(Maternity) Leave

There is a stretch of the most precious time in the mornings after your husband has gone to work when the baby wakes up and you feed her and she falls asleep on your chest, her small arms holding your torso, their full length barely reaching the edges of your back. You can't move, of course, so you listen to an audiobook and lie there in the mostly-dark room and you are two places at once: this most precious place with your daughter sleeping on your chest (which she does not do throughout the day, high on milk scent too close to your boobs, demanding to be held but a safe enough distance away from the food of you) and the other place of deep deep sadness that in 35 days you have to return to work and these small morning hours will go away. Bad mother. She will sleep this last stretch of night sleep instead in a pack n play or not at all, having to be woken up more fully and moved around, crying while you get dressed and cannot hold her. She is so small. Impossibly small. Bad mother. This most precious time is a gift and you are squandering it thinking already of when it will be over. Your neck hurts because you spend so much time staring at her. You don't eat enough in the day and you've been crying more at night again and my God there are already so many things you are doing imperfectly (which is to say, wrong). Bad mother. She already grew out of her newborn clothes and you cried when you packed them into a little plastic bin for storage. The beginning especially was so hard and exhausting, and there was so much pain (the literal, physical kind) it was almost unbearable but now you worry you missed it and you're missing it and you aren't ready to leave her. It is perhaps technically far away but it feels far too close and you aren't ready for these small hours between night and day to disappear, packed in a small plastic bin. You aren’t ready.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Number 3. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.