“工作6点结束，对吗？”他自己经营自己的公司，所以即使是在下午6点晚些时候对close进行验证，在我的产假期间也感觉很优雅。

对不起，我不知道该告诉你什么。”

在中世纪的货架上，每六点过一分钟都是一个缺口。我无法忍受额外的分钟，我没有为额外的分钟做好准备。

“想让我去拿晚餐吗？”听到他的提问，我感到心不在焉。

不，我不想让你出去。你刚到家。

“天哪，我很抱歉。”他的语气不是抱歉。他的语气是压力、沮丧和烦恼的混合。“你想用完吗？我们可以点菜。”我解释为他不想一个人呆在家里，哪怕15分钟。

“你能等他一分钟吗？我得坐下，我好痛。”

“好吧，让我把外套放下，很快去洗手间。”他看到我崩溃了。他的反应让我觉得我对一个正常的期望是不公平的。对我来说，这是一个正常的期望，工作到很晚，放下外套，上厕所。在正常情况下，这是正常的期望，但这些时候是例外。

操你，上厕所。他在我腿上尖叫当我坐在马桶上的时候。当我去的时候，我正在擦血和缝线。我一天9个小时都没有拿到&“；让我就&”；。但是我没有说。他终于回家了。我已经超越了我通常的对话，公然说6:30太晚了。实践教会我一次只拿一件东西，我没有时间我不想面对争论。我已经处理够了，我不想让它打到风扇上。

他的卫生间休息时间证明有助于我集中思想。当他回来时，我重申了我的观点。“我知道工作很重要。我知道你的事业才刚刚开始，但如果你6点下班，你应该在6点10分之前回家。如果你真的需要留下来，我需要你在6点之前告诉我。”我当时在发抖。我想要同情。我想要理解。但现在，我想要改变。

我明白了。”他一针见血地说。

公平地说，他试图出现。在最初的几个星期里，他上班迟到了几个小时，这样我就可以在长时间的喂食后有时间睡觉。他会在7点后带杰克下楼，看电视上的体育节目，我会休息到9点或10点。这足以让我至少睡个懒觉urvive the day. There were also some fun times when he really showed up. Like when he would use Jack like a puppet and have him dance across our table, controlling his limbs and grooving to the tunes.

But overall, I was very alone. I felt like it was up to me the way he hoped it could be up to me, not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t feel like I had a choice.

That part of motherhood bootcamp, the divide in our relationship, was almost equally hard when I had the space to acknowledge it. At first, I felt like it was my responsibility to bring Jack to peace because I was the creator, the mother, the vessel. I was the food supply; we were connected internally, and there will always be a piece of him inside of me for the rest of my life. It felt like he was more mine and as a mother, I had a stronger superpower to make it better.

My strongest memory is when I was lying in bed one morning. My mother-in-law was downstairs watching Jack for a moment in a brave attempt to allow me some time to take a nap.

While she was downstairs doing her part to soothe him, I lay in bed and thought, If I don’t wake up, I’ll be okay.

It’s not that I wished to die, but that I had a beautiful life, and I would be okay if it were time to cash in my chips. I was tired. Beyond tired, I was exhausted, and there was no rejuvenation in sight. The birth literally tore me in half and now I had stitches deep within me, holding me together.

They discovered six weeks after the birth that I had been stitched up wrong. Like a sweatshirt whose zipper was only half aligned, they discovered this constant source of pain for me that I shrugged off and attributed to post-delivery pain. It made it impossible to sit down, not that Jack allowed it anyway.

When they discovered my raw, exposed tissue, they singed my tissue with liquid nitrate to kill my nerve endings, and even still, the raw sensitivity persisted. It was so physically and emotionally demanding that I didn’t think I had anything left. I was ready.

In similar moments, but with a hint more energy, I was driven to search for support: “Reasons for colic,” “food sensitivity,” “pain after childbirth,” “postpartum depression,” and “new parent coping.” I can’t remember all the browser history, but every moment I had off, I was searching for answers. Some searches I knew were terrible, but I typed them anyway. I searched for words like “frustrated,” “helpless,” and “giving up.” It didn’t matter the search, I rarely found anything of substance, but I did come upon a quote by Miranda July that made me cry because of how fitting it is:

“If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have?” These exotic revelations bubbled up involuntarily and I began to understand that the sleeplessness and vigilance and constant feedings were a form of brainwashing, a process by which my old self was being molded, slowly but with a steady force, into a new shape: a mother. It hurt. I tried to be conscious while it happened, like watching my own surgery. I hoped to retain a tiny corner of the old me, just enough to warn other women with. But I knew this was unlikely; when the process was complete, I wouldn’t have anything left to complain with, it wouldn’t hurt anymore, I wouldn’t remember.

People would say that at three months it gets better. Some were bold enough to say six months, and then there were the heartless ones that said around a year. I was living on an hourly basis. Make it through this hour, and maybe the next could have relief.

We would do squats. We would drop our knees and hold him close and something about the motion would quiet his screams. Hundreds of squats, up and down all day. It turned into a method of evaluating how hard the night was. “Tonight was a 157-squat kind of night, tonight was only 86 squats.” It was the expectation that my husband would trade off with me when he could handle it. He wanted our roles to be balanced. He wanted to help, but regularly he couldn’t.

Each time I assumed more of the load than he did, he let me. I’d do the soothing for as long as I could bear, and my times went from double to triple his. And as I did more, I knew more, I was growing thicker skin and learning faster.

“Why is he crying?” He’d ask in desperation.

I never knew, but I had come to understand what we needed to try. “Did you check his diaper?”

“Yes, and I tried to feed him, but he won’t take a bottle.”

“He just ate 30 minutes ago.” I knew he saw me feed him, it felt dumbfounding. “Maybe rub his stomach, do his leg presses. Maybe he has gas.”

“What’s wrong with him?” he meant on a bigger scale.

“Nothing is wrong with him.” The question annoyed me. I had heard it too much and I was already done asking.

“Something is wrong with him.”

“He has colic. What else is there to say?”

“But why doesn’t it stop?” He pleaded. You can’t fix this, I wanted to scream. It just is!

Maybe that was the mother’s instinct, understanding faster. It took a long time, but eventually I became relatively accustomed to the screaming and soon, acceptance hit, I felt resentment that my husband couldn’t step up to the situation the way I had. I didn’t acknowledge my role, enabling the very situation I resented.

The craziest part was that by month four, I started to want another one. It wasn’t a conscious choice; it had to be biological. There wasn’t a single ounce of me that could handle another. I hadn’t even healed from the birth yet. But there was something in me that was ready. Something else that was growing. I loved him. Even though he never smiled, even though he couldn’t interact, even though the majority of his life was screaming or sleeping, it was enough. And even in my ugliness, there was still something more beautiful about life. That part of me that went through bootcamp was now strong. He was my everything. I had become a mom.