Baby Love Lite (10 page)

“
Tylar! Tylar! What are you
doing? Stop . . . you need to stop!”

My eyes looked back up finding him gazing
down at me. We were no longer in Preston’s room. We were on the bed
in our room. His statue-like expression was gone. It had been
replaced by one of fear and confusion. It was familiar to me now as
I came out of my dream-like haze.

I'd seen that same expression on his face
every night for the past three nights. He reached over and flicked
the switch on the lamp next to the bed. My face was covered with
sweat. My breathing was quick and shallow. I looked up at him not
masking my fear with the unanswered question.

“
She’s fine. She’s in her
bed right where you tucked her in earlier." His tone was different.
He was exasperated; anyone could see that. For the first time I
noticed the dark circles underneath his eyes. He'd not been
sleeping well, mostly because I'd kept him up intermittently each
night with these horrible nightmares that seemed so
real.

“
I’m sorry," I said softly.
“It’s just that I had this horrible dream about -”

“
I know, Tylar,” he snapped
in frustration. “Please spare me the details. It's just another one
of your fucked-up dreams like all of the others.”

He lowered his head, rubbing his hand over
his forehead and raking it back through his sleep-tousled hair.
Trey’s mom was due in the following morning to stay and help out
with the baby. I knew he'd voiced his concern about me and my
paranoid mental state to her.

I couldn’t be blamed for what I'd dreamt; I
did think that Trey had had his fill of me not seeing someone about
them. He'd been prodding me to talk to my OB/GYN to see if the
dreams could possibly be attributed to post-partum depression. He
wanted me to get help.

I couldn’t tell him that this dream was
different than the others. I was sickened by it. This was the first
time I'd dreamt of hurting my baby; this was the first time I'd
ever dreamt that I was my mother.

“
Trey,” I said softly,
waiting for him to look at me. I felt so damaged.

He looked over at me, his gorgeous eyes tired
and drawn; he was still rubbing the back of his neck in utter
frustration and helplessness. He cocked an eyebrow waiting for me
to say what I had to say.

“
I'll get in touch with the
doctor tomorrow, I promise. I'll find out what's going on and if
Dr. Addison feels that it's beyond his expertise, I'll have him
refer me to a psychiatrist. I promise you that. I'm so very sorry
that this has been happening.”

“
Sweetie,” he replied with a
sigh, drawing me closer to him. “I'm not blaming you for this. I
know that whatever is going on with you isn't your fault. I just
want it gone."

“
I understand,” I choked
out, tears welling up. “Can I please ask you for one thing
tonight?”

“
What is it?”

“
Please can you get Preston
and let her sleep in here with us?”

He eyed me warily. I actually thought that
perhaps Trey no longer totally trusted me around my baby. The
thought of that crushed me into a million pieces; yet had I told
him about my latest dream I could almost guarantee that he would
have me institutionalized.

“
I'll go get her,” he
replied quietly.

Her bassinet was still in our room and during
the days when Trey was at work, I kept her in it so that I could be
nearby watching "Ellen” while she napped. I tried to make things
normal like they used to be before Jean was run down and left for
dead.

Trey returned with Preston in his arms. He
placed her carefully into my arms where I looked down onto her
sweet, chubby cheeks and kissed them gently to chase away the
memories of what I'd done to them in my latest dream. Her large
blue eyes fluttered open and she gazed up at me with love. I kissed
her again and again. She smiled at me, presenting her dimple which
I kissed as well. Her hand reached up and grabbed onto my hair,
fisting it with her tiny fingers and pulling.

“
Ouch,” I said, laughing.
“You're hurting Mommy.”

I gently pried her little fingers out of my
hair, kissing them with my lips. I kissed her cheeks over and over
again, telling her how much I loved her. I cradled her against me
as we hunkered down and fell asleep together. She placed her tiny
thumb in her mouth and snuggled against me feeling safe and secure
within my arms.

It was sometime later that I felt Trey
lifting her from my arms in order to place her into the bassinet.
“Please don’t take her from me. I need her here with me okay? Just
this once?”

He relented, pulling the covers up around us
and enfolding the baby and me within his strong and loving arms. “I
love you,” he whispered into my ear.

“
I love you,” I whispered
back, snuggling against him. “I’m sorry that I’ve been so fucked
up.”

“
Go to sleep, baby,” he
ordered softly.

It'd been three weeks since I'd started
seeing Dr. Karla Hunter, a psychologist that Dr. Addison had
referred me to who specialized in post-partum depression. Dr.
Addison had told me that my dreams, fears and anxiety were textbook
symptoms of PPD. He'd started me on a low dose of an antidepressant
medication called Paxil, which he assured me was safe for
breastfeeding mothers.

As I sat in her office, waiting for her to
come in, I reflected upon how things had been since Dr. Addison had
diagnosed me with PPD. The dreams had continued off and on for a
week to ten days after I started the meds. Little by little they'd
diminished. My anxiety and fears about the baby were starting to
subside. I wasn’t sure if the meds could take total credit for that
because having Susan at our apartment was good emotional medicine
for me as well.

Susan had immediately put me at ease about
being there to help out. She assured me that she wouldn't try and
take over or get in the way of my mothering. She told me that if
there was anything she did that I didn't like, I was to tell her
immediately. She also assured me that she'd suffered bouts of
post-partum depression after Tristan had been born and that it
wasn't all that rare; that I wasn't to feel ashamed or upset by it.
She mothered me as if I were her own daughter which had brought me
much comfort.

Susan and I'd developed a routine with
Preston that worked out well for all concerned. Trey set up the
double bed that had been in that bedroom before it had been
transitioned into the nursery. It was plenty large enough to
accommodate. Susan slept in the nursery with Preston. I used my
breast pump in the evening so that if Preston awoke during the
night or before I got up in the morning, Susan would take the
feeding for me.

I rested so much better knowing that someone
I loved and trusted was sleeping close by my baby. My anxiety and
stress level had been greatly reduced. My relationship with Trey
had benefited tremendously. We laughed and loved again. The dark
circles under his eyes disappeared and our mutual affection
reappeared with more energy than before. We enjoyed our closeness
and doing things as a couple away from home like we'd done before
Preston was born.

Dr. Hunter breezed through the door just
then, my chart in her hands. “Good afternoon, Tylar,” she greeted
me warmly, glancing through her notes from the session we'd the
prior week.

“
Hi Karla,” I replied,
smiling. She'd insisted on my calling her by her first name which
was fine by me.

“
Anything new happening?”
she asked.

“
Everything's pretty much
the same,” I replied. “I’m feeling well, sleeping well and the dark
nightmares have disappeared. Susan's still with us. She's made a
lot of my fears disappear just by being there.”

“
How so?” Karla
asked.

“
Well, for one thing I feel
better about going out without taking the baby everywhere I go.
Plus, she sleeps in Preston’s room so that makes me feel better
too.”

“
How long is your
mother-in-law staying on with you and Trey?”

“
I’m not sure.
Why?”

“
No reason. I just think
that maybe we need to discuss possible reasons as to why her
presence has made you feel safer, secure and well, to be perfectly
blunt, sane.”

What was with psychologists, I wondered? Did
they always find it necessary to find some deep, dark hidden
meaning to any inconsequential remark made? I was a new mother with
no experience with babies.

Why shouldn’t I feel more secure and relaxed
having Susan nearby? It wasn’t as if my own mother had taught me
anything maternal. Dear God - I hoped Karla didn’t bring that
subject up again.

“
Have you given any more
thought to your own mother, Tylar?”

There it is!

“
Not really,” I replied with
a shrug. “I mean, I’m not sure what you expected me to think about.
I’ve told you that most of my 'mom’ memories aren't all that
pleasant.”

“
I understand that,” she
remarked.

“
Trust me; I'm not trying to
dredge up memories that are painful to you. I just thought perhaps
there might be some benefit in you and I discussing some of the
issues you may have had with your mother that cause you to worry
about your own potential as a mother to Preston. I recall some of
your dreams dealt with your fear of harming your baby.”

“
One dream, Dr. Hunter. It
was only the one dream.” I was quick to correct her and the fact
that I'd not used her first name didn't go unnoticed by
Karla.

I saw an eyebrow arch upward infinitesimally
at my response. Dear God, I'd probably set off some psychological
“bell and whistle” with my defensive response to her seemingly
benign statement. The truth was I didn't want to dwell on my mother
or the fact that I'd dreamt that horrid nightmare. The pills had
taken care of those bad dreams. What would be served in dredging it
all back up again?

“
Did you have any luck with
trying to recall your first memory since our last
appointment?”

Shit - this again. She's starting to annoy
me a tad.

“
As a matter of fact I did.
My first memory was at the house where I was raised; the one and
only house that I ever lived in with my mother in Radcliff,
Kentucky.” I replied.

Karla nodded for me to continue, her pen
poised above the lined notebook she'd been using to take notes
during our sessions. Her reading glasses were perched low on her
nose. She looked like she was pushing forty. Perhaps the idea of
bifocals was disdainful to her. I could tell she wore contacts. I
continued with my memory, as she requested.

“
I was on the swing set in
my backyard. I was swinging really high on one of the swings by
myself. I felt the swing set start to tip over. A man came out of
our house and ran over to me. He grabbed the swing as it was going
back up. He stilled the swing and lifted me from it. He placed me
down beside him and told me very nicely not to go on the swing any
more until the swing set had been anchored down into the
ground.”

Karla was writing furiously in her notebook.
I gave her time to catch up before going on, noticing that when she
looked back up at me her contacts were colored. Her eyes were blue
today, matching her two-piece blue suit. I recalled last week her
eyes were a dark chocolate brown matching the dark brown blazer
she'd worn with her tan-colored slacks.

“
I’m not sure who the man
was that day,” I remarked, answering the question I was sure she
was ready to ask. “All I know was that he wasn’t like a boyfriend
to my mom or anything.”

“
Why are you certain of
that?”

“
He wasn’t her type, for one
thing. He was in a suit and tie. And they didn’t hold hands or kiss
or anything like any of the boyfriends I'd managed to glimpse after
that over the years. Also, I could tell that she really didn’t like
him. No, that’s wrong,” I corrected myself. “She really hated him,
as far as I could tell.”

“
Why would you say that?”
Karla asked her brow furrowed in her attempt to understand how as a
child of perhaps four years old could read those kinds of adult
emotions.

“
I guess it's because I
recall seeing him a couple of times after that. I remember an
argument she'd with him a year or so after that.”

“
Tell me about the argument,
Tylar.”

“
I don’t know when it
happened, exactly. It was definitely after the incident with the
swing set. My mom had given the swing set away. She never did have
it anchored into the ground.”

I paused briefly to make the memory crisper.
“She'd been pissed at me after that. I suppose she blamed me for
swinging on it too high. Anyway, the next time that I saw that same
man I was in school.”

The memory became more detailed in my mind.
It put a timeframe into perspective. I was in kindergarten; that’s
right, it was kindergarten.

“
I was in kindergarten,” I
confirmed out loud. “I know that because the elementary school that
I'd gone to had a Halloween festival. It was the first time that
I'd gone to it. I'd have been five years old at the time. They held
it on a weekend evening, either Friday or Saturday. It must've been
Saturday because it was my mom’s ‘date night.’ She didn’t want to
take me.”

“
Date night?” Karla
questioned.

Here we go…