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I finished half the sandwich and most of my tea before I was ready to talk. I tucked my hands together between my legs and nodded at Seb, peaceful and content in his grandmother’s embrace. “Guess you’ve got the magic touch, huh?”
Lori smiled at the baby fondly. “Hardly. I’ve got a full night’s sleep behind me and the luxury of handing him back if things get too overwhelming.” She lifted her eyes to mine, a crooked smile of commiseration on her face. “He’s also got very swollen gums and at least two teeth ready to rupture any minute, plus he’s had a dose of pain relief medicine that wasn’t available an hour ago. So don’t beat yourself up about this, honey. Seb’s just been too uncomfortable to eat or sleep, and he didn’t know how to tell you.”
I dropped my head into my hands to hide the tears welling up again. I’d spent the last two days silently promising any god who would listen that I’d doanythingfor four hours of solid sleep, and I’d never felt so selfish as I did right then. The poor thing had been in fuckingpain, and I’d been totally clueless. Worse than that, there’d been moments I’d been frustrated withhimthat I couldn’t work out what was wrong——and, of course, it had never been Seb’s fault.
It had been mine.
38
Abbie
My throat felt thick,and the tears threatened to spill over. I was an awful, awful person. I also wasn’t his mother, I reminded myself, and I didn’t deserve to be. I wasn’t mother material.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered into my palms.
Mama’s hand landed on my arm, and she rested it there in silence until I raised my head. I met her burning eyes with my sore and swollen ones.
“Yes. You can,” she said.
I shook my head and used a sleeve to wipe my nose. “I’m such an idiot. I was so cocky that first week. Everything seemed so easy. He was sleeping well, and he ate everything we offered him, and he was always smiling—like, always.” I laughed dryly as I ran my eyes over Seb’s sweet, sleeping form. “He made me forget who I was. He made me think I could do this, but I can’t.”
Mama brushed her fingers back and forth over my forearms, but Lori snorted quietly.
My head jerked up. “What?”
She shifted to redistribute some of Seb’s weight, and he didn’t even stir. “I must have said the exact same thing a thousand times over the years.”
I blinked and waited for the punchline, but she only sat there and watched me with a curious mix of empathy and amusement.
“I don’t understand,” I admitted.
“William was a dreadful sleeper. I don’t think I got more than two hours of rest at a time for at least the first three months, then no more than four at a time the six months after that. I was not in my right mind for most of it, but I was certain it was all my fault. Other mothers had babies who slept when they were supposed to, so how hard could it be? What was I doing wrong? Would the lack of sleep impact his development? Was I cruel to leave him to cry, or was I creating bad habits by cuddling him so much? I never did find answers to my questions because nothing worked until my boy figured things out for himself.”
Lori turned to Mama. “How about you, Nancy? How many times over the years did you decide that motherhood was too hard and you were screwing everything up?”
Mama blushed. At first, I thought it was because of Lori’s language, but then Mama dropped her eyes in a sheepish way and looked at me with something resembling guilt.
“I can’t remember feeling that way with Abigail,” she confessed. “I was a lot older then, and we’d been trying for her for such a long time that by the time she was born, I had a much better perspective on motherhood.”
When Mama rolled her lips as if there was more she wanted to say, my stomach tightened with intuition. “But what about when you had Adam?”
The flush in her cheeks deepened. “That was different. I was very young, and your father worked long hours. I didn’t have a lot of help, and Adam suffered from colic. He crieda lot.”Mama’s smile was rueful. “There were some days I might have given him back if there was such a thing as a baby return policy.”
“Wow.” A teasing smirk pulled at my mouth. “I can’t wait to tell Adam about this.”
Mama tapped me playfully on the arm, but she smiled, too. “Oh, stop it.”
My amusement dissolved quickly. As comforting as all this was—and it did ease the dull ache behind my eyes a little—it was also unsettling. “So… why doesn’t anyone warn parents about how hard it’s going to be?”
Lori lifted her shoulders and dropped them again. “I think it’s somewhat better now than back in my day. There’s less stigma around mental health, for one thing, and more support available in the community. But I think it’s a combination of things. Not many mothers are comfortable asking for help, and I don’t know anyone who likes to admit when they’re drowning.”
“And we don’t want to scare new mothers,” Mama added. “We don’t want them to fear what’s ahead, and we don’t want to assume that our experience will be their experience. Not all babies are the same, after all.”
“And we don’t want to sound ungrateful,” Lori added. “Because we’re not. We love our children more than life itself—and parenthood is a privilege, not a right—so what kind of parents would we be if we spoke disparagingly about these loud, messy, demanding, exhausting, beautiful blessings?”
She punctuated her words with a light kiss on Seb’s forehead, and I continued to stare at his precious little face while I sorted through what they were trying to tell me.
Motherhood was hard for everyone.
