Four months after my daughter was born, I measured time in feedings instead of hours.
I woke two or three times a night, sometimes more, and by morning I usually couldn't remember whether I had brushed my teeth. Coffee went cold on the kitchen counter. Breakfast was whatever I could eat with one hand while holding a baby with the other.
Some days, taking a shower felt like an accomplishment worth celebrating.
Ryan slept through almost all of it.
If I nudged him awake, he would mumble, "You're already up," as though that settled the matter. On weekends, he occasionally took the baby so I could rest, but the moment she started crying, he appeared in the doorway.
"She's been with me all day."
"Yeah, but you know how to calm her down."
So I would take her again.
One evening, we were getting ready for Ryan's company dinner. I had spent twenty minutes trying to make myself presentable before pulling an old black dress from the closet. It had always fit perfectly. That night, the zipper stopped halfway up my back.
I sucked in my stomach and tried again.
Ryan was standing behind me, adjusting his cuff links. I caught his reflection in the mirror.
"You know I love you," he said, "but attraction matters."
"You became a mother, not an old woman. If you keep letting yourself go, eventually I'll have no choice but to leave. You should respect your husband enough to stay beautiful for him."
For a moment, I honestly thought I had misunderstood him.
"I had a baby four months ago. I'm up half the night. I barely have time to eat."
"Claire, plenty of women have babies and get themselves back in shape."
He sighed, already irritated.
"I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm being honest."
That night, after he fell asleep, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried as quietly as I could. For the first time since marrying Ryan, I believed he might actually leave me.
The next morning, before I could talk myself out of it, I put on my sneakers, strapped my daughter into her stroller, and started walking.
At first, walking was all I could manage. I pushed the stroller around our neighborhood every morning, starting with twenty minutes and gradually stretching it longer. Some days my legs ached before I reached the end of the street. Other days, my daughter started crying halfway through. I hurried home feeling as though I had failed at something embarrassingly simple.
But the next morning, I went out again.
After a few weeks, I added short workouts while she napped. Nothing dramatic—squats beside the couch, exercises on the living-room rug, anything I could stop the second I heard her wake up. I started paying more attention to what I ate too. Not starving myself, just planning meals instead of surviving on crackers and whatever Ryan had left in the refrigerator.
The scale moved painfully slowly. Sometimes I lost two pounds in a week. Sometimes I stepped on it every morning for three weeks and saw the same number staring back at me.
Ryan always seemed interested.
"How much now?" he asked one Saturday as I came out of the bathroom.
He smiled. "See? Wasn't so hard."
Another week, when I told him nothing had changed, he only said, "Huh," and went back to his phone. I hated how much that tiny reaction bothered me.
Around the same time, Ryan started coming home later.
"Work's crazy," he told me.
He had always been ambitious, and I was so focused on the baby and my own routine that I barely questioned it. His phone began spending most evenings face down on the table. Once, during dinner, it buzzed. Ryan glanced at the screen, stood immediately, and walked into the hallway.
"Work?" I asked when he returned.
"Yeah. Nothing important."
I accepted the answer because I wanted to.
At that point, I was still convinced that if I could become the woman Ryan wanted again, everything between us would settle back into place. And slowly, my body did begin to change. My walks got longer. Carrying my daughter upstairs stopped leaving me breathless. One morning, I passed a shop window and caught my reflection moving beside the stroller.
For the first time in months, I liked the woman looking back at me.
And strangely, Ryan wasn't the first person I wanted to tell.
By the time Ryan's company party came around, I had almost forgotten what it felt like to get dressed for something that wasn't a grocery run or a pediatrician appointment. I chose a fitted dark green dress I had bought for myself a few weeks earlier. Not because Ryan liked the color. Not because I thought it made me look thinner.
Ryan stared when I came downstairs.
At the party, the reactions started almost immediately. One of his coworkers blinked at me, then laughed.
"Ryan, your wife looks incredible!"
Ryan's whole face lit up.
Something about the way he said it irritated me. As if he had trained me for this. As if my body were a project he had supervised. He kept one hand around my waist most of the evening and introduced me to people with an enthusiasm I hadn't seen in months. Every time someone complimented me, his grip tightened slightly.
I remembered the night of the black dress. The way I had covered my mouth so he wouldn't hear me crying. Now he was looking at me like I had finally become worth showing off again.
At one point, while Ryan was talking to someone from accounting, I noticed a woman standing near the bar. When her eyes met mine, she glanced away almost immediately and took a sip of her drink.
On the drive home, Ryan rested a hand on my knee and grinned.
"See? I knew you still had it in you."
He seemed surprised by my lack of enthusiasm.
A few days later, he came home carrying flowers. I couldn't remember the last time he had brought me any. He handed them over with a smile.
"You look like the woman I married again."
I looked down at the bouquet, then back at him.
"Then let me plan something special for us."
His expression changed instantly. He thought I meant romance. And maybe, a few months earlier, I would have. But by then, I had started paying much closer attention.
Three days later, I got a message from a number I didn't recognize.
"I think we need to talk about Ryan."
My first instinct was to assume it had something to do with work. Maybe someone from his office had gotten my number from the party. The reply came almost immediately.
"Hannah. The woman you saw at the party."
We met the following afternoon at a coffee shop across town. The second she walked in, I recognized her. She sat across from me, wrapped both hands around her cup, and looked like she hadn't slept much either.
"Six months," she said when I asked how long.
While I was walking with the stroller every morning. While I was counting pounds. While Ryan was asking me if I had "made progress."
"He told me your marriage was basically over," Hannah continued. "He said you two barely spoke anymore. That you'd let yourself go after the baby and stopped caring about the relationship."
"I know how awful that sounds. He said he was going to leave. He just wanted to wait until the timing was right."
"And then you saw us at the party," I said.
"He had his hand on you all night. He kept introducing you as his beautiful wife. He looked proud of you."
I gave a short laugh that didn't feel like one.
Then I started asking questions.