Breathing

And the exhaustion of parenting

The transition from mother to father isn’t one most people consider or speak to, and I know this may feel foreign for those who are not transgender or do not have such a presence in their family. This is a complicated holiday for me, the transman who has only celebrated one such day before, and that one felt nervous and insecure. But as a Papi, I am no different than any parent in all of the amazing genders we embody. And so, in honor of Father’s Day, I feel compelled to think of the person most responsible for my parenting role.

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When we first brought you home, I cried in the car about the notion of you sleeping in your nursery alone. You’d spent more than nine months in my belly, soft and warm and close, and suddenly the whole idea of you being out of reach was intolerable.

And yes, there were hormones involved, and I’m happy to blame them for their part in a lot of things. But deep down, I just didn’t want to be apart from you. You would sleep, cherub cheeks rosy in the low light, and I was transfixed by the sight of you. You were peaceful and sweet, and sometimes I would stare at your face for so long I lost track of time.

But no sooner would I step away than something inside of me would clench with anxiety. “Check that he’s breathing,” it would say to me, and I would. Obedient as ever, I would sneak an eye around the not-quite-closed door and watch from as far away as I could to keep from waking you until I was sure that your chest was moving up… down… up… down…

You breathing became an obsession.

I would wake in the night, straining to hear you on the baby monitor, that little plastic speaker connecting us across invisible radio waves through the walls of that old house, despite my internal sense that we were connected on some other also-invisible level. There, just in my left ventricle, I could sense a tug at your pattern of fussing noises, those tiny whimpers that started out as mere dreams and often woke you (and me) fully. Your mother would softly chide that it wasn’t my turn, that she could wake and go, and I brushed her off more than either of us recalls. I would rush to you.

More nights than not, I would lay there awake, listening to the sounds you made, desperately praying you would fall back asleep and give me reprieve from feeding you and fighting off the exhaustion and fatigue, but I never admitted how calming even the sound of your cries felt.

It was a terrible sleep deprivation of new parenthood, and I willingly suffered its grasp.

But once you were in my arms, your tiny warmth tucked into that corner where shoulder meets neck that was built to be a home to you (and later to your brother), your breath and mine snapped into symmetry. I slept on my feet and you slept against my chest, and we both benefitted.

I defied the ridicule for not sleep training you like I should have, and I know that letting you dream while I held you went against all of the best advice that was given anytime friends or family saw the deep circles under my tired eyes, but it became an addiction. I needed to hold you and feel you breathing just like you needed to be held, to be given that assurance that you were safe and loved.

I really thought it would get better as you grew up. That the years would calm this nervous twitch deep inside me that feels the relentless need to check your breathing at all hours of the night.

Well, let’s be honest, during the day I can hear the disaster of sounds that follows in your wake as you dig and build and play and create and laugh and talk and talk and talk, and so the fear abates, and I shrug at your mother’s eye rolling, and we laugh about how good things were back when we could have Ben and Jerry’s and a bowl of popcorn for dinner. Not a vegetable in sight. I rest with my eyes open in much the same way I did when you were an infant. This, I believe, happens to almost every parent. It’s a rite of passage.

And in the night, still, even with you claiming to be a “tween” and asking ridiculous questions like, “when can I have a cell phone,” still, I find myself awake in the darkest hours of the night listening. Listening through the doors and the walls and the distance for the sound of your breath in and out.¹

Your mother doesn’t know how many nights I have gotten out of bed, heart racing, knowing I needed to check. And what would I have done had I discovered you NOT breathing? How would I have saved you? What would my body possess to keep your heart beating, your lungs filling with air, should they stop suddenly?

I cannot say.

I only know that I must get up and lean against your door, ear pressed tight to the wood for that rhythmic whisper of inhale and exhale.

My body is not tied to the ocean, to the tides, to the constant pounding of waves upon rocky or sandy shores like so many poets and artists have tried to convince me. It is tied to your lungs, to how they fill and empty so many thousands of times as I watch you grow and thrive, and I will never stop listening for your breath as you sleep.

If I’m still doing this when you’re thirty-five, you can tell me to knock it off. And I might listen.

Your trans friend Papi,

Robin

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1. I do the same with your brother, so no statements about which one of you is my favorite.