Maternity Leave (9781466871533)

by Julie Halpern

  5. Put Sam down for a nap.

  6. Shower with baby monitor on.

  7. Let water run until it gets cold or until Sam scares the shit out of me over the monitor.

  8. Get dressed in yoga pants.

  9. Put Sam on mat.

  10. Read aloud from latest Tori Spelling bio.

  11. Sing along to Ella Jenkins CD.

  12. Nurse.

  13. Put Sam down for a nap.

  14. Repeat numbers 8–12.

  15. Try to take my own nap.

  16. Worry that I won’t be able to fall asleep.

  17. Fall asleep exactly three minutes before Sam wakes up.

  18. Repeat numbers 8–12.

  19. Take Sam for a walk. Run into “The Walking Man,” a neighborhood guy often seen striding by in gym-teacher shorts and tall socks. Friendly hellos exchanged.

  20. Look at the clock 16,000 times until Zach walks through the door.

  Except that before #20 can come to fruition, my cell phone rings. It’s Zach.

  Zach: Hey, honey, how’s it going?

  Me: Oh, the usual.

  Zach: You wouldn’t mind if I went out with some people after work, would you? Like I used to sometimes on Fridays?

  Me: [cold, mind-melting silence]

  Zach: Hello?

  What am I supposed to say? Is it selfish of me to want him to come home after I’ve been trapped with this kid for ten hours a day? Am I a horrible person for hating every ounce of his being for having the audacity to ask me this oblivious question? Is it wrong that I think he should automatically know that he needs to come home and that every lonely minute of my day leads up to the very moment that he does? Am I allowed to tell him any of this?

  Me: I’d really rather you come home. It’s been a pretty long week for me.

  Zach: [silence. Is it angry silence? Pensive? Did he even hear when I said?] Yeah, okay. I’ll see you in a little while.

  We hang up, and I feel guilty. But why? Why is it perfectly normal in his head that now that we have a kid, he can still do exactly the same things he did before we had one? We are not the same people. Our lives are not ours anymore, and I’ll be damned if I give him a pass to freedom—which he already has all day long—while I’m tethered to this baby for better or for worse. That was part of our marriage vows, right? So why do I have to feel like shit? I bet he doesn’t feel like shit. He’s probably driving home, cursing me out, making some ridiculously antiquated ball-and-chain reference to his work friends, who then get to make fun of me for being overbearing and demanding and a hard-ass and a killjoy.

  * * *

  Wow. I was so mad I didn’t realize how far from our house I walked. Now I really have to pee. My enlarged bladder and weak Kegel muscles curse you, Zach!

  26 Days Old

  Ah, the weekend, where I get to kick back, relax, and sip margaritas by the pool. Except that instead of margaritas I’m drinking prune juice because I’m constipated. And instead of the pool I’m on my bed watching cooking shows and changing my mind about what takeout I want for lunch based on which show is on. Right now it’s Mexican for Mexico: One Plate at a Time.

  Zach is an annoyingly good dad when he’s here. Whenever he’s around he doesn’t seem to mind holding Sam or singing to Sam or changing his diapers. What an asshole. Doesn’t he know the better a parent he is, the shittier I feel about my inadequacies? While Zach was at work all week, I tried so hard to be the sweet homemaker mom I’m supposed to be during my maternity leave. I rocked Sam and sang him songs when I could think of one to sing. I tried “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses, but I was not willing to compromise on my Axl Rose impression, and the loud and screechy parts made Sam loud and screechy. The other ones I came up with seemed so maudlin. “Rock-a-Bye Baby” is bizarre. Why is this cradle in a tree in the first place? Is the baby okay after he falls out of the tree? Then I tried singing “Hush, Little Baby,” but I had no idea what the lyrics were so it went something like this:

  Hush, little baby, don’t say a word

  Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird

  If that mockingbird don’t sing,

  Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring

  If that diamond ring don’t shine

  Mama’s gonna buy you some turpentine

  If that turpentine smells bad

  Papa’s gonna buy you a cow named Brad

  If that cow named Brad goes “Moo”

  Mama’s gonna buy you a stinky shoe

  If that stinky shoe’s too gross

  Papa’s gonna buy you a piece of toast

  If that piece of toast gets burnt

  Mama’s gonna buy you some butter that’s churned

  If that butter that’s churned goes sour

  Papa’s gonna buy you a massaging shower

  If that massaging shower’s too hard

  Mama’s gonna buy you a block of lard

  If that block of lard’s too fat

  Papa’s gonna buy you a climbing cat

  If that climbing cat falls down

  You’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

  Sam still didn’t fall asleep after that magnum opus, so then I whipped out the saddest song of all time: “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” I remember watching the cartoon as a kid and bawling my eyes out at the end. As an adult, I was no different the second I hit the line “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys.” Jesus Christ. Does Jackie Paper die? Or did they mean he just doesn’t live forever as a little boy because he grows up into a neglectful dickhead who forgets his awesome dragon friend? Poor Puff, sadly slipping into his cave.

  And I’m crying again.

  FACEBOOK STATUS

  I have a hickey on my areola. Which is a lot less cool than a hickey on my neck because a) a baby gave it to me; b) this hurts like a mother sucker; and c) wait, were hickeys ever cool?

  27 Days Old

  I hate the middle of the night. Hate hate hate it. I am considering moving to the Arctic for part of the year just so it can be daylight all of the time. Sam is up every two to three hours, and it feels like there is no closure to each day, just an endless cycle of stops and starts and so much waiting. Each time I feed him, I lie awake waiting for the next time. I am so fucking tired. When I ask for advice, be it on the phone or Facebook or the grocery store, people love to offer this nugget:

  “Just have Zach feed him.”

  How? Do you want me to spend what little time I have in between feedings pumping milk from my body? That would defeat the purpose. And people (most prominently my mother) are still pushing the formula angle. I don’t want to be all preachy and angry because that’s not my style (to people’s faces, anyway), but I don’t want to give Sam formula. My body was made to nourish him, and damn if I’ll let some company pump him full of chemicals to make my life easier. Having a baby shouldn’t be easy. Or should it because it’s supposed to be natural? But breastfeeding is hella hard and painful, and it feels like the only thing I’m doing right by this baby since his birth. Shit, I have to do something right. I really want to be good at breastfeeding. Like, the same way I wanted to get a perfect score on my SATs. So I will fight through the pain, the sleeplessness, the ravaged nipples. Somebody out there better give me a good grade soon, or I may have to take my mom up on the Costco supply of formula.

  28 Days Old

  Tonight we had eggs for dinner, which admittedly made me really gassy. Then Sam had a horrible night of writhing and screaming from what appeared to be gas. (Although, frankly, who can tell with babies? Maybe he was wrestling with a demon inside of him who enjoys mauling my breasts and keeping me from getting more than an hour of sleep at a time.) Zach described one particularly bad episode as looking like Sam was giving birth. Served him right. Zach wouldn’t subscribe to my demon-possession theory, but it couldn’t hurt to call an exorcist. Are they listed in the phone book?

  29 Days Old

  I am not doing so well. Whenever Sam wakes up from a nap, I feel a wave of a
nxiety well up in my stomach. I don’t want to take him out of his crib. I don’t want to hear his crying or feel the way he immediately wants to attack my boobs the second I pick him up. I don’t want to change his diaper and snap up his baby-sized snaps not made for grown-up-sized fingers. And I most definitely do not want to see that hopeful look in his eyes when he stares at my face, his mama’s face, and I don’t have the slightest desire to smile at him.

  This is not how being a mom should feel.

  My mom came over between knitting and canasta so I could cry in the shower for an hour.

  Night

  Zach noticed I was not myself and suggested we see a movie. We pick a Melissa McCarthy comedy because if anyone is going to make me forget who I am for a bit, it’s Melissa. Not that I could possibly forget, seeing as I am wearing Sam in his wrap on my chest.

  When we go up to buy the tickets, the kid at the counter actually tells us that no children under six are allowed into R movies.

  “He’s not even a month old. He won’t even be awake,” I argue.

  “That’s our policy.”

  “Your policy is to allow six-year-olds into R-rated movies but not babies who can’t even see past my tits?” I berate the youth behind the register.

  “Um, thank you.” Zach ushers me away from the whippersnapper and bypasses the human ticket-buying experience by purchasing our tickets from one of the automatic machines. The ticket-ripping boy isn’t as much of a stickler for the “policies” of the theater, and we make it past him without a kerfuffle.

  One box of Dots and sixteen thousand fat pretzel bites with fake cheese later, I am feeling pretty good. Until Sam wakes up and starts crying during the last half hour of the movie. I spend the final scenes bouncing him in the aisle near the door. My thighs are going to be speed-skater thick by the time Sam starts walking.

  31 Days Old

  I am horrid. Someone should come to my house and arrest me and take this baby away to a more suitably loving home environment, because this most definitely is not one. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t know how to do this.

  Sam woke up this morning screaming as usual, and after a night of being woken up five times, so many starts and stops and fails of nursing, two diapers filled with shit, and three outfit changes, I am done. I am over this. I want to leave. To run away. To join the circus. To move to Australia. To change my identity and become a different person who isn’t the awful, ugly, depressed mother I am.

  I screamed at Sam. I screamed at him and about him and on the way to his room and as I threw his diaper on the floor instead of in the diaper pail. I told him he was the worst baby ever. I told him to shut up. I told him he disappointed me, and I wished I didn’t have to be home with him. Even Doogan ran away from me.

  Sam is now back in his crib, screaming and crying probably, but I wouldn’t know because I am in the basement with the monitor off, blasting Slayer on the stereo and vacuuming spots I just vacuumed sixteen times.

  I am a horrible person. I don’t deserve to have a child.

  Later

  The consensus is that I might not be that bad.

  From my mom: “I’m sure I said things to you that weren’t very nice, and you turned out fine. Good enough, at least.”

  From Fern: “Wait until you have another one. Then you can let them say all of the terrible things you wanted to say to each other, kick back with a shot of tequila, and laugh.”

  From Louise: “My four-year-old is a giant turdcake. I can’t get her to leave the house without having to tell her thirty times to go pee, sixty times to wipe, a hundred and fifty times to flush, six thousand times to pull up her pants, and five million times to wash her hands. Don’t even get me started on how many times I have to ask her to put on her shoes. I’m talking instructions for individual feet. Get all your name-calling out while you can. Sam doesn’t know the difference. No one’s sitting in therapy bitching about how their mom yelled at them when they were one month old.

  “Give yourself a break.”

  33 Days Old

  Today my mom is taking me shopping for new clothes. I haven’t wanted to leave the house in anything other than yoga pants, since my stomach is deflated enough not to wear maternity clothes, but my prepregnancy clothes don’t fit me yet. We head to the mall.

  “Why are we shopping at a store called Forever 21? I hate to break it to you, dear, but you are no twenty-one-year-old chicken,” my mom informs me.

  “Do you mean I’m no spring chicken, or are you calling me a chicken for some other reason?”

  “You know what I mean.” She flaps her hand dismissively.

  “Their clothes are cute and cheap. I don’t know how long I’ll be this size, so I don’t want to spend a lot of money.”

  “I’m paying today,” my mom demands.

  “You don’t have to, Ma,” I protest.

  “I want to. Let me do these nice things for you before I become an invalid and you have to spend all of your money on a nursing home for me. Or you could always add a wing to the house.”

  “Ma! You are not going to become an invalid. At least not anytime soon.”

  “And don’t waste your money on a fancy coffin for me. In fact, just cremate me. It’ll be cheaper.”

  “Mom! Macabre much? I’m not going to cremate you. Isn’t that against Jewish law?”

  “I think God would understand me not wanting to be a burden on you.”

  “Oy. Let’s just shop, shall we?”

  “Fine. But if you do cremate me, at least find a pretty little vase with a secure lid. I don’t want to be in one of those tacky tins they put pets in after they die. Sweet Nebbie gone, and they return her to me in a coffee tin covered in whimsical paw prints.…”

  “Got it, Ma, no dead dog coffee tins.”

  I successfully manage to tuck Sam into my Moby Wrap, and I find myself feeling rather smug as I spot other moms pushing their babies around in strollers. They’re probably thinking, Look at that woman, how bonded she must be with her little one. How sweet. Or maybe they see through the charade to read the exhausted, blotchy expression on my face, the result of crying half the night as my husband lay snoring next to me.

  “That’s a nice one.” My mom pulls top after top off the racks, and I try not to veto every single one. It’s baffling how my mom manages to sniff out the matronly items available at Forever 21. “Ready to try on?” she asks.

  “How am I going to try on clothes? I’m wearing the baby.”

  “Take him off. I’ll hold him. You want Grandma to hold you, don’t you, Sammy?” Mom coos at the baby.

  “If I take this thing off, I’ll never get it back on. Plus, he’ll probably start crying, and then I’ll have to rush and stress out. It’s better we just buy them, and I can return the ones I don’t like.”

  As we’re paying, Sam starts fussing. “He’s hungry.” I deflate. “He’s always hungry.”

  “I made you that lovely nursing cover. Why don’t you use it? We can find a quiet spot.”

  “I’m not ready for public nursing, Ma. I can barely do it when I’m sitting in a soft chair with ten pillows behind me, a nursing pillow under him, and my bra on the floor. Let’s just get him home.”

  “But we’ve only been here a half hour,” Mom protests.

  “Unless you want him to suck on your boobs, we’re going home.”

  “In my day, they didn’t even encourage us to breastfeed. I couldn’t figure it out. My doctor was all, ‘Meh, that’s why they make formula.’ And you turned out fine.” She likes to say this.

  We walk toward the car, trying to carry on a conversation with Sam screaming in my face. “Ma, are we really going to have this argument again? I want to breastfeed him. Period.”

  “I just wish you weren’t so hard on yourself.”

  I’m starting to get that a lot.

  FACEBOOK STATUS

  Note to self: Probably best not to purchase ten size small t-shirts four weeks after giving birth witho
ut trying them on first.

  34 Days Old

  Zach wants to go out to breakfast today, a Sunday, which I am vehemently against. Breakfast restaurants are always annoyingly packed on Sunday mornings, and I flash back to the ridiculous hour-and-a-half wait times Zach and I were willing to endure during our hipster tenure in Chicago before we moved to the suburbs. Today we compromise and leave the house at six forty-five A.M., prechurch crowd, since I was already up anyway. Zach wasn’t quite as game to miss out on his beauty sleep, but I reminded him that beauty sleep died the day his sperm invaded my egg.

  With the amount of shit we bring into the restaurant, you’d think we’re moving into one of their extra-large booths for the next three months.

  Sam stays in his car seat carrier, and I almost manage to devour my entire Belgian waffle before his face turns from peachy sweet to roaring red.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” Zach is still not completely awake, even though he is on his third cup of bottomless coffee.

  “He’s hungry,” I say, sounding a lot like Eeyore. “As always.”

  “Do you want to try feeding him?” Zach has watched me struggle for nearly five weeks and knows not to say anything that might imply inadequacy in the slightest. But he also really wants to finish his omelet.

  “I could. I guess.” I’m waffling more than, well, my waffle, because the thought of other people witnessing my complete failure at momness is debilitating. But one of the many reasons I chose to breastfeed was to make Sam more portable and spontaneous. I have to try it sometime, and the restaurant isn’t crowded enough for all eyes to be on me. Hell, at this time in the morning the only eyes on me are from senior citizens who woke up earlier than we did. “Can you hand me the nursing cover?” I ask as I gingerly unlatch Sam’s seat belt. Zach digs through the diaper bag and pulls something out.

  “This?”

  “That’s a blanket.”

  He dives in again and holds up another item. “This?”

  “That’s another blanket.”

  Three blankets later: “How many blankets do we need in here?” he laments. Zach manages to find the nursing cover my mom made for me out of old Strawberry Shortcake sheets from my childhood bedroom. Attached is an adjustable strap I throw around my neck to hold the cover on, and she even thought to fill the lip of the cover with a bendable wire to give it a tentlike stiffness.