In the Blood by Lisa Unger Read Free Book Online

Expecting. Touchstones. T. Berry Brazelton. Dr. Spock. Ferber. Attachment parenting. Nurse on demand. Set a routine. Baby slings. Baby swings. Vacuum cleaner. Car ridesinto eternity. There is no book, no expert, no contraption we have not tried. And still, he cries.
    When there is a blessed time of silence, we all sit waiting, holding our breaths, keeping our bodies very still. Once he slept for three hours. And me, my husband, and mother whispered giddily to each other in the kitchen. What was it? I had given up wheat, dairy, broccoli, coffee, and citrus—any one of those things might have been passing to him through my breast milk and causing him an allergy. Maybe that was it, finally, after a week of eating nothing but (gluten-free) chicken soup? Was it the new Sleep Sheep, which issued soothing white noise? Was it the swaddling, the classical music, the new pink lightbulbs? But then it started again.
    Tomorrow, my husband has to go back to work. And soon my mother will have to return to her own life. Only I will remain with the boy who I want more than anything to love but who screams every time I touch him. I have never cried so much; I didn’t even know I had so many tears.
    I hear my husband knocking softly on the door. But I don’t want him to come in, so I don’t answer. He will leave me alone; he knows I need the silence. I can feel him linger, waiting. But I feel dark inside, mean and selfish. There is almost nothing left of me, and I need to hold to every cell.
    I am angry. I have been robbed. There is a fantasy we are sold. I can see it even now, the nestling mom and newborn. The blissed-out hours of just lying and looking, sucking on little toes, eliciting smiles, dangling colorful toys. The cooing, fat, pink baby in adorable onesies, lying beneath soft blankies and cuddling plush ducks. I didn’t get any of that.
    My baby cut a bloody swath through me. Labor anddelivery was a grueling, twenty-six-hour ordeal that ended in an emergency C-section necessary to save both our lives. I remember, though I was addled and racked with pain, wondering why my child was trying to kill me. I could feel that something was wrong. The pain, the consciousness-altering waves of agony that rolled through my body, did not feel productive. There was a darkness to it, the pull of death. Had he been born in the Middle Ages, certainly we would not have survived, neither of us. It was that bad.
    But luckily, it’s the modern first world, where white-coated, scalpel-wielding, trained professionals zip us into sterile rooms and save the day. In my darkest moments, I wonder if it was a cheat, an escape from that cosmic yawning. Maybe there is an angry god somewhere, raging. He wanted us, almost had us. We were nearly washed to him on a rushing river of my blood, pulled back just as he closed his hands around our hearts. Maybe in my baby’s incessant crying, this god is making himself known.
    My husband, my beautiful, kind, loving husband, is still out there. I can feel him hovering, wondering whether to knock again or drift away. Since the hospital, he treats me so gently, as though he is afraid that I might shatter into a million little pieces and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to put me together again.
    I want to lean on him, to cry to him, to let him hold and comfort me. But it’s as if I can’t access the person inside me who wants that. I can’t wrap my arms around him and weep into his chest. I want to comfort him because I know he is suffering, too. But I am as stiff and cold as a corpse, limp in his embrace.
    We used to have heat, so much heat. But we are a lifetime away from the hot, humid, stormy summer night in Key Westwhen we first met. I had come down for a long weekend with my girlfriends. God, we were young, my girlfriends and I. We were all just out of college, all working seemingly glamorous but poorly paid jobs in New York City. We were all edgy, hungry. We wanted big things,