It piss poured rain on the night that Eric finally left me. Becoming a new dad was too stressful. We hadn’t planned the pregnancy and we hadn’t even been dating for a year. It was just too much. At the time, I was already 35 weeks pregnant. Far too late to consider an abortion. He downloaded Tinder and I moved back home with my father.
My pregnancy anxiety went through the roof. I felt abandoned. Totally alone in this brave new world of impending motherhood. My body hurt, but my soul felt hurt, too. Pregnancy had been painted as this glowing, transformative moment in life. Now it felt radioactive.
The shimmering pink forum banners and soft blue blog backgrounds suddenly turned my stomach. The punchlines to awful jokes. I hated seeing my body - swollen and itchy and stolen - in the window of every store. I cursed the heartburn. The uncontrolled emotions. The vivid dreams - the nightmares were bad, the sex dreams featuring Eric so much worse.
Endlessly exhuasted. Emotionally, physically, mentally.
I still loved the idea of my son though. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t spin some divine wheel to select a broken home. He was just a little boy, curled up under my ribcage, punching pint-sized fists against my abdomen. Making me a mother one day at a time.
It became ritual for me to check my pregnancy apps at midnight when the 3rd trimester insomnia really kicked into gear. It was comforting watching the weeks and days slowly dwindle. As my due date edged closer, I tried to stay focused on the positive.
34 days left. 36 weeks and 4 days since my tiny one took root.
Nesting didn’t come naturally, but I started to try. Babies need a plethora of things. Everything specialized and miniaturized, painted with tiny animals and bright pops of color. Extra sensitive. Extra soft. Extra expensive.
I couldn’t afford much, so I turned to my FaceBook mom groups. I explained my situation. I accepted pity in return for help and gathered together all the odds and ends to a makeshift, secondhand nusery. My only splurge was on his swing and an outfit declaring “I Love Mama” with matching socks. I was responsible and only met people at police stations or public coffee houses. Until Kathy.
“I read your posts in the Expecting Mothers: June 2022 group,” her first message opened, “and my heart is broken for you. I had an Eric, too. It felt so personal to me.” The message was followed by a chain of blue emoji hearts and sad faces.
My nusery was almost finished, but her profile picture showed a smiling, mid-twenty something blonde with a perfect baby bump and beatific smile. She had an Eric, too.
I replied and our conversation felt natural. Her Eric had left her out of the blue. She’d done everything to save the relationship. Some things just weren’t meant to be. Motherhood was salvation. The love of a mother could overcome anything. She wanted to help me.
“Postpartum depression can be so real,” she wrote, “I don’t want you to feel alone like I did when my Eric left. Let me be your bonus support person. I’ll help with the nusery. No mom shaming around here! Secondhand just means loved before and sometimes that’s even better. You know it’s good!”
My mom was dead. My sisters out of state. My friend group non-existent. My dad a drunk. Kathy didn’t know it, but she wasn’t my bonus support person - she was my only support person. The only one checking on me. A blessing. We’d only been talking a couple days, but my soul yearned for her to be there. I just wanted one other person to care about my baby.
We met for coffee a half-dozen times. She was everything she was online. Beautiful. Glowing. Kind. Full of bubbly laughter and advice. Always warning me to be careful - “Don’t accidentally trip with all that bump!”
I felt seen. For the first time since Eric left, I felt supported.
10 days left. 38 weeks and 4 days and finally I had some peace.
I messaged Kathy that night: “I can’t believe how close I am. My OB says he’s measuring perfectly and a little ahead. He’s so ready to meet the world. He moves so much these days. I cannot wait to hold him.”
She replied almost instantly, “I am so excited. You know, I still haven’t seen your nusery. Are you sure you don’t have any last minute things to do? Bags all packed? Anything you need help with, just ask!”
That 3rd trimester anxiety really is a bitch. I knew I was ready, but a second set of eyes couldn’t hurt. I wanted to be sure.
“Why don’t you just come over tomorrow? Check it out and feel free to bring your little one! I have lots of baby supplies after all lmao,” I added my address to the end. Kathy hearted the message and I went to bed.
My dad left for work that morning at 7:45 and I spent two hours cleaning and fussing over the house. I didn’t want Kathy to think I was unprepared. In a weird way, I wanted her to be proud of me. I hoped that I would be an excellent, perfect example of a mom like she was so effortlessly.
I heard a car pull up around 9:30. Her sensible blue Ford Fusion with the Baby On Board sticker stuck on the back glass. I watched nervously by the front door as she unloaded a carseat with a dark blue cover that perfectly matched the designer diaper bag swinging from her shoulder. Her hair was golden in the sunlight. Her black sundress fit perfectly. How did her Eric ever justify leaving her? She had to haunt him in his sleep.
She rang the doorbell and I ushered her inside.
“Oh, Amy, that bump is just perfect,” she grinned as she placed down the carseat before standing up and reaching out to rest a hand on my belly. “He really is ready to meet the world.”
“Do you want to see his nursery?” I couldn’t hide the nervous tremor from my voice. “We can see if-“ I paused, trying to remember her son’s name, “if your little one approves,” I finished, pregnancy brain kicking into full, embarrassing gear.
“I’m sure he’ll adore it. Do you want to hold him? You can take him out. My back gets to killing me from packing him around,” she giggled, rubbing her back with a theatrical grimace.
I giggled, too.
“This is so silly of me, but what’s his name again?” I felt embarrassed to ask as I kneeled down to introduce myself to the little boy that belonged to the perfect mother.
“Eric.”
I didn’t have time to react. Pregnancy makes sudden movement impossible. Especially in the late term. I barely managed to glance up in confusion before I felt something heavy come crashing directly into my face. The world tilted in a dizzying stream of colors. Pain shot through my head and then my tailbone as I tumbled over backwards. Instinctively, my hands came up to shield my stomach - my baby - and another blow landed, the diaper bag with horrific force, before everything turned dark.
And I was floating.
Or drowning.
Or maybe burning alive.
The pain felt more real than anything I had ever experienced. So lancing and hot that my mind refused to hold onto it. My eyes felt glued shut. My chest ached for air. It felt like an insurmountable weight was crushing my entire body. Nothing existed but the pain and nothing ever would or could again. I didn’t even feel human anymore. I’d been reduced to acid and ashes.
I wanted to die until I heard a cry.
A wailing, hiccuping cry. A baby. My son.
In a world shaped by impossible, blinding pain, I knew that he had been born. The most extraordinary moment and one thought: I want to hold my baby now.
“Please,” my voice, scratching and faint. Another cry and the willpower to open my eyes.
Kathy kneeled above me. Her milk white arms streaked red with gore and her dress now a limp, wet thing smeared onto her like a sloughing demonic skin. Her facial expression was rapture, the most malignant ecstasy.
She held him. My wailing, red and purple faced child. The memory of his tiny fist curled around her finger, of his echoing cries, of her falsely won tears of joy is one that will forever haunt me in my sleep. In that moment, I understood.
You read stories online of parents accomplishing incredible feats to rescue a child. That inhuman burst of adrenaline. A love beyond what can be explained. An instinct older than langauge and more powerful than fate. It usually reads like feel good bullshit, but there is a truth in there somewhere. It wasn’t a thought or a plan, but just a fact, I was his mother and I would never allow him to be taken by a nightmare.
I could never tell you in detail what it feels like to press your organs in with one hand, feel the squish of blood and split skin, and not pass out immediately. Nor what kind of strength it takes to reach out with the other, desperate and searching, until you find the knife placed so casually aside that just disembowled you. It’s a racing, raw feeling. It’s a whole lot of damage.
The real surge comes two minutes later and takes every ounce of strength and desire that you have ever had. It takes dangerous, overwhelming need when you throw yourself forward with one chance to commit physical exorcism against the closest thing to real evil you’ve ever encountered.
If I’m crouching violence in purple prose, blame it on the human mind tapping out in that moment. I don’t remember stabbing Kathy sixteen frantic times while an infant squirmed between us. It was a bloodbath. I know that. There was no giant swinging motions - more tight, focused digging, grinding, shoving ones. And Kathy, so caught up in her repellant act, never ran out of audacity.
“My baby,” she kept saying: “Eric.”
Everything happened so fast. The aftermath felt sudden and cold like taking a leaping plunge into a frozen lake. I hadn’t moved much, but I had already broken through some bodily limit. The world swam around me. There was so much noise. Crying and screaming.
My baby.
I managed to take him. Reclaim him. I remember dropping the knife, shoving it in a skitter across the entryway’s tile. Minutes streaked by in black hazes of half-memory. I knew I was dying. Escourting Kathy all the way to Hell, but my son lived. I could feel him, warm and heavy on my chest as I struggled to do one last thing.
If she’d moved me to the kitchen or we’d made it to the nusery, there would be no one to tell this story, but the mail runs just a little after 10:30 at my house and we were right by the front door. Placing my son aside for his safety as I swayed forward, tugging my ruined body for the door, felt harder than everything else but I didn’t want to fall and hurt him as I tilted forward, grasping the doorknob, and saved us.
My mailwoman is a stern faced, retired teacher named Alexandria. I left the hospital two months ago with a three month old baby boy named Alexander.
The mainwoman checks on us often. And postpartum depression really hasn’t been an issue for me at all after my very special delivery.