“What about the cord blood?” Jack inquired. At first, I thought this was some sort of weird Angelina Jolie kind of thing where Jack wanted to wear a vial of his son’s cord blood around his neck. Rather, he’d heard about preserving the cord blood, which contained the baby’s cells, so they could be reproduced down the line if the baby should encounter a genetic disease or serious injury.
“We can do that,” the doctor said. “It’s pretty pricey and the chances you’ll ever need to use it are exceptionally rare.”
“We’ll do it,” Jack and I said in unison. When I say we didn’t have extra cash to burn, I mean, we really truly did not have a dime to spare. We hadn’t been on more than a weekend vacation in ten years, our home was only half furnished, and we both drove early model jalopies. It’s not that we were poor; it’s just that quite a bit of our money was tied up in Jack’s business and, though we bought our home at a steal, we still carried a $250,000 mortgage on it. The house was actually one of our better investments, but it was also one of the economic realities that kept us bound. We could sell the house for a hefty profit, but not enough of one to manage two households. When the doctor uttered those two horrible words, “exceptionally rare,” we both knew we’d find a way to pay for the umbilical cord preservation.
Nurse Betsy immediately placed my detached baby on my stomach and wrapped us in a warm cotton blanket fresh from the drier. His arms splayed across my body and melted into me like a pat of butter sinks into a warm muffin. His ten little toes pressed against my thigh as though they were taking root. I looked at his little face with its spider of purple veins on his right eyelid and giggled.
“What’s so funny?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know.” My eyes welled with tears. “He’s just so cute. And he’s here. God, Jack, he’s here,” I sighed. No one but Jack knew what the hell I was talking about, but nurse Betsy was sobbing too. I wondered if she cried at every delivery, or if my son was just especially, touchingly beautiful.
“This is the sweetest baby I’ve ever seen,” she continued sobbing.
“Bets, you say that every time,” the doctor laughed.
“It’s true every time, you cynical old fart.” She swatted him with a cloth.
My baby’s face reminded me of Mr. Magoo at his angriest. All facial skin seemed to gather at his nose.
Nurse Betsy said her shift was ending, but she wanted to get me started breastfeeding. “He should nurse within the first hour of life, so let’s get him washed up and I’ll get you started.”
“I’m so glad you were our nurse, Betsy,” I smiled. “Thank you for thinking my son is beautiful.” She hugged me with one arm as she held my son in the other.
“I don’t think it; I know it.” She gave a giggle of a hiccup as she began washing her hands at the basin.
Jack and the doctor stood facing each other awkwardly. They shook hands and bristled something at each other that sounded like a thank you, and an acknowledgment of thanks. The doctor stood motionless in front of Jack for a few more seconds, seemingly waiting for something. Are we supposed to tip him? I wondered. “Alrighty then, if that’s all. It’s been a pleasure,” the doctor said, dismissing himself.
When Betsy returned, Jack excused himself to make telephonic birth announcements. “Wanna see something neat?” Betsy asked.
“Well, I don’t know, Betsy,” I said lightly. “I just squeezed a baby from my body. I don’t know what could possibly top that.”
“This’ll come pretty close,” she returned. She placed the freshly scrubbed baby on my stomach and instructed me to resist the urge to lead him to my breast. “Open your gown all the way so he knows they’re there. Watch how he instinctively crawls to your breasts to nurse.” And sure enough, like a little inchworm he wiggled right up to my right nipple and clamped onto it. Motherhood was so easy, I thought, relaxing into my pillow. It’s so beautiful and natural. My miracle-of-birth, natural-wonders-ofthe-universe dream state was interrupted by the last thing in the world I expected to see—a television camera and a reporter wearing more base makeup than the drag queens at Lips.
My left breast was completely exposed while my son’s head covered my right nipple. His head was little bigger than Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl pastie, so I hardly took comfort in this shield. Before I could say, “What the hell is a TV camera doing in the maternity ward?” the reporter was in my room. They were there to see me, or more specifically, my son, the first baby born in the New Year.
“This looks like my exit cue,” Betsy whispered. “My husband has a bottle of bubbly chilled at home, so time for me to fly.” She kissed my forehead and told me it was an honor to be part of my “birth experience.” And with that, she flew out of my room, like an angel.
Posing a stark contrast to Betsy’s ethereal presence was a man with a plastic helmet of black hair and creases in his pancake makeup that looked as though they’d been cut with a knife. “We’re live at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village with the first New York baby of the New Year. Born—get this—at exactly the stroke of midnight. Not a second earlier, not a second later. How’s that for perfect timing?”
Far better than your intrusion into my first ten minutes of motherhood, sir. Can they just burst in here like this, unannounced? Isn’t there a privacy law that prohibits this? They’re lucky I’m not too vain and concerned about the fact that my hair is a big knot on the top of my head, I’m wearing no makeup, and my face is functioning at half capacity! They’re lucky I’m not in the witness protection program or some ultra-private Greta Garbo type, or they’d be in big trouble.
“Congratulations, Mom!” the reporter spoke his first words to me.
“Um, thanks,” I pulled the bedcovers over my exposed breast. “You’re not getting my boobs on film, are you?”
He burst into forced laughter and looked into the camera. “What a kidder! The things you get with live TV, eh, Frank and Jackie? “Who the hell are Frank and Jackie? Where the hell is Jack? “So, Mom, tell everyone how it feels to deliver the first baby of the New Year? Pretty crazy, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Okay, then, why don’t you tell our folks at home about how it feels to have New York’s first baby of the Neeeeew Year!” Where is Jack?
“I guess if I had to articulate it, I’d have to say I feel several different, conflicting emotions that are at the same time completely congruous, if that makes any sense. First, I feel such enormous relief and gratitude that my baby is here in my arms with me.” With that, my eyes flooded. “We had such a tough time, and so many disappointments, and now that I’m holding this baby, I still remember, but all the pain has washed away. I am so, so amazingly grateful that this beautiful, healthy baby is my son. I feel humbled, really just so humbled, but also proud, too. The human body and the human spirit are really so amazingly resilient. This is my fifth pregnancy,” I sniffed. “My fifth pregnancy. And it’s my first birth. I just want to fall to my knees and give thanks to whatever divine spirit rules this world, because I am so grateful to finally be a mother. I’m terrified too. This baby is so small and so vulnerable. All of his first choices are in my hands, and I want to make the right ones. I don’t want to make any mistakes, and yet I know I will. I just hope that everything I have and every ounce of my love are enough to make him happy. I’m so afraid that I won’t be a good enough mother, and at the same time, I feel such assuredness that I will because every bit of me instinctively knows that this is my little soul mate, and we’re going to be just fine. After everything, and after all the heartache in getting here, I know that we’re going to have a beautiful life together.”
That went on a bit longer than I’d originally planned. Not that I had much time to plan. “Was that too long?”
“Too long and too heavy,” the reporter said. “I told them to cut to a Chevy commercial right after all the stuff about your miscarriages. No one wants to hear that kind of thing on New Year’s Day, lady. They want something
more upbeat, more-”
“Crazy?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
“Lucy!” Jack burst into the room. “I was calling my parents and I saw you on television. You were great! You know, everyone in the lounge is crying and hugging each other. It’s like a scene out of It’s a Wonderful Life down there. Mothers are asking their grown children if every ounce of their love was enough and if they knew how much they loved them.”
I turned to the reporter. “I thought you said I was cut off for a truck commercial.” Turning to Jack, I asked, “What was the last thing I said?”
“That, despite your intense trepidation about the monumental responsibility and vulnerability of motherhood, you instinctively knew everything would be all right. Lucy, I’m telling you, you really hit a nerve. Frank and Jackie at the news desk were getting misty. They had to cut to a commercial because Frank couldn’t talk about tomorrow’s college bowl games without getting a flutter in his voice. He actually asked if they could take a break so he could call his mother.”
“Frank the Tank?” asked the reporter.
“You know it, man,” Jack said.
“Whatever,” he said. And with that, they left.
A new nurse entered the room with a decidedly different demeanor than nurse Betsy. She had a slit of a mouth that never curled up in the slightest, even as she spoke. It was as though she had a wired jaw. Her natural blond hair was pulled in a tight bun and her icy blue eyes completed the look of the Aryan poster child. She walked with such a military cadence that I swore I heard Darth Vader music accompany her every time she approached.
“I’ve come to take the baby,” Fraulein Helga announced.
“I’ve decided to keep him with me in the room,” I said, looking to Jack for support.
“Your hospital offers the rooming-in option,” he told her. It did? There was a name for keeping the baby in the room with you? Thank God for Jack. As long as I remained completely oblivious to his athletic good looks, his sweet charm, and his encyclopedic knowledge, this arrangement would work out just fine.
“The baby needs quiet to sleep.” Helga would have none of our nonsense.
“I passed the nursery ten minutes ago,” Jack told her. “The place was lit like a refrigerator and every baby was crying hysterically. Our baby’s asleep.”
“Babies need to learn independence,” Helga shot.
“He’s forty-five minutes old,” Jack countered.
I fell in love twice that night. First with the baby that had taken years to find its way to me. And second with the husband I’d spent years drifting apart from.
Chapter 11
Later that morning, I opened my eyes to see Jack asleep in a chair beside my bed, and our son sleeping in a Lucite bassinet beside him. The hospital dressed him in a tiny white undershirt, a blue knit cap, and a pair of diapers that looked too big. His legs were like little twigs curled into his chest where his head was also protectively tucked away. I knew babies didn’t sleep with their hands stretched behind their heads like Jack was positioned, but I didn’t expect my newborn to still be in the fetal position.
Jack opened his eyes, looked at his watch, and smiled. “Morning, kiddo,” he said. I actually felt pretty well rested. “I hope you don’t mind but when you told me about that trick nurse Betsy did with the breastfeeding, I figured I could just hold him to your boob and let him latch on without waking you.”
“Wow, and he just did it?”
I giggled, a bit embarrassed about being manhandled in my sleep, but more grateful for the six-hour block of rest. “So what did she do, just tickle his cheek?”
Jack nodded. “You know, Luce, that’s something we need to figure out today—what his name is going to be. We keep calling him, well, him.” We hadn’t discussed names because every time we had before, it made the loss that much more real. Whenever Jack dared to connect with my bulging tummy, he always referred to it as “buddy” or “little guy.” Now it was time for little guy to get a real name. “Hey, by the way, Lucy, the kid scored a perfect ten on his Apgar,” Jack said proudly. I already knew I was going to be one of those obnoxious boastful parents because, though I had no idea at the time what an Apgar test was, I was beaming.
“Do you have any ideas for a name, Jack?”
“I was kinda thinking Adam.”
“Your grandfather’s name,” I said.
“Unless you want to name him after your father,” Jack offered.
“Adam’s a good name. Let’s go with Adam.”
“Lucy, this is going to mean the world to my grandfather,” Jack said.
I sighed with regret that my own father wasn’t with me for Adam’s birth. Even with Jack, and the fast-approaching staccato of my mother’s heels in the hospital corridor, I felt incredibly alone without him. Not alone, I suppose, but incomplete. Anjoli burst into the room like fireworks with gifts in wildly colored wrapping paper and curly ribbon exploding from every side. “What a fabulous baby!” she pronounced upon seeing Adam. “What are we calling him, darling? My numerology consultant said Oyl would be a good name for his birth date and time.”
“Oil?” Jack asked.
“O-Y-L,” Anjoli spelled.
“It’s pronounced oil, though?” he asked.
“We’ve named him Adam,” I said.
Anjoli looked at Adam asleep in the bassinet. “That feels right,” she said. Jack shot me a look of relief that she wasn’t going to lobby for naming our kid Oyl, however it was spelled. He and Anjoli get along just fine, but like anyone else, Jack doesn’t particularly like having a disagreement with her. Anjoli never gets particularly contentious. Rather, she calmly piles on endless servings of New Age philosophy till you can’t help but surrender just to make the chatter stop. Jack calls Anjoli “the vapor” because she occupies every corner of every space she’s in. It’s not just the bags of assorted seeds, sprouting jars, and vitamins—it’s her energy. It’s everywhere. She’s in the corners of the kitchen ceiling, where streams of cobwebs need to be cleaned with a broom.
Kimmy’s entrance with a giant stuffed panda was followed by Zoe, who came bearing giant mums with blue ribbon wrapped around the ridged glass vase.
“Flowers!” Anjoli exclaimed. “What a lovely gesture, darling, but I’m allergic to flowers.”
Zoe, one of the few people who was not intimidated by Anjoli, told her that mums have no scent.
“It’s not the scent. It’s the pollen. My eyes are going to start burning any moment now.”
“That’s odd, I chose mums because I saw them at one of your dinner parties last year,” Zoe said, placing the vase on my nightstand. “Let me see this little cutie pie!” Adam was in my arms nursing again. He’d just woken up, but as soon as I put him to my breast, he dozed off again.
Kimmy asked if it was okay to watch me nurse. She felt awkward staring at my boobs, although a million home bound New Yorkers had seen a similar sight the night be fore. “It’s okay, except I’m a little nervous that no milk’s coming!”
“Colostrum, kiddo!” Jack laughed. “Your milk will come in a few days.”
“He’s from La Leche League,” I told my visitors, never imagining that in a very short while I’d desperately call on that very group.
Our first few days back in Caldwell, I felt as though Adam and I were in our own private universe. I woke up every two hours to the sound of Adam’s little squeals for milk. While the rest of the world slept, I sang songs through an almost fully functioning mouth, changed diapers, and nursed. On my third day home, I wondered why I insisted on feeding Adam while sitting in a glider chair. I brought him to the bed with me and we both fell asleep while he nursed. Much better. While the rest of the world was drinking coffee, jogging, and leafing through the morning paper, Adam and I were out. As kids walked home from school, we were on our third nap.
On my fifth day home, I’d spent an hour pacing, rocking, and cooing Adam until he finally drifted off to sleep. Then the phone rang. Adam screamed like
a siren, and I nearly burst into tears that we were both jolted from our muchneeded nap. I heard the familiar delay of a telemarketing call after I answered. Crackle, crackle, crackle ... “Hello, is Lucy Clean dere?” the voice of sheer stupidity asked.
“Who is this?” I snapped, knowing it was no one I wanted to speak with.
“Is this Lucy Clean?”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, dis Angela,” she said. “Can you put Lucy Clean on da phone, please?”
“Angela,” I lost patience. “Who the hell are you and what do you want?”
“Is this Lucy Clean?”
“No, it’s not,” I said, truthfully. After six days of motherhood, clean isn’t exactly the mispronunciation of my name that fit best.
“When would be a better time to call Mrs. Clean?” she asked. I suddenly had an image of a muscular bald chick with her arms folded across her undershirt.
“There is no Mrs. Clean! Don’t call here again.”
“Is this the person authorized to make the long distance phone service decisions?”
I fumed. Didn’t she hear my baby crying in the background? I wanted this woman dead. “If you ever call this house again, Angela, I will hunt you down and kill you and feed your dismembered limbs to wild animals and ...” She hung up. Strangely, I found the conversation extremely cathartic, as I was getting less patient and more furious with every sleep-erratic day.
Tales From the Crib Page 7
