T's apple cookies

Writing, I am desperate to spit out words.

But I hesitate, too.

I wish to write about something that I haven't been able to judge whether or not it is ethical to put in written form. It has taken long for me to consider without a decision. I have been oscillating  between the hurt that I have been suffering from in the experience and the doubt that I might have wrongly interpreted the said experience.


"Scientists" might attribute such evil thoughts to postpartum disorder in hormones. However, the so-called scientific explanation cannot ease my suffering. It only augments my discontent over the patriarchal framework of society, which has employed science as a weapon against women's ordeal.

I have been tormented by the angry thoughts in relation to the said experience periodically without a way of getting rid of it. So, I asked myself if I can write it down and let it go. But I do not know how effective this method would be.

It started with my story about breastfeeding.

From the very beginning, T drank both breast milk and formula. I did not know there was such an option to make and simply followed the advice in the hospital. It turned out to be a sensible one since I returned to work within 2 months, and T would need to depend on other source during my absence. The decision seemed to work fine for both T and I. However, though having said nothing, one day my mother-in-law was surprised when T did not need formula after being breastfed, "so now you finally have more breast milk!" It is difficult to translate the expression, although she sounded unexpectedly surprised, but I felt as if my physical mechanism was praised for finally being functional.

On a different occasion, while chatting with his mother, my husband casually said that "anyway she did not produce much breast milk." My immediate protest was pacified with an apology afterwards. But the harm was done, and I still recall the incident whenever my spirit is down, even though I got to realise that in the end men do not usually know how sensitive the issue can be especially when it is in front of the mother-in-law.

In the first few months or so, my father-in-law called everyday to ask the exact statistical information of the volume of breast milk and that of formula T drank. I was very slow to feel the harm that this action did to me, and was totally too vulnerable to refuse the disclosure. Unfortunately, I felt as if I had been a cow being monitored for her everyday labour in nourishing the child of the Father's family.

Then after I returned to work two months after the birth, we were blessed with my mother-in-law's help. She came to babysit T once a week. I know it was a big compromise for her to make among her busy daily schedule, and I also knew that I had given up the right to any complaints once I decided to seek her help. As weeks went by, our interactions at home on those specific days of a week took a sour turn. In addition to the language issue we had, the stress of staying in someone's house and the stress of having another person at home became overwhelming. Usually before my husband came home, together with the baby we had time to spend alone after my work. Silence gradually took over most of the time, as I was still new to Japanese vocabulary of nursing so that I could not respond much but smile at her description of T's day. Gradually she would take T out for a walk while I stayed in to prepare dinner. What traumatised me most was that I rarely got any chance to hold T while she was present. My attachment to the baby was deeper than I was aware of, and I usually had to sit and wait while the lactational breasts were in pain. She would keep baby T close to herself, talking to him as if I had not been there.

I sometimes wonder whether she thought that I, as an "irresponsible" mother who chose to work, had already forfeited my right to claim my love for my child.

Or, if she had handed T to me, it would have made her appear like a housemaid offering services rather than a grandmother topping the pyramidal hierarchy of the household.

Reflecting upon those days now, I still cannot bring myself to reconciling with my wrenched nerves then.

My depression and confusion and discontent reached their peaks on the day when T was a month old, when we brought him to the ceremony of baby boy's first visit to shrine. It was supposed to be a day full of joy and felicity. The photo of we 3 as a new family in the shrine was much liked on my SNS page. Some heart-warming messages said that it was a beautiful photo of a blissful family. However, I was more than anyone else conscious of the fact that I had to force a smile on my face. I acutely remember that I felt incapable of lifting the corners of my lips, as they were bound to slag down by my mental reality. I keenly remember that I simply couldn't smile on the day and wondered if that was the day and the emotion which all the rest of the days afterward would duplicate.

That was a ceremony reinforcing the authority of a grandmother in a patriarchal household in the society of Japan. Knowing its nature, perhaps I shouldn't have been too much disturbed, but I know how much I felt lonely as a mother, a wife and a foreigner, and how much I felt being relegated to a nurse in support of the patriarchy.

I never got to touch the baby on the day except when he had to be fed. I remember how much my own parents longed to hold T while they, as unconscious supporters of patriarchal society, thought they had less right than the paternal grandparents. I remember how dangerous I considered that my mother-in-law held T in her bare arms walking to the station for almost 20 minutes from the shrine. When I showed my concerns over possible stumbles, my husband and she dismissed it.

I remember in the taxi home from the shrine, she held T in her arms sitting next to me, but I was not at all able to bring myself to talking to her as the suppressed emotion turned me entirely against her. I clearly remember that when the chauffeur realised the purpose of our trip and the fact that T is the first grandchild of both families, he joked, "so there are six parents in total." I burst into a laugh, and only I knew how bitter it was. No one else in the taxi reacted to the joke. I do not know whether it's because of its sarcasm or because the point was simply missed. My own mother next to me does not understand the language, and my husband told me that he did not know why the chauffeur made such a comment. My mother-in-law remained silent. As far as I am concerned, it was as clear as day.

I lightly sighed and commented on how patriarchal the entire day was to my brother when we headed to the station. He enquired if anything had happened. When the day went as smooth as it could be, it was more patriarchal than ever, wasn't it? Since we simply complied with the ways in which things were expected to go along.

I have been brooding over the thoughts, and they are getting too stewed to be rid of.

Yesterday I came across a news journal about expecting mothers and mothers having given birth who committed suicide in Tokyo. In the past 10 years, there have been 63 women taking their own lives, ranging from people in early stage of pregnancy to those after a year since the delivery, because of depression. If I were still the self before T was born, I probably wouldn't understand the significance of the statistics, but now it is so close to the reality that I have been through.

It is a blessing to be a mother, but I would never deny and can never laugh at how difficult it is to nurse a child in a world run by patriarchs. And the world still wants to explain away this form of social injustice against women through "science".

It has taken me almost a month to compose this entry on my mobile, during the breaks between childcare and work. I hope i can let the thoughts go, instead of forgetting, and think more soberly from now.