Separation anxiety
On motherhood post-umbilical cord, emergency scenario anxiety spirals, and not getting on the boat.
After an agonizing few days of warring with myself, I decided that I will not be attending my husband’s office holiday party. It is on a boat. And we have a four-month old.
This was not an easy decision. I love a holiday party. I love a holiday party because when else does the American workplace acknowledge the passage of time and invite us to mingle as our authentic selves (or at least a more authentic version of ourselves) for an evening? When else do we get to meet our coworkers’ partners and see the ponytailed IT guy’s “festive cocktail attire” wardrobe and learn which members of management know the Cupid Shuffle? Even if the holiday party is just a version of the melon bar—i.e., a pretty negligible corporate perk in the scheme of things, one that is a paltry reward for our constant availability and dwindling benefits under late capitalism—it is nevertheless an employer’s nod to the world outside of work and our human need for revelry. Postpartum bod and ensuing outfit woes aside, I would have loved to put on lipstick and heels, put faces to names, and gush about my baby to my husband’s coworkers.
Despite the promise of unlimited California sauvignon blanc and a buffet of tiny desserts, for weeks the thought of shivering my way up the gangplank in the frigid San Francisco evening air has filled me dread. Why have I been so reticent to indulge in this festive maritime adventure, you might ask? It’s not seasickness, or social anxiety, or sobriety, or any of the usual reasons why one might say no to a booze cruise. It’s just good old-fashioned maternal anxiety.
I have been experiencing a classic anxiety spiral, the kind where you can’t quite pinpoint a specific rational fear standing your way. We would be gone for only a few hours. My daughter who, unlike me, does not yet have separation anxiety, would be asleep for most of them. I have a babysitter lined up, one who has already been watching my daughter one afternoon a week. The babysitter’s job would be to put my daughter to bed, just as she has been doing for us at nap time, and to give her a bottle if she wakes up before I get home. There is very little room for error. Nevertheless, I recruited our next-door neighbors to be on standby in case of a medical emergency—one of whom is a doctor! I even have another babysitter, with a background in early childhood development, on standby! Though my daughter would be safe and cared for by any of these able-bodied adults, I just cannot bring myself to get on a boat and sail (sail? do you sail if it is not a sailboat?) off into the Bay. A primal instinct prevents me from doing so. Both parents, this primal instinct tells me, should not board a seafaring vessel while their five-minute-old baby is left on land in the care of non-blood relatives.
I recognize that the voice in my head is dispensing rather anachronistic advice. It’s not like I would be boarding an ocean liner or a steamship to the new world. My inability (or unwillingness) to muffle this persistent instinct in service of a night out has caused a subtle rift with my husband this week. After all, in 2023, there is little functional difference between a floating holiday party and one at a restaurant in San Francisco. I sense that my attempt to explain that I would feel comfortable attending a land-bound party does not help heal the rift. I fear he feels me explicitly choosing my daughter over us for the first time. Perhaps that is exactly what I am doing.
My friends who are themselves new mothers understand my anguish. They reassure me that my inability to be apart from my daughter for one evening, four months into our relationship, is not a predictor of what kind of mother I will be. They understand the desperation for autonomy but longing for togetherness that characterizes these early days. This is still a fragile time, they remind me. She is freshly out of my womb. I hope they are right. I realize I have been worried about ensuring that my daughter develops a secure attachment to me, but what about my own ability to come and go without becoming distressed?
I know that somehow all parents learn how to endure a gradual and sporadic separation from their child. It is necessary for the flourishing of both parent and child, and yet I have been unable to shake the awareness of the geographic and logistical distance that boarding a booze cruise would place between me and my baby. It has taken weeks for me to be able to fully articulate my conclusion—that I am not yet ready to let a cold and choppy body of water separate me from my baby, and to be left staring across the wide expanse of the Bay at the lit-up houses adorning the Berkeley and Oakland hills like Christmas tree lights, unable to get to her in the event of an emergency. Will I be spending the rest of my life orienting myself towards her as I lay in bed at night, counting the steps or miles between us, charting paths to her?
Could we enlist the Coast Guard if something happened requiring us to get back? This is a thought that actually crossed my mind in the last few days. Could we ask the captain of the booze cruise to ferry us to Oakland? Would there be a dinghy to take us to shore? What if something happened to us?
Two nights ago we moved our daughter out of our bedroom and into the nursery. This is one of many gradual steps we will be taking in the coming months that should hopefully result in more sleep for all of us, and yet I am already grieving the loss of her presence next to us in the bedroom. I’m grieving that a chapter of our parenting experience is already behind us. I’m prematurely grieving the passage of each stage that results in her laying her head at night a little further away from me. She is no longer a newborn. She thrashes against the sides of her bassinet when she wakes. I dread the sound of her screams in the night. But I know my ensuing private moments with her in the nursery, her tiny hand reaching up to my mouth or wrapped around my finger as she nurses and I stroke her forehead, are what I will long for years from now. Being a parent is like inhabiting the feeling of reading a devastatingly beautiful line of poetry every moment of the day.
As I write this, my husband is boarding the boat without me. I am home, with my daughter asleep as I write. She has woken up crying twice since I put her down, but she is learning to put herself back to sleep. I watch her writhing on the monitor, holding my breath, not wanting to have to interrupt my writing to comfort her. She soothes and falls back asleep. I am proud of her and my shoulders relax. Soon, however, she will wake and she will need me, and I will be relieved that I am here to comfort her. I will breathe an involuntary sigh of relief as she latches, as I run my thumb across her soft cheeks, and we are reunited once again.