I Fell While Holding My Daughter

Leading up to the day my daughter was supposed to get her two-month vaccines, I could barely sleep. I had been worried about the pain she’d endure, talked to my mom and sisters about coping strategies, planned for the happiest morning she could possibly have. When the day came, we drove to the doctor like usual, a spot in downtown DC, and my husband dropped us off to look for parking, and I got out of the car like usual, and I got my daughter out of the car like usual, and I turned to walk into the doctor’s office like usual, and then my right foot caught on something and I was on the ground.

My muscles had atrophied in those two months; sitting and holding my baby took up most of my day. My right leg showed signs of sciatica, a tingling numbness I’d grown used to. But that day, these issues culminated into an utter failure of a body.

I went down, hard. The fall was slow motion, and faster than anything I’d ever experienced. My left leg hit, then somehow my right elbow, then the middle and ring fingers on my left hand, and my daughter spilled out of my arms onto the concrete, and I fell on top of her. I was up in an instant, my weight on her for less than one second, and I pulled back to look at her, this tiny, wide-eyed creature, probably wondering if falling was a part of this new world she’d been forced into. I hoped that she wasn’t also wondering about pain.

I scooped her into my arms and stood, shaking, sobbing, saying “I’m sorry” over and over to the people around me, to the buildings, to the sky. My husband had only just started driving away, having seen nothing. A woman ran to our car and stopped him, and I stumbled over, carrying our crying baby. My husband looked at us as if he had entered a different dimension. Where was his wife and child that just left the car? The ones who were fine?

Another woman and her daughter escorted me to the doctor’s office while my husband drove away once more, his heart strobing as he had to park the damn car instead of taking care of his family. The woman’s daughter pointed down and said to me, “Your knee…” I looked down to a bloody mess. “I know,” I said. But I didn’t know. I could barely even feel it. I was too busy scanning my daughter’s head, her arms, her legs. No blood. Instead I saw the same skin I knew almost instinctually—an angel kiss here, a birth mark there. She wasn’t even crying anymore, but I was.

The nurses took us to a back room. Two of them held my daughter, who was laughing and cooing and showing off for them, while I stood in the corner as other nurses bandaged my many wounds. I was still crying, saying, “I just feel so stupid. How did I even fall?” The nurses consoled me, told me stories of their own falls while holding their children. Soon, the doctor came through and checked my daughter for any brain damage. She was fine, perfect, only one tiny scratch that wasn’t even bleeding on the side of her head that hit the ground.

The doctors and nurses surrounded me again. “You did good, mom,” they said.

But we hadn’t even got to the vaccines.

My husband finally made it inside and grabbed our daughter almost immediately. He was in bear-dad mode, shaping his body like a cave around her. “I did everything to make this not traumatic,” I said to him. “And then I fell.” I looked at my scraped up hands, the skin raw and red. I had to leave the room; I was already a hazy mess, picturing my daughter’s body lying on the concrete every time I blinked. I couldn’t watch her endure even more pain—this time pain we opted to inflict in hopes it would prevent further pain down the line.

Even though a doctor tried to distract me with stories of a duck’s nest outside the office, I could still hear my daughter crying a few rooms away. “That’s her,” I said to the doctor, still crying slow tears. The doctor nodded and put her hand on my shoulder. I went to my daughter and held her when the shots were finished.

It took a while for the recollection of the fall to stop haunting me at all hours of the day and night. I would wake up remembering the sun on her tiny flailing body, or recall the feeling of my backpack flopping over my head as I toppled onto her. I’d reach over to feel her tummy rise and fall in the darkness, reassuring myself that she was alive—and not only alive, but extremely well. I’d saved her in all the chaos, and yet, I didn’t feel like some sort of super mom hero, I felt like a complete moron.

Now, almost two months later, I feel like I’m falling while holding her in different, more nebulous and metaphorical ways. Two of my three freelance contracts unexpectedly ended while I was on maternity leave. The last one is on hiatus until July, and it’s the most annoying and least reliable contract anyway. DC’s program that funds maternity leave for freelancers was a bust—and may not apply to me at all as a contract worker, despite several employees telling me I would be covered. I spend basically all of my free time—which isn’t much—applying for jobs that lead absolutely nowhere. As a writer, editor, and podcast producer, I’m in a field so saturated I can’t see straight.

Multiple times a day, I walk the same path over our creaky floorboards putting my daughter to sleep. I hold her close, and she rests her head on my shoulder, looking around the same room she always naps in with the curiosity of someone seeing it for the first time. She eventually rests, her breathing slow and steady. I settle onto our bed, sometimes holding her throughout her nap, sometimes transferring her to her own little bed. I love holding her close to me. And I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I keep telling my husband, “This isn’t how it was supposed to go.” As if that sentiment will somehow set my universe upright again.

Still, when we talk about what it might look like for me to go back to work, if I do get hired somewhere eventually, I’m confused about how it will look. Job applications keep asking me if I’m okay with in-person work, and my mouse hovers over the checkbox every time. Yes and no. No. Yes. My daughter says “Aboo” while I decide.

At night now, I close my eyes and picture the rhythm of our days, the new noise she made, or when she grabbed my finger and brought it to her mouth for the first time, or the way she startled and laughed when I faked a sneeze. And I picture us both spiraling, a dizzy mess of what-ifs and what-nows.

I’m infinitely happier and more patient after I’ve left the house by myself. I’ve never thrived when alone for too long—even as a child, I had trouble playing alone, and as a teenager, I’d panic-plan weekend events with friends to make sure I was an integral part of the world. As an adult, I feel like the color gray when I don’t see any other person all day.

I remember telling myself before my daughter was born that I would create the village I would need to thrive. I promised myself I wouldn’t get bogged down by the logistics and schedules that tend to rule parents’ lives, that I’d bring my baby into my life instead of shaping my life around hers. Now I walk the perimeter of my room over and over to put her to sleep, feeling like the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper, wondering if I’m doing the right thing for me, or for her, or for us, or for everyone else.

I fell while holding my daughter again when I realized I had lost myself. But losing myself feels different than I imagined—I know that old version of me is still in there, I know exactly what she wants, what she dreams, what she strives for, but it’s like she’s trapped in a locked box and I can’t remember where I put the key. I can still sense her voice, her logic, her reminders, but some hormonal instinct inside of me plugs her ears and screams I can’t hear you.

I keep telling myself it’s just a phase, just a season, that when my daughter is older it will be easier for me to fit her into my life, and I’ll find the dusty old key that allows that old version of me to emerge. My daughter will be awake for longer stretches soon, she’ll be able to eat solids soon, she’ll be able to hold a spoon and entertain herself for glorious stretches of time. I know it’ll come. Until then, this village I’ve conceptualized has to be built, and I’ve got to get out of my own way. I’ve got to be comfortable just existing next to other people—to let my daughter nap at friend’s houses, to plan ahead for nights out when she starts going to bed earlier.

Instead of remembering the fall, and my baby in shock on the sidewalk, I’m trying to remember the women who surrounded me when I needed them. They came out of nowhere—the woman who stopped my husband, the woman and her daughter who supported my arms as we walked into the doctor’s office—angels who lifted me up, literally. The nurses and doctors gathered in our little examination room and told me stories, patched me up, cradled my baby in their arms. I have these women in my life, all over the place. They’ve been infinitely patient with me as I navigate doing what’s best for the baby and doing what’s best for me. I have to let myself fall with my daughter right into their open arms.

A couple weeks after the fall, I told my husband that not many people asked how I was feeling—most questioned whether my daughter was safe and well. This makes sense, of course, and I would probably do the same thing. But it was the first time I felt the mom erasure, sitting there with bandages on my hand and wrapped around my knee, while everyone circled around my angel of a daughter. During the slow-motion-but-fastest-thing-I’ve-ever-experienced fall, I knew I needed to protect her, and some calm part of my brain instructed my body how to do so. I remember the thoughts, Okay, I’m going down, fall on the side, cradle the baby, roll on your back…only some of these instructions translated, but I was still amazed at that quiet voice taking over.

I have to protect myself, too. Or else all my daughter will see is an aching mess—a bleeding knee or a bleeding heart. In this season of unknowns, it seems that feeling overwhelmed with self-inflicted responsibility is not the way out. Okay, I’m going down, I might think. But I’m going to try not to stay there.