First poop. I mean mine. Friends warned me that the first poop after giving birth was like shitting a ball of barbed wire. Kewl. It would definitely hurt my tender parts. It was a massacre down there. I bent over with a mirror to see. I had three stitches. (Unless you’re a raging whore with a Grand Canyon kookah, you will rip or get cut.) It looked like I’d torn a second vagina. Taking a dump would be like tearing a second anus. It was still really sore, too. I didn’t eat the day I gave birth and not much of anything the day after. So I didn’t have to face this battle until the fourth day. I had to psyche myself up like a soldier going into battle. I entered the bathroom, aka my torture chamber. I sat down, gripped the rim with both hands, and struggled with it. I wasn’t afraid of popping a hemorrhoid anymore. But I was afraid to tear my stitches. I’d had a baby. I’d been to the bloody wars. In the end, I got it out. It might sound crazy, but this was a huge accomplishment. I felt like a weight was taken off my . . . butthole? I might’ve cried with relief. My ass hurt for hours after, though.
First diaper change. Again, I mean me! After giving birth, you aren’t allowed to just wipe with normal toilet paper. You have to spray yourself down with an iodine wash to clean the stitches, then pat dry with special cold wipes. It was a ten-minute routine every time I peed. I wore brick-sized pads that had to be changed every hour. My lady parts ached for days, so I put ice cubes on the pad to numb them.
Lorenzo’s First Year
Lorenzo’s first minutes in a comfortable cocoon.
I could stare at him forever while he sleeps. He’s beautiful.
We’re basically twins!
With my twin in the morning.
Mommy loves you forever and ever. You’ll always be my baby.
Bathing in the sink!
My Christmas present!
He didn’t cry with Santa Claus. That’s my boy!
Our first Christmas picture. Many more to come through the years, and I can’t wait.
Ringing in 2013 with my family! So much better than being drunk at a club. Oh, how times change!
When Lorenzo started smiling, it was amazing. Now he doesn’t stop smiling! He’s such a happy baby.
Sleeping Beauty
My baby was so tiny! Time flies!
Family vacation in Florida—Lorenzo is 4 months old.
I’m not just saying this ‘cause he’s my baby, but I have the CUTEST baby ever!
My little business man!
Lorenzo’s first diaper change. We put it on backwards. Not that it mattered. He splattered it with his yellow curds five seconds later, and we had to do it all over again. I worried I’d be grossed out (I didn’t have a good track record when it came to changing diapers), but I loved Lorenzo’s poop. So did Jionni. We fought over who got to change him.
First look at myself naked. Scary! I got fat while pregnant, yeah. My attitude was, So what? I knew I’d take it off later, after the baby was born. Well, later had arrived. I’d given birth, but my belly was still round. I still had hot flashes, felt sore, and was leaking crazy fluids. Pregnancy hormones had made my hair thick during the pregnancy. Now they were diminishing and my hair was falling out! The shower drain looked like it was clogged with a guinea pig. The bloat from water retention was going down. I had the soaking wet sheets from night sweats to prove it. But I still felt huge. My engorged boobs were absurd. If I auditioned for a porn movie, the director would say, “Sorry, hon, but your tits are too big.” That big. My belly sagged like a punctured soccer ball. I could store a week’s groceries in my mommy pouch. The stretch marks on my boobs and belly were red and angry. They weren’t going away anytime soon. I was only 25. I thought my body would bounce right back. Wrong. I don’t care how young you are. You need to have realistic expectations. I did manage to get myself back into shape—the best shape of my life, in fact—but I had to bust my ass to do it over a period of many months. (More on that later.)
First escape. My first hour of Me Time? I got my nails done. Jionni stayed home to feed and burp the baby. I felt guilty being away from Lorenzo, and called home to check in. As it turned out, Jionni took some Me Time, too, playing football in the yard and letting his mom do all the work. I didn’t care about that. But Jionni lied. He said he was feeding Lorenzo when he wasn’t. Sneaky hubbie. I forgave him.
First flirt. A week or so postpartum, the sexy feeling was slowly creeping back. We couldn’t have sex for six weeks, but I still wanted to cuddle! I was counting down the days until we could get it on. I tried flirting with Jionni. Making eyes and leaning on him. He was totally into Lorenzo and barely looked at me! I whined about not getting enough cuddling time. Looking back, it was odd how much I wanted him when I couldn’t do it. But when we finally could have sex, I wasn’t remotely in the mood. We didn’t get around to that for a few months.
First smoke. I blame Jionni’s mom’s sangria, which she keeps in an enormous cooler on the kitchen counter. The sangria taunted me for nine months of pregnancy. One day when my friend Stephanie was visiting, I had my first cup of it. I got a tiny buzz, and that made me want to have a cigarette.
I bought a pack. It was an impulse purchase. I stopped smoking with the snap of my fingers when I realized I was pregnant. I wasn’t really a diehard smoker anyway, it was just something I did when drinking. Welp, the pregnancy was over. I’d been so good for so long! I had no intention of smoking regularly, but I wanted to do something a little bit bad.
I knew Jionni wouldn’t approve. I’d never smoke anywhere near my baby, but I didn’t want to get in trouble with my fiancé for smoking at all. So I waited until he went out. My mom watched Lorenzo while Stephanie and I went outside for a cigarette. The first inhale was kind of disgusting. It stank! Did cigarettes always smell so foul? I was paranoid the smoke would get in my hair and clothes. I had like two drags before I put it out and went inside to take a shower.
The guilt! It felt like I had killed someone. I ended up confessing to Jionni.
His turn to get pissed off. He felt lied to. “What kind of fiancée are you? I don’t care if you have one cigarette, but don’t go behind my back,” he said. I learned my lesson. I promised him, from that point on, I would tell him whenever I did something wrong. That promise would bite me hard in the ass soon enough.
First spray. I tanned after a few weeks. It was like spraying on the pretty and brought me back to life. Mommies have to make time for themselves. Once a month, I take a day to get a tan, get my nails done, and have my hair done. I go to lunch or shop with friends. One day a month isn’t too much to ask for a happy state of mind. I want to be with Lorenzo and do everything for him. In order to be present and in the moment with him 97 percent of the time, I need my 3 percent of Me Time. You care for your baby by caring for yourself.
First night out with Jionni. You had to care for the relationship, too. Jenni and Roger babysat so Jionni and I could go out to dinner, have a couple’s night, and get some romance back. We brought a bottle of white wine along. My first sip? Blecch. It tasted funny. My tongue wasn’t used to the flavor. Just to confirm, I had another sip, and another. Two glasses later, I started giggling, then snorting, then crying about how much I loved my baby. I was right back on that hormonal, emotional roller coaster. Maybe I was a little drunkie, too. Jionni said, “She’s back.”
Meh. It didn’t feel like a return to my old self, though. That girl was gone (and by “gone,” I don’t mean wasted). When I watched the scene on Snooki & JWOWW Season Two, I noticed something I didn’t realize at the time. During the entire meal, Jionni and I talked about Lorenzo. We were out, alone together for the first time in a month, and we couldn’t stop obsessing about what was happening at home. When we got back to the house, we both ran down the stairs, and said, “Where’s my boy?” We chased Jenni and Roger away so we could fuss over the baby. Jionni looked at me and said, “I can’t believe we have a kid.”
More giggling and crying.
It’s been months since that night. We talk about other things now. The
laser focus on Lorenzo has softened. But whenever we go out, we’re counting the minutes until we get back home. We were two. Now, we’re three. It’s not that Jionni and I are bored with each other. But we’re both really into Lorenzo. Like, really into him. I’d missed people before. When I had boyfriend, for example, I felt depressed to be apart, even for a little while. None of that compared to the . . .
First night apart. I waited until Lorenzo was four months old and went to Los Angeles to do press for Snooki & JWOWW. But I couldn’t sleep. I was worried sick and wondering how he was doing. In the hotel, I slept like a baby all right—up ever few hours, crying. It physically hurt to be separated from him, like a body part had been detached. Every chance I got, I would FaceTime with Jionni and have him hold up the phone to Lorenzo just so I could see him and he could hear my voice. As soon as we hung up, though, the waterworks started all over again. Anything would set me off. A TV commercial about dogs. A Taylor Swift song. Other mothers with their kids. I’m not doing long trips anymore, not if I can help it. I just can’t do it. Longing for Lorenzo takes too much out of me.
Chapter 17
Moo
I’d heard and read that breast milk had the most nutrients and was best for the baby. So that’s what I wanted to give Lorenzo. Nothing but the best. But I’d also heard from a friend that breastfeeding hurt like a mother, which I guess was appropriate.
I have the pain tolerance of a mosquito, and I was hesitant to have my nipple sucked off. But I tried it anyway. Things didn’t go so smoothly. I grabbed Lorenzo by the back of the head like they taught me at the hospital, and shoved his tiny face into my ginormous boob. The poor kid didn’t stand a chance. His lips were searching and pursing, but it took forever for him to latch on the right way. But then he’d get detached and we had to start the nipple hunt all over again. Meanwhile, I was rearranging him, cursing and sweating. Jionni encouraged me. His saying, “Come on, you can do it,” didn’t really help. I felt like a complete failure for not getting the hang of it. I was determined to keep trying. “Breast is best! Breast is best!” I kept muttering. They might as well have piped that into the PA system at the hospital.
After we brought Lorenzo home, the latching on problems continued. No matter how I held his head, my boobs smothered him. His lips were too small to hang onto my nipples. We had a baby scale to check Lorenzo’s growth. Every day, he lost a little weight. I doubled down trying to get him to latch onto my twin planetoids. They got bigger and bigger, but the baby was shrinking. My frustration? Through the roof.
“This isn’t working,” I said, freaking out. “Lorenzo isn’t eating.”
“He’s fine,” said Jionni, annoyingly calm. “Try it again.”
I sat down on the couch, and repeated the routine I was taught—position boob, position baby head, contact, adjust—for an hour. My breasts were engorged to skin-splitting fullness. Some milk dribbled out. But Lorenzo. Would. Not. Latch. I weighed him obsessively, like every hour. When his weight dropped another half an ounce, I started crying. “We have to give him a bottle,” I said. He wasn’t eating enough, and the more I panicked, the worse it got.
Breast is best, breast is best . . .
For me, breastfeeding was the worst. Jionni wanted me to keep going. If you give a baby a bottle too soon, he’ll get the dreaded “nipple confusion” and never learn to latch on the right way. But I’d had enough. “Fuck it,” I said, and just gave him baby formula. He slurped it down. He was obviously starving. Never again would I let my baby go hungry.
I stopped shoving his face against my chest, and broke out the Medela breast pump I got from my baby shower. From that moment, I sucked the milk out of my udders with a machine—both at once—for 15 minutes every three hours for the next three months. I took my pump everywhere. Women had told me that, when they looked at their baby or even at a photo of their baby, their boobs leaked milk. When I looked at my pump or even a photo of it (I kept one in my wallet next to Lorenzo’s—kidding!), the milk faucets opened. Breastfeeding was, truly, a beautiful bonding experience. I grew to love my pump on a deep level.
It hurt at first. But after the first couple hard tugs of suction, it actually felt good to pump. It was a huge relief to get the milk out of my engorged ducts. The sucking action wasn’t continuous like a vacuum cleaner. It was rhythmic, just like taking alternate tugs on a cow’s nipples, one then the other, spraying into the bucket, or the bottle attachment. The intensity of the suction was adjustable. I kept it low for the first few minutes, and then slowly increased it to get the milk out faster. When it was on High Suck, my nipple would get as long and red as a grape. Not appetizing. They had three hours to calm down, and then the Girls and I would go at it all over again.
At full engorgement, my breasts were rock hard with milk. It felt like I was hauling a pair of bowling balls in my bra. If anything set them off, it was Niagara Falls on my shirt. Wet circles would seep through my clothes. I was shopping with Jenni at Mandee once during filming, and I had to ask the salesgirl for a paper towel to put in my bra before I tried on any clothes. It was the right thing to do and probably saved me some money. They have a store policy: If you milk on it, you buy it.
I figured it didn’t matter how Lorenzo was getting my milk, as long as he was getting it. In an ideal world, he would have latched on perfectly. It wouldn’t have hurt. We would have bonded magically. He would have sucked like a boss and we would have kept it up for a year. But that wasn’t how things played out. I milked myself for my baby. I made sure he got what he needed in a way that made sense for us. I definitely enjoyed burning a zillion calories a day (okay, more like 500) by manufacturing all that milk. So I didn’t do it the traditional way. So what? If people had any objections to that, they could SUCK IT!
Meanwhile, the greatest invention ever is the hands-free breast pump bra. I loved this. I’d slip the funnels into the bra and turn on the pump. I’d hang out on the couch, watching TV with a cold drink, flipping through magazines, and meanwhile, the pump just kept siphoning away. If a Martian flew down from outer space, landed in our basement and got a load of me filing my nails while a machine sucked white fluid out of my chest, he’d think, Earth people are friggin’ cray-cray. I’m outta here. I said to Jionni, “I could throw on the backpack and my new bra, and walk around the malls, shopping and milking myself at the same time.” He did NOT love that idea.
A major complicating factor of pumping: We were filming Season Two of Snooki & JWOWW. I had to cover my boobs when I was hooked up to the machine or lock myself in the bathroom where cameras weren’t allowed to go. I was thrilled when the season wrapped so I could air out my boobs whenever and wherever I wanted.
By the time Lorenzo was a few weeks old, I was pumping like a badass cow, producing all the milk he needed, and then some. We had extra to freeze for future use. Jionni said, “Why don’t you try breastfeeding again?” Pumping and then feeding did double the workload. Feeding him straight from the boob would remove a time-consuming step. By then, I was a lot more relaxed about the whole thing. The baby was a lot stronger and heavier after a month, and my boobs weren’t quite as gargantuan as when my milk first came in.
“Okay,” I said.
I put Lorenzo’s lips up to my nipple, and he latched on! I looked up at Jionni, tears in my eyes. We finally did it! No nipple confusion for my boy.
Lorenzo started sucking—hard. And my tears started flowing. My friend hadn’t been kidding. It killed! I doubled over in pain. “He’s ripping my nipple off!”
Jionni said, “That’s my boy!”
Huh? A father proud of his son for attacking his mother’s nipples? Not cool. I de-latched, and gave Lorenzo a bottle.
After months of watching Lorenzo guzzle my breast milk like it was divine fluid of the gods, I started getting curious about the taste. I heard about a restaurant in Manhattan that actually serves human milk to put in your coffee. My first reaction was that they’d have to pay me to drink that! Then again, maybe human milk tast
ed just like cow’s milk. Only one way to find out.
I didn’t actually sample my goods, though, until one night when Roger, Jenni’s fiancé, dared us each to do a shot of my milk. I figured, how gross could it be? It came out of my body. Then again, shit came out of my body, too, and I wasn’t going to chow down on that. But if my milk was good enough for Lorenzo, it was good enough for me. It’d be like taking a vitamin with all those “breast is best” nutrients, right? During the Depression, didn’t whole starving villages survive on the milk from one woman’s boobies?
I defrosted a bottle from our freezer stash. It was about a month old. We could have just licked it like a momsicle, but Jenni didn’t want a brain freeze. After microwaving it, I poured the milk into four shot glasses. We held them up to drink.
Roger, show off, downed his right away. He said, “It’s clumpy like mashed potatoes.” I should have nuked it a little longer.
Jenni shot hers like the pro she is. She said, “Like soy milk with a Splenda.”
Baby Bumps: From Party Girl to Proud Mama, and all the Messy Milestones Along the Way Page 11
