How Baby Shark Pushed Me To My Breaking Point

The following is an excerpt from Marian Schembari’s new book, A Little Less Broken.

I’d expected postpartum depression, but I hadn’t expected to love my daughter so fully but be so incapable of being around her for more than a few minutes without losing my mind. I couldn’t handle the sensations of motherhood. The constant climbing and pawing. The need to bounce and rock. The crying, the lack of sleep. My body was a too-tight guitar string, ready to snap at any moment. Which I did, at least once a week for two years.

Just before June turned one, we were sitting in the dining room, her in her high chair at the head of the table like some Renaissance lord, me half asleep in the seat next to her.

“Mommy, Baby Shark. Baby Shark!”

“Honey, we listened to ‘Baby Shark’ seventeen times already. I cannot listen to it anymore.”

“Baby Shaaaark!” she whined.

The sound clawed its way into the tubes of my ears and the painful, tender part of my brain. I could barely hear her over the static in my head. My hand twitched. I ached to slam my palms onto the table, to feel the sting of the wood on my skin. Mommy Shark was on her last nerve.

“Baby Shaaaaarrrrkkkk!!!!!”

I closed my eyes. Focus on your breath. Inhale, exhale.

“BABY! SHARK!”

I shrunk back, the sound breaking me out of my flimsy meditative state. I must not have taken deep enough breaths.

Just tune it out! I shouted at myself. I remembered Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love and her successful meditation at an ashram in India even though she was surrounded by biting mosquitoes. “In stillness, I watched myself get eaten by mosquitoes,” she wrote. “The itch was maddening at first but eventually it just melded into a general burning feeling and I rode that heat to a mild euphoria.”

Where was my euphoria? I closed my eyes again and imagined a bubble surrounding my body, protecting me from the sound. With each inhale, the bubble contracted, and with each exhale, it expanded.

“BABY SHARK BABY SHARK BABY SHARK!!!!!!”

The bubble burst.

Stay calm. Just let her scream. It won’t change anything. She has to learn she can’t always get what she wants. Remember, your anxiety feeds her anxiety.

I turned to June with my most maternal, empathetic face.

“I know, honey, you really want ‘Baby Shark.’ You love that song!” As I spoke, the pain in my body twisted somewhere deep. I watched her face crumple and turn red, a dam about to burst, but I kept flailing, grasping for some sense of control over this one-year-old who owned me. I leaned toward her and gently touched her sticky hand where she’d been eating plums from the tree in our backyard. She yanked it away.

“MAMA! BABY! SHARK!”

“I know, honey, I know. It’s so hard when you can’t get what you want.”

Each word out of my mouth was fire, but if I couldn’t do this, if I couldn’t empathize with my daughter who just wanted her favorite song, how the hell would I manage when she was sixteen and I wouldn’t buy her a car? How was I going to do this for seventeen more years? I forced a smile. She squished the plum in her hand, then smeared it into her hair. Great, now I was going to have to clean it out during bath time, which also made her scream.

On the living room couch, Homer’s ears twitched and his head shot up. He barked once, sharp and piercing. I flinched. He bolted to the door and whined.

The doorbell rang.

I groaned and dragged myself from the chair, the smell of plums thick in my nostrils. Homer whined again and ran in circles by the door, his nails clacking like a tap dancer.

I swung open the door. Behind the screen, two older women wearing ankle-length skirts and long-sleeve blouses stood with black leather briefcases and a stack of pamphlets.

Fuck. Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“Hello! Good afternoon! My name is Elaine and this is Mary. Can we just—”

I have never in my life been rude to someone at the door; I have let salespeople talk at me for thirty minutes about solar panels and fiber network something-or-others, but not today, Satan.

“I’m sorry,” I said tightly, not sorry at all. “I can’t with you right now.” I slammed the door in their faces.

I walked back to the dining room table with purpose.

“You know what, hun? You wanna listen to ‘Baby Shark’? Let’s do it.” I grabbed my phone and had Spotify open in .3 seconds. The happy notes of “Baby Shark” filled the room.

“NOOOOOOO!!!!” June screamed. She strained against her high chair, her face the color of plums. I couldn’t tell what was fruit and what was anger.

“What is wrong with you?!” I snapped. “You’ve been begging for ‘Baby Shark’ for fifteen minutes.”

She stiffened and grunted. Her face was turning red. I panicked. Was she choking? In a flash I was unbuckling the straps and lifting her out of her high chair.

“Are you okay, baby? Did something happen?”

She screamed, straining against me now. “Down, Mama! Down!”

“You want to go on the floor?”

“No! Chair!”

“But you were so unhappy in the chair!”

Baby shark do do do do do baby shark do do do do do

“CHAIR!!!! NO BABY SHARK!”

The room spun. Afraid I’d drop her, I put her back in her chair, my lower back spasming as I hunched over, trying to figure out these fucking straps. The song began again, on a hideous loop from hell.

I swung toward my phone and paused the song. June looked at me with her big eyes, tears streaked down her cheeks. I reached over to wipe a bit of juice off her lip, managing only to smear it across her cheek. She looked like a demon.

“BABY . . . SHAAAAAAAARK!!!”

There wasn’t a thought that crossed my mind or a moment’s hesitation.

I grabbed the empty plum-smeared plate and flung it as hard as I could into the wall.

The thick pottery made a satisfying CRACK before breaking into three neat pieces and scattering on the floor.

June’s eyes darkened, then her entire face creased. I pounded my hands on the table, then stormed into our bedroom where Elliot was getting ready.

“I threw a plate. I can’t do this anymore. Just take her. I can’t.”

“I got it, don’t worry.” He rushed out of the room. Behind him, I slammed our bedroom door as hard as I could.

Throwing the plate toward my one-year-old daughter was the worst thing I did, but it also wasn’t completely out of character. I smashed two souvenir glasses from a trip to Germany. I slammed more doors more times than I could ever count. I had a lovely, perfect daughter and she was so unlucky to get stuck with me. Though I was thirty-one and married and a mother, I was still twelve inside and full of rage.

After my explosions, I’d run away from June, too ashamed to look at her sweet face. I’d curl up in bed and hide under the blankets until the rage evaporated and my mind cleared.

Hours after throwing the plate, I emerged from the bedroom in surrender.

June was playing with Elliot on the living room floor, and when she saw me, she dropped her blocks and toddled into my lap. I wrapped her in my arms, and she let me cover her face with kisses.

“I’m so sorry, Peanut,” I whispered into her damp ear, fresh tears spilling from my eyes. I pulled back from her and said, “Mommy should not throw plates. Don’t let anyone treat you that way.” My behavior made me feel like an abusive boyfriend, crawling back to her, promising I’d never do it again, even though we all knew I would.

The problem was, before I knew I was autistic, everyone kept telling me this was normal. I read motherhood memoirs and talked tentatively to other parents, who all praised me for apologizing and “making the repair.” Motherhood is really hard, they said. No one ever warns you how hard. You’re doing a great job. And I thought, Okaaayyyy, but tell me specifically how you spend more than ten minutes with your kid without violently losing your mind?

I knew babies cried, obviously I knew they cried, and I expected parenting to be hard, but if it were this hard for everyone, how come they could walk through town with happy babies gurgling in their strollers? If it were this hard for everyone, why did most families choose to have more than one kid? I already knew we wouldn’t be doing this twice.

For the first two weeks of June’s life, when she was quietly nestled in my arms, it was unfathomable to me that I would ever do anything to hurt her. She was perfect in every way and I loved her more than I could bear. I just didn’t realize it was possible for her to hurt me too.

Her cries were knives in my eardrums and chest. Her touch on my body was fire. It was impossible to be the mother I imagined when her baby noises and baby demands made it feel like I had moved permanently inside the echoey, sticky nightmare of Chuck E. Cheese.

And I hated myself for even thinking that, which of course added another layer of guilt and shame. She was just being a baby, that’s what babies do! But if I couldn’t handle this, a normal baby with normal baby behaviors, then I’d already failed, before motherhood had even truly begun.