“Sit down,” I tell my toddler, calmly but firmly. “Don’t stand in the tub!” 

She looks at me, her little legs searching for purchase, and she starts to rise. 

She knows she’s not supposed to stand, but she wants that toy just out of reach. 

“Sit,” I say again, giving her a look. 

She slowly lowers her squishy little baby bottom back into the water, and splashes a little in protest, getting me right in the eyes. 

“How’s it going in here?” My husband peeks his head in, and our daughter laughs and squeals when she sees him. 

He is her favorite person on the planet, and this fills me with bittersweet love. Seeing them together is most heart-squeezing thing I could have ever imagined. Yet, sometimes I worry that their bond is so strong because there is something wrong with hers and mine. 

Although I logically know this isn’t true—I’ve been breastfeeding for almost seventeen months now, she runs to me and grabs my hair for comfort, and she holds my leg out in public. I am her safe space.

Rationally, I know that her current preference for my husband, her daddy, is likely just a phase. Our doctor, seeing her cling to him before shots, tells me this. Perhaps the look on my face when she pushes me away prompts this.

“My son used to scream when I came intothe room,” my doctor tells me. “It was just a phase, though. I wouldn’t worry about it.” 

I wantmy daughter and my husband to continue their incredible bond. I want her to know her father loves her and would do anything for her, and I want them to be close. 

But sometimes, in a part of myself that I’m ashamed of, I wish that she would favor me, just for a little bit.

Sometimes, in these darker moments, I blame my pregnancy, which was unplanned and difficult and plagued by doubt. But mostly, I blame the first two weeks of my baby’s life.

During her first two weeks, severe postpartum anxiety and other health issues, such as a difficult recovery from an emergency C-section, consumed me. My memories of her first two weeks are jumbled, dark, full of sensations I still struggle confronting. 

I wonder if our bond is somehow damaged because during those first two weeks, I was a little bit afraid of her. I was terrified to be alone with her, terrified to change her diaper, terrified that I would hurt her, either accidentally or on purpose. She was so tiny and so heartbreakingly fragile. 

Our bassinet, set up so carefully prior to her birth, moved to my husband’s side of the bed. I was too afraid of being that close to her all night long. I was too afraid that something would happen to her, and I would be the first one to find out. I was too afraid that I would go insane and do something to her. I made my husband check her on the hour those first few nights, waking up from a deep slumber in a panic, and shaking him awake. 

“Is she okay? Is she breathing? Can you check? You have to check!” 

I was furious at myself, at the world, at my body, and even often at my baby. What was this? Where was the joy? I had a perfect, healthy baby, and I thought I was going to be on cloud nine. Instead of that iconic, joyful hospital picture, the photos from that time are more often of my husband and baby, without me. 

“I’m a terrible mother!” I sobbed to my own mother, in an unusual moment of emotional honesty. “I forgot about my own baby!” I wailed, detailing a moment when I’d followed my husband into the nursery to discuss something, and he’d had to remind me that we shouldn’t leave the baby alone in the other room. 

I know that it could have been much, much worse. Thanks to the quick action of my doctor, I was put on Zoloft and referred to mental health specialists immediately. I only had two weeks of this debilitating anxiety, unlike other mothers who spend months or even years in this terrible fog of guilt, fear, and pain. 

You’re a good mom, I took to chanting to myself during those early dark days, and it became habit.You’re a good mom. Look at your baby. She’s amazing. 

I help my baby, now more a toddler, out of the tub. I make her laugh, we brush her teeth, and I make sure she’s dry and warm. This is my favorite time to snuggle her, a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly rare, as she gets more active. 

“Dada,” she says as we pass my husband in the hallway. “Mama,” she says, pointing to me. When she says my name, I can’t help smile and squeeze her too tightly. 

Maybe this lingering guilt causes me to squeeze her harder than I would have. I don’t know. 

After she’s asleep, I find my husband in bed, looking at pictures. To my surprise, he’s looking at the very first pictures of our baby, at the hospital. Pictures I both love and hate. 

“This one is my favorite,” he tells me, and shows me one I don’t remember. At first, I only see the hospital bed that felt like a prison, my awful hospital gown, my unwashed hair, my body still swollen from pregnancy and surgery, my face oddly slack from exhaustion and medication. Our daughter is still red and crinkly, and her eyes appear crossed. In all usual senses of the world, it is not a good picture.

Nevertheless, as I look at it, my heart warms to know that to him, this moment, which for me looks so flawed, was perfect. 

It’s true, that first few weeks of my daughter’s life weren’t pretty. 

Perhaps that is what makes them so beautiful. 

-Amy McMahon

Amy McMahon has lived all over the world, storytelling along the way. She currently lived in Montana with her husband and baby daughter, where she is an emerging author.