BY KAILEY TEDESCO
CW: Discussion of mental illness (OCD, PMDD, PPD), mention of suicidal ideation, motherhood, eating
January 29 2021
I hear your heartbeat for the first time.
I am terrified in a way I’ve never been terrified before.
February 11 2021
I have my first appointment with a therapist. Ever. This is something I have wanted for so long, something I’ve always known I’ve needed. First, shame. Then later lack of insurance. Finally, the stars align.
I think horrible things that I don’t want to think. Ego-dystonic thoughts. Intrusive thoughts. Forbidden thoughts.
No, I won’t tell you what they are.
When I was in sixth grade I thought my first thought that made me hate myself. That made me imagine I was possessed by a demon. That made me want to die.
I made a deal with God then. I said so many Lord’s prayers, I lost a whole night of sleep. I did this for years. My own sick confessional.
Still, the thoughts didn’t go away.
I bottled it all up. A secret. I stayed isolated with my bad thoughts for years. Over a decade. Some nights just sobbing over the shower drain, water running cold.
Some nights googling ways to die.
It becomes unbearable when I’m in my twenties, so I tell my partner. It helps to tell, but doesn’t cure. Eventually, I tell a professional.
I get diagnosed with OCD and PMDD — things I always suspected, and things I always knew.
It feels better to claim them.
When you know a demon’s name, you can control them. You’re one step closer to getting them to go away.
January 1 2021
My best friend has a New Years Eve party over Zoom. She says we should make digital mood boards with our wishes for the year ahead.
I list the usual things. Writing goals. Goals related to helping animals. Finally getting her for my mental illness.
At the last moment, I write “maybe, possibly begin to think about starting a family.”
I didn’t know it then, but I was two weeks pregnant when I wrote that sentence.
You were an unplanned plan.
April 4 2021
I still score high on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. I wonder if this has anything to do with my pregnancy, or if I would have always answered that I cry often, that I sometimes have trouble seeing the funny side of things.
The sobbing has actually gotten better. My partner doesn’t need to scoop me out of our breakfast booth and guide me into bed quite as often these days.
I still worry about how I will be as your mother. I’m selfish. I wanted to get help for me, but now I need to get help for the two of us. I don’t want to bring you into a world that can get as scary as mine.
The therapy has been helping, but my counselor suggests I may need something more. I make my first appointment with a psychiatrist.
I don’t believe in God in the exact way that I used to. I’m not Catholic anymore, but I think there’s still something there. I’ve sort of made my own God, someone to confide in, to strike deals with.
This feels like a time to start striking deals.
January 13 2021
I ask my family to meet me at a local restaurant on a Tuesday night. They already suspect the news even though we’ve always said we weren’t sure whether we wanted children or not. When I tell them, I am so happy. They are so happy.
We are all so happy.
November 9 2020
I paint my bedroom a deep green & buy my partner & I moody, vintage curtains. I also thrift an antique blow mold of the virgin. I want it to look like my grandmother’s house in here, I say, still clinging only to the aesthetics of Catholicism.
I spend hours painting by myself. Arm sore & brow sweating.
In a few months we will empty this room & paint over the walls. It’s the only room in the house with proper ventilation in the summer.
We don’t know it yet, but it will soon be yours.
August 9 2021
I’m almost finished nesting.
But, I am oscillating constantly. Sometimes fawning over tiny pajamas & the thought of you in them. Other times terrified that I am still plagued by intrusive thoughts.
I’ve seen a psychiatrist on the verge of retirement. He complains about his office, about his secretary. He asks me almost no questions.
It felt like an Augusten Burroughs memoir. He scolded me for not getting help earlier and off-handedly wrote me a Zoloft prescription. He said he’s surprised I made it through high school, let alone a master’s program.
I sit in my car, eight months pregnant, and cry.
April 14 2021
I see a psychic in Salem, MA and ask her how I’ll be as a mother. She tells me that you may be the soul of the second child my grandmother never got to have. She says you will be caring and kind.
I love already, more each day.
January 12 2021
I’ve been feeling funny. It’s not that I’m that late, but I’ve been feeling funny in a way I haven’t felt before. A mix between nauseous & winded. Sad in a wistful way, all of the time.
I joke that I might be pregnant. My partner doubts it and so do I. Neither of us can pinpoint a moment that would have caused it, a moment we were any less careful.
Still, the funniness persists & I ask him to run to the store and get a test.
I take it & before I can think about taking it, two pink lines appear — positive. I take it again. The lines appear in even less time and darker than the first.
I run to my partner & interrupt his Zoom call. We look at each other, eyes big as though we’ve just seen something impossible.
It isn’t impossible though. We both know that.
April 22 2021
I see your face for the first time on a fuzzy screen. You’re a ghost, scratchy & just coming into focus. I didn’t fully believe it was real until this moment.
When the technician leaves, I tell my partner that your name is Sebastian Leeds — Sebastian after the cartoon with a great pyrenees that reminds us of our beloved dog, and Leeds after the Jersey Devil legend, beloved to me.
My partner immediately agrees.
February - March 2021
I am so sick, I can’t stand. I can’t cry. I can’t think without needing to vomit. Nausea that makes my head feel separate from my growing stomach. Makes me feel like all my blood is shaking in my veins.
I somehow manage to get out of bed and teach my Zoom courses, but then I am couch-bound, nursing the same saltine for hours. Watching only Grounded for Life and The Nanny.
Sitcoms can act as antacids. Everything else feels like a too-full stomach.
I forget how it feels to write or read poetry. To watch horror movies or to craft decorations for the house. I can’t do the dishes without needing to sit. I forget myself in the porcelain of the toilet.
I joke about giving pregnancy zero stars on YELP when I get up enough momentum in my voice to make a joke.
It will be a long time before I can eat normally again, and worst of all, I worry that I’m hurting you.
August 30 2021
I am back at work in an office and a classroom. I am always hyper-aware of every restroom and the amount of steps it will take to get there.
I steal sips of water under my mask when no one else is in the room with me. I feel you coming closer every single day. Suddenly, I lose my mucus plug. I cancel classes and go home.
When we realize it’s a false alarm, we go out to get you Beetlejuice toys.
Your nursery is ready and so are we.
September 15 2021
At 7am, I report to the hospital. They’ll call it a spontaneous vaginal delivery, but that’s not entirely true. You were induced. After 39.5 weeks of discomfort, I feel like I need to control one thing. The doctor says I’m already dilating.
So, I choose your birthday.
They break my water around noon and the contractions begin. I don’t remember the pain now, but I remember the thought that it was the worst I’ve ever felt. My bones and muscles all twisting like a hot towel over a basin of water. I’m continuously leaking amniotic fluid. It feels like it goes on for hours because it does. When I’m ready to push, I push wrong. All face, they tell me.
Then you get twisted inside of me. Your heart rate drops. Doctors rush in. At least a dozen of them. They probe me while I am up on all fours. I am scared, devastated, and humiliated. My partner’s face is so close to mine but I can’t hear what he’s saying. They give me oxygen.
I pray & pray for you to be okay. I make deals.
They stall labor and I flip from side to side for several more hours. I may need a C-section they say.
Finally, they tell me to try pushing once more. It works. Your head crowns and they guide my hand to feel it.
At 11:22pm, you arrive from me, onto me. Nothing I could say about the experience is original, but it’s all the truth.
You’re the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
My thoughts go silent, for the moment. They are obliterated by your light.
August 1 2021
I tell my partner that I’m feeling better. Clearer.
When the thoughts do come, they always include the people I love the very most.
I know I will love you the very most & so I’m scared, preemptively of what I might think.
The thoughts don’t come as often, and when they do, usually in the deepest dark of the night, I can brush them away more easily. Still, I worry. I cry sometimes because I don’t want this part of me to every be a plague on you. I’m still getting help and working through it. I’m not there yet, but I’m getting closer. I know this will be a journey throughout my entire life.
I’m doing it for me, finally. And, now I’m doing it for you.
Kailey Tedesco is the author of These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press) and the forthcoming full-length collection, She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publications). She is the co-founding editor-in-chief of Rag Queen Periodical and a member of the Poetry Brothel. She received her MFA in creative writing from Arcadia University, and she now teaches literature at several local colleges. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can find her work in Prelude, Bellevue Literary Review, Sugar House Review, Poetry Quarterly, Hello Giggles, UltraCulture, and more. For more information, please visit kaileytedesco.com.