Maternity Leave (9781466871533)

by Julie Halpern

  Louise has a different approach. “There’s a website we use where you post what you’re looking for, and people get back to you. I have to warn you, though, that the more part-time you want, the fewer people you’re going to get.”

  My mom has agreed to watch Sam Monday afternoons, all day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, and Friday afternoons (in order to fit in her plethora of clubbing and gaming needs). The complicated process is compounded by Louise’s caveat, “We interviewed a ton of really sucky applicants. One was a guy, which, I must admit, the prospect of a manny had me blinded for a moment there. He totally duped me, too, because he looked all fabulous and coiffed in his profile picture. Then he comes over, and he wouldn’t even look at Jupiter. He had on a friggin’ Brad Paisley t-shirt and he was either seriously baked or coming off a bender.”

  “So did you hire him?”

  “Almost. But then we found this smart Ukrainian girl who was not wearing a Brad Paisley shirt, so we decided to go with her.”

  After I hang up with Louise, I’m even more confused. Fern paid tons of money, and her people are crazy. Louise interviewed a buttload of wackos before finding someone who seems okay. But how do you know even if they seem okay that they’re not some psycho baby stealer? Or a Brad Paisley fan? What if someone is wearing a paisley shirt, not a Brad Paisley shirt? Is that the same thing?

  How do people go back to work after they have kids? This already feels like the biggest, most complicated decision I’ve ever made. And I’m not even close to making it.

  107 Days Old

  Today I’m practicing filling out nanny information forms from various websites. They sure want to know a lot about us. I feel like I’m filling out college applications.

  * * *

  Family interests or hobbies: comic book conventions, science fiction, murder mysteries.

  Number and types of pets: 1 cat, ½ Siamese, all awesome.

  Will either parent work from a home office while the nanny is with the child? No. Maybe sometimes. You never know.

  Do you require the nanny to have own car? No. I mean, yes to drive herself to work, but no to drive Sam anywhere. Am I allowed to take her keys?

  Other requests: Please keep television viewing to a minimum, and absolutely no cell phone use while watching Sam.

  * * *

  With the answers I’m giving, I don’t think I’d even get wait-listed at my safety school.

  108 Days Old

  Sniffing out more nanny advice on Facebook. Someone suggested using Craigslist. Can that be trusted? Isn’t that where people go to find free pillowless couches and public bathroom trysts? Do I really want to find a caregiver for my son at the same place where I once got into an argument with someone after I posted an ad for a free stack of 1990s Rolling Stone magazines, and they were gone before I came home from work and had time to remove the post? I set up a videocamera for the next week just in case the complainant decided to retaliate. (They were free, dude!)

  Maybe I shouldn’t go back to work. Maybe it would just be simpler to stay home and take care of Sam. Clean the house. Do the laundry. Make the dinner. Because, as I have already proven to the world, that is so easily accomplished when I am home with a child. Plus, that would mean I would have to be home with a child.

  I don’t know if I can do that. No, I do know—I can’t. I love Sam, mostly, but I am not cut out to be at home with him twenty-four hours a day. I need my students, my colleagues, my classroom, my alone time in the car, my welcome-home time when everyone is so excited to see me that we scream and hug and laugh every day.

  That’s going to happen, right?

  109 Days Old

  I sat down and did the math of our lives. Without my teacher’s salary, the result would be no vacations, no takeout, no college fund for Sam or—gasp!—QVC money for me. I call my mom in San Francisco. “How did you manage to stay home with me and Nora while Dad worked? And why?”

  “That’s what we did. Well, some of us. Other moms wanted to prove to the world that they could bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “I have no idea what you’re saying, but continue,” I tell her.

  “Money went a lot further back then. Houses were so much cheaper. And, if you can believe it, I enjoyed being home with you girls.”

  “So you’re saying I’m a shitty mom?”

  “Did I say that? Who said that?”

  “No one.” I sag. “I’m just using you to berate myself some more.”

  “You get that from your father,” Mom says. “I have to go, honey. We’re going for dinner. Kisses to Sammy.”

  Mom hangs up, and I crumple my budget and toss it into the recycling bin.

  We can’t afford me not going back to work.

  Thank God.

  110 Days Old

  NO NO NO. People magazine posted a series of photos of a toddler Prince George and his nanny, and the nanny was picking him up and KISSING HIM.

  Did Kate die a little inside when she saw these?

  I have to stop with the nanny business for now and just enjoy my maternity leave. It would help if I weren’t so bad at enjoying my maternity leave.

  111 Days Old

  I am interrupting my complete and utter nanny panic to start freaking out about sleep training now that Sam is three months old. Maybe we’ll get him to sleep through the night, and my love for him can finally blossom. Feeling *hopeful.*

  112 Days Old

  Sleep training can kiss my flat ass. We are starting with a cry-it-out at naptime approach. I don’t know who’s crying more, though, me or him. I wish someone would sleep-train me.

  113 Days Old

  I’m officially over the cry-it-out approach (who can stand all of this crying?), so I spend the day driving around with Sam in the car. When he’s hungry, I pull over and nurse him in the front seat. When he’s cranky, I hold a passy in his mouth until he falls asleep. When I’m hungry, I seek out a not-as-fast-food drive-thru for sustenance. In fact, I make a day out of finding the best drive-thrus in a forty-five-minute radius from my house. Here’s what I come up with:

  • Steak ’n Shake. Shakes, grilled cheese, fries. Watch out for ketchup packet pressure accidents.

  • Dunkin’ Donuts. Good to know for breakfast-craving runs, although donuts have been known to start my day in a downward food spiral.

  • Sonic. Tots. Sonic Blast with Reese’s. Grilled or fried chicken (depending on how much I hate myself at that moment).

  • Deerfields Bakery. This bakery has a drive-thru window where you can order a smiley-face cookie. If only they also offered the service of Swedish Fish and matzo ball soup, I’d wonder if I’d died and gone to deli heaven.

  • Portillo’s. Chocolate Cake Shake. It’s a fucking shake with pieces of chocolate cake in it. I’ll go through the drive-thru on a unicycle if I have to.

  I’m never returning home again. If I keep eating all this shit, I won’t be able to get out of the car anyway.

  114 Days Old

  To: Annie

  From: Lou

  I’m so sorry I haven’t written in a while. Remember how I ended my last email with Jupiter and a stomachache? Turned out that my in-laws poisoned us (not technically, but I consider whatever they did poison because it was either their fault for serving bad food or they passed on some killer rotavirus), and the entire family got the shits, pukes, and everything in between. I’m talking every person at that damned barbecue, not just my family, which is why I’m finally allowed to blame the in-laws. Terry was almost defending his family, as always. I don’t get it. I would totally cop to my family tainting the hell out of my food, yet he feels like it’s some kind of betrayal to say two bad words about his kin. Please. Don’t tell me he wasn’t cursing them while seesawing on the toilet (do not make me explain what seesawing on a toilet is). Have you ever seen a baby projectile vomit? We’re talking Exorcist-level shit. All over the walls. Everywhere. It’s been over a week, and I know there
is puke somewhere waiting to be discovered at Jupiter’s sixteenth birthday party. Our house reeks. I’m seriously considering hiring someone to clean the place from top to bottom, but two things are stopping me: 1) Bringing someone in to clean would mean hours of me picking crap up off the floor first; and 2) I can’t decide if I’m embarrassed at what a hole my house is. Should I be? It’s not Hoarders-level disgusting, but it’s to the point where I don’t feel comfortable using the five-second rule if a morsel of food falls on the floor. Anyway, even though Terry won’t officially blame his family for our vomitous situation, he turned down an invitation to eat at their house for the first time in forever. I chalk that up as a victory for me. To the victor goes the lack of explosive diarrhea. Isn’t that how the saying goes?

  Call me if you get a minute. I’ll try to pry the phone out of Jupiter’s hands. Am I a bad mother because I let her play games on my phone while I read a book?

  <3 Lou

  116 Days Old

  Sam has been incredibly needy lately. More so than usual. He’s almost four months old, and I still don’t get him. Sometimes he smiles at me, and I’m not in the mood to smile back. Does he understand? Does he feel bad? Does he hold it against me, and that’s why he’s always crying? The more he cries, the more vacuuming I get done, so there’s that. And it seems to stop his crying for a bit, too. Maybe he’s already some kind of baby neat freak, and he’s developing obsessive-compulsive disorder and I’ll never be able to keep the house clean enough for him and therefore he will be miserable the rest of his life and spend all of his days in expensive therapy and counting the hours until he’s old enough to go off to college and leave us forever.

  Or maybe he just has gas?

  117 Days Old

  POSTBABY BODY REPORT:

  • Stomach is … there.

  • Boobs are ginormous and droopy, and my nipples look like they got into a barroom brawl.

  • I still have that black shit in my belly button. What gives?

  • Line of color leading down to my filthy belly button still there.

  • Massive pimple still on my chest.

  • My hair continues falling out en masse. I’m making a beautiful hair art sculpture on the shower wall. I may start taking pictures and posting them online. A blog about shower wall hair art. Has that been done before?

  I can’t believe how simultaneously bored/tired/stressed/depressed I am. I go back to work in less than two months. I don’t want to admit to anyone that I’m counting the days, but several of my coworkers posted on my Facebook wall after Sam was born and they all wrote variations on the same theme: “Time goes by so quickly, enjoy every minute of it.” “They grow up so fast. You never get the time back, so enjoy it while you can.” “You’ll blink and they’ll be in college.” “You’ll never want to go back to work.”

  As of now, it all reads like bullshit. These four months have been the longest of my life. I don’t want the time I’ve already had back if that would mean the lack of sleep and self-doubt that’s plagued me from the very beginning. It is super fucking hard to give every single ounce of yourself—your time, your health, your body, your previous life—over to a person you just met and who doesn’t seem to have any interest in giving any of it back. Am I the most selfish mother who ever lived?

  Maybe a relationship with a child is supposed to be like an arranged marriage: We’ll probably love each other eventually, but for now we’re strangers and have yet to settle into a happy life together. I click on a talk show to gain some perspective. How is it that there are this many people in the world who are not the father?

  118 Days Old

  I think I’m ready to have sex tonight. Not really, but I’ve been watching episodes of Girls, and they have so much sex that I’m reminded of that period in my life when I, too, enjoyed it. Maybe all I have to do is jump back on the horse, and it’ll be like old times. Or the bicycle. I don’t know. I don’t particularly want to have sex on a horse or a bicycle, but they’re both things you’re supposed to get back on. And darned if I’m not going to try.

  We manage to get Sam down to sleep after much screaming and soothing and readjusting. “Maybe he’s teething?” Zach suggests.

  “Maybe he’s just an asshole,” I say, and then have to spend the next fifteen minutes apologizing to Zach because he will never be on board with saying bad things about Sam. What is it with guys? Do they think they’re above petty blame and name-calling? Please. If they had half the brainpower and intuition that women have, not to mention one-quadrillionth the obligation and guilt mechanism, they wouldn’t bat an annoyingly long eyelash at a little harmless venting. It’s not like I’m calling Sam an asshole to his face (much).

  I try to remember what kind of look implies I’m in a sexy mood, but apparently I choose the wrong one because Zach asks, “Are you mad at me?”

  I sigh. “No, I’m making my sexy face. I’m leading you into the bedroom seductively. Pretend you can tell.”

  “Ah, yes, I recall that expression. It’s been so long, I’d nearly forgotten,” he says, smirking.

  We stand next to the bed and kiss. Pecks at first until we find our groove, and the memory foam of love starts bouncing back. We recline onto the bed, and that’s when things, shall we say, turn less sexy.

  Zach grabs my breast, which in the past would have turned me on in a manly, take-charge kind of way. Tonight? “Ouch. I’ve just gotten over a plugged duct, and it’s still sore,” I warn him. He switches breasts, and that one is no better. “No, not that one either. Sam latched badly the other day, and my nipple is tender. Maybe you should just stay away from the breastal area today.”

  We kiss and roll a bit, removing articles of clothing and giggling with joy and awkwardness. Then Zach slips his hand between my legs. “Whoa there!” I command. “I don’t know if I want your hand in that area. What if things feel weird?” I ask.

  “Like weird how?” he asks, sounding slightly disturbed. I’m a pro at the turnoff, I’m discovering.

  “It’s just that there were stitches, and maybe the area is a different shape or size. You probably knew it better than I did. I wouldn’t want to gross you out or anything.”

  “You just did, and it’s not because of anything I felt,” he points out, then clarifies, “I’m not thinking about any of those things. I just want to make love to my beautiful wife.” He lays it on thickly, and I vow to myself to stop sticking my foot in my vagina.

  “How about we get to the act? Maybe a quickie for the first go? You know, dive right in?” I suggest.

  “If that’s what you want, then I am not going to say no.” Zach doesn’t seem nearly as uptight about this process as I am, and in a second he’s on top of me. In another second, he’s inside of me, and … It’s not that bad. It’s not that good, either, but I don’t tell him. Maybe the ol’ vageroo just needs a few test runs to get up to speed.

  Zach is thrusting and moaning, and I’m happy he’s enjoying himself. I try to remain still, just in case anything down south starts to, I don’t know, go south. Several minutes of work on Zach’s part, and he stops. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I answer.

  “You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself,” he notices.

  “I’m enjoying myself just fine,” I say, not at all in a way that would convince someone I was, indeed, enjoying myself. “I’m just a little tense, is all. Keep doing what you’re doing,” I tell him.

  “I don’t want to if you’re not feeling it,” he complains.

  “Oh, I’m feeling it. It’s just … Never mind.” I shake the thought away.

  “What?” he presses, and I’m worried that he’s going to lose his erection and won’t complete the task at hand.

  “It’s just that I keep imagining you picturing a baby’s head squeezing out of my vagina,” I admit.

  Zach rolls off of me. “Annie,” he moans, and not in the manner of David and the QVC chocolates.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t completely
feel like myself yet. I don’t know if I ever will. My body has turned into a baby factory—making him, housing him, feeding him. My back hurts, and my boobs hurt and my face has aged about sixteen years since Sam came out of me. I’m worried that I won’t ever be as attractive as I once was.”

  “You are. You’re even more beautiful because you’re a mom.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re supposed to. I feel heavy and squishy and old, and I see Alfred Hitchcock staring back at me every time I look in the mirror. I’m glad you claim to not see it, but in order for me to feel sexy to you I have to feel sexy to me, too. And that’s not happening yet.”

  “I get it,” he says disappointingly. “How soon are we talking here?” He rolls onto his side and smiles at me encouragingly.

  “It doesn’t hurt that you want to have sex with me, so keep trying and hopefully one day soon I’ll be like a sixteen-year-old gymnast again.”

  “You were never like a sixteen-year-old gymnast,” Zach informs me. “Which is good because I’m not interested in having sex with a teenager.”

  “How about a twenty-something yoga enthusiast?”

  “I’d be happy with a thirty-something English teacher,” Zach says, and he gathers me into a cuddle.

  Instantly I’m asleep.

  I have a dream wherein I’m having decent sex with several of the characters from Battlestar Galactica (not at one time; they morph from one character to another, as people do in dreams). I take it as a good sign. As though somewhere in the future I’ll be having decent sex. Now I just have to make it happen with my husband.

  119 Days Old

  Nora spent the day with me and Sam, and it was a welcome break from the chaotic monotony of my life. Of course, after she left I felt like a traitor to womankind, but that seems to be more common than not since I became a mom and Nora is still trying.