Tough as a mother
Mothering through scrapes, sickness, and allergy exposure therapy. Plus, a recommendation for a Substack written by a friend.
Last year, a friend of mine asked me what most of my friends ask me when they see me: What have you read and loved lately?
The answer I gave? Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder. When I think back to all of the books I’ve read in the past couple of years, Nightbitch is one that crystallizes and shimmers at the top of the heap. It might not be for everyone, but it was one hundred percent, absolutely for me.
“My friend read that recently and really liked it,” he said. “She loves a book about an unhinged woman.”
Unhinged woman? I said. Naw, dude, that’s just a mom.
Being pregnant, giving birth, and mothering a baby have required a wildness—a bravery, a strength, a willingness to surrender—in me that wasn’t there before. It has forced me to work hard to let go of what other people think of me. It has shaken up and reordered all of my priorities. It has cracked me open and allowed me to fully step into who I am in this present moment. Basically, I feel like I’ve reached my final Pokémon evolution.
One of the biggest hurdles I’ve had to overcome is my phobia of all things medical. I have always been terrible with needles, doctors, and blood. In the seventh grade, I almost passed out against the locker bay after just hearing about the circulatory system in science class. There wasn’t even a movie or photograph in the lecture. I think there might have been one quickly sketched diagram by Mrs. Zahedi on the white board, and that was enough for me apparently. I remember my vision going dark as I slid down the cool metal lockers. I was late for history class. When ninth grade health rolled around, my parents explained the situation to my teacher and she excused me from class when everyone else had to watch the video of a woman giving birth. Lol.
In years past, when I’ve had to go to the doctor, they send me to get my blood drawn and I nod and smile and head down the hall toward the needle-area and then I take the stairs out of the building and escape. When I finally did get my blood drawn after about three or four years of this, my doctor literally started jumping up and down out of celebration. I was so proud of myself I wasn’t even embarrassed.
So then I got pregnant and all of a sudden, getting my blood drawn was something that had to happen on the regular, not just every three to four years. I slouched back on the dingy leather seats, threw my right arm over my eyes like I was performing the charade for “dramatic,” squeezed my eyes shut, and proffered my left arm. I imagined the tiny bundle of cells inside of me, these cells that were of me, but not me, and I told myself to get over it.
While pregnant, I willingly gave vials upon vials of blood, drove myself to the emergency room when I had strange heart palpitations (everything was fine), and got all of the necessary vaccines without so much as a flinch. It was like I was an entirely new person, and in some ways, I was.
But after I gave birth, I reverted to my old ways, bargaining with my doctor for a year off blood panels and psyching myself up for weeks before finally getting my flu and Covid shots.
But there are times when that new me is back. Where she has no choice but to appear, dutiful in the face of germs and doctors and needles. Now that I have this fresh little person in my world, I have to take care of him. When he woke up sweaty and sick, I held him while he stared at me with sad, flat eyes, rivulets of puke flowing down him, down me, down us, the dog lapping the floor beneath my slick feet. Too much? Yeah, my high school English teacher would have told me to cut that part. He instructed us never to write about bodies, and to him I say: You’ve clearly never been pregnant or given birth before. So yeah, write about bodies I will.
Bodie’s body is strong. He’s a very physical person. He loves to practice basketball shots, to run and jump, to climb and kick balls. When I took him in for his 18-month doctor’s appointment, his pediatrician took one look at his bruised and scraped arms and knees and said, “Yup, he’s a rough-and-tumble.” Which means I’ve had to toughen up, too. Perpetually cautious, often prone to second-guessing, I have no choice but to tighten my abs and brace my knees and stretch my arms open wide when my little guy takes a running leap off the bed. When he falls on the pavement and blood runs down his elbows, I scoop him up and try to convince him that we need to clean the scrape when all he wants to do is get back “dow!” and run some more.
Having a child is pretty much striking a balance between the highest rush of joy you could possibly imagine and the absolutely soul-crushing fear that harm in any form will come to them. And when harm does come, because, inevitably, it does, you get over yourself and do what needs to be done.
When Bodie was six months old, we started solids. I followed all of the directions about introducing allergens and the first time we tried peanut butter, all was well. Phew. The next time we tried it, not so much. He broke out in hives, his eyes got puffy, and, naturally, I freaked out. I called the doctor, I drew a bath, I scrubbed him clean of any peanut butter that he’d gotten on himself, and I held him while he slept. I watched the hives fade from his skin. He woke up smiling.
The doctor said we needed to come in and do a blood test to confirm the allergy and figure out next steps. My heart sank. I scheduled the appointment and asked Michael to take off work so he could come with us, mainly so he could be there to comfort me.
On the day of the blood draw, Michael got called into an important meeting, so Bodie and I had to go it alone. The nurses had me lay him down on the table and then lay down over him so my face was close to his. One nurse held down his arms while the other would tie the tourniquet and draw his blood. I was in charge of holding down his legs so he wouldn’t kick and squirm. He screamed and screamed and screamed. And then it was over. A blue Bugs Bunny bandaid over a tiny cottonball in the crook of his arm. I clutched him to my chest and slumped against the wall, nursing him. I knew that I needed to be on the ground.
Are you okay? the nurses asked me. I told them I was feeling a little faint, but I’d be fine.
Stay right there, they said. They came back a few minutes later with a box of apple juice for me. Not for my son who’d just had his blood drawn while screaming, but for me. A few minutes after that, they had a doctor poke her head in the door. Again, not to check on my son, but to check on me. Bodie was one hundred percent, completely and totally fine after the ordeal, as I knew he’d be. But there’s something about needles. There’s something about a vial of blood. And there’s something about holding down your child while they scream in fear and pain, even if you know it’s to help them. Even if you know they’ll be okay in the end. Was I shaky and scared and a little ridiculous with my apple juice box in one hand and happily nursing baby in the other? Yes. Was I weak? No. Was I brave? Yes. Was I overreacting? Whatever. The answer to all of those questions can be summed up like so: I was a mother, mothering.
Once I felt fine enough to drive home, we left. A week later, we got the results: Bodie’s peanut allergy was a 4.6 on a scale of 100, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but is. Our doctor prescribed us an EpiPen and told us to make an appointment at the allergist’s office. I told myself that we had the EpiPen just to be safe. I told myself that I’d never have to use it.
When Bodie was a little over a year, we finally got in to see the allergist. She explained that we’d do something called a “peanut butter challenge,” where, under her supervision in the doctor’s office, we would give Bodie tiny amounts of peanut butter powder mixed into applesauce in increasing doses every hour. We’d see how his body reacted. If he started getting full body hives or had troubling breathing, they’d administer medicine and we’d stop. If he “passed” the peanut butter challenge, that is, if he had negligible reactions, then we would get the all-clear to start doing exposure therapy at home.
As you can imagine, I was a tightly-coiled wreck in the days leading up to the challenge. I read the same two Reddit threads about exposure therapy food challenges over and over again. I kept thinking about a flight I’d taken where a flight attendant came over the intercom and asked us all to please refrain from eating anything with peanuts in it for the duration of the flight; there was a passenger with an airborne allergy. I thought of the trust required to step foot on the plane and hope that we strangers remember to keep our granola bars and trail mixes tucked away. I thought of the Pad Thai I’d eaten in Thailand and the bun bo nam bo I’d devoured in Vietnam, both covered with crushed peanuts. I thought of the peanut butter pie I’d fallen in love with at Mabry Mill in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Bodie would be under strict supervision during the peanut butter challenge. He would be safe. A chance to eat all of those glorious foods and live without the stress of a severe allergy would be worth it.
The day of the challenge, Michael took off work, and the three of us packed the canister of powdered peanut butter and the itty bitty measuring spoons we’d been told to buy along with toys, books, and Ms. Rachel already cued up on the YouTube apps on our phones. The nurses and allergist helped us get comfortable, they answered our questions, and explained the procedures. Then, it was time to begin. We fed Bodie the mixture of applesauce and 1/64th teaspoon of peanut butter powder. Then we waited. An hour later, we gave him another 1/64th. He got a few hives on his back and the area around his mouth looked a little pink, but neither of these things were overly concerning to the doctor. Bodie officially passed the peanut butter challenge and we were cleared to continue exposure therapy.
Every day, I mix the required measurement of peanut butter powder into a small amount of strawberry-banana Naked juice. Every two weeks or so, the amount of peanut butter powder increased by about 1/32 of a teaspoon. We missed a few days here and there, but overall, everything was going fine until one day about a month ago. I gave Bodie his “smoothie” with the same amount of peanut butter I’d been giving him for about a week and then we went outside to play soccer. About thirty minutes later he started coughing. It was a deep, hacking cough. It sounded like he’s been sick for a long time, but he hadn’t had a cough before this point at all. I knelt down and pulled up his shirt to inspect his skin. There, huddled at the top of his back were three distinct hives. He kept coughing. I brought him inside. I gave him baby Zyrtec like the allergist told me to do. I knelt down beside him and listened to him breathe. It sounded labored, like he was breathing around patches of gravel in his airway. I set him up in front of Ms. Rachel and called the allergist. Thankfully, I was only on hold for a couple minutes. Bodie smiled as Ms. Rachel balanced a toy atop her head. “So silly,” she sang.
The nurse answered and I explained the situation. “All right, you’re going to administer the EpiPen,” the nurse told me.
“Okay, I’m crying, can you walk me through it? I’ve never done this before.”
“Blue to the sky, orange to the thigh.” She told me the best place to stick him, the outer part of his thigh.
“Is he going to cry?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I yanked off the cap, and I pulled down Bodie’s shorts to expose his chubby little thigh, and took a deep breath. My mother has always described my actions surrounding anything requiring fortitude as “ginger,” and she’s right. I’ve never been one to throw myself into the fray, to hoist the sails with defiance. I grew up a dancer, an actor. I’d rehearse my steps and songs and words until the confidence was baked in to each sound and movement I made. I’m a writer: it’s always two words forward, one word back, the delete key my most used. When I’ve finally finished a sentence, I know that the heart of it is usually here to stay.
So when it came time for me to stab my little boy’s thigh with a needle, the thing I’d always feared and despised, I cried, yes, but I knew I couldn’t be “ginger.” That medicine had to get into his body. I had to get his airway clear.
Blue to the sky, orange to the thigh. I pressed down hard and then I pressed down harder, until my baby’s cries told me that the needle went in. I held it there for five slow seconds, like the nurse told me to. I kissed my baby’s head. I held him. He settled and turned back to see what Ms. Rachel was balancing on her head now.
“Okay, it’s done,” I said. I released a shaky breath.
“If he doesn’t improve in ten minutes, administer another EpiPen. If he doesn’t improve after that, call an ambulance. Call us back to let us know what happens once things stabilize.”
My anxiety ratcheted up again and my hands were sweaty and shaking as I hung up the call. I sank to my knees beside Bodie and listened to him breathe. Over the course of the next few minutes, the sound of gravel dissipated. He smiled at Ms. Rachel. He started wiggling around. The hives began to fade. By this point, my husband was on his way home from the office. When he walked through the door, Bodie hugged him, happy and breathing easily. Michael took over calling the allergist back and I cuddled with Bodie and let myself be lulled by Ms. Rachel’s sweet and sing-songy voice. I could feel the tension and anxiety rolling out of my body in waves.
Despite my fear, there was never any question I would do whatever I had to in order to help my little boy. The idea of needing to “be brave” never even entered my mind. I had to do what moms do: I had to be a mom. I had to take care of my child. My feelings were absolutely one hundred percent secondary to whatever I needed to do. Okay, I’m crying, tell me what to do.
The allergist believed that going outside and playing so hard in the heat contributed to Bodie’s reaction. She said we could go down in the amount of peanut butter for a few days and then bring it back up. Even though I was terrified of a repeat reaction, we followed directions, trying to give him his smoothie concoction at a time when he’d (maybe) be calm for the next two hours (a difficult thing to predict with a toddler). We have now been back at 1/16 + 1/32 tsp of peanut butter for a couple weeks with no problems, knock on wood/thank god. Next week, we go up to 1/8 tsp. I’m nervous, but hopeful. And if the worst should happen—dear god don’t let it happen—I know what to do.
In the grand scheme of things parents and their children face, a peanut butter allergy that can be treated with exposure therapy is no large obstacle. We know this. We are grateful. And still, it is a scary thing. It is a path of unknowns that has required growth from all of us. Most of all, I have learned that even though I feel more confident in administering an EpiPen, I do not feel “braver.” I do feel a bit more sure, though, that there’s no use in worrying about if I will be able to do what I need to do to help my child should the worst happen. When I woke up that morning, the last thing on my mind was a potential life-threatening allergic reaction. But it happened. And I did what I had to do, not without fear, but without question. And I’ll do it again and again and again, because that’s what being a mother is: it’s being the embodiment of love and the embodiment of strength, in equal measure, all the time, forever and ever, amen.
As I was exploring my way through this essay, I kept thinking of a Substack written by my dear friend, writer E.A. Midnight, where she writes about her experiences with infertility and IVF remarkably close to real time. I am truly in awe of the way she alchemizes her emotions and thoughts into words, and the generous, caring spirit with which she shares them with us.
In one recent letter titled “Ongoingness,” she writes about going on despite it all, about how people continue to move forward in the midst of grief, yearning, pain, and the tumult that comes with having so many questions that have no answers. She writes eloquently and elegantly, and I come away from every piece with a deeper sense of what it means to be human.
Here’s a short, searing excerpt from the essay to show you what I mean:
“This is the thing I’ve been sitting with lately. That time keeps going. That we run out of it. Each day wakes me up. Each night, my eyes flutter shut. With dawn hinting into the sky, I will again be awake. Every moment, that right now is un-navigable, will clear. We cannot stay in one spot, one place, one moment. This grief is heavy, this fear is unbearable. But, if there is anything I’ve learned from not dying in the thirty-seven years I’ve (still) been here, it’s that you move through these things. You learn to navigate them. You go on. It is Not easy. It never is.
But we keep going.”
I am lucky to have someone like E.A. Midnight in my life. Our words brought us together; she solicited a submission from me to the literary journal she co-edits with Heather Bartel, The Champagne Room (My essay “Frankenstein’s Mother” appears in issue 2). I have actually never met her in the flesh, and yet we type to one another and read each other’s writing and send each other so much love. It is a beautiful friendship, and one that I’m very grateful for on many levels. I have always believed that the word mother is a verb more than it is a noun, and reading E.A. Midnight’s Substack further expands my thoughts of what motherhood is and can be.
As I have written these essays about my daily life, I have found it profoundly helpful and important to think of this wide net of what motherhood can be and I am also grateful to understand more about E.A.’s experiences with infertility. Reading her words helps me understand that specific pain and grief. It has not been my reality, and I do not need to change the fact that I often write about motherhood in order to avoid adding to that pain, but it does help me remember to create space for others and their experiences within my writing on the subject. This complication and nuance—that I can express myself while holding space for other experiences—is something that my conversations with E.A. have taught me is possible. It is a practice, and one I am committed to because at the heart of it is love.
If you are looking for solace in infertility and/or IVF, or you want to learn more about the process, or you simply want to immerse yourself in beautiful, heart-filling, heart-rending writing, I strongly suggest subscribing to E.A. Midnight’s Substack. It is free, it is captivating, and it is a needed voice in the world. Subscribe here.
I’m curious. When have you had to do the thing that scares you? When has your gentle caring heart propelled you to be tough? Let us know in the comments or reply to this email to start a conversation with me. I hope that no matter which fears come your way this week, that you know you can and will rise to face them.
Friend, if you know of someone who might enjoy reading these missives, will you forward it to them? I’d appreciate it.
With love from my kitchen table,
Kaia
Oh Kaia, I am crying. This letter is so powerful, so strong, and even though I know you didn't feel it, it's so brave. There is nothing like pushing yourself through fear for someone you love. And then on top of which sharing it with other, baring yourself in these intimate letter. I feel your writing so deeply in my bones. When I started my journey, I could not handle needles and even though I am used to them now and can administer them to myself (still kinda makes me want to puke when I think about it), I don't feel braver for it either, not really. I feel like it's just one step onward, forwarding, doing the thing I have to do. I am sending you all the love and all the strength as you continue pushing and pushing and pushing forward on your incredible journey of motherhood and life.
And thank you, my dear friend, for the loving mention and your generous words about my writing and my sharing of my IVF experience. It means the world to me. I love the ways in which I am learning (through all the moms and trying-to-be moms I know) how wide the net of motherhood is, how far it travels and what it encompasses. I cherish hearing about each journey, listening to each story, each step. It is so powerful and interesting and insightful. I am forever grateful to know you. <3
This was such a well told and engrossing account of what it’s like to deal with fear.
I also used to have needle-phobia. At age ten I escaped from my school so I wouldn’t have to get my rubella shot. I only confessed years later in grade 9 and my mother took me to public health and I got it because at that age I understood I was protecting all the pregnant teachers in my school.
I found the exact same thing during my pregnancies. I was immune to the fear of medical things because my babies needed me. I did all the hard things.
Needles don’t scare me anymore. But watching my kids deal with their own needle phobia was really much harder than having my own.
But we persevered. And I’m so proud of myself, and my children for doing the things we needed to do to keep ourselves and our communities safe.
I think the final step in my medical fear journey was having a stroke and spending three days in hospital receiving shots to my stomach to clear any possible blood clots. Nearly dying really gave me this temporary sense of having to just do all the things to recover.
I say all this, but my former husband and children’s father is still the one who takes the kids to the doctor and the dentist.
…and I still have extreme dental anxiety. I tried to go back this year, but the dentist hurt me and was cold and unfeeling…so I left that practice.
…but I’m looking forward to finding a gentle dentist. And next week I’m getting a tattoo to remind me how tough I really am.
Thanks again for sharing your story.