Fighting for Connection
By Kailyn Rhinehart
@kailrhine
It is unseasonably warm for October. Clinging to the dwindling days before the long winter, a new friend and I meet at the park. Our kids are similar ages and we find comfort in our turbulent beginnings to motherhood. Our daughters skip ahead to chase butterflies while we push our sons in strollers. The air is crisp but warm, like the earth hasn't figured out the seasons are changing.
After reminiscing about my daughter's birth and colicky first months, I conclude with a shrug, “We still don’t know what caused all the issues.”
My friend responds with details of her own birth and feeding woes. The path we’re walking on narrows. We move the strollers closer without missing a breath in conversation. The girls gravitate toward the pond in the middle of the park, bending their heads down to search for bugs. I pause when I notice my friend’s eye shift towards them.
“Do you ever feel like you have to fight for a connection with her?” She abruptly asks.
Despite the air’s warmth and the ease of our conversation, every inch of my body freezes in response. My grip tightens on the stroller under my palms. My jaw stiffens.
***
I watched as my husband fumbled through the bags we brought to the hospital.
“Give me the blanket,” I demanded over her cries.
I reached into the clear bassinet, disregarding the surge of pain from my freshly postpartum body. My baby thrashed with each shriek as I set her on the hospital bed beside me. Our daughter was hours old and already an expert at using the full capacity of her lungs. The lights were dim, but the recovery room felt anything but calm.
“Get the pacifier,” my husband snapped back before tossing a pink swaddle in my direction. I snatched it up as it hit the bed and silently begged her to stop screaming. The day’s events flashed before my eyes—my water breaking, being wheeled to the delivery room, my labor, her birth.
The rest was a blur.
“She doesn’t like that one, hand me the one with the giraffe.”
Glancing out the window, I could see the sun fade over the parking lot. Our overtired demands drowned in her screams. She wailed louder. Frazzled and defeated, I unsuccessfully attempted to shh-shh her.
I can’t do this, I thought to myself. I wasn’t sure if I meant calming my screaming child, or everything else—motherhood.
A few weeks later, the thoughts were still there. One night I frantically typed, “Gas drops or gripe water?” and “How to get a newborn to stop crying.” I was unsure whether I was looking for answers or solidarity. We took her to a chiropractor, and I saw several lactation consultants. After three months and infinite loads of laundry soaked in spit-up, we got her tongue-tie clipped. Still, she cried. The numbers looked good, though, and that’s all that mattered, right? I beamed with pride when the doctor told me I was doing a good job, but I wasn’t sure I believed him.
To be honest, I wasn’t even sure my baby liked me.
I floundered under the weight of gratitude I thought I should feel about this new life. The days became monotonous. I dreaded bedtime. The nights haunted me. Each one seemed to bring me back to the first. We would rock for hours as I waited for the wails to subside. Nothing seemed to settle her. Out of desperation and exhaustion, the lyrics to “It Is Well With My Soul” found their way to my lips. She sobbed, wrapped in her swaddle. I did too, enveloped in the darkness of her room and my mind. My heart willed the lyrics to be true.
But nothing was close to ‘well’ these days.
A few months later, we visited my parents for Christmas. At four months postpartum, I was a foreigner inside of my body. I slept in my childhood room and noticed how strange it made me feel.
How fitting, I thought. Like a child wearing too much lipstick trying to walk in oversized heels, I stumbled over my new identity. Me, I’m the mom.
I kept a log of what I ate on my phone and learned to load a syringe of gripe water faster than a cowboy could load a pistol. I drew comfort in being with family—or I tried to. A new location was no exception. Still, she screamed each night.
“I’m going to limit dairy to see if it makes a difference,” I nervously explained. I shrugged, feeling silly.
I handed family members a clean burp cloth when they offered to hold her and cautioned them of inevitable spit-up. They brushed me off with smiles and eager arms, unaware of the contrast between these cheerful days and the realities of the nights. I hovered anyway, ready with rehearsed apologies. One evening between discouraged shushes, bounces, and songs, my mom hesitated in my doorway.
“You weren’t kidding,” she sympathized between screams, before gently offering to relieve me. Her words were validating. But her offer added fuel to the fire of doubt already burning inside me, guilt and anger resting among its coals.
I should know how to do this, I’m the mom. I thought, as my lips tightened in a grateful but defeated smile.
***
I remember little from her first year.
I don’t recall how old she was when she first smiled. Or the date she crawled. We cheered when she first laughed, but I can’t tell you how many months old she was. While pictures and videos feel strange to watch, they remind me I was present. My body was, at least.
I wrestled with the absence of the beginning memories for years, before eventually surrendering them to the fog. The blurriness of those days seemed to deny me the experience of motherhood I had longed for.
Despite their blurriness, those days contain the foundation of how she and I grew together; a foundation more visible after the fog cleared. Our foundation, soaked in redemption, dripping with joy, is still rooted in love.
***
Do I ever feel like I have to fight for a connection with her, with my own daughter?
Dusk settles over the park as we prepare to leave. Looking at the woman I hardly know next to me, I am unsure how my answer will sound out loud. My eyes find my daughter. She’s bent down near the pond searching for turtles. I hear her clicking her tongue, attempting to call the turtles, certain she’s plotting to bring them home with us.
My jaw unclenches now and my lips curl into a smile. My daughter turns to look back at me. She points towards the pond, hoping to draw my attention to the turtles. I smile because I know her heart.
The relationship I have with her is something I never expected to strive so hard for, but these years have been full of a myriad of memories and emotions. Some impossibly hard, others impossibly beautiful.
I inhale once more, before slowly and steadily letting go of my breath and lowering my battered shield, grateful to find another mom who has had to fight for the bond they thought would come naturally. With her question repeating in my mind, I turn to meet her gaze.
“Almost every day,” I tell her.
Guest essay written by Kailyn Rhinehart. Kailyn is a wife and mom to two wild and beautiful, blond babes, currently living wherever the military says to. She is a former teacher and a current writer. She drinks entirely too much coffee and writes way too many lists. Despite being a New England native, she's found a deep love for the South's year-round sunshine.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.