I was still on the toilet when my husband grabbed my hair, dragged me into the hallway with my clothes half down, and slammed my shoulder into the doorframe because our newborn had kept him awake again. By the time I hit the floor, I barely looked like the woman who’d come home from the hospital three days earlier—my hair was stuck to my sweaty face, one cheek was swelling, my lip had split, and dark bruises covered my arms above the hospital wristband. His mother threw my crying baby onto a pile of blankets. I crawled to my son first, smashed the bathroom stool into my husband’s shin, shoved her away, and locked us inside. Then he screamed that life had been better before I gave birth.
The first thing I heard after my skull struck the hallway wall was my husband saying, “Stop being dramatic.” The second was my three-day-old son screaming from the blankets where his grandmother had thrown him. I was still half dressed, one hand clutching the waistband of my hospital underwear, when Daniel yanked me upright by…