of the hospital bed with me, his large hand cradling our baby. I wished we’d chosen a name for her.
She was tiny. Her legs were folded tightly into her belly, making her look smaller still. Her skin was pale. Her red lips formed a miniature rosebud. Her one wisp of hair, wet and matted to her head, was nearly blond. Blue eyes. She had a large forehead and a small, sweet, funny-looking, lopsided face, as if her features had all slid down from her forehead into a puddle near her chin. She was a girl, with tiny, perfectly formed labia. She weighed exactly five pounds.
I was prepared for a penis, but somehow I wasn’t prepared for blond. I expected her to look Mediterranean, like me, with darker skin and hair.
I wanted to be in love with this baby. I had hoped for instant love, which would redeem the previous months of not wanting to have a baby. My baby. I was in love with her beautiful rosebud mouth, her impossibly small fingers, which I caressed with my gargantuan fingers. All I wanted was to take care of her, to help her to get strong. I was not instantly in love. Nor was I not in love. She needed a name.
“Why is she so small?” I asked.
“She’s not so small,” said Tara. “Five pounds is in the normal range.”
“Why is her head lopsided?” I said.
“Their heads get squished during childbirth,” she said. “All babies look like old men with wrinkled faces when they’re just born.”
Julia didn’t. Brad and I were at Julia’s birth. When she was born, she looked perfect. Julia’s birth mother, twenty-year-old Zoe, used no painkillers, and she pushed for only thirty minutes. As Julia’s head crowned, the Jamaican midwife announced exuberantly, “I see a lot of black hair, I see a lot of black hair.” And then glistening, big, strong, beautifully formed Julia flew out of Zoe with her arms over her head, her enormous hands, fingers outstretched, into her new world. Newborn Julia large and robust and aware. Broad cheekbones and dark, wide-awake eyes. Loud crying in her first minute, then lying on Zoe’s chest and scrambling for her breast, which she energetically sucked. “Alice and Brad are crying,” said Zoe, which we hadn’t realized until she said it. I loved Julia instantly without expecting to. Once she was wrapped in swaddling, the nurse handed her to me. Her eyes looked at my face, Brad’s face, mine, his, mine, his, preternaturally alert and curious and perceptive. Our friends didn’t believe she actually looked at us at such a young age—“Newborn babies’ eyes can’t focus,” they said—but she did.
My new baby was tiny and silent and limp and lopsided.
I wanted to be totally in love with her. I hoped nursing her would bring the love on.
She showed some interest in my breast. When I lay her on my chest, she rooted, moving her mouth in the direction of my nipple. But her mouth was so small and weak, my breast so big and hard, and my nipple so flat that she couldn’t get it in her mouth, and she quickly lost interest.
A male attendant wheeled Baby and me into my recovery room—a double, partitioned by a pale green curtain, furnished with a vinyl chair, a plastic bassinet, and a hospital bed. The sterile space was redeemed by a wall of windows. The dawn sun streamed in over the East River, lighting Brooklyn’s industrial shoreline, and sky, sky, sky, the clouds still painted pink with the fading sunrise. In the water far below, miniature red tugboats heroically pushed barges twenty times their size. To the south, the Roosevelt Island tram flew back and forth, drawing an arc as it carried early morning commuters from small island to big island.
The attendant transferred me from the gurney to the bed, and we started our new family life.
Everything hurt. My vagina was torn. My body felt as if it had been turned inside out. I had enormous hemorrhoids, like two bunches of large grapes, one bunch ringing the inside of my anus and a second bunch outside. Even on the
She was tiny. Her legs were folded tightly into her belly, making her look smaller still. Her skin was pale. Her red lips formed a miniature rosebud. Her one wisp of hair, wet and matted to her head, was nearly blond. Blue eyes. She had a large forehead and a small, sweet, funny-looking, lopsided face, as if her features had all slid down from her forehead into a puddle near her chin. She was a girl, with tiny, perfectly formed labia. She weighed exactly five pounds.
I was prepared for a penis, but somehow I wasn’t prepared for blond. I expected her to look Mediterranean, like me, with darker skin and hair.
I wanted to be in love with this baby. I had hoped for instant love, which would redeem the previous months of not wanting to have a baby. My baby. I was in love with her beautiful rosebud mouth, her impossibly small fingers, which I caressed with my gargantuan fingers. All I wanted was to take care of her, to help her to get strong. I was not instantly in love. Nor was I not in love. She needed a name.
“Why is she so small?” I asked.
“She’s not so small,” said Tara. “Five pounds is in the normal range.”
“Why is her head lopsided?” I said.
“Their heads get squished during childbirth,” she said. “All babies look like old men with wrinkled faces when they’re just born.”
Julia didn’t. Brad and I were at Julia’s birth. When she was born, she looked perfect. Julia’s birth mother, twenty-year-old Zoe, used no painkillers, and she pushed for only thirty minutes. As Julia’s head crowned, the Jamaican midwife announced exuberantly, “I see a lot of black hair, I see a lot of black hair.” And then glistening, big, strong, beautifully formed Julia flew out of Zoe with her arms over her head, her enormous hands, fingers outstretched, into her new world. Newborn Julia large and robust and aware. Broad cheekbones and dark, wide-awake eyes. Loud crying in her first minute, then lying on Zoe’s chest and scrambling for her breast, which she energetically sucked. “Alice and Brad are crying,” said Zoe, which we hadn’t realized until she said it. I loved Julia instantly without expecting to. Once she was wrapped in swaddling, the nurse handed her to me. Her eyes looked at my face, Brad’s face, mine, his, mine, his, preternaturally alert and curious and perceptive. Our friends didn’t believe she actually looked at us at such a young age—“Newborn babies’ eyes can’t focus,” they said—but she did.
My new baby was tiny and silent and limp and lopsided.
I wanted to be totally in love with her. I hoped nursing her would bring the love on.
She showed some interest in my breast. When I lay her on my chest, she rooted, moving her mouth in the direction of my nipple. But her mouth was so small and weak, my breast so big and hard, and my nipple so flat that she couldn’t get it in her mouth, and she quickly lost interest.
A male attendant wheeled Baby and me into my recovery room—a double, partitioned by a pale green curtain, furnished with a vinyl chair, a plastic bassinet, and a hospital bed. The sterile space was redeemed by a wall of windows. The dawn sun streamed in over the East River, lighting Brooklyn’s industrial shoreline, and sky, sky, sky, the clouds still painted pink with the fading sunrise. In the water far below, miniature red tugboats heroically pushed barges twenty times their size. To the south, the Roosevelt Island tram flew back and forth, drawing an arc as it carried early morning commuters from small island to big island.
The attendant transferred me from the gurney to the bed, and we started our new family life.
Everything hurt. My vagina was torn. My body felt as if it had been turned inside out. I had enormous hemorrhoids, like two bunches of large grapes, one bunch ringing the inside of my anus and a second bunch outside. Even on the
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