But when the nurse placed the tiny baby against her chest, Maya felt something far colder than joy.
She felt trapped.
He was warm and helpless, wrapped in a white hospital blanket, his tiny mouth searching for comfort. Everyone in the room smiled as though a miracle had taken place. Maya looked down at him and waited for the magical feeling she had been promised.
It never came.
Instead, fear came.
Then anger at herself for being afraid.
Then shame for wishing, even for one terrible second, that she could go back to the life she had before him.
At home, that shame grew heavier.
The baby cried at night, and Maya began to hate the sound before she even hated herself for hating it. She fed him with one hand while scrolling through photos of her friends under colorful lights on her phone. She changed him while messages appeared on the screen asking where she had gone, why she never went out anymore, why she had become so boring.
