Maternity Leave (9781466871533)

by Julie Halpern

  “They sent a present,” he offers.

  “If it’s not a new set of working boobs, then I don’t care,” I gripe.

  I’m griping now?

  5 Days Old

  I think I’ve been awake for sixty-six hours. I’ve lost track of all time and reality. How do people do this? Zach somehow manages to fall back asleep every time Sam wakes up, but after changing him, dressing him, nursing him, and washing the nipple shield, I am more wide awake than that time I drank two five-hour energy drinks in order to finish grading a stack of essays I shirked to watch all of Orphan Black over a three-day weekend.

  Must try to sleep.

  Must fall asleep.

  I’m imagining my yoga teacher’s voice in my head.

  Eyes heavy.

  Shoulders relaxed.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Shit.

  Baby’s up again.

  Restart the clock.

  Sam’s First Doctor’s Appointment

  Why do they expect us to bring a brand-new baby to a doctor’s office? For starters, I look like absolute shit. Second, we just left the hospital. Is this some sort of test so they can see what a bang-up job I’m doing or take the baby away if I’m not? And what about all of these disgusting kids hacking their death boogers all over the waiting room? How is that good for a newborn?

  Zach and I (to be clear: Most of the time when I refer to “Zach and I,” I technically mean “I,” with an afterthought nod of approval from Zach) interviewed pediatricians the last few months before Sam was born. I wanted to find someone highly intelligent, pro-vaccine, but understanding of my irrational fears. And funny. And it had to be a woman because I’m completely sexist. We chose Dr. Zale, a short and sharp Jewish pediatrician with a wonderfully calm demeanor and a few years of crazy parents under her belt.

  Zach and I enter Dr. Zale’s waiting room, Sam resting in his car seat. My paranoid new-mom vision zeroes in instantly on two children: one coughing directly into the air (get off your fucking phone, mom, and teach your kid some healthy hygiene habits pronto!) and another moaning into mom’s shoulder as he’s curled up on a chair. I consider draping a plastic sheet over Sam’s car seat but reconsider when I realize it probably would not be the safest thing to do. Plus, I left my plastic sheet at home. Zach is about to set Sam’s carrier down a mere two seats away from Curlboy, so I violently snap at him with my fingers and make a scrunched-up expression that says, “Do exactly as you’re told, and you’ll get ice cream afterward.” Then I use my best head-jerking skills to redirect him to a chair equidistant from the two sickies. No one else better come into the waiting room while we’re here, or I’ll have to recalculate our seating.

  Coughie and Curlboy are called in first, and I breathe a little easier (albeit not very deeply, so as to avoid inhaling nascent germs). Ten minutes later, a nurse pokes her head out of the door leading to the exam rooms and calls out, “Sam.” A ping of recognition hits me that Sam is, in fact, a real person with a name attached. We bring him into room four, and the nurse instructs us to undress him down to his diaper. I try to work quickly, sensing her impatience, but I’m still new to the litany of teensy snaps. Eventually, he of the shriveled, black belly-button monstrosity is undressed and ready to be weighed. I rest Sam into a bucketlike scale, resulting in a wail of mythical magnitude. “Six pounds ten ounces,” the nurse reads.

  “That’s more than he weighed when he was born,” I note to Zach. “That means when he’s sucking on my boobs, something’s coming out.”

  Dr. Zale examines Sam soon after, but I can’t hear much of what she tells us. Aside from the sheer volume of Sam’s screaming, I’m still dumbfounded that my body is actually working correctly, that milk is coming out of me and nourishing this baby enough to make him gain weight. Maybe I am capable of providing for a human. At least three ounces’ worth, anyway.

  To: Louise

  From: Annie

  Lou, I’m sorry I haven’t returned any of your calls. You told me I would be a zombie shell of my old self once the baby was born, and you were right. I seriously think bits of my skin are peeling off. I look that bad. Just behead me now. I’m sooooooo tired. I actually had to delete some of the o’s in sooooo because I fell asleep while holding down the key. And then Sam woke me up. Why is he always doing that? Help! I know you can’t. I know you’re home with Jupiter and baby #2 is going to fly out of you any second, so I have no right to bitch because you will have two people to prevent you from sleeping. I wish I had listened to you when you told me how hard this is.

  I’m guessing the answer is no (you get an I’m about to have a baby pass), but do you want to come to Sam’s bris on Tuesday?

  It’s BYOP. That was supposed to stand for Bring Your Own Penis, but I realized that makes no sense. Will I ever make sense again?

  XOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

  Annie

  Louise and I have worked together at Parker Middle School for ten years. So far she is one of the only people who admitted things aren’t going to be all baby powder and handmade blankeys. I hope that was just her patented sarcasm talking.

  6 Days Old

  My mom came over today to help plan the bris. Everyone has their theories and opinions on circumcision, as is evident by the hilarious comments on Facebook. One guy from my high school referred to it as “the worst day of my life,” while another shrugged it off as “a snip and a nosh.” I’m choosing to do it because it’s a Jewish custom, and supposedly mohels do the cut better than most hospital staff (according to the cautionary tales of my colleagues, and I do love a good cautionary tale about penises). Plus, my aunt Edie already ordered the lox platter. Zach, while not a Jew, is on board the circumcision train because he doesn’t want any locker room trouble for Sam later in his life. To which I ask: Are guys really looking at one another’s penises so closely that they can detect whether someone is circumcised or not? Why aren’t they hiding in the showers or trying to discreetly put on their underwear while awkwardly shielding themselves with their towels like girls do?

  The bris is supposed to take place on the eighth day of life, because thousands of years ago someone figured out it is the day the baby will feel the least amount of pain, or something like that, proving once again that people of yore did a much better job of understanding their kids than I am managing today.

  Did I mention my nipples are dying?

  Zach’s moms sent a rather bizarre baby basket today, although I’d expect nothing less. After his mom, Dawn, and dad, Stewart, divorced when Zach was sixteen, his mom went back to school to get her master’s in creative writing. While there, she met a women’s studies professor, Mimi, with whom she fell madly in love. They’ve been together, professoring it up in Seattle, ever since. At our wedding, Zach’s dad and two moms walked him down the aisle. Zach’s dad remarried almost instantly after the divorce to a woman I never got to know very well. Sadly, his dad died five years ago of lung cancer, and his stepmom seemed to think we were going to argue over who got his money. All Zach wanted was his dad’s collection of Johnny Cash memorabilia, and he had to fight her on that, even though she always seemed annoyed that his dad spent their money on the collection. The Cash (Johnny, not money) eventually became Zach’s, and we now keep our communication with the stepmom to a holiday-card minimum.

  Dawn and Mimi are a fun couple to visit, although extremely tidy to the point where staying with them becomes more chore filled than our nonvacationing lives. I’ve never wiped a bathroom counter after using the sink, but leaving extra water droplets on the tile is a no-no. If only they could see the horror show that is our toothpaste-globbed, watermark-tainted bathroom sink these days. I guess I won’t worry about it until their visit next month. In the meantime, we can enjoy their gift basket of feminist baby-raising literature, oatmeal-colored, organic, dye-free onesies, and mother’s milk tea that tastes a little like tree bark pancakes. How did anyone discover this stuff ups breastm
ilk production if they had to taste it first?

  Later

  Having my mom here was the most magical six hours of my new life. She held Sam, and I showered without fear of him waking up or Zach coming into the bathroom with a question (although showering with my healing ass was still horrifying). Not that Zach’s doing a bad job. He hasn’t complained about changing a single diaper, even that time he threw up in his mouth a touch, but he is under the impression that I know more about parenting a newborn than he does. Just because I grew this little pumpkin doesn’t mean I know how to water and feed it and trim its vines or whatever, and by vines I mean his fingernails. Sam’s pediatrician joked that some ignorant parents think biting their kids’ nails off is a good idea. I pretended I wasn’t one of those parents. Is this natural to other women? Is there something inherently wrong with my physiology?

  To: Annie

  From: Annika

  Hey Annie—

  Thanks for the invite to the bris! Is it OK if I bring my new boyfriend, Anders? Do we need to bring anything? Pigs in a blanket? Cocktail Wienies? Band-Aids?

  Hugs!

  Annika

  Annika is a close friend from college. At least, we were close when we were in college. We lived together a couple of years, took random classes like ceramics and Finnish together, dated several of the same hipsters, and formed a band called the Pee Sharps. Annika was the lead singer, and I played lead guitar. I was never very accomplished, but the chords I did know I played very well. Repeatedly.

  Toward the end of school, Annika decided she had no interest in completing her degree, and she moved to Sweden with a guy from our Finnish class. After that ended, she moved to Barcelona to be with a guy she met in Finland. Rinse and repeat. Between college and our current age of thirty-six, I think Annika has lived in seventeen different countries with an equal number of guys. Maybe more. Somehow she landed nearby in Chicago about a year ago, working as a party planner for a nonprofit company, although I’ve only seen her a couple of times. Working and being pregnant made visiting her in the city complicated. Not that she came out to visit me in the suburbs. We don’t quite have the same interests or schedule anymore; I’m more of a “go out to lunch” person, while Annika’s social life doesn’t start until I go to bed (a reasonable nine thirty on a school night). And she’s not quite in tune with the nuances of adult behavior, which explains why she’d want to bring a new boyfriend to a bris. At least she’ll get to meet Sam.

  7 Days Old

  We are running out of options for takeout. Even Doogan seems miffed by the stack of plastic containers (I promise to wash and recycle them when I’m not so tired, Doo). I am very grateful that Zach doesn’t mind going out and picking up (in no particular order): Indian, Chinese, Thai, and Mexican. If we ate “official” fast food, I would ask him to pick up a Whopper right now. But we don’t eat fast food or even meat, really. Why is that again? Something about chemicals and not wanting to hurt animals, and damn, Zach better get back with that double chocolate fudge sippable sundae from Steak ’n Shake ASAP.

  FACEBOOK STATUS

  Was anyone else as disgusted by their baby’s charbroiled belly button shrapnel as I am?

  Ten Minutes Later

  Did I say I was grateful that Zach doesn’t mind picking up food? I meant jealous. Sear-his-brain-out-with-my-angry-eyes jealous that he gets to leave the house and I have to stay here with the Screamer. LalalalalalaIcanthearyou!

  Another person just changed her Facebook profile picture to an ultrasound. Why do people do that? a) It is not a picture of you; and b) Let’s face it, ultrasound pictures are at most abstract and at the least semidisgusting. I don’t want to see inside of your body. If it’s a reaching attempt at getting six thousand likes at the fact that you are pregnant, why not post a clever status update. Mine was, “Looks like I won’t be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro this summer because instead I’ll be HAVING A BABY!”

  Man, that was fucking stupid.

  I just posted another obligatory picture of Sam. Six comments already, three of which claim he looks “just like Zach.” Why do people think I want to read that? What mom is like, I just housed this human for ten months and then wrenchingly squeezed him out of my lady hole, which made me so hormonal that I sweat through three t-shirts and pairs of underwear every night, but I’m so glad my baby looks like my husband and not me. Throw me a bone, Facebook! Who are you, Jenny Krakovitz, anyway except some girl I went to high school with? I don’t think we said two words to each other as teens, and now we’re “friendly” enough that you can throw insults at me like “He looks just like Zach” on my Facebook page! Fuck you, too! Weren’t you a cheerleader? Didn’t I hate you in high school? Well, I hate you now!

  I think he looks like an old man with a receding hairline, Cheerleader.

  Take that, Jenny Krakovitz.

  * * *

  Zach is finally back with my grilled cheese and shake from Steak ’n Shake, and I am praying that no one saw that Facebook comment before I deleted it.

  Middle of the Night

  I have misplaced my nipple shield. I shake Zach awake. “Zach, I can’t find my shield!”

  “Your what?” he answers groggily. He is not allowed to be groggy.

  “My nipple shield. It popped off after I fed Sam, and now I can’t find it.”

  “We’ll look for it in the morning.”

  “No, we will not! I have to wash it off, and I need it for his next feeding, which you will also be allowed to sleep through. Help me find it. I always help you find your contact when you drop it. Think of this as a giant contact lens for my boob.”

  Zach fishes under the bed for a flashlight. He always pulls out a flashlight when looking for items, one of his most redeeming qualities.

  After a good ten-minute search, a glint of light reflects off the shield, which has somehow affixed itself to the side of my dresser.

  “Kind of like a wacky wall walker,” Zach notes.

  “More like a tacky titty tumbler,” I laugh, but Zach has miraculously fallen back asleep in the amount of time it took me to concoct that joke. I wash off the shield in the bathroom sink and try with no success to fall back asleep before I have to put it to use again.

  8 Days Old—Bris Day

  What kind of asshole makes people host a penis trimming at their home eight days after giving birth? This means I have to put on a bra! Thank God my mom came over and helped Zach straighten up. I still can’t walk completely normally. The midwife told me my “bottom” might be stiff for a few weeks. I thought that sounded ridiculous. Who calls a butt a “bottom”? But it’s not my butt, and it’s not my vag, but somewhere in between. “Bottom” seems to cover it nicely. What I want to know is, how did Princess Kate walk so normally in front of billions of people when they showed her leaving the hospital after giving birth? Is there anything that woman does not do perfectly? I’d like to think she had serious “bottom” pain but was ordered by the queen to grin and bear it and walk normally or have her title revoked. This may be my son’s bris, but I’m going to be shuffling through it like a ninety-three-year-old man.

  I hope I manage to not puke all over the mohel’s beard.

  Post-Bris

  It wasn’t so bad. Sam barely seemed bothered by the cut. The mohel was very calm, and he gave Sam a little towel soaked in wine to suck on. One of my mom’s mah-jongg friends (of which there are about seventeen hundred) hovered near me during the ceremony, trying to convince me to leave, that moms aren’t obligated to stay and watch. By the time she concluded her overprotective nudging, the mohel was finished and wrapping a sleeping Sam in a blanket. “You missed it! I made you miss it!” she shouted wildly. She seemed far more bunged up than I was. It’s not like I wanted to watch. I was mostly thinking, a) Are my boobs leaking? and b) I wonder if my mom remembered to buy egg bagels. The answers: No and Yes, so I’d say bris success!

  After everyone has left and Sam is sleeping like a drunk (I’d be a bad mom if I spiked his blankey every nig
ht from now on, right?), Zach rubs my back.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  “Tired. Relieved it’s over. How about you? Any transference of penis pain?”

  “I’m trying not to think about it.” He adjusts his manhood all the same. “You did great today.”

  “Thanks? I didn’t really do much except eat a lot and try not to cry.”

  “You were very composed. Very mature when you gave that speech thanking everyone for coming.”

  “I guess this officially makes us grown-ups.” I sigh, resigned to the idea.

  “I guess so. We can still go to comic book conventions, right?”

  “I hope so. We can dress Sam up in all sorts of humiliating costumes before he’s old enough to tell us not to.”

  “I knew there was a reason we had a baby.” Zach squeezes me.

  “Not too hard in the boob area. I wouldn’t want to get any milk in your eyes.” He eases off. “I noticed Annika didn’t show. Not that I expected her to. Who brings a new boyfriend to someone’s bris?”

  “It would be better than when she brought that one guy to my grandpa’s funeral,” Zach reminds me.

  “Oh yeah. That white guy with the dreads. Isn’t he an accountant now?”

  Zach fishes around in his pocket. “I got you something.”

  “I really hope that’s not Sam’s foreskin,” I joke.

  “Annie,” Zach reprimands my grossness. “Here. It’s a push present. I read about it online.”

  “You read about it online, huh?” I smirk at the thought of Zach reading relationship articles on his computer while pretending to watch Breaking Bad.

  He hands me a tiny cardboard box with a hand-stamped logo on it. I open it, and inside is a silver “S” framed with a gold heart. “It’s for ‘Sam.’ I thought it kind of looked like the Superman symbol, except with a heart.”

  “It’s beautiful. Thank you.” I open the clasp and slip it around my neck. Zach kisses me on the lips, and for a moment I pretend we’re a perfect little family.