Maternity Leave (9781466871533)

by Julie Halpern

  “What are you going on about?” my mom asks. “You will be fine. Nora will be here.”

  “No, she won’t. She lives in the city and has a job and a husband and can only come out here when she doesn’t have anything better to do.”

  “Hey!” Nora contests. I mouth, “Sorry,” and continue my defense. “You’re sure you can’t stay home just this one year?” I press.

  “Honey, my sister and I are getting older. It is important for me to spend this time with her. I have complete faith in you that Sam will be okay—even thrive—without me here. Plus, I’m going to take care of him when you go back to work. This can be like my vacation before I start my new job as Sam’s caregiver.”

  “It’s not technically a job if she’s not paying you,” Nora points out.

  “Just wait until you have a child you don’t know how to take care of, and Mom abandons you,” I tell Nora as I escape to take a shower. “And for your information,” I call back, “I had sixteen-foot-high brick walls built around the house while we’ve been sitting here, so neither of you will even be allowed to leave again. Get comfy.”

  75 Days Old

  Even the batteries in the carbon monoxide detector don’t want me to get any sleep.

  To: Annie

  From: Louise

  Holy shit turd and a half. What the fuck was I thinking having another kid? Jupiter is on top of me twenty-four hours a day. She won’t let me sleep. She keeps having nightmares and coming into my room. Last night I just put the baby down, which took me a good forty-five minutes, and I close my eyes for one minute before the apparition of Jupiter appears and says, “I had a nightmare about an Old Navy mannequin. I looked at it, and then it moved!” That is some freaky shit right there. And now I have another place I can’t take the kids if I need to run errands. Better off anyway. How many of those stupid stuffed animal balls can I buy from the checkout just to keep my kid quiet for three minutes while I bleed money?

  Hope you’re faring better than me in the sleep department.

  Lou

  77 Days Old

  I went walking with Sam today in the Moby Wrap. I listened to a particularly dorky Harry Potter podcast, although there’s only so much one can say about a book and movie series that I’ve read sixteen times and watched hundreds more that is even remotely revelatory.

  Then I realize that there will come a day when I can read Harry Potter aloud to Sam.

  A rush of joy burns in my stomach that I haven’t felt since his birth. Or before his birth, when I was hopeful and naive. I almost believe he will not be this age forever. At some point he will start to talk and walk and share in countless pop cultural milestones with me.

  I have something to look forward to.

  Sam and I round the corner, and I’m veritably beaming with my new discovery, when we run into the Walking Man.

  “Hello.” He nods.

  “Hi,” I reiterate.

  “Hard work there.” He addresses the lump in my wrap.

  “Hmmm?” I clarify, as I’m not quite sure to what he’s alluding.

  “Exercising with a baby. Good for you!” he commends me, and heel-toes speedily away.

  A future with Harry Potter and a compliment? Somebody pinch me.

  (But not on my nipples, please. You don’t want to know what I’d do to you if you did.)

  78 Days Old

  When I first became a teacher, I told myself I could buy one fancy thing with my first paycheck. That thing? A boxed set of all of the Monkees episodes in existence. The Monkees was my favorite television show as a kid, when they celebrated their twentieth anniversary and aired on several channels from local to MTV. My mom took Nora and me to a reunion concert when I was merely seven, and I cried when they sang “Daydream Believer.” At the time I thought it was a sad song, since Davy (may he rest in peace) was telling sleepy Jean to cheer up.

  I pull out the box set, untouched for several years, and pop in the first disc. Immediately I’m transported back to elementary school, when Nora and I danced around our living room to her cassettes and she made out with classic photos of Mike. (Never mind that the Monkees were well into their forties at the time of their reunion. They will forever be etched into our brains as the romping foursome of the TV show.) Sam seems to enjoy the sound of the show, and he gives an extra oomph to his neck extensions during tummy time.

  Could I be doing something right?

  79 Days Old

  Has anyone seen my ass? I seem to have misplaced it while giving birth. Or maybe it’s just reattached itself to my stomach.

  To: Annie

  From: Annika

  Ready for Kesha? I’m painting my nails for the occasion. You should consider some crazy makeup, too. Can’t wait!

  80 Days Old

  Some mornings, I love to see Sam smile at me, and I whisk him out of bed with a snuggle. Other days he’s so whiny and grumpy that I’d rather leave him in there and beeline for the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru for a finsky of Munchkins.

  81 Days Old

  Last night Sam was up five times. Five times. Five times of crying, feeding, and wrestling him down to sleep. When I’m that tired, the middle of the night is so scary. I remember reading Roald Dahl’s The BFG when I was a kid and he wrote about three o’clock being the Witching Hour. I am not supposed to be awake at three o’clock. Something happens to my mind, and it is not right. I am not right. My thoughts spiral out of control to a dark, terrifying place, a place I would never admit I go to anyone. I think about doing terrible things to myself, or to Sam, hating myself for feeling that way, hating Sam for the guilt and for coming into this world and making me turn into this monster. Picking him up from his crib and wondering if I can control myself from doing something atrocious. Feeding him without feeling love.

  Then morning comes, and I don’t feel as bad, and I make it through the day and Sam makes it through the day and Zach gets home from work and things feel like they might be getting better.

  And then it’s the Witching Hour all over again.

  82 Days Old

  “There are three bottles, just in case. You might only need two.” Tonight’s the Kesha concert, and it will be the longest period of time I’ve been away from Sam since his birth. The concert is in Milwaukee, which is about an hour’s drive from our house. Between those two hours of driving plus the two to three hours of the concert, I’m going to have to pump breastmilk in the car lest I get another plugged duct. I’ve never had to use the pump’s battery pack, and I’m nervous that it won’t have enough juice to suck the milk out of me. Not to mention the sheer awkwardness of having my boobs attached to miniaturized farm equipment in a car parked out in the open. I’m not as anxious about having them exposed near Annika; we had enough changing room shenanigans in college that it doesn’t seem all that strange. Plus, I’ll be wearing a cover.

  Half the contents of my dresser are now on my bedroom floor as I try to find something to wear that a) does not scream, “I’m too old to be here!” and b) fits me. I settle on a distressed, oversized black t-shirt, worn thin from my college days, and a pair of shorts that don’t squeeze my stomach too much but hang enough that they don’t look like mom shorts. I finish the look with green Converses, cool and timeless (although I know I’ll regret them later when my old-lady feet and back scream at me for not wearing more supportive shoes).

  By the time we leave the house, I’m toting my pump bag, backup batteries, empty bottles, a cooler, my boob cover, and enough makeup to cover a transvestite cabaret. I convinced Annika to drive, since with my months of minimal sleep I don’t know if I can be trusted to helm long car rides. And this way I can liberally apply ridiculous makeup along the way.

  I look up the concert venue beforehand and see there is an opening act. Based on previous Kesha concert reviews, I estimate we can get there around eight thirty and we won’t miss any of her show. I’m too old to be hanging out for an opening band.

  Annika and I arrive in Milwaukee around seven thirty
and grab a bite to eat before the concert. She regales me with tales of adventure and romance, delicious food, and mass quantities of alcohol. It doesn’t seem very different from our lives in college, except now she’s not living off her parents’ insurance. Since all I have to talk about is boring stories of sleep deprivation and boob pain, I let her do all of the talking. Around eight, we decide to find the venue and a discreet place to park for the breast-pumping preshow event.

  We drive through Milwaukee, down alternating bright and busy thoroughfares and dark and desolate industrial streets. I don’t want to park on the breast-exposing bustling streets, but I’m afraid to park on the empty ones because there is something sinister about abandoned buildings on unlit roads. I’d hate for the suction cones on my boobs to slow me down in the off chance I’ll have to make a quick getaway. We settle on a side street near the venue, kitty-corner from a well-lit McDonald’s but directly in front of a darkened assisted-living facility. Annika pumps us up with music from her iPad while I pump the milk out from underneath my boob cover. It’s all very surreal and odd and nothing I’d ever envisioned the two of us doing together in college. I’ll pretend the whole thing is subversive and file it away for parallel life performance art potential.

  I spy a disheveled man drunkenly wandering across the street, and I pray he doesn’t make his way over and knock on our windows. I double-check the door lock just in case. Luck, be a titty tonight! I manage to pump without incident (or so I hope; one never knows what may sneakily make its way onto the internet).

  When I’m finished (an ample five ounces!), I store the milk in my cooler, and we stuff everything in the trunk. “I hope no one is watching,” I say. “What if they think I’m stowing some kind of refrigerated drugs in your trunk, and they break in and steal my breastmilk?”

  “I don’t think anyone saw.” Annika shrugs it off, as she often does.

  “That breast pump cost over two hundred dollars. I wonder what they can get for it on the black market. And think of the boost to their immune systems if they drink my milk!” I’m laughing at my breastmilk humor, but Annika doesn’t seem, or even try, to get any of it.

  We drive around in circles in an attempt to find street parking. Annika is certain we can score a free spot, but I’m leery of the possibility of getting stuck in Milwaukee if our car gets booted or, worse, towed with my breast pump in the trunk. “Why don’t we just pay for parking?” I suggest.

  “Why would we do that?” Annika balks. I might have, too, fifteen years ago, but we are adults with jobs and there is a $20 parking lot directly across the street from the venue.

  “If you don’t want to spend the money, I’ll pay for it,” I offer.

  “It’s the principle,” she argues.

  “The principle is that we are thirty-six years old, and we don’t need to be dealing with parking bullshit like seventeen-year-olds visiting the city for the first time. Park in the lot. We’re going to miss the show.”

  Annika concedes, and we give my $20 to a shifty-looking man with a wad of cash. He wraps our bill around the rest and points to a space in a lot that I’m hoping is kosher and not just some dude collecting money and leading suckers into a tow zone.

  I’m suitably dolled up in face paint, and Annika looks doubly the part in preposterously uncomfortable-looking footwear. She staggers into the venue, and we scope out the joint.

  I remember a time when I’d wait outside for hours before a show to ensure my body was pressed immediately against the stage and every person surrounding me. Tonight, older and germophobic, I don’t want to touch any of the people here who seem to have started drinking sometime in the afternoon. Yesterday.

  We decide to use the bathroom before the show starts, my practical suggestion, and we find a line in the bar area. A motley crew of “older” women wait in line, all completely trashed. I marvel as a ratty-haired gal digs into her bra and extrapolates a pouch, similar to a Capri Sun, filled with vodka. I know its contents because she proceeds to tell the entire line about her purchase and how the drinks here are too expensive and the concert tickets are so expensive and I’m afraid she’s going to drop trou and pee on the floor, we’ve been waiting so long. Finally it’s our turn for the bathroom, a single, as it turns out, and I invite Annika in with me. It seems like the right thing to do in this situation (and by “situation,” I mean being surrounded by drunk Milwaukeeans also too old to be attending a Kesha concert and getting shit-faced on boob package liquor).

  Annika and I stop by the merch stand, and I take advantage of the babyless shopping experience and purchase a t-shirt emblazoned with a picture of Kesha’s cat, a Siamese bearing an uncanny resemblance to Doogan. I tuck it into the back of my shorts, and we make our way inside the hall.

  The concert is held at what was probably once a beautiful, ornate dance hall used for swank, polished events, as many concert halls once were. Now, as we stand close to the back so as to remain untouched by the seething mass of sweaty bodies, a girl vomits white goo not ten feet from us and, consequently, passes out. As her friends drag her away, I think three things: a) This is a far cry from the tux and tails this place once saw; b) Why would you get so fucked up after you paid for concert tickets that you end up missing the show; and c) Damn, I’m old.

  Kesha comes onstage, approximately the size of a Tic Tac from where we stand, and Annika and I spend the next hour dancing, sweating, and watching people slip on that girl’s puke. I’m almost transported back to a time when I felt free to dance and not care how I looked to anyone. Or maybe I cared a lot more how I looked, since I was probably single back then. Either way, I most definitely felt better than I did now: older, bags under my eyes, heavy, milk-loaded boobs inhibiting my dance moves. I wager with myself that I’m the oldest person in the room, until I spy a seventyish-year-old man. He’s not dancing so much as swaying, and for all I know he’s a child-stalking perv, but for now I give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s just an aged Kesha fan who doesn’t give a crap what people think of him. I try to follow suit and let the glitter fall where it may.

  After the concert is over, we haul ass back to my house so I can feed Sam before my boobs burst.

  I change out of my sweaty concert clothes, and Zach grills me about the show. I tell him about pumping in the car, the barfing girl, and Old Man Kesha. He tells me that Sam seemed tired, so he put him down after we left and he’s been sleeping ever since.

  Five hours.

  The second I put on my pajamas, Sam is up screaming. I nurse him and lay him back down to sleep. Two hours later he’s up again. And another two hours after that.

  I guess this is my punishment for taking five hours for myself.

  FACEBOOK STATUS

  I pray I do not look as old as James Spader.

  84 Days Old

  I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. Does it really count as waking up if I never really fully had a night’s sleep? If my life is a series of unfulfilling naps that fail to invigorate me? If I look ten years older than I did a mere three months ago?

  Do they have mom and baby couples therapy?

  85 Days Old

  Sam is twelve weeks old today. He smiles. He holds his head up to some capacity during tummy time. He laughs when his daddy makes silly faces. He plots maniacally against his mother each day as to how to make her life an aging, depressing, sleepless hell in which she will rot eternally for not knowing how to love this human she brought into the world. And he poops quite a bit, too.

  86 Days Old

  In preparation for her trip to San Francisco (eleven days and counting), my mom drops off the Costco case of formula she’s been keeping in her trunk the last two months. “Just in case,” she notes.

  “I’m not going to use it.” I grit my teeth. “But thank you anyway. Why are there some missing?”

  “My mah-jongg group was over, and we wanted to try it. Zelda was insistent it was going to taste like Ensure.”

  “You drank baby formula?” I laugh. �
��How was it?”

  “Disgusting. I mixed it with a little vodka, but that didn’t seem to help.”

  “Vodka and baby formula? So that’s why you’re always bustling off to a mah-jongg game.”

  “We know how to have a good time. What can I say?” Mom shrugs.

  87 Days Old

  Because of my, shall we say, lack of pleasantness (and because I look like a bulldog), Zach suggested we sleep-train Sam. He brought home a book called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, with a foreword by noted baby expert Cindy Crawford. I open the book, read two sentences, and throw it across the room. Well, I try to, but I’m so fucking tired that the book arcs downward in a pathetic rainbow.

  I have no interest in reading a book about sleep when I am not getting any. I give it to Zach and say, “If you want to help, you read the book. I might be tempted to club someone over the head with it.”

  89 Days Old

  Two days later, Zach approaches me. “I read the sleep book. Some of it. It’s a lot. The guy seems very focused on a baby needing sleep, and we’re doing him a disservice by going to him during the night. I don’t know if I agree with that.”

  “a) What about Mom needing sleep; and b) we?” Zach may be a great dad, but he is an even better sleeper. Not to mention his lack of mammories.

  “Hey, I read the book,” he tries to defend himself.

  “Yes, and you also got me pregnant,” I note.

  “Speaking of which…,” Zach starts.

  I don’t let him finish. “You want to get me pregnant again? Do you hate me that much? I can’t even take care of one kid, and now you want me to have two? This soon? My body won’t be able to handle it! I’ll go into the hospital and have to be on bed rest for months like Tori Spelling!”

  “Whoa! Calm down. I was just going to say it was nice making out that one night and see if you wanted to do it again. I’m not asking for another baby. I barely know what to do with this one.”