I threw myself into my work during the second pregnancy. Working even longer days and determined to ascend another rung on the corporate ladder before I was sidelined again.
The baby came early, four weeks to be exact. The labor was sheer hell. Blinding pain that came on so quickly they refused me the epidural I insisted on. They said I’d progressed so fast that I was past the point it could be administered safely. I think the nurses just took morbid delight in my agony. Bitches. I condemned every last person, unrelentingly and loudly, in the delivery room, Seamus included. No one escaped my wrath.
The actual birth was a heart-wrenching repeat of my first. “It’s a boy,” the doctor declared in the same congratulatory tone. A sticky, miniature life form was laid on my chest. I watched Seamus’s eyes mist over and every feature on his face transformed into luminous love and pride. The cavern behind my ribs that housed vital organs for breathing and sustaining life instantaneously emptied, while Seamus’s struggled to keep up with an overabundance of air being taken on by anxious, excited lungs and a racing, exultant heart.
I had been defeated again. By my own seed. Fucking little traitor. I lay there staring at Seamus, begging him with my thoughts, Please look at me. Please tell me you love me. Pleading. It didn’t work. He only saw the turncoat cuddled up to my bosom.
“Do you like the name Rory?” He was smiling so sweetly that I would swear the two of them were having a telepathic conversation and had already bonded for life.
I didn’t answer his question. I hadn’t thought about names. I was in denial prior to the birth. And now that it was over I just felt empty.
“I’m sorry to cut your time with him short, but we need to get him checked out. Being premature, he’ll need some extra attention.”
Take him. Please. And while you’re at it, I could use some fucking extra attention, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I was still looking at Seamus’s beautiful face as it crumbled in the understanding that his little boy may have complications due to an early arrival into the world.
I should’ve been crumbling for the same reason, but I wasn’t. I was crumbling for myself.
Rory spent four weeks at Children’s Hospital before he was cleared to come home. I went back to work after the third week. Fortunately, Seamus was on summer break from school and took on parenting full time with both the boys.
The postpartum depression was real this time around. I avoided emotion at all costs and what overtook me was suffocating. I was medicated. It helped with my moods, but love never bloomed for my boys.
I saw the way Seamus looked at me. Questions like, “What do you need?” and, “How can I help?” were common additions to our limited conversations. I knew he genuinely wanted to help me, but I also knew that by helping me he thought he was helping the boys. Helping our family. Because Seamus was a family man, through and through.
I started to resent the fact that I was being silently judged, even if it was being done with good intent on his part. I felt weak and vulnerable. We all had our part to play in this goddamn fa?ade, and postpartum depression was fucking it all up.
Kai is three now, and Rory is one, I’ve accepted the fact that I birthed these children, and that’s enough. Their father loves them for both of us. I’m playing my get out of hell free card—Seamus. He will always deliver me from evil. Unknowingly atone for my sins. Thank God he hasn’t left me. He’s too blinded by his love for our boys to see me for who I really am.
The fa?ade remains intact.
We needed a hero
present
“Seamus!” It’s the muffled cry of someone in trouble. Someone who needs help.
I blink the sleep from my eyes once and strip the covers back and bound from bed in one clumsy motion. I’m standing in the hallway outside the kids’ bedroom trying to recall if the cry for help was female or male.
I’m only half awake, but my mind is leaning toward female when I hear it again, “Seamus!” accompanied by more knocking on the front door.
My heart’s pounding in my chest, but there’s a degree of relief when I realize it’s not my kids calling out. They’re safe and sound. I shuffle toward the door because tired legs paired with numbness don’t make for a cooperative couple.