Gwen pressed slightly harder on the back of June’s head, shoving it into her boob until June’s mouth opened with a depressing amount of reluctance and she latched on to the nipple.
“There you go, Juney,” Leigh said.
June’s eyes remained wide open as she sucked, alert and focused. When she took formula from the bottle, she always closed her eyes, as if the whole experience was peaceful and required minimal effort. After a minute or two, she pulled off Gwen’s nipple suddenly, her head whipping back and then flinging forward into Gwen’s chest.
“She’s headbutting me. That’s how pissed she is,” Gwen said.
“She can sense your tension,” Leigh said. “Try to breathe.”
Leigh demonstrated deep breathing, inhaling and exhaling like the Zen mother Gwen would never be.
Gwen coaxed June back onto the breast, despite her squeals of resistance. June sucked again, those eyes wide open, and then again pulled off abruptly. She wailed, opening her mouth so wide that Gwen could see the entire track of her toothless gums on top and bottom.
“Oh my,” Leigh said.
Oh my, indeed.
Gwen felt a wave of heat roll through her. She suddenly understood those mothers who lost it and shook their babies. She should have consoled June, whispered to her that it was okay that she didn’t want her mother’s breasts, but Gwen was not that evolved. She felt rejected, and the only way she knew to respond to this rejection was by holding the baby out to Leigh and saying, “You take her.”
Leigh accepted June into her arms but held her at a distance from her body, as if she wasn’t sure how to proceed.
“I think you just need to be patient with the process,” Leigh said.
She had been saying this for two weeks now. Gwen snapped her bra closed, pulled down her shirt, and stood from the couch.
“I can’t,” she said. “How about I take Belle for a walk around the block in the stroller while you give June a bottle?”
Gwen rummaged around in her diaper bag and retrieved the bottle of formula, prepped and ready in anticipation of this event. Once June saw the bottle, she fussed in Leigh’s arms.
“Okay, yeah, I’m sure Belle would love that, thank you,” Leigh said.
Gwen lifted Belle from the floor, silently begging her not to cry. She couldn’t handle another infant rejection. Belle was an easygoing baby, though, probably due to her mother’s lack oftension, and she seemed happy enough to be in Gwen’s arms, then in the stroller.
“We’ll be back,” Gwen said.
It was good to get outside, good to be in the presence of a baby who was delighted instead of agitated. At the end of the block, Gwen stopped to text Leigh.
Sorry. Clearly, I’m not handling this well. We won’t be a bother much longer. I have to go back to work on Monday. I really do appreciate everything
Just the night before, Gwen and Jeff had gotten into an argument—“a heated discussion” was Jeff’s phrasing—when she’d dared to tell him the secret she’d been keeping from him.
“I don’t want to go back to work,” she confessed.
She felt immediately lighter with this out in the open instead of festering inside her. The relief, though, was short lived.
“What do you mean? You love work, babe,” Jeff said. He was smiling as he said it; he clearly did not understand her despair.
“I just ... I can’t,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
He came to her, put his arms around her in his best attempt to be comforting, but he couldn’t manage words that were of any comfort.
“We talked about this, though, before we even got pregnant. We talked about it when we bought this house.”
Yes, yes, they had. That was true. He seemed incapable of believing that a woman, upon having a baby, could become a different person.
“I know.” She couldn’t bring herself to say more. Her throat constricted, and the words piled up, unable to get through.
“We have a house in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Seattle,” he said. Then, as if she still didn’t get it: “This isn’t a one-income neighborhood.”
