I closed my eyes to stop the tears from falling as the nurse explained how well Ethan was doing, and like all the others, congratulated us on our new family. Tristan made his way over to his incubator while he chatted the woman up about needing one more of everything, every word filled with so much happiness.
“Nina, come over and see him. He’s as gorgeous as his sisters,” he bragged.
Slowly, I made my way to where he sat and stared into the incubator my son lay in. Tristan’s finger touched his wrist, lightly stroking the skin in a way that seemed totally foreign to me. He talked about what they’d do when he got older, and I sat there silently, unable to say anything for fear I’d explode into tears.
“Tristan, I don’t feel well. Can you get the nurse to take me back to my room?” I quietly asked, sure everyone heard the truth in my voice. I didn’t know what to do with my own children—how to even touch them.
“Sure. It’s probably a good idea we leave now anyway. We don’t want to excite them too much.”
He was trying hard, but he didn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to be there. Why should he? I didn’t understand, to be honest. All I knew was that if I could run away, I would.
* * *
By the end of the first week, I was released from the hospital, but Diana, Tressa, and Ethan had to stay so Tristan and I continued to live in the penthouse. Day after day for weeks, I walked hand in hand with Tristan down the NICU corridor to see my children, and day after day, I went with a smile on my face but on the verge of tears. I had no idea what was wrong with me. At first, I’d thought I’d just been unsure of myself as a new mother. All the books had said that could happen and not to worry, but every day I waited to feel better, and I never did.
I knew Tristan wondered what was wrong with me. No mother who cared about her children felt like this. I was broken, defective, and no matter how much I wanted to be the right kind of mother, I wasn’t. I didn’t know why. I just wasn’t.
Even visits from Jordan felt forced. Her happiness for us was so genuine, but every time I saw her, I felt like a fraud. I wanted to feel the happiness she felt. I just didn’t. I didn’t know why either. By the time Christmas arrived, it was all I could do to get out of bed each morning. Jordan came over to spend the holiday with us, but I begged off as soon as I could, claiming to be sick with the flu so I could go hide away in bed. At least there, I could close my eyes and pretend I wasn’t myself in my dreams.
Getting up from the table, I pushed my still full plate away from me and forced a smile for Tristan and her. “I must be coming down with something. Probably the flu. I’m going to head to bed. Tristan, they’re not going to let me see the babies until I get better, so I want to kick this as soon as I can.”
He stared up at me with eyes full of fear but merely nodded, forcing his own smile onto his lips. “Anything you need, just say the word.”
I turned toward Jordan and shook my head. “I don’t want you to get whatever I have, so no hugs today. Sorry to be such a party popper. I’ll give you a call this week, okay? Merry Christmas.”
“Okay, honey. Merry Christmas. Feel better.”
I left them and climbed into bed, loving the solitude it offered. Pulling the covers up over my head, I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come and take me away.
A hand on my shoulder roused me from my nap, and I rolled over to see Jordan sitting on the bed next to me. Rubbing my eyes, I sat up against the headboard. “Hey, what’s up?”
“I want to talk to you, honey. I think it’s time we admitted something’s wrong, don’t you?”
“It’s just the flu, Jordan. I’ll be okay in a few days,” I lied.
“I don’t think so, Nina. Your husband may not know what to do about how you feel about visiting the kids, but I do. You’re suffering from post-partum depression, sweetie. My brother’s wife had it after Caleb was born.”
“I’m not depressed, Jordan. I have everything any woman could want—a wonderful husband, a beautiful house, this penthouse, three beautiful children.”
“Who you don’t want to go see.”
Her words hit me like a fist to my face, and I tried to avoid her stare, but she wasn’t letting me go on this. “Look at me, Nina. Don’t look away, honey.”
Tears streamed out of my eyes and over my cheeks as I turned back to face her. I couldn’t deny the truth anymore. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I sobbed. “I love them, Jordan. I do. I love them more than I ever thought I could. I was so worried when Tristan first told me about them, but there’s something wrong with me. I thought by now I’d feel better about visiting them, but I don’t. I’m terrified of going to that hospital, and I don’t know why.”
Once I began crying, I couldn’t stop. Jordan took me in her arms and held me as my sobs wracked my body. For the first time since waking up after my children were born, I didn’t feel like I had a hundred pounds of worry on my back. I’d kept this secret inside me for so long, and now as I cried my eyes out on her shoulder, the heaviness that had weighed me down faded away.
“Honey, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re going to be okay. Sandy felt a lot like this too, but she’s fine now and she and Caleb are closer than she ever imagined they could be.”
I leaned back against the pillows and hung my head. “I worry all the time that I’ve ruined this for Tristan. You should see him with them, Jordan. He’s so loving and caring. I don’t know what to do.”
“You haven’t ruined anything for him, Nina. He’s worried sick about you. He doesn’t know what to do, so I told him I’d talk to you. Tristan wants you to be as happy as he is.”
“I want to be that happy. I see him touching them and talking to them and I think to myself how much I wish I felt like that. What if I never feel that way toward my own children, Jordan? What kind of mother feels like this? I messed up their birth, almost killed them, and now I can’t even be there for them.”
“You didn’t mess up anything. Is that what you think? That you did something wrong?”
“I must have. Why would I have started bleeding if I didn’t?”
My body heaved from crying, and Jordan took me in her arms to hold me. “Oh, Nina, you didn’t do anything wrong. You were carrying three babies. That was hard on your body. And it’s no wonder they wanted to come out early. They knew how wonderful you were on the inside, so they wanted to meet their mom on this side.”