You Are a Strong, Brave Girl

My daughter shit sticky black meconium all over my abdomen and down my ribs as soon as the doctors put her on my bare chest after a difficult labor. My son had done the same thing two years earlier after a difficult delivery. But I didn't mind, didn't even notice through the relief that I could stop pushing. With my son, I felt wonderment that he was an entirely separate and distinct person from me. With my daughter, I felt like I had met her before, like I have known her all my life.

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My forearm pins-and-needles to a bloodless death, but I will not move until my two-year-old son cuddling that arm sleeps a deep sleep, a sleep so deep it will not disturb him when I slip my arm from beneath his head. It will not wake him when I roll over, the mattress depressing at the edge. I hold my breath as I ease across the creaky floorboards, still holding my nursing infant in my other arm.

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I wish I could say it felt like heaven, like floating in a fluffy cloud, like weightlessness, but my first postpartum swim after my second baby felt more like a rusty pair of scissors slicing through the water. The pool water, cold as a lake in early May, ran against the grain of the leg hairs I hadn't shaved. My flip turns had more speed than during the last month of pregnancy, but my abdomen still pulled taut, protective, a warning, don't do that again. Not yet.

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My daughter arrived two weeks past her due date. After frequent heart rate checks, my medical team kept saying, "She's happy in there." Even during labor, which did not go well, they kept saying, "She's happy in there." She seems happy out here, too. She taught herself to smile at three weeks, which is early for most newborns. Since then, she has greeted me almost every morning with a big smile and big kicks that wiggle her from side to side, like a puppy wagging its tail with delight.

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We've watched his favorite TV show Robocar Poli so many times that the theme song disturbs my dreams. He calls the show Blue Cars, even though it only has one blue car, the police car who, like the rest of his rescue team, transforms from a vehicle into a robot. Now he calls all TV shows Blue Cars. The police car is Poli, the ambulance is Amber, and the helicopter is Heli, but the fire truck is Roy? Now he calls all red vehicles Roy. When he wakes from a nap he says, “Hi Mommy. Blue Cars. Now. Please?"

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Exercise advice for pregnant women includes avoiding breathlessness, contact sports, and activities during which you could fall or get hit by a ball. Also, do Kegels. Even less advice exists for postpartum women. The first six weeks, the advice is don't move except to feed your baby and maybe feed yourself and to go to the bathroom, where you might leak blood and breast milk on the bathroom rug, although they don't warn you about the leaking part. Also, breathing exercises. After six weeks, you're on your own.

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I call my daughter the Princess and the "Pee" because she only cries when she has a wet diaper, even one small trickle of wetness makes her kick her legs with furor, like she can wriggle out of the diaper on her own. Her brother dances for her when she cries and tells her, "Gobba gobba gee, gobba goo." If that fails to make her smile, he says, "Mommy, baby, milky, now," and directs me to the nursing pillow. When I take her to the changing table, a pad on top of the dresser, he lays on the floor between us, usually with a blue car or two in hand.

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I asked my son if he wanted to swing at the park and this time he said "yesh." I squatted and picked him up under the armpits, my arms out long so I didn't squeeze him against the baby strapped to my chest. I lifted him high enough to clear the lip of the bucket swing. He put his feet through the holes and I pushed the swing as gently as the afternoon breeze. "No, mommy, stop!" he said, like before, but laughing the deep belly laugh. He reached for my hand to make the swinging stop. I held him steady. “I’m so proud of you for trying the swings again. Was that fun?” He looked to the sky as an airplane rumbled overhead and said, “Yesh?”

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During my fifth swim after my daughter's birth, I remind myself that I'm allowed to go fast. If I want to. If I can, now that I'm no longer constrained to a pace in which I can "hold a conversation," meaningless advice when my face is underwater. Go fast on this one, I tell myself before swimming one length of the pool. Set a new baseline. But I don't swim fast. I worry about the pain, causing new or renewing the old. My heart thumps like a bass drum. I wonder if I can still be an athlete if I'm pain avoidant.

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When she was 10 weeks old, I took my daughter swimming for the first time. I submerged us to our shoulders. She smiled: at me, at my parents and brother and niece, who stood in a circle around us. I held her with outstretched arms to give her space to kick and explore the water, if she wanted. I blew in her face and dunked her, quickly, barely sinking her whole head beneath the surface. When she wailed, we all said, "Aww." I wiped the water from her eyes and held her to my chest again. I put my cheek on her wispy wet hair and whispered, "You are a strong, brave girl.”