They said motherhood would instantly fill me with love...
unfinished letter # 11
Thank you for reading Letters from a Muslim Woman. I share the joys and challenges of being a visibly Muslim woman in a sometimes-unfriendly world.
A gentle note that the letter below is part of my unfinished letters series, where I share my most tender, unvarnished thoughts on topics like Islamophobia, sincerity, and the visibility in being a visible minority. Today’s post is about my postpartum journey and mental health. Most of it is behind a paywall. If you’d like to access the whole letter and want to support my writing, consider upgrading. If you are already have, thank you!
The day we brought our baby home from the hospital nearly 14 years ago, I felt like I was wading through water. The air itself was thick and viscous. Exhaustion had descended so that people’s voices seemed to travel through a tunnel to reach me. M and my mom were carrying my bags and the car seat, respectively. I was carrying my weak body and unsettled heart.
We had left our 18th floor apartment two days earlier in the maddest rush I had ever experienced, missing an emergency car delivery by a matter of minutes, gotten through the insanity, and come home with a healthy baby boy. And yet, rather than feeling tethered to a line of women through time immemorial who had managed the same feat, I felt oddly, increasingly isolated.
D was born in the middle of December in Montreal, where dusk falls at 4:25 p.m.
Mama, (my mama, even though apparently I was now a mama myself,) was with us for 8 weeks, tending to my every need so I could tend to the baby. She brought me bowls of chicken soup and buckwheat bread, lest my wheat sensitivity trigger his indigestion. Glass after glass of fenugreek and caraway tea, an old Egyptian concoction for increasing milk. Sliced pears and frozen mangoes and little pieces of broccoli to scoop up hummus. Mostly, I just wanted coffee with too much cream and sugar, and a croissant from the bakery in the underground metro tunnels five minutes away1.
Despite Mama’s waiting on me hand and foot, I never emerged from our bedroom before 2 p.m., barely grasping at the remains of weak sunlight the winter sky had to offer.
Mama held the baby while I slept, and encouraged me to sleep when he did. But I couldn’t, despite my exhaustion. My body was both lacking and restless.
On the fifth morning after we came home, we ran out of apples and tomatoes. Before either M or Mama could argue, I blurted out, “I’ll get them.”