The sixth day after my daughter Lily was born, I developed a fever.
But my husband, Derek, had gone to buy diapers, and my mother-in-law, Brenda, was out getting groceries. Neither was back yet.
I waited, enduring, drifting in and out of consciousness until Lily’s cries jolted me awake.
Only then did I realize I’d either been asleep or had passed out.
I quickly tried calling Derek. His phone was off.
I called Brenda. Her phone was off too.
I had married thousands of miles away from my family, and I had no relatives or friends here. My only option was to call an ambulance.
As my fever began to subside, I picked up my phone and saw a message from Derek:
“Mom works her fingers to the bone for us, and you still managed to upset her. She’s too fragile for this, so I’m taking her away to clear her head. You really need to think about your behavior.”
I stared at the message for a long, long time, until a nurse exclaimed in surprise:
“Where’s her family? The IV is backing up with blood, and no one noticed?”
I wiped the dampness from my face and said blandly,
“My apologies. I’m a single mother. My husband’s family? They’re as good as dead to me.”
The nurse looked at the reddened IV tube, then gave me a sympathetic glance.
“Oh, single moms have it rough. By the way, your daughter needs to stay in the NICU for observation.”
My heart lurched.
“What’s wrong with her? It’s not pneumonia or a cough, is it?”
Lily had also developed a fever, and we’d both been rushed to the hospital together.
The nurse, while adjusting my IV, comforted me.
“Pediatrics said no, it’s probably just a chill.”
I breathed a slight sigh of relief.
The nurse then asked,
“If your husband’s family isn’t around, can your parents come to help out? With both you and your little one hospitalized, it’s inconvenient without family nearby.”
Actually, I had thought about calling Mom and Dad when I woke up, but they lived too far away.
From the West Coast to the East Coast—it spanned almost the entire country.
Even if they rushed, the fastest they could get here would be tomorrow.
In that moment, I truly understood what it meant to marry so far away: no family support!
Seeing my silence, the nurse didn’t press further.
She’d seen this situation countless times in the hospital; there was nothing for her not to understand.
As she left, she turned back to remind me,
“Even if you’re raising the baby alone, you need to take better care of yourself. Look at your milk ducts, they’re so clogged you waited until they got inflamed. We’ll start with anti-inflammatory and milk-clearing treatments for the next couple of days. If that doesn’t work, you might need surgery to drain them.”
I sighed, clutching my chest, which throbbed with needle-like pain.
My milk ducts clogged the day after Lily was born. My chest felt hard as a rock, and the pain was unbearable.
I told Brenda I needed a bland diet, but yesterday she still cooked a greasy pot of pig trotters soup for me, saying it would help with milk production.
I told her I couldn’t drink it, and she immediately started tearing up, complaining to Derek that I was throwing a fit.
Derek’s face darkened instantly. He scolded me, saying it was “just clogged milk ducts,” how could I refuse the soup Mom had slaved over?
He didn’t even notice I already had a low-grade fever.
I was too weak from the pain to argue with him, so I turned away and ignored him.
He stood behind me, huffing,
“I’m not one of those ungrateful sons who forgets his mother the moment he gets married. You’re a college graduate, and your parents are educated people. Surely you know what it means to respect your elders and be grateful, right?”
I had intended to just put up with it, but then he dragged my parents into it, and I was so angry, tears welled up.
“Derek, grateful? My milk ducts have been blocked for three days, and your mom still insists I drink that pig trotters soup. If I don’t, she cries and complains to you. What exactly am I supposed to be grateful for?”
“If you think my mom isn’t good enough, then you take care of yourself! My mom isn’t a maid to serve a princess!”
That really pushed me over the edge.
“Derek, my incision hasn’t even healed properly. Are you even listening to yourself? Fine, I guess I’m not destined for the Miller family’s care, I accept that. Have your mom give me the $2,500 for a confinement nurse, and I’ll hire one myself.”
“Crazy! Unbelievable!”
Derek spun around and stormed out.
I had hit a nerve.
When I was pregnant, I wanted to hire a confinement nurse.
Brenda didn’t want to come take care of me during my postpartum confinement, saying Leo was at a critical time for his exams and couldn’t do without her cooking and care.
My mom was a homeroom teacher for a graduating class and couldn’t take such a long leave.
She was also afraid I’d suffer, so she offered to pay for me to stay at a luxury postpartum care center.
Derek said the money for the center would be better used to upgrade our car, since with a baby, we’d need a bigger one.
I suggested we just hire a confinement nurse then.
A colleague recommended Aunt Carol, a great confinement nurse she had used. The price was agreed: $2,000 for forty-two days.
Brenda heard about it and insisted on coming.
She said she’d given birth to two children and knew best how to take care of a baby.
Besides, she argued, no outsider would care as much as the baby’s own grandmother. Why pay an outsider when family could earn that money?
I disagreed at first.
Brenda’s sole focus was always on Leo.
Derek tried hard to please her, but Brenda didn’t even seem to like him much.
In my eyes, if it weren’t for stringing along Derek just to get money to support Leo, she wouldn’t even bother to humor him.
If she didn’t even like her own son, would she like me and the baby?
But Derek kept pleading with me:
“Chloe, Mom rarely comes to our place. She genuinely wants to take care of you and our baby. Just do it for me, please.”
Seeing his hopeful face, I couldn’t bear to refuse and agreed.
I never imagined I was setting myself up for such a huge disaster.
When I was discharged and returned home, I found that Derek had given the master bedroom to Brenda. Lily and I were relegated to the smaller second bedroom.
The tiny room, with a bassinet crammed in, left me barely any space to move.
That would have been somewhat bearable.
But the second bedroom had no private bathroom, so every time I had to bathe Lily, I had to use the main bathroom.
Brenda wouldn’t even properly dry Lily’s hair or body. She’d just haphazardly wrap her in a bath towel and hand her to me to get dressed.
I reminded her that the baby could easily catch a cold that way.
She immediately complained to Derek, accusing me of nitpicking.
Before she came, Derek and I had a pretty good relationship. We never had a serious argument or raised our voices at each other.
I remembered when I first came out of the delivery room, he had red-rimmed eyes and gently touched my IV-drip hand, saying, “You worked so hard, my love.”
He even held Lily, smiling foolishly and saying how lucky he was to have such a cute daughter.
I thought I was so happy then.
But after Brenda arrived, within just a few days, Derek was like a different person.
“She’s my mom, what do you expect me to do?”
“She’s my mom, can’t you just put up with it?”
“She’s my mom, can you please stop making a scene?”
We argued almost daily.
I was utterly fed up.
But looking at Lily’s adorable little face, I told myself to just let it go.
Brenda would leave once my postpartum confinement was over anyway.
As for Derek, my feelings for him had faded. I’d just consider him a roommate to raise our daughter.
Endure it! Endure it!
I wanted to endure, but Brenda didn’t.
The moment Derek left, Brenda walked right in.
She went to the window without a word and, *bang*, flung it open.
A late autumn chill immediately poured into the room.
I panicked.
Lily had just had a bath; her body was still damp, making her highly susceptible to catching a cold.
With the wind blowing, she coughed several times.
I yelled,
“What are you doing opening the window? Close it now!”
Brenda pursed her lips and said, smiling sweetly,
“Didn’t you say you wanted to follow scientific recovery methods? I specifically learned that bedrooms need ventilation!”
I was fuming.
“Ventilation means opening the window just a crack during the warm daytime hours. Who opens a window wide open in the dead of a cold night for ventilation?”
She was clearly doing it on purpose to provoke me.
As soon as I said that, she lowered her head, eyes red-rimmed, and walked out, as if I had subjected her to immense injustice.
I quickly braved the cold wind and closed the window.
The moment I got back into bed, Derek burst in.
“Chloe Miller, can you please stop being so dramatic? I stewed pig trotters soup for your milk supply, and you said it was old-fashioned and unscientific.”
“My mom, at her age, specifically went to learn scientific methods for pregnant women, and she ventilated your room, yet you yell at her.”
“Can’t you show some manners and be more sensible?”
“My mom is fifty years old! She’s trying to help you, and she’s doing it wrong?”
Looking at his angry, dark-red face, I suddenly felt like I was looking at a complete stranger.
My body felt colder than when the wind had swept through earlier.
I tightened my shawl and said coldly,
“Derek, don’t let your mom trouble herself with me anymore. Tell her to leave tomorrow.”
He clenched his jaw.
“Fine! You said it, don’t you dare regret it!”
With that, he slammed the door and left.
Lily was startled by the door slamming and burst into tears.
I could hear Derek comforting Brenda in the living room. No one came to check on Lily.
I endured the pain from my C-section incision, picked up Lily, and gently soothed her.
Her small head brushed against my chest, and I felt a jolt, a sharp pain radiating up and down my body. I shivered uncontrollably.
For the first time, I felt like I’d be better off a widow. Tears silently streamed down my face.
In five days of recovery, I shed more tears than I had in my entire twenty-five years combined.
Partly due to unstable hormones, but mostly because my heart had died.
All night long, not a single person came in to care for Lily.
I stayed awake the entire night, completely drained of energy.
Early this morning, Lily started crying again.
Derek said he was going to buy diapers, and Brenda said she was getting groceries. They both left.
My head was spinning, and I didn’t have the energy to argue. I just told myself the argument from yesterday was over.
It would just be like this, I had to get through this recovery period, right?
I never imagined they were using an excuse to leave, afraid I would stop them.
And I certainly never expected them to board a plane for a vacation to clear their heads.
No wonder I couldn’t reach them on their phones; they were on a flight.
This made me laugh, a bitter, hollow laugh.
Did such a man deserve to be a husband, a father?
How foolish was I to still treat him like a human being?
I tossed my phone aside, pondering what to do next.
I couldn’t come up with anything.
So I simply cleared my mind and stared at the stark white ceiling.
After a long moment, I told myself: Chloe Miller, this cannot go on.
Perhaps because half a day had passed, and I hadn’t replied to a single message, Derek felt a bit frustrated and sent two more.
“Chloe Miller, I just want you to experience how hard it is to take care of a child, and how much my mom sacrifices. Don’t be ungrateful, not knowing how good you have it.”
“Mom is very upset, I’ll go comfort her again. You caused this mess, and I have to clean it up. Why can’t you be more like Vanessa… Never mind, we’re about to board a boat for a sea excursion. You video call Mom tonight and apologize to her.”
I barely heard what he said after that.
But he mentioned “Vanessa” and paused, and I heard that clearly.
Hah! He was still thinking about her.
I used to wonder why the less his mom liked him, the harder he tried to please her; and why, even after Vanessa dumped him, he still couldn’t forget her.
I thought it was because he lacked love as a child.
Now I understood. Wasn’t that just pathetic?
My right hand, pressing the cotton ball, was aching, so I unconsciously shook it a little.
The blood at the needle site, which hadn’t clotted, suddenly gushed out. I quickly called for the nurse.
The nurse, who happened to be at the doorway, hurried back to help me replace the cotton ball.
“Press harder! You bled so much, you need to press longer!”
Her voice was a little stern.
I weakly nodded.
“Okay!”
Seeing my poor condition, the nurse softened her tone.
“You still have two more bags of IV fluids later, and you don’t seem to have much energy. Maybe hire a caregiver? Not noticing blood returning in the IV can be very dangerous.”
“Then please help me find a good caregiver,” I said.
In the past, because I wanted a bigger house and a nicer car, I scrimped and saved, not even buying myself a bubble tea.
And now, those two were flying to the beach, staying in a five-star hotel, and enjoying a seafood feast.
My frugality was an absolute joke.
I needed to be good to myself.
The next IV bag was scheduled for half an hour later. I endured the pain all over my body and went to the NICU to see Lily.
When I arrived, the ward nurse said Lily had just gotten over her fever and was asleep.
Because I had a high fever, the doctor wouldn’t let me get close to Lily. I could only watch from a distance.
I saw other babies being looked after by entire families, while Lily lay alone in her small crib.
Her little face was flushed, and she was breathing with tiny, labored gasps through her small open mouth.
She must have sweated from the fever earlier; her short, soft hair was matted to her scalp.
My heart ached with a mix of sorrow and pain.
I could endure any hardship for myself, but I couldn’t bear to see my daughter suffer.
Reluctantly, I still called Derek.
He didn’t answer.
I called several times, and he hung up each time.
I sent a message, telling him Lily was hospitalized and needed someone to stay with her.
He sent a voice message much later, his voice full of anger.
“Chloe Miller, can you stop being so dramatic? The moment I leave, you have to invent a lie about our daughter being hospitalized?”
“I’m just accompanying Mom to clear her head. Can’t you just be calm for a few days?”
I looked at his message, and my heart felt like it had swallowed a block of ice.
It slowly melted, chilling my entire body bit by bit, to the bone.
How foolish was I to still treat him like a human being?
All those tangled thoughts suddenly became crystal clear.
If Derek truly loved me, he wouldn’t have insisted Brenda come stay with us in the first place.
Every time there was a conflict with Brenda, he wouldn’t have simply told me to endure it.
He disregarded my feelings for only one reason: he didn’t love me at all.
I earned enough money to live a perfectly comfortable life on my own, so why was I staying in a strange city, enduring hardship and being disrespected?
Why should I expect others to suddenly show me kindness?
There was no reason, absolutely no reason at all!
It took me barely a second to make my decision: leave this city, leave that rotten excuse for a human being!
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