Childbirth Is a Fever Dream

Postpartum is the groggy morning after.

One minute I’m reading Island of the Blue Dolphins in a pop-up castle with a glittering moat and the next I’m looking down at my own face floating on the corner of my elbow nook but it isn’t actually mine, it's my baby’s.

My mind whirlpools and a squiggly arm extends out of its socket, dragging my daughter out of her bassinet and into my bed. I’m not sure if the warping arm is mine. She’s talking to me using real words — she’s telling me she’s hungry, hungry, hungry to the tune of the trash bag commercial “Hefty, Hefty, Hefty” as she climbs onto my body searching for sustenance like a hungry bunny in a carrot valley.

I jolt awake. Lightning bolts are zigging and zagging across my room but my baby sleeps soundly, untouched and dreaming of her army of pacifiers we like to call “cadets,” waiting patiently in procession for midnight grabs like good little soldiers.

Panic surges but I’m used to it now, so I laugh. The groggy morning after that is postpartum is weirdest in the early hours. Every wake, I wonder if the pillow I’m holding is my child.

Did I accidentally pull her to my chest in my sleep? Do these survival instincts strike fear like bolts to keep me on my toes? Is this just the inevitable result of the fever dream that is childbirth and new motherhood?

The bassinet is a ship with wings. I am a wildflower field. My daughter is me. I have time travelled.

I’ve spent years reading books about magic. Fantastical worlds made of twinkling fairies and enchanting elixirs. Injecting every heroine’s sorcery into my veins like I’m fighting my own valiant war against the evil King who can summon dark lords and I must PROTECT THE REALM with a precious once-thought-was-lost family heirloom. Novels so surreal that fiction bends reality like a warped event horizon and we flee into its pages, escaping the mundanity of life beyond ink.

And then I had a baby.

I’ve seen my fair share of life’s sublimity. I’ve eaten clouds and swallowed the sun. I’ve stood on the edge of the world, I’ve sank my teeth into its Earthly depths. I’ve made a home out of countries I met for mere hours.

I’ve fallen in love. I’ve exploded in sunset ink. I’ve heard it all in song and poetry. I’ve eaten fungi and watched the world warp in prismatic wonder. I’ve been under the scalpel multiple times, my heart on the line, and still —

Childbirth is the closest thing to magic I’ve ever experienced.

It is a fever dream. A combustion of everything seen and unseen.

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For the first two months after the birth of my daughter, I wondered if I was losing my mind.

The atmosphere drapes an iridescent haze around my newborn baby; like a little angel has been bestowed upon my lap and her fluffy carrying cloud plumes its way through my living room, helping me to and fro, sprinkling us with pixie dust.

For your hair, a shimmer, it said. For your stomach, a soothing herbal tonic. For your heart, your husband’s hand coated in a rainbow tincture and your daughter’s head emanating the scent of cotton candy, an alchemy of sweetness for your new softness. Don’t you just love it here? Keep your eyes open — the night can wait. The days are long but the years are short.

I stare bleary-eyed into the shimmering shadows of an endless summer day, no differentiation between week and hour, life and Heaven.

When I went into labor, the world stopped spinning. My socks grew their own legs and wandered into dark corners of my closet. I tried to chase them but my feet trudged through maple syrup I don’t remember pooling about my bathroom, the giant chocolate chip pancake I ate every night of my pregnancy now growing to absurd proportions, occupying my entire bathtub bathing in butter, telling me, “GO NOW! THE BABY PANCAKE IS COMING!”

Is it happening? HAHA is it happening? HAHAHAHA IS IT HAPPENING?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I carry a puppy pad with a sad puppy face to the triage desk. They ask if I want a biscuit or a bone. I drool and nod with urgency — both.

I look down at my stomach and see that it has become the ocean. Moving in violent waves. The Pacific, not the Atlantic. Navy blue, deep, ice cold, shuddering.

There’s a song playing somewhere but I think it might be inside my head. The anesthesiologist is harmonizing. He has a beautiful voice.

Then my daughter is there. I hear her crying. She has the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.

When I look at her, I see a triangle. I angle my head in confusion.

Triangle, triangle, triangle. Three sides, three points. Knee, knee, head.

I birthed a shape. It’s so cute.

The shape has eyelids. How are they there? Where did they really come from?

They came from nothing. They came from an idea. They came from a collision of souls. They came from a string I unravelled, the violet spool of which ended here.

She stops crying on my chest. Safe. Found. From an ocean to a buoy I have become. Carrying. Floating. I am swimming and the lights are flickering like stars and the air is sweet like morphine and I’m saying shh, shh, shh and she is singing coo, coo, coo.

Blink — seven months have passed. The haze has made a permanent home out of my atmosphere. My wobbly arm has returned to its rightful place at my side, but I punch the sleep/wake button over and over on the monitor all night, reigniting the light on the screen like I’m smacking a flashlight I’m desperate to keep on to illuminate the dark unknown. There she is — curled up like a shrimp in the corner of her crib. I want to eat her.

I curl up with a pink and fuzzy blanket made for her. I hold it close knowing it’s really just a blanket, my blanket, her blanket. We’ve made it so far; we’ve only just met. The fever dream is over, the grogginess has dissipated. I am awake, so awake, but the portal to another dimension, imbued into the rocking chair as a rune in the Yellow Room, is still here. Magic still courses through my bloodstream. Hallucinations have been reality the whole time. There’s still a something in the air.

She is mine. She is mine. She is mine.

She is real. She is real. She is real.

I am the Keeper of the Kingdom. I am the Queen of the Baby Dragon.

I must protect, I must protect. I must protect.

I dress in the armor of a Mother, dragon-scales refracting purpose and power, and I march confidently into the nursery every morning, sprinkling my daughter with the magic dust, ready to let the light in.

💌

Xo,

Violet Carol

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More from Mother Love Letters 💌

Poems for newborn nights: “Midnight Feedings” & “Blink”

Personal essay on the challenges of breastfeeding (featuring my best friend, Lindsay): Breastfeeding is a Full-time Job (Part 2)

Personal essay on my new identity as a mother: Motherhood Has Revoked My Cool Girl Card and Now I Am Boring

Personal essay on my positive c-section experience: No Revision for My Incision Decision