By Jenny Leon
@jennyrosenyc

Duane Reade, the popular New York drug store chain, is a haven for young mothers. They have everything—pregnancy tests, Boudreaux’s Butt Paste, All Dressed chips, infant Tylenol and panty hose. All in a one stop shop. And they are open 24/7. 

But the best part about Duane Reade is that it is a safe haven. An escape from the four walls of your 1,800-square-foot apartment, where you can find relief from the intrusive thoughts of accidentally killing your newborn while lost in the throes of postpartum depression.

*

Outside the late July air felt like a blanket trying to asphyxiate Manhattan, or at least the few suckers like myself left to singe because we hadn’t fled to the Hamptons or Newport. I wasn’t sure whether it was the poor air quality or my newborn’s interminable cries, starting with a few squeaks and quickly escalating to a crescendo of squawking, that made me feel as if I couldn’t breathe.

The Duane Reade at the corner of 72nd and Broadway had become an integral part of my daily survival routine. I aimed to arrive just in time for the commencement of the witching hour at 5pm. The time of day at which my baby’s body would be taken over by an evil spirit and he would begin to howl at the moon for an hour, while I cried helplessly in a corner.   

Miles was not a calm baby and, frankly, I was not a calm first-time mother.

Before Miles was born, I assumed I’d excel at motherhood the way I had at everything else in my life. I was a corporate lawyer at a top Manhattan firm and a valedictorian. During prenatal class, I was the sycophant who sat smugly with my hand raised straight in the air in the circle of anxious buddha bellies. 

But once Miles was born, I panicked.

The nurse handed me this tiny perfect human. I began to fumble awkwardly like a novice football player trying to achieve the hold I’d so diligently studied.

“Watch his neck,” the nurse corrected me. I sensed judgment in her voice.

All I could think was don’t drop him, don’t drop him, FOR F*&K’S SAKE DON’T DROP HIM!

This was not the oxytocin-induced sense of tranquility that I’d been promised. Fear flooded over me as powerfully as a tidal wave and as naturally as the milk pouring from my breasts. I was drowning in the all-consuming waters of maternal love.

*

It was stuffy in the small carpeted office. I yearned to jump out the window into the Garden of Eden below. But I was not suicidal. I just didn’t want to be here anymore. 

In an effort to avoid meeting my new psychiatrist’s gaze, I stared out the window at Madison Square Park below. I focused in like a sniper on all the happy new families donning their clean, crisp white linens, while pushing their Uppababy strollers. I admired the gendered pale pink and baby blue diaper bags hanging from the handlebars, identifying the sex of the bundles of joy that lay hidden under UPF50+ resistant canopies. These gentrified Manhattanites thought of everything. 

To me, new parenthood felt more like a warzone than a walk in the park. It was filled with bloody nipples seeping through spit-up encrusted tees reeking of spoiled milk and smeared with the remains of liquid baby poop that no stain remover could destroy because I’d forgotten to throw my clothes in the wash for two weeks. 

What did the park people have that I lacked? 

Tilting her spectacles on the bridge of her nose, so that her gaze seared into my skull, my psychiatrist asked, “So, what brought you here today?”

Where did I begin?     

That pervading my joy over having a healthy baby boy was a paralyzing fear of loss, of death. That I counted the hours he was alive, figuring with each hour he was alive, he was a little less likely to die. That the situation felt perilous to me, as if Miles had been born with a life-threatening illness, as opposed to the reality that he had been born two days before his due date at over 8 pounds and received a near-perfect Apgar score. Or was it that I believed I was the only person who could keep him safe? That I wanted to be his everything. No, I needed to be his everything.    

The psychiatrist nodded her head slowly. I could see her filling out the prescription pad on her desk: 300mg Zoloft to be taken daily. 

*

One year later.

Miles and I roam the aisles of Duane Reade. I am 34 weeks pregnant with my second child. 

I’m warmed by the familiar stacks of commercial products—royal blue for Extra Crunchy peanut butter, marigold for Honey Nut Cheerios and aquamarine (or is it turquoise) for Pampers Swaddlers. 

I pass by a frazzle-haired woman wearing Ugg slippers and pushing a baby in a stroller. I recognize the baby’s high-pitched wail as that of a newborn. Our eyes meet briefly with a slight nod of solidarity before we abashedly turn our heads back towards our respective strollers. We are members of the sisterhood of the unspoken truths of new mothers.

I want to say: I’ve been where you are now, friend. You are doing a great job masking the despair that is rotting your insides. I can barely see it seeping out onto your skin like some cheap body lotion. Hang in there. Within this drug store, you may one day find some small semblance of your former self. Until then, keep trudging through the aisles. They will keep you safe. 

Thank goodness for Zoloft. Without Zoloft, I don’t think I would have the strength to be standing here with a one-year-old and an almost fully gestated (unplanned) pregnancy. Perhaps the Zoloft is making me too calm. The situation sounds untenable. 

“Excuse me, ma’am. Is there a chance you might be pregnant?” the young, pimpled pharmacist asks me in a squeaky, pubescent voice.

I stare at him incredulously. Do bodies actually come in the shape of my current body, which, undoubtedly, looks as if I am either heavily pregnant or trying to steal a watermelon? 

“Yup.” I roll my eyes and point to my belly.

“Do you know that taking Zoloft during pregnancy can create a risk to your unborn fetus?”

 So can the stress of waiting an hour in line at Duane Reade with a one-year-old, I think.

“Yes.”

“In order to release this prescription to you, we require a note from your OB consenting to the administration of this drug during pregnancy. Your OB is aware that you are on Zoloft and that you are pregnant?”

Overcome by the smothering heat of growing rage and hormones, I place a hand on the counter to steady myself, enabling Miles to lunge towards the cup of pens he had been eyeing by the cash register. 

I begin composing a rebuttal in my head that would bring Johnnie Cochrane to his knees. Did you ever think there might be a reason why I was prescribed Zoloft during pregnancy? Do you believe that continuing necessary treatment for a mental illness during pregnancy makes me a bad mother? What is your relationship with your own mother like? Perhaps it would have been improved by Zoloft.  

But all I manage to say is “Yes, my OB knows about the prescription.” I tightly curl my fingers around the leather handle of the stroller, pretending it is the pharmacist’s neck.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll give it to you this time. But next time, please bring a note from your OB, so we can keep it on file.”

I grab the tiny white paper bag, as if I’ve just been handed cocaine in a dark alley and stash it in the undercarriage of the stroller. Once I am out of view of the pharmacy desk, I give the finger to the pharmacist, letting it linger there for a long second.

As I cross through the automatic glass doors back into the outside world, I know that my love affair with Duane Reade is over. 

I have to choose Zoloft.

Jenny Leon is a lawyer, writer and Canadian expat, living in New Jersey. She is working on a forthcoming memoir about how getting breast cancer at 33 led her to quit her job and have a third baby. 

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