Thin Ice

Have I mentioned how one of my favorite things in the world is when people who don’t know me or my child offer unsolicited childrearing advice?

Like the hippie dude at the coffee shop who wanted to make sure I was breastfeeding my baby. Or my mother-in-law’s friend who wanted to make sure the baby wasn’t sleeping in our bed “otherwise she’ll be there until she’s 7.” Or the scores of skinny, chilly old ladies on the street chiding me to put another blanket on the baby because she must be cold.

We kicked off my mom’s group this morning the way we always do, by going around the circle sharing the highlights and low points of our week.

“My low,” I began, “was the other night when my husband was working the night shift…” The baby kept waking up every hour and I was getting really frustrated and totally felt like a bad mother. I explained how there were all these contradictory voices in my head telling me I was doing it wrong—spoiling her by attending to her every time she cried, neglecting her by not attending to her sooner, being inconsistent by bringing her into my bed at 4am, being mean by not bringing her into my bed sooner, being a generally bad parent for having a kid that wakes up at all in the night—much less one that wakes up and cries. Then I realized she was having an eczema outbreak and was all itchy, and I felt like a total ass for not noticing sooner.

A few moms nodded empathetically. One mom asked what I do for the eczema.

“Oh, you know. I try to keep her greased up with Vaseline when she starts to look spotty, and when she’s clearly itchy I use hydrocortisone. Just two or three times a day like the pediatrician sai—”

The inquiring mom interrupted, horrified. “Hydrocortisone will make her skin thin! You shouldn’t ever use it more than once a week! At the most!”

Now. Let’s pause here for a moment, shall we?

Aren’t moms groups supposed to be, like, safe places to share?

Also? Nobody in our mom’s group, including the mom in question, is an expert on anything child-related. None of us even had children six months ago, much less experience taking care of children in any sort of medical capacity.

Also, what am I supposed to use to quell my child’s insane itching? I get eczema on my hands when I stay at my parents’ house too long, and, let me tell you, it itches like a motherfucker.

Also: It will make her SKIN THIN?

“It will make her SKIN THIN?” I asked, raising my eyebrows until they merged with my hairline.

Now, obviously thin skin and the making thereof would be a problem—whether we’re talking literally or metaphorically. I would hate to think that the ointment I was applying to my child’s itchy, spotty face was weakening her protective layers in any way. And I—a woman who has it noted in her medical records that she is, quote, “very [emphasis theirs] skeptical of Western medicine”—am somewhat skeptical of Western medicine, but I’m pretty sure that if hydrocortisone did indeed weaken my child’s protective layers, my pediatrician would not have recommended using it, nor would she have reassured me that it was very safe.

I’m pretty sure she’s not looking for a lawsuit.

I know, I know. I sound defensive. That’s because I have a thin skin! I always have. Without the use of hydrocortisone! I have a hard time blocking out all of the bossy, contradictory voices telling me how to be a parent, even when their suggestions are ridiculous or irrelevant or just plain annoying.

I’m inquisitive and a perfectionist. I want very much to find the best way to take the best possible care of my baby, so I make the mistake of listening to everything anyone says in case there's something helpful tucked in there. And when what they say smacks of judgment, well, that's always been a warning signal that I might be doing it wrong.

But as anyone who has been a parent for seventeen weeks ought to know, there is no best way— and every reasonable thing we do as parents is just as likely to be right as it is to be wrong. And vice versa.

Let your child's skin be itchy or put something on it to make it thin?

I for one like to direct such questions to my child's highly-recommended doctor and then follow her advice. It's less confusing that way, and it saves me from having to spend too much time on the internet. Plus, then I'll know who to sue if anything goes awry.

If my baby rubs her face on my eczema-friendly cotton t-shirt and emerges looking like she’s been in a fight with a gang of cats, I’ll eat crow—and put in a call to my pediatrician's office. And my lawyer! Until then, well, put another blanket on your own baby if you know what I mean.

Coconutty

I woke up this morning to the smell of coffee and the sound of a coconut being slammed against a rock in the backyard for use as an ingredient in my birthday cake.

Later, my lawyer friend—whose birthday was a month ago—called to wish me well. I asked excitedly how she was enjoying being 35.

A long pause.

Then: “Am I supposed to lie to you because it’s your birthday?”

Ahem.

Well.

At least there will be cake.

With fresh coconut, no less.

Why the Word “Miami” Makes Me Queasy

Tomorrow is my 35th birthday. A year ago today two lines appeared on a stick in the bathroom of a cheap boutique hotel in Miami.

Nothing would be the same again--particularly my digestive tract, my boobs, my vagina, and my ability to contemplate Miami, alligators, or Cuban food without feeling nauseated.

Singing in the Raincoat

I finally purchased a raincoat the other day.

Technically, I’ve bought many raincoats since I moved here—I just return them all to the store before ever wearing them or after wearing them once and then realizing they’re so not me. Each one is too sporty and Velcro-y and loud or too beige and old-lady-trench-coatish.

But this one is going to last, I’m sure. It is beige, but—it’s soft and quiet and fitted and features a kicky little three-tiered skirt-type thing that I’ve never seen before on a coat. When our babysitter (a fashionable 18-year-old) saw it, she exclaimed her love. So, if anything, I’m too old-lady for it.

It only took me eight years of living in this famously rainy city, but I think I’m finally set.

By 2018 I'll have found a pair of Wellingtons to match.

If You’re Happy and You Know It the Itsy Bitsy Wheels on the Bus Clap Your Hands!

We had another guest speaker in our mom’s group today. I for one am against guest speakers, preferring instead to sit around with the others drinking sparkling water eating hummus and complaining about our husbands.

Unfortunately, they didn’t leave me in charge.

Today an “early childhood creative dance” instructor blew into the room with many, many, many cumbersome bags full of many textured vinyl rainbow-colored mats (for traction!) and rainbow-colored balls (for core development!) and metallic rainbow-colored crinkly paper ribbons (for sparkle!) and rainbow-colored scarves (for flair!) and models of the brain (for a condescending lecture!)

Okay, she only had one model of the brain—or she only pulled one out of her bags—in order to illustrate the point that movement is essential to baby brain development otherwise all our children will end up with ADD, especially if we leave their socks on.

How would this occur? I don’t know. I wasn’t able to pay much attention to her lecture, what with all the big bouncy balls! and sparkly metallic crinkly ribbons! and swishing rainbow scarves! and singing! and barefoot crying babies! and the surreptitious nervous glances flashing between the moms!

“I guess it takes a certain kind of special to want to teach dance classes to rooms full of screaming infants,” one of the moms astutely surmised out of the corner of her mouth as the early childhood creative dance instructor packed up her ribbons! and scarves! and balls! and mats! at the end of her presentation.

Yes, indeed. A certain kind of special.

It also takes a certain kind of special to try to convince a room full of intelligent, educated moms that unless we purchase mats and balls and ribbons and scarves, our children will be, and I quote, “Sixty percent more likely to have a sensory integration disorder.”

Or I think that’s what she said. My attention was... Wait. Was that a bell I just heard? Accompanied by light reflecting off the... Woops, a ball is rolling into... Oooh! Look! Shiny!

Putting the "Fun" in "Less Neurotic Than Before"

So. It turns out that despite the challenges of new motherhood, I survived teaching my first class since the baby was born without losing my mind or my patience or my place in the readings or anyone’s homework. I even showed up every week with combed hair and wearing shirts not sporting any spit-up stains. Granted, the quarter was only six weeks long (what can I say?—we’re creative writers), but still. An accomplishment.

Another accomplishment: at the end of class several students told me how much fun they’d had, and I took it as a compliment.

Passing the Time

How in the bloody hell is it March already? My three-and-a-third-months-old baby was born yesterday, I swear.

Little Miss Understanding

We’re back from Los Angeles, and it’s official: I suck at being a daughter-in-law. I’m prickly and defensive and take everything the worst possible way imaginable and then spend hours trying unsuccessfully to convince myself that my mother-in-law probably didn’t mean whatever she said the way I thought she meant it.

My newest strategy is to employ a technique I learned when studying abroad in college. I was in London—English-speaking London—but our orientation leader warned us that just because everyone technically spoke the same language didn’t mean that we would not have misunderstandings. “If you find yourself feeling offended,” they advised, “stop and ask what the person means. It’s probably just a cross-cultural misunderstanding.”

So when I made chocolate-chip cookies for my British host family and they declared them “Good, but a bit sickly and Moorish,” I kept my offense in check.

I did not, however, manage to ask them what they meant by “sickly and Moorish” because I am shy. And because I am chicken. And because I didn’t want to be the ugly American. On the outside I smiled politely, but on the inside I remained all I make you cookies with a bag of chips I schlepped all the way from Iowa and you have the gall to call them sickly and Moorish—whatever the hell that means?

What does my mother-in-law mean when she says that our changing table is more well-stocked than Dr. Husband’s emergency room? Or that we have so many baby clothes she won’t be giving us any? Or that when she found out we’re still using disposable diapers (because we’re too exhausted and tired of doing laundry to make the planned-before-we-actually-had-a-baby switch to cloth) she was inspired to write an article called, “Diapers: The Lesser of Two Evils.” What could she possibly mean?

I’ll never know because I’m too chicken to ask, for fear that the defensiveness oozing out my pores will alienate me from her—and, by paranoid extension, my husband—even further.

When I befriended a British woman my senior year of college and brought her some chocolate-chip cookies one day, I asked her about sickly and Moorish. “Oh,” she explained, “‘More-ish’ because you want to eat more and more of them and ‘sickly’ because you feel a little sick afterwards from eating so many.”

Right. Of course. Glad we got that sorted out. It took two years, but better late than never.

The Friendly Gendered Skies

On an airplane today, flying to L.A. to visit Dr. Husband’s mom while he does some work at the University of Alaska this week. The plane is full. I’m in the window seat with the baby on my lap/boob. The middle seat is occupied by a sweet-seeming Ukrainian woman. The aisle is taken by a chatty man who works for World Vision and does his banking at Bank of America and used to do a lot of international travel but now is mostly traveling domestically, as his wife prefers to stay home in Seattle.

As a rule I believe the armrests on either side of the middle seat belong to the person in the middle seat because what else does that person have, really? But it turns out that trying to nurse discretely on an airplane sort of requires the use of the nursing-boob-side armrest. So I apologetically ask the woman next to me if it’s okay if I use the armrest between us to prop up my arm while I nurse. She kindly agrees. I use it for five or ten guilt-ridden moments during takeoff, feeling like a shitty row-mate.

Midway through the flight I glance over and see that Mr. Bank of America International Travel World Vision With the Travel-Averse Wife is totally hogging both his armrests. Without asking. Or apologizing. Or, presumably, feeling guilty. And I think, not for the first time, that is the definition of patriarchy.

Motherese on Down the Road

Some sort of child language expert came to give a presentation to our mom’s group this morning, to answer questions about our babies’ language development.

I find most baby-related topics too tedious to think about for too long on any sort of intellectual level (any level at all other than: Tell me the quickest, most effective and painless way to get my child to sleep through the night), and language development is no exception. My child will talk when she talks. In the meantime she will gurgle and coo and cry and then eventually point and nod and grab, and all will be well. Or, alternately, she’ll have some sort of major and concerning speech delay and then we’ll consult some sort of specialist and figure out what the deal is.

Have I mentioned that as an undergraduate psych major I never once opened my Developmental Psychology text book?

Anyway, I’m in the mom’s group for the camaraderie and the snacks, so I’d planned to duck out before Language Lady began. Alas, the baby was napping contentedly when Miss Communication began her spiel, so we stuck around for a while—all the way through When your baby giggles, she’s communicating with you! past Some people like to use sign language with their babies to help them communicate! and We call it PARENTese now, not MOTHERese, up to, It’s GOOD to read to your child! By the time she got to When you read to your baby, you should point to the pictures of faces and talk about the emotions being expressed! Oooh, look at de baby’s wittle face! What a sad little faceypoo! Why is the wee wittle baby sad?!

My own wee wittle babypoo and I couldn’t take it any more and had to leave, waving bye-bye all the way out the door.

If You Like It Then You Should Have Put a Lid on It

It’s been a while. A while since I’ve written and a while since I’ve… Well… You know. Seen any action.

I hear this is typical for parents of newborns. It’s hard to be in the mood when your wife is perpetually snapping at you for forgetting to close the lid on the diaper pail. (But come on. You’ve just tossed feces into a bucket in the room where your offspring eats and sleeps—isn’t it instinctual to put a lid on it?)

Maybe Dr. Husband would put the moves on me if I stopped saying It takes one to know one! every time he complains that I’m being bossy about the baby?

Or if I stopped entertaining divorce fantasies… a neat, tidy, quiet cabin in rural Maine with cheese-and-crackers for lunch every day, fish for dinner more often than not, and a rotation of strong but surprisingly emotionally available (especially for Maine!) men keeping me warm at night while the baby sleeps soundly all night long in her own room down the hall…

Is this typical for parents of newborns, too? Or for newlyweds?

Cats and Dogs

It’s pouring down rain here in Seattle, which, believe it or not, is quite out of the ordinary. Typically we get more of a drizzle—a dry rain, if you will. (A digression: I used to see a therapist who said “if you will” at least once per session, and I nearly had to quit seeing her because it was so annoying.) It’s very hard to stay awake on days this dark and rhythmically drippy, even when you’re relatively well-rested because your infant only had to eat ONCE the night before (!) and slept in with you until 7:30—that’s SEVEN THIRTY, people—in the morning. Take that, Size 6!

So, it turns out that a man I used to be in love with—massively, majorly, absurdly, semi-codependently, semi-unrequitedly in love with—just had a baby with the woman he was with instead of me even though it was SO OBVIOUS he and I were TOTALLY SOULMATES—except that he had a panic attack the one time he finally kissed me and except that my therapist, who seldom voiced an opinion about anything, firmly believed I was letting him use me, if you will—except for some stuff like that, we were totally meant to be together.

But we weren’t—together. Or meant to be, as it turns out.

It turns out he was meant to move thousands of miles away and have a baby girl with that other woman—the one he was in an actual relationship with rather than an odd little affair of a relationship consisting of weekly breakfasts, daily emails, and hourly pining. He was meant to have a baby girl with that other woman exactly one month and one day after I was to have a baby girl with a man who is steady and loving and true and entirely, completely, unabashedly, requitedly mine.

Three years ago, before I met the future Dr. Husband, I would not have been happy for this man to have a baby. Three years ago the news would have crushed me. Three years ago I would have been a steaming puddle of goo at the mere thought of this man having a baby with anyone other than me.

But then I met Dr. Husband.

And he asked me to move in.

And then he proposed.

And then we got pregnant.

And then we got married.

And it was everything I’d been wanting so much for so long, I could barely admit it to myself.

And now here I am in size 12 pants in a beautiful house with my beautiful husband downstairs looking after our beautiful baby girl.

And because I am now—finally—happy for me, I can be happy for the man I used to be in love with, too.

And so I am.

So, Happy Valentine’s Day to us all.

Especially the girls.

A Work in Progress

I am now officially a full-fledged member of the parenting club I was so reluctant to join. I paid my dues and everything—and I’m not speaking metaphorically. I’ve attended three meetings and have come to think of the ten other moms as my coworkers. (The ten other babies are, of course, my baby’s coworkers.) They help the day pass much more quickly. They share their snacks. They’re great for conversations around the water cooler. And if the boss gets upset with the quality of my work, I know they’ve got my back. (Who’s the boss? The baby, I suppose. Or maybe Tony Danza. Whichever. They communicate their desires with clear verbal instructions to me equally often.)

The downside, of course, is the inevitable competitiveness—not over assignments or clients or praise from the boss but jeans size and sleeping habits of our offspring.

My personal low today hit me after the following exchange:

Me: Does anyone else try to get work done at home and feel like it’s impossible?

Sweet Blonde Woman [est. size 6 jeans]: Yeah. It’s challenging, isn’t it?

Me [size 12 jeans]: Totally! How do you—?

Sweet Blonde Woman: I can only get work done in a few two-hour chunks when she’s napping in her crib.

Me [in my head]: Two-hour naps? A few of them? In her crib?

Me [in reality]: ---

Sweet Blonde Woman: Also, I get up at 6 so I can get a few hours of work done before she wakes up. But you don’t want to do that! [Smiling.]

Me [in my head]: Right! I don’t want to do that because the 3 to 21 minutes of work I would get done before my child wakes up is hardly worth it. And since my child has migrated to a spot right next to me by 6 in the morning, she would likely wake up with me anyway! Why won’t my child sleep in her crib?! Why won't she sleep until 8am? Why won’t she nap for more than 20 minutes at a time?! Why must she sleep on me?! When will Dr. Husband and I ever have sex again?!

At this point the facilitator sensed my panic and very gently reminded me that my baby is younger than Size 6 Sweet Blonde Woman’s baby. There’s hope, she seemed to be trying to say. Or maybe, Chill the hell out, crazy anxiety lady. You’re scaring all the babies.

My Day, Made

As I was leaving the house without the baby today I thought about how long it’s been since anyone has flirted with me. People just do not flirt with pregnant ladies or moms of tiny babies—especially when they seldom leave the house. So you can imagine my delight when a bus driver hopped off his resting bus and asked me if there was any good food in the neighborhood.

That's flirtation, right? Right?!

A Big Day (And It's Not Even Noon)

Last night, Dr. Husband and I had the following exchange as he removed a bag of Sara Lee bread crusts from the freezer so he can make stuffing (and a roast chicken!) tonight for dinner (I know—a Jewish doctor who cooks!):

Dr. Husband: Nobody does it like Sara Lee.

Me: You know, when I was growing up, I always wondered whether it was “Nobody does it like Sara Lee” or “Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.”

Dr. Husband, in a tone that says, obviously, people: It’s “Nobody does it like.”

Me: Yeah, well. I thought the double negative was weird, but whatever.

Dr. Husband: Silly.

Me: I was twelve.

*

Today has been slightly more exciting. I took the baby to meet a friend for coffee, and first Dan Savage told me he loved my baby.

Then the guy who started The Onion told me my baby was cute and gave me a recommendation on a daycare center.

Then—and this is the best part—as I was stopped at a red light on the way home a Sara Lee truck drove by. The side of it read: “Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee.”

Mental Hygiene, II

There is no sweeter sound in the world than the kind, gentle cooing of a babysitter keeping your infant happy and warm and fed and dry and safe and silent.

Mental Hygeine

I used to be an interesting person, I swear. Oh, not tremendously interesting, not, like, Michelle Obama-interesting or Charlie Kaufman-interesting or the-guy-who-invented-spray-cheese-interesting, but I thought about stuff. I had things to say about the stuff I thought about. One year I even took some filmmaking classes and made a movie about stuff I was thinking about—namely, how weird straight men are around each other—a movie that gay people in Miami at least seemed to like.

But now, well. I feel tapped out. Dried up. All done. Anyone bored enough to spy on my Google search history would discover that I spend all my mental energy seeking out things like “Fisher-Price bouncy seat replacement toys” and “full-figured nursing bras” and “tips for taking infants to the movies.”

In my darker moments I’m tempted to believe that I’m not worthy of pursuing anything bigger or broader than this—my new tiny circle of babycare.

Last night Dr. Husband and I had a fight in which I bemoaned the fact that the baby would be due for a nap right before her bedtime, thereby fucking up her bedtime. Dr. Husband suggested that we could just try to keep her awake longer, and because I’d spent my precious reading-while-nursing time reading Unhealthy Sleep Habits = Unhealthy Devil Children (or somesuch) I was all, “No! That’s the equivalent of depriving her of food, you evil man!” and he was all, “I’m sorry, but I do not spend all day being aware of her sleep needs, what with intubating people and having to yell 'Clear!' all day at work.”

Okay, I’m paraphrasing slightly.

His point was that it takes actual mental energy to keep track of all this baby jazz, and I’m the parent appointed with said keeping track. (He is the parent appointed with making as much money in one day as I will make teaching a six-week creative writing class.)

And I realized—well, I realized I need to get out more or I will become one of those moms who funnels all her creative energies into planning birthday parties for her children and becomes bitter and resentful when her children fail to thank her. Even though they’re not yet verbal.

I want to be a good mom. And I want to create things other than my child (adorable and compelling though she is) and marital strife with Dr. Husband (lively and compelling though that is, too).

I don't feel anywhere close to being able to make another movie, but maybe I could make an essay or two? Or some art out of Triscuits and spray-cheese?

Trial Run

Dr. Husband and I took the baby to her first movie today. We both really wanted to see Up in the Air with George Clooney but realized we’d be better off going to a movie we didn’t want to see, what with the baby’s propensity for fussing, crying, cooing, giggling, and otherwise not being a silent moviegoer. So we took in a 10 a.m. showing of When in Rome, which A.O. Scott summed up for us beforehand: “Its failure to produce anything much in the way of worthwhile complication is not the only problem with this frantic and dispiriting movie.”

Perfect! Neither of us has gotten nearly a good enough night’s sleep to handle much complication, especially if it’s worthwhile!

I got pretty nervous during the “Please don’t spoil the movie by adding your own soundtrack/Silence is golden” PSA, which, as you may recall, includes a baby crying in Dolby stereo, but in the end my child was an angel. The type of angel who poops all over every item of clothing on her body before a movie and screams inconsolably all the way home after it, but still an angel.

And, yes, the movie was bad, but not all that frantic or dispiriting—which was good because Dr. Husband and I both managed to see every single minute of it, uninterrupted by our child.

Sundance, here we come!

NFW

Things went much better with the baby and the sitter today. It turns out my child was frantically overtired last time—a situation only solvable by strapping her to her mother’s body and staying in constant motion for the duration of an acceptable-length nap or until my back can no longer take it—whichever comes first. (The latter always comes first.)

I spent most of my three precious hours staring at the wall wondering what the hell I was supposed to do with myself during this time I was paying someone else to watch my child nap (because of course she naps for the sitter—babies always nap for the sitter.).

Write?

Sentences?

Paragraphs!?

Interesting ones?!?!

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Please Join Me

I’m not much of a joiner. Oh, I’ll take a class once a decade or so, but in general I prefer the comforts of loneliness to the discomforts of small talk and role playing and having my torso and face break out in red blotches while everyone stares at me as I’m forced to introduce myself and name my favorite animal.

The idea of signing up with the local nonprofit that matches new Seattle parents with other people in town with babies the same age as theirs filled me full of dread—especially when I learned there would be singing.

It turns out, though, that stay-at-home-and-try-to-write-a-teeny-bit motherhood is boring. And lonely—lonely in a way that’s starting to make small talk and publicly naming my favorite animal sound appealing. So when the 400th person told me I had to sign up, I did, despite my reservations about the singing and the facilitated conversations about such scintillating topics as feeding, clothing, washing, and trimming the fingernails of my family’s newest member. I was in it for the camaraderie of other stay-mostly-at-home moms. And the Perrier.

I attended my first meeting today and had only two social anxiety attacks—the first when I realized that despite the fact people having been telling me I “look great” for having just had a baby, there are moms out there (moms in my group!) who look considerably “greater” than I do. It should be illegal for new moms to wear jeans smaller than a size 10 around other new moms! Honestly! The nerve!

My second attack of teariness (no, not exaggerating) occurred when the other moms talked about their schedules. They have schedules! They have husbands who work consistent, predicable hours and are home at consistent, predictable times! Their husbands can “do” the 7pm feeding because their husbands are always home by 7. Hell—they have a 7pm feeding! What’s up with that? I thought you were supposed to feed two-month-olds when they’re hungry. How do they get their babies to be hungry every night at 7?

Let it be resolved that I am going to impose structure on the baby’s and my life. Dr. Husband can negotiate his life around ours as his crazy “sometimes I work from 6am to 3pm-ish, sometimes I work from 11am to 8pm-ish, sometimes I work from 1pm to 10pm-ish, sometimes I work from 11pm to 6am-ish” work schedule allows.

On the bright side, at least my baby wasn’t the one that shat all over the hostess’s wool couch.

Putting the "Fun" in "Neurotic"

I taught my first class since having the baby yesterday. Okay, technically it was my second class, but the first was a volunteer class to drum up business for this actual class I’m teaching for the next six weeks, so this is the first one that counts. I’d forgotten how nervous I get in front of other people, particularly when I’m out of practice. Hell, I’m out of practice leaving the house, much less imparting wisdom about creative writing to a roomful of creative writers.

I’d forgotten, too, how much more neurotic I am about pretty much everything besides being a mom (and all it takes to thrust me into those particular throes of neurosis is to pick up a book on parenting—so I suppose I shouldn’t be blowing that particular horn after all). I once knew a lady who was so neurotic. How neurotic was she? She was so neurotic that when after teaching her first creative writing class after having a baby, two students came up to her and told her they’d had fun, she nearly burst into tears.

Fun?

Real classes aren’t fun.

Real classes are challenging and engaging and gripping and mind-blowing. “Fun” is for amusement parks and trips to the ice cream parlor and late night dance parties.

Next thing you know they’re going to be telling me that I’m an adequate teacher with average ideas who gives mundane but functional assignments.

Fun, my ass.

Next week I’m taking away their bathroom break.

Fun.

Hmfph.

New Adventures in Motherhood

As I sit here writing this, a very sweet, very capable babysitter is hanging out downstairs with my fussy offspring, while I ostensibly get some work done. The baby keeps crying every five minutes, and I am trying desperately not to intervene. All those years of babysitting never taught me how hard it was to leave your own kid--even to leave them for the other room for ten or twenty minutes. "Oh, we'll be fine," I reassured countless parents as I shooed them out the door. And we were always fine--but not always without some fussiness here or there. And I was never privy to the agony of all those moms driving away in all those cars practically in tears themselves. Or maybe I'm just a hopeless sap.

But my baby is so small and so young and so MINE--I still cannot stand to hear her cry and not at least try to soothe her.

Next time the babysitter comes, it would be smart of me to leave the house so I don't hear the inevitable fussing, but I'm just not there yet. Maybe next week. Or next month. Or when the baby is two.

Wacky Parenting Interaction #19

The setting: The café up the street from our house which the baby and I use as a latte-providing destination to motivate us to go for walks in the cold Seattle winter rain—though today it was gloriously sunny and too warm for a coat.

The characters: Me, my two-month-old daughter, and a hippieish man in his sixties with scraggly facial hair and a slightly wild glint in his eye.

Hippie man: Oh, wow. A baby. Are you nursing?

Me [crossing my hands in front of my chest while giving him the finger]: Am I nursing? Are you seriously asking me that? What the fuck business is it of yours?

Me [in reality]: Uh—yeah.

Hippie Man [Giving the double thumbs-up, a la The Fonz]: Right on. There’s no point in having a baby if you’re not going to…

Me [Trying to cut him off by wheeling the stroller past him and towards the door]: Uh, huh.

Hippie Man: That’s great, that’s great. He’ll be immune to everything.

Me: Um. I hope so.

Hippie Man: No really, he will! That’s how it works!

Me: Go back to the sixties and leave the world’s mothers alone!

Me [in reality, hustling us out the door]: --- .

Mother and Child Reunion

You know how in every crowd there’s one mom—at least!—who acts all sanctimonious about her parenting choices, making everyone else feel crappy and angry and irritated?

Well, today Dr. Husband and the baby and I attended a reunion of our Lamaze Class From Hell and the worst person in the room was the facilitator who was as nightmarish as she was originally, twisting every epidural into a “medical intervention” that ideally would have been avoided.

When it came my turn in the circle to tell my “birth story” (when did this become a thing, by the way? Did 19th century moms have birth stories? Well, the mister boiled some water and I screamed and pushed real hard and didn’t die and here we are…) I delighted in announcing that I lasted all of an hour without an epidural, getting one as soon as the nurse answered my question of, “Well, how much worse are these contractions going to get?” with, “Oh, honey. So much worse.”

I didn’t want to feel like a failure for getting an epidural—it was pretty much always plan “A” for me.

Lamaze Lady made herself feel better by summarizing our collective birth stories with, “Well, it sounds like all five of you had really hard labors and used epidurals only when necessary.”

I wanted to shout out, “Not me! Not me! I got an epidural long before I needed one!” but managed instead to just exchange a meaningful glance with Dr. Husband.

When Lamaze Lady left I thought the judgmentalism part of the event was done—but then the mom hosting the event brought up one of those dangling toy “gyms” for another mom’s baby to play with while the grownups ate cookies. I remarked how nice it was that the gym was made entirely of fabric rather than a bunch of made-in-China plastic. The hostess casually mentioned that they try to avoid plastic whenever possible. “Oh, us too!” I cheered, thinking nothing of it.

Well. As one of the other moms was getting her baby situated in her carseat for the ride home, she pointed to some toys dangling from the handle of the carrier and said that, like my child, her baby hated traveling in the car, too—until she’d attached toys for her to play with. I nodded and smiled and started to say, “Good idea—I should totally get some—” When she added, “They are plastic and they are made in China.”

I was so startled that I stupidly—stooo-pid-leee—said, “Oh, that’s okay, it’s not like she can put them in her mouth.”

And then the baby grabbed the cute plastic made-in-China dragonfly hanging in the middle and mouthed the hell out of that thing.

Yes, today I was that mom.

Inappropriate Utensils

As these things go, my baby is pretty easy. She has known the difference between night and day from the outset, only getting up to eat a few times in the night, and she’s generally pretty chill during the day—as long as she’s being held and as long as I’m not trying to eat—which, for some mysterious reason, she cannot abide by. (Doesn’t she know that her food source requires food to work properly?)

All that said, she is still a newborn, and as such is exhausting.

And sometimes that exhaustion leads her parents to behave like children. Take, for instance, the following exchange her father and I had this morning:

Me [still waking up and holding the baby in one arm while stirring oatmeal flakes and water in a pan, as I have become expert at doing one-handed in the past eight weeks of my child’s life]: ---.

Dr. Husband: I’ll take the baby.

Me: That’s okay.

Dr. Husband: I’ll take her. That’s dangerous.

Me: We’re fine.

Dr. Husband: Give her to me. That’s not safe.

Me: ! [Followed by storming out of the kitchen.]

Dr. Husband: Oh, give me a break.

Me: !

Dr. Husband [calling after me as I head upstairs, oatmeal-less]: You obviously need to eat! Do you want a spoon or a fork?

Me: --- .

*

Like I said, I was behaving like a total child. But, more importantly, who eats oatmeal with a fork?

Wish I May

The other night, sometime around 3am, or perhaps 2:00 or 4:00, I asked myself: If I could have anything in the world right now, what would it be? Why I felt compelled to play magic genie with myself I have no idea, other than the fact that I’ve grown wary (and weary!) of logging onto the New York Times website and reading about horrible things happening in the world in the middle of the night and I’ve exhausted Hulu's repertoire of Modern Family and Community and Glee, so I’m pretty much left with my own sleepy mind for entertainment.

ANYway, I asked myself what I would wish for if a genie emerged from a lantern (or, more likely (if "likely" is the right word, which it is not) a breast pump), and the answer came hard and fast: A weekend by myself in a nice hotel with nothing to do but sleep under a duvet and eat round-the-clock breakfast from room service.

Sure, I would miss my little bundle of joy during the five or ten minutes I was awake and stuffing pancakes into my mouth, and, yes, I would have to pump to keep up my milk supply, and, sure, my wee one would probably miss me and wonder why I left her alone with the parent with the scratchy face for so long, but, oh, that duvet—so soft and fluffy and warm and cozy and delicious. And, oh, those pancakes—so soft and fluffy and warm and cozy and delicious, too.

Friend of the Year

I had coffee this afternoon with a (childless) friend and discovered that I’ve hit the point of new parenthood when I no longer have anything interesting to say.

Oh, I could go on about how adorable my baby is when she makes this one particular noise or how her pouty face is cuter than any other pouty face in the world—but I vowed NEVER TO BE THAT KIND OF PARENT, so I’m left with nothing.

Pretty much unless you want to discuss strategies for interviewing babysitters or getting a two-month-old to sleep when she’s not lying on someone’s chest or removing mustardy breast-fed-baby poo stains from onesies without resorting to bleach (or is bleach perfectly fine? I don’t know because it’s too boring to ask other people about!), I won’t be a good conversationalist.

Oh, I try. I ask my friend about her job and her new boyfriend, but my queries are clunky at best. So, how’s the job going? And: Are things still good with the new boyfriend? Follow-up questions are beyond me, not because I don’t care but because I cannot think of what to ask next. Or sometimes because my baby just pooed and I can feel it leaking through her diaper onto my t-shirt because, did you know? Newborn baby poo is the consistency (and color!) of butternut squash soup! Isn’t that interesting? No! Of course not! Never mind!

I try to keep up with current events. I read the newspaper—but I do it in online the middle of the night during feedings, so by morning my recall is spotty at best. Bombing? An airplane? In his underwear?

Truth be told, I’m quite proud of myself for remembering that my friend has a job and a boyfriend. And, hey, I usually even remember the boyfriend's name, which, considering that I forgot my own age the other day, is really just completely fucking incredible. I should get a medal or something.

Ready or Not

The holidays are over, my parents and brother have left town, my husband has finished cramming nearly a month’s worth of shifts at the hospital into one week, and my formerly consolable offspring has returned to her consolable self, her fussiness having peaked at 6 weeks, just as the books say it will.

Life is good, and, hey, it isn’t even raining outside.

2010, here we come!

The Other Foot

Get this: my mom and dad caught wind of Dr. Husband’s mom’s plans to buy a house here (and by “caught wind of” I mean “I told them”), and now they, too, want to move to Seattle. My dad is particularly eager, scouring the web for real estate and saying terrifyingly things like, “Your mom won’t be ready to make a move for five years or so, but I think the time to buy is now!”

“They do know my mom is thinking of being here just some of the time, right?” Dr. Husband asked nervously, pouring himself another spot of the rye whiskey he bought special for the holidays.

In response I raised my eyebrows into a look that said—or endeavored to say—See how it feels now, buster! punctuated by a Miss-Piggy-style karate-chop noise: Hi-ya!

Sweet Silence

In an effort to prevent any major emotional meltdowns during their weeklong visit, I have insisted that my parents retire to a hotel for the post-Christmas part of their stay. This is new for me, this insistence stuff.

So far it’s going pretty well.

Oh, sure, they ate prepackaged cheese crackers with peanut butter for dinner in their hotel room last night before going to bed at 6:30, but I don’t care! Or, more accurately: I won’t let it get to me! Or, more accurately still: I’m confident I can work out my ambivalent feelings in therapy in the not-too-distant future!

Ah, progress.

So Tender and Mild

As far back as I can remember, I’ve wanted a baby for Christmas. This year—my 35th on the planet—I finally got one.

I could not be happier.

I am, in fact, so full of love for her and Dr. Husband that I almost can’t stand it. My cup seriously runneth over—and I haven't even started hitting the sauce.

Halle-fucking-lujah

My family arrives this afternoon, and my head is splitting open into the first migraine I’ve had since getting pregnant last February. Coincidence? I think not.

Because apparently neither of us has a great sense of timing, Dr. Husband and I thought that this morning—just hours before the onslaught of my family—would be a good time to discuss his mom’s desire to buy a vacation home down the street. By some stroke of luck (another Christmas miracle?!), we had our most productive conversation on the topic to date. Yes, Dr. Husband finally said those magic words: I don’t expect you to be best friends with my mom.

He conceded that what the two of us need is a functional relationship, not one in which we stay up all night together giggling while we French braid ribbons into each others’ hair.

“Functional” I can work with, people!

Be of Good Cheer

Today is the winter solstice, which I believe means tonight will be the longest night of the year which means I might have to take my own life today because LAST NIGHT was the longest night I’ve had in a long time and it was pretty miserable and I don’t think I can handle a repeat, particularly two days before the arrival of my parents and brother and the full frontal assault of Christmas.

Apparently the gods really didn’t like my hubris—or perhaps my pseudo-Catholic invocation of “miracles” about the baby taking a nap in her crib on Friday. The baby is still fussy, including most of last night.

Granted, Dr. Husband and I are lucky. (You hear that, gods? We’re lucky! I’m grateful! Thank you for this blissfully well-behaved-almost-all-the-time child!) The fact that a bad, sleepless night with our baby stands out from the other nights with our baby is reason enough for some parents of newborns to refuse to speak to us and/or permanently hate us. And though a night of a baby making whiney “eh-eh-eh” noises and then crying if you try to move her off your shoulder or change positions slightly or take a deep breath—well, I’ve babysat enough kids and read enough books and heard enough parenting war stories to know that “eh-eh-eh” noises AREN’T THAT BAD, even if they’re keeping you up all night. She could be, for instance, screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs all night long or threatening to run away from home and take the family cat with her.

The problem is partly that we expect her to be a decent sleeper. She almost always is, so why would we bother anticipating a night of constant fussing? As loathe as I am to admit it, sometimes Dr. Husband really is right about his happiness/reality/expectations equation. So from here on out, I’m going to assume that my child will never sleep and I will never get to put her down and I will never get to shower again. Because thinking that way is sure to make me feel better.

Good for Goodness' Sake

The baby continued to be a Christmas angel all the way through Dr. Husbands’ workplace holiday party Friday night. She charmed everyone present and did not whine or cry or make even the tiniest peep the entire time—a whole hour-and-a-half!—we were there.

Then, because karma is the bitch that she is, the baby has been fussing non-stop ever since. We told her that Santa will only come if she stops being so difficult, but she just got this look on her face like I can’t believe you’re stooping to idle threats already. I’m only a month old, people. Haven’t you got anything better up your sleeves? And then the real crying began.

My Baby's All Grown Up

Not only did my child nap long enough on the couch this morning for me to do a load of laundry, bake a cake for Dr. Husband’s workplace Holiday Party, and clean the dishes (Martha Stewart, I’ve got your number!), but at this exact moment—2:03 in the afternoon—my child is napping again all by herself—in her crib. As Dr. Husband said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her do that before.”

Indeed. It’s a goddamn Christmas miracle.

Welcome to the Nursing Home

So, I’m standing in my kitchen rinsing some stray coffee grounds out of the sink when I catch a whiff of a rather nasty sour milk-type smell. I run the disposal, but the smell is still there. I transfer a used plate from the counter to the dishwasher, but the smell is still there. I stick the sponge in the dishwasher, but the smell is still there. I spy pieces of breast pump lounging in a bowl of water and think, Ah-hah! Of course! I wash them out and drain the bowl and stick it in the dishwasher, but the smell is still there. Fuck it, I think, and carry the baby into the living room—and the smell follows me. And I realize the smell is emanating from me—from my shoulder, specifically, where my darling baby girl spat up earlier this morning whereupon I decided that it wasn’t worth it to put her down—which would wake her up, which would make my chances of getting any work done “zero”—and change shirts—which would mean another load of brights which would be annoying because the last load just finished the rinse cycle, and, no, I can’t just toss the shirt in the laundry basket because, hello! The smell! So I left it on and forgot about it, and, yes, I’ve learned my lesson.

Neighborly

Speaking of parents and boundaries, it turns out Dr. Husband’s mom contacted a local real estate agent after her Thanksgiving visit because she wants to buy a little house up here so she’ll have a place to stay when she comes to town.

Let me repeat that: MY MOTHER-IN-LAW WANTS TO BUY A HOUSE IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD.

Dr. Husband thinks it’s a grand idea. “All that free childcare we'll get! And your parents can stay there when they visit, too!”

Note the use of the future and present rather than subjunctive tense.

It’s already a done deal.

Well.

What can I say?

I’ll have a lot of opportunities to practice setting boundaries, won’t I?

Home for the Holidays

We are practicing setting boundaries these days, me and Dr. Husband. Learning how to set reasonable limits, how to make sure we get enough personal time to keep us from going insane, how to encourage those in our care to play independently from time to time. We are practicing these concepts not on the baby, who is still too young and wobbly to learn such things but on our not-too-young and not-too-wobbly parents and siblings who are suddenly quite interested in visiting us regularly and eating all our snacks.

The therapist I started seeing a few months back, largely in anticipation of the post-partum depression that has not yet descended upon me (fingers crossed! naps taken! depleted vitamin D reserves assisted with supplements!), she suggests taking a hard-line approach to parental visits. Tell them what you need from them, and don’t make it optional, is the gist.

But how do you tell people whose idea of a “visit” is a solid week of staying in your house and never venturing outside that your idea of a “visit” is a weekend of them staying at a hotel and meeting up each day for an afternoon adventure and dinner out? It seems about as possible as a team of flying reindeer carrying a man in a sleigh filled with gifts for all the children in the entire world.

It’s not that I don’t like spending time with my family—I really do—it’s just that I need it to come in small doses, like sun exposure or flourless chocolate cake. When I graduated from college I moved from a campus 1,000 away from my mom and dad to a city three hours away so that each visit wouldn’t be such a big deal. Big Deal visits are sure to disappoint—and to grate on the nerves after an hour or two.

But now I live nearly 2,000 miles away from my parents, and nearly 1,000 away from Dr. Husband’s, and we have just supplied them with their first grandchild, and every single visit is sure to be a Very Big Deal.

How to cope?

Jack Daniels works pretty well, it turns out, but I would have a hard time justifying the consumption of whisky at 9 in the morning without a medical reason and a doctor (husband’s) orders.

The woman I was in a relationship with back when I lived in a city three hours away from my parents’ house—and three hours away from hers—used to refer to the phenomenon of going to visit family and having everyone hang out in the living room all day making chitchat as “having the sit-arounds,” a diagnosis that always makes me think of having the runs or the bends.


Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is to not come down with a case of the sit-arounds.

Love,
Me


p.s. Please tell my parents and brother that this gift is not optional.

A Holly Jolly Christmas

I had a total meltdown yesterday—an approximately once-a-week occurrence nowadays. I picked a fight with Dr. Husband because, well, I haven’t had more than two-and-a-half hours of uninterrupted sleep in a month and because, well, he was there.

It was a pretty typical affair for us—I tell him I need something from him, he gets defensive, I tell him I’m not attacking him I’m just clearly stating my needs, he gets more defensive, I get defensive, he says something mean, I say something mean, he tries to take a time-out to calm down, I feel abandoned and chase after him, he gets super mad, I cry super hard, and then he eventually leaves the house or I eventually leave him alone while contemplating how I—and now the baby and I—will make it on our own. I suppose I could pursue that teaching job at the University of Oklahoma and put the baby in daycare… my thinking goes, but I’d still have to deal with him and his parents…Perhaps I could kidnap her? And leave the country? And switch from writing nonfiction to writing novels?

After we both more or less regained our composure, we went out and got a Christmas tree because what says Happy Holidays! like a rage-and-sleep-deprivation-fueled family feud?

After stringing the lights and hanging the ornaments and then discovering that half the light strands had stopped working, my neck began to spasm something fierce. It can’t have helped that for the past month I’ve been wearing a baby in a sling or carrying her during most of the daytime hours combined plus I’ve been sleeping exclusively on my right side so I can keep one hand on the baby all night so she’ll stay asleep plus I’ve developed the bad ergonomic habit of typing with just my right hand every time I nurse plus I’m now lugging around two 20-pound breasts plus I’m spending a lot of time bouncing the baby (and the breasts!) up and down on the birthing ball (which, by the way, went unused in my blissfully medicated labor).

Also, my father-in-law is coming to town today.

On the plus side, the best thing to do for spasming neck muscles is to drink alcohol—Doctor Husband’s orders.

Conveniently, this is the best thing to do for visits from in-laws, too.

The Modern Condition

The baby’s Social Security card arrived in the mail today. Now she seems like an honest to god person. No, it wasn’t the peeing or the pooing or the eating or spitting up or crying or cooing that made her seem real—it was a two-by-three inch piece of blue and white paper that the government sent her in the mail.

She’s supposed to sign it when she joins the workforce. So strange to think of this cute little lump getting her first job and paying her first taxes and experiencing what will hopefully be her first—and only!—inkling of why some people decide to become Republicans.