the pregnancy and because of my exposure to Diethylstilbestrol—the medication they gave my mother after her first miscarriage before I was born. The doctors told her it would increase her estrogen level for her next child. They didn’t realize then that a whole generation of women later would be sitting on their left sides for three months while trying to have their own children. They told me to take a vacation, to let the baby relax—we both deserved it. But I couldn’t help but notice the way Richard would circle my belly whenever he was home as if he were making sure it wouldn’t burst, pacing around me like a little boy completely helpless and confused by being so far out of his element.
I couldn’t do anything for me either. I had to take control. I couldn’t let this blob of a human swimming around inside of me, not old enough to have an age or a first breath, take over my life. I was the adult. I was in charge. So I made lists for the future, starting with the second I stepped foot out of my bed until the baby graduated from college. I made shopping lists for what we would need when the baby came, I made graphs of our savings—what we should keep in the bank and what we should invest for the baby’s future. I made pro-con lists of the best schools in the country that the baby could go to—different lists for the different personalities that the she could possibly have. This was growing up. This was having adult responsibilities. This was love. And every afternoon Richard would come home, circle dumbly around my growing stomach, and put all of my lists in the filing cabinet.
When she finally came, Mary was beautiful. A perfect birth, no complications, she came out screaming—7 pounds 5 ounces at 2 o’clock on the morning of September 3rd, 1997. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, to go through twelve hours of excruciating labor, to watch her leave me and be exposed to the rest of the world. For as thankful as I was to have her born and to be free from my bed rest (God knows I never wanted to see that bed again) there was another part of me that knew she was safer inside of me. She wasn’t ready for the world yet, but the book Richard was reading said that I would feel this way. I had to let her go.
I’ll never forget Richard’s face when he first held her. They were still checking my pulse and blood pressure when they brought her back into the room, clean and covered in hospital pajamas. He was the first one of us to hold her. His big hands cradled the entirety of her head and his forearm was big enough for the length of her body. For the briefest of seconds I could see him sweat. I could see his eyes jet out of their sockets and his knees lock-up with nerves, but only for a second. Something came over him, a second nature, and it took over. I couldn’t believe he ever looked comfortable without a newborn baby in his arms. He started to hum. There wasn’t a clear melody or a real purpose, just the vibrations of masculine vocal chords slowly washing over every sound in the hospital room. He hummed with Mary and rocked her with his big hands and forearms like there was nothing else in the world. I don’t think there was. The nurses asked me if I wanted to hold my baby for the first time and I told them I would rather wait until I had gotten some rest, so I wouldn’t drop her.
Instead I lay in my hospital bed next to her plastic crib, watching her ribcage rise up and down and her fingers twitch when she was getting fussy. Richard lay with me in bed, his head curled up next to mine, watching as I did. We spent the day feigning sleep to one another and refusing to leave for bathroom breaks or meals. We were both mesmerized by her presence. He put his lips next to my ear and whispered to me.
‘I think you were right Lizzie.’
‘Hmmm?’
‘About her. About Mary.’
‘What’s that, Richard.’
‘That everything has changed. I mean—it already has. You have plans… big plans… we have plans. Together. But it’s all about her. That little girl runs our lives now, you know what I mean?’
I felt his breath curl up against my cheek, the scent of un-brushed teeth creating a fog around my face.
‘Is that how it’s supposed to be? Are our kids supposed to be in control?
‘I guess you never grow up. You just move from being ordered around by one group of people to the next. She’s in charge now and she hasn’t even lifted her head yet.’
A pit grew in my stomach and I announced that I was feeling the effects of the pain medication they had given me for the labor. Richard left the room to find something that I could vomit in.
I looked into the bassinet, my beautiful girl sleeping soundly. I couldn’t blame her, it had been a hectic first day. And then I saw it—a smile crept across her face just long enough to let me know that she knew.
My mother never got to see her first and only grandchild be born. We had tried to call her all during the day of Mary’s birth without effect. The day after, while we were bringing Mary home for the first time and Richard was settling her into her nursery, I got the message that my mother had been off her medication and had taken her own life a couple days before. They found her that morning lying in her bed, on the same side that she had slept on for thirty years, with an empty prescription of Dad’s old pain medication and the empty champagne bottle that my parents had saved for their 50th wedding anniversary. She left no note for her family.
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