I Can’t Believe He’s Mine

The below article is part of Print Pals, an ongoing collaborative series between Byline and likeminded independent publishers. For our first iteration, we’re partnering with Spread The Jelly, a publication founded by Amrit Tietz and Lauren Levinger that prioritizes radical honesty around motherhood and the female experience.

To compensate for my terrible birth story, I punctuate each retelling with the same slapstick line: And he was born on April Fool’s Day! I do this to avoid sympathy. Pity is a dish best served far away from me.

The irony is that for the entirety of my pregnancy, I panicked over another parodied day in April. Aligned with my son’s due date was 4/20—weed day—and I imagined he might be bullied by association. Silly, right? I’d turn the idea over in the shower and visualize my uterus, demanding it contract early and spare him the middle school embarrassment. And so it did; my son was born three weeks early. On April 1.

I labored for 72 hours and he spent a month in the NICU. I downplayed the severity of his illness to friends, family, colleagues. I wasn’t sure how to share bad news in the context of a congratulations, so I sat in my hospital bed and ignored dozens of well-meaning paragraphs from people who love me. I responded only to clients from my agency. With them, I could control the narrative. There would be no expectation of an emotional reaping; they wouldn’t know and they wouldn’t ask. I wouldn’t have to admit that my body had failed me. And worse, that it had failed my son.

On the daily back-and-forth to the hospital on Long Island, my husband turned to me and wondered out loud if all the anxieties we’d harbored—about train delays, and looming recessions, and barbecues we weren’t invited to—had prepared us for this very moment. It’s strange. A faint relief can wash over you once the dust of a Very Bad Thing has settled. What is there to panic about when it can’t get any worse?

In my 20s, I was convinced that if I didn’t do everything now now now, it would never get done and I’d end up a bitter 80-year-old with bad teeth, tallying the regrets of wasted opportunity. I used to write sprawling to-do lists and then panic at the sight of them. I overthought everything, and in doing so, robbed myself of the joy of real, hard-earned accomplishments. I spent my trip to Rome planning my next trip to Rome. I attended seven weddings in a single year (seven!) and didn’t enjoy a single one because I was mentally tangled in the logistics of the next. The checklist-ification was a bandage for an emotional need, a thin veil of control that tricked me into believing satisfaction was always just around the corner. Excess planning convinced me that I could outmaneuver bad outcomes.

The most wonderful thing about becoming a mother is realizing the enormity of the world and the smallness of my control in comparison. Motherhood has taken a Goliath stone sling to the illusion that every little thing can be managed, every disaster preempted. It’s been freeing to understand that fate’s plans are sealed, permanently, with ink. The weight of my worries feels lighter now than it did before diaper cream and pelvic floor therapy. I more thoroughly appreciate the present.

What has slithered into control’s place is an overwhelming sense of gratitude, because the second most wonderful thing about becoming a mother has been watching the people I love, love my son. It’s electrifying, almost dizzying at times. I wish I could inhale the adrenaline and exhale it into a corked bottle for safekeeping, to unstopper whenever I need reminding of how lucky I am. I feel a renewed appreciation for my husband, my friends, my sisters, my father. My mother.

Showing up for my son has shown me the depth of others’ love for me. Watching the people I care about pour themselves into him has been like holding up a mirror: their tenderness toward him reflecting back the affection they carry for me. I can sense it, too, from loved ones I’ve lost. After three days of labor, high on magnesium, I hallucinated my namesake (my grandmother) sitting by my hospital bed. My son was born with a stork bite across his forehead and eyelid, allegedly, according to Reddit, a kiss from someone in heaven. The mark deepens to a tomato red when he’s angry, just like the ones she used to grow. Even she seems present in the details of his face.

It is 7 a.m. and I am wearing a bottom-of-the-drawer shirt, a souvenir from a trip to Lanai, a place I’d like to revisit but likely won’t for a while. The collar is tight and laundry hasn’t been done in a week. My clothes don’t fit the way they used to. There are empty Similac bottles strewn across my apartment, the scent of chalky milk seeped into my couch cushions, my bedding, my son’s breath, my son’s neck. He’s sleeping beside me. In a few minutes, he’ll wake up and want to be fed. He’s so sweet in the mornings. I can’t believe he’s mine. I have so much to do. I have never been so content.