home in silence, and Austin carried the car seat upstairs with the baby sleeping in it, and as soon as they walked into the apartment, Jaime woke up and started to scream. It was time to feed her, but Zoe’s breasts were aching, and the doctor had warned her of the danger of getting a breast infection with cracked nipples. It wasn’t dangerous, but would be even more painful than what she was dealing with now. She had given her a cream to provide some relief.
Zoe picked Jaime up and took her to bed with her. She settled back against the pillows the way the lactation specialist had told her to do, with one arm propped up on a stack of pillows. She opened her blouse and put Jaime on her breast, and let out a short scream when Jaime latched on, but she was so hungry she emptied both breasts for the first time and went back to sleep while Zoe held her. She looked up and saw Austin watching them with a worried look.
“How was that? Any better?” he asked hopefully. He felt sorry for Zoe, she wanted to do everything perfectly, as she always did, and this was hard for her. She was determined to be the consummate mother. She hated feeling so incompetent, and she always measured herself against her own mother, who had seemed like the perfect mother to her when she and Rose were children. Everything had fallen apart when Rose died, but before that, Beth had always known what to do. It made Zoe miss her now, she needed her wise advice, but her mother couldn’t come. She couldn’t get the time off from her job in the pediatric ICU at UCSF. And Zoe didn’t want to admit to her mother how inadequate she felt. Her mother had taken care of her child with cancer for four years, and Zoe couldn’t figure out how to nurse her baby after a week.
Things started to get better in the second week. Jaime was going almost two hours between feedings, although the goal was three. They weren’t forcing a schedule on her, and Jaime was regulating herself, which was Zoe’s goal. She wanted to meet the baby’s needs, not force theirs on her. The theory was good but the reality didn’t work so well. At the end of two weeks, the nursing was still just as painful for Zoe, but at least the baby wasn’t screaming all the time, although she got fussier at night. She had day and night reversed, which Zoe’s sister-in-law said was normal. She’d had the same problem with their twins, one had been fussy in the daytime, the other at night, and they’d been up around the clock with them, but they had hired a nurse. She said she would have lost her mind if she hadn’t, and Eric would have divorced her.
The one thing Zoe and Austin agreed on was that they could no longer imagine how they could manage a newborn and a toddler, if they had another child. They had always said they wanted three children, but after a year of hormone shots, four rounds of in vitro fertilization, and now a rough beginning with what Zoe still insisted was a colicky baby, whatever the doctor said, the idea of doing it again was overwhelming, and inconceivable to both of them. Austin said it to her one night when the baby was finally asleep after screaming for three hours for no apparent reason, which Zoe insisted proved she had colic.
“I couldn’t do this again, Zoe. I think Jaime is it for me.” She looked at him sadly for a minute and nodded. It was early to bring it up, but the past two weeks had shaken them both.
“I’ve been thinking the same thing. I always assumed I could handle two or three children, but with everything there is to worry about, and that could happen to her, I think one is it for me too.” It seemed too soon to make the decision, but they were both sure.
“Nothing is going to happen to Jaime,” Austin reassured her, and leaned over and kissed her. They had hardly spoken to each other in the last two weeks, except about the baby, or to argue about her. She had completely taken over their lives, and changed their easygoing relationship, which worried Austin. He didn’t want to lose Zoe to the baby. He needed her too. And with more