Wiped!

by Rebecca Eckler

  But we also take pictures of the baby naked. Or we put a cell phone next to her ear and think it’s adorable and snap away. We put stuffed animals by her and think it’s the funniest thing we’ve ever seen. We take rolls upon rolls of pictures of the baby, who does nothing but eat, sleep, pee, and poo. I then ask the Fiancé to take them in and get triples. We have piles of photographs of the baby on countertops, on bookshelves, on end tables. We have yet to put any of them in the many photo albums we received as presents. I put that on my “must do” list, along with figuring out how to use the Diaper Genie, getting skinny again, being more patient with the in-laws, remembering to use shampoo next time I take a shower, and maybe shaving my legs.

  7 P.M.

  I realize that tomorrow will mark six weeks since I had the C-section. I can start working out! Tomorrow I can also have sex. It will be six weeks since the baby came into our lives. It only feels like six years since she came into our lives. It also feels like six years since I’ve gotten laid.

  8 P.M.

  “I can’t have sex,” I tell the Fiancé. Technically I can. I just don’t wanna.

  “I know,” he says.

  “I can’t have sex for another three weeks or so. I really want to, but I can’t. Doctor’s orders,” I tell him, acting like I’m sad about the whole thing.

  I’m not though. Well, I’d like to have sex. I just don’t want to be seen naked and have sex. How could I possibly want to be naked when I feel so not sexy? Who would even want to have sex with me? And how can I have sex when I’m so tired? I suppose I could just lie there.

  I had to say something about us not having sex. It’s been almost two months since we’ve been intimate. I feel like the Fiancé and I are losing that close feeling couples have, that you can only get back after a passionate night (or ten minutes) in bed. I needed to say something. It’s like the Fiancé has become my roommate. This thought saddens me. But not enough to want to get naked and have sex.

  I know that guys like to have sex. Heck, I even like(d) to have sex. I only feel slightly guilty lying to him about the doctor’s orders. Am I the only woman to add on an extra few weeks to when the doctor said was an okay time to get back at it? There is no way I could climb on top of him looking like this. I could hurt him. And there is no way I want him to grab my big ass.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “I’m too tired anyway.”

  Um, hello?

  The Fiancé is too tired? It’s okay for me to be too tired, but he’s not supposed to be too tired! You know your relationship is in trouble when your male partner is telling you he’s too tired to have sex with you, which is the female equivalent of “I have a headache,” usually a lie.

  Is it because I’m still fat? Is it because having sex is what got us where we are today—with a baby? Is it because he sees me as I see myself, as a gross blob of unsexy flesh? Is he worried I could hurt him?

  I’ve never met a guy who was “too tired” to have sex. Even though I don’t want to have sex either, my feelings are hurt.

  I head to the washroom to get ready for bed. Every time I open the washroom cupboard to get toothpaste or mouthwash, I swear the box of condoms we keep there is mocking me. I can’t stop myself from opening the box. I take out the condoms and count them. Phew. They’re all there. I know the Fiancé would never cheat on me. One of my friends who had a baby told me that she and her husband used to have sex almost every night. Until they had a baby. And now they have sex, like, once a month. I’m just being paranoid. It must be the post-baby hormones. I’m also being paranoid about the fact that none of my friends have called me back, right? And I’m being paranoid worrying that the in-laws are going to drive me mental for the rest of my life, right? It has got to be the hormones. Please, dear God, let it be the hormones.

  November 11

  10 A.M.

  I get my period. It shocks me, like I’m thirteen all over again and it’s the first time. At least I have a good reason now not to have sex. At least for a couple of days.

  I think I remember someone telling me I shouldn’t use tampons the first period after having a baby. Whatever. I’m already not feeling sexy, and a maxi pad isn’t going to make me feel any sexier, that’s for sure. I find a tampon and look at it like I’ve never seen one before. I kind of miss them, which, I know, is weird.

  I guess I can start having babies again. The thought mortifies me.

  “I got my period,” I say to the Fiancé, calling him at his office. It’s the biggest news, the only news, of my day. I want to share it with someone.

  “Congratulations,” he says.

  “So, when are you coming home?”

  “Good-bye!”

  I wonder how much longer I have before he decides to never pick up his phone when he sees that it’s me calling. Or maybe he’ll start getting his assistant to tell me that he’s in a meeting. All day. Forever.

  10:30 A.M.

  I take a shower and get into another pair of trackpants. I’m pathetic. I did get out of my sweatpants once, two weeks ago, when I was trying to look like I had my shit together. In the city I now live in, with my family—I can’t believe I have a “family”!—the government sends a nurse to your home a few weeks after you give birth. They say this is to see how the parents are holding up, but who are they kidding? I know it’s really to see how the baby’s holding up, living with us. Today is the day of our visit.

  I think, “What would a capable mother, one who knows what she’s doing, one who loves being a mother, one who has her shit together, wear for the visiting nurse?” My options are minimal at best. I had made the mistake of trying on a pair of pre-pregnancy jeans, which was probably the worst decision I’d ever made in my life. I couldn’t get them up past my knees. Had I really been that skinny once? I cried for twenty minutes after that.

  So I put on a pair of stretchy workout pants, which are slightly more fashionable than sweatpants. In other words, not very. The Fiancé, who came home from work for this appointment, or test, or whatever it was, is wearing a suit. “He’s so lucky to look so professional,” I think bitterly.

  I give our condo the once-over, making sure that it looks like competent parents live here, ones who are raising a baby in a healthy, safe environment. Is it clean enough? Will the nurse care that absolutely nothing has been babyproofed? Should I hide all my Us Weeklys and put out some parenting magazines? Will the nurse care that this condo still looks like a designer bachelor pad, aside from the baby’s room, which is straight out of the Pottery Barn showroom?

  I have dressed the baby in a brand-new onesie and sleeper. I am completely nervous. What if the nurse can tell that I am an absolute mess, that I have no idea what I’m doing, that I have no business being responsible for a newborn?

  “Fuck,” I say to the Fiancé when I hear the doorbell. “She’s here.” It’s judgment time.

  “Don’t worry,” the Fiancé tells me. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Hello. I’m Meredith,” says the woman at the door.

  “Hi,” we say in unison, and the Fiancé introduced us.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee or some juice?” I ask, thinking, “Please don’t want coffee or juice.” I am pretty positive we don’t have either. I do have a lot of formula though.

  “No, no. I’m fine. Let’s go see the baby,” she says, getting down to business.

  “Please don’t take my baby away,” I think. “Please don’t take my baby away. If you don’t take my baby away, I will promise to be nicer to the Fiancé, stop moaning about the in-laws, and give a lot of money to charity.”

  “Why don’t you undress her so I can measure her?” says the woman, taking a measuring tape from her bag.

  I nervously pick up the baby, which is weird, because I have never been nervous picking her up before. Holding the baby is one of the things I had been most paranoid about before I gave birth. But immediately, when the doctor had handed her to me, she just fit in my arms perfectly. It also wasn’t nearly as hard as I
had imagined to change her diapers. I almost kidded myself that I was a natural at this mommy thing when she first came out of me. And I was, for the first ten minutes, before she starting crying and I had no idea why.

  The baby started to fuss when I undressed her with Meredith watching. “Oh, God, don’t cry now,” I think. “Please don’t cry now. Don’t make me look like I don’t know what I’m doing. Don’t act unhappy now, of all times. You’re making me look bad!”

  “So, is she breast-or bottlefed?” Meredith asks.

  Crap. This is another question I hate. At least she’s a professional and has more of a right to ask this question than some people. Perfect strangers, when they see me with the baby, have asked me this. Though I’m completely comfortable with my decision to formula-feed, I’d learned the whole “Are you bottle-or breastfeeding?” discussion was one I never wanted to get into. You can never tell what people’s reactions will be.

  “She’s bottlefed,” I say firmly, with a “Don’t fuck with my decision” undertone. I am lucky. Meredith doesn’t seem to care. Well, not entirely.

  “Was that your choice, or was there a medical reason?”

  “Um, it was my choice,” I answer, again with the “Don’t fuck with my decision” undertone.

  My friend Vivian calls certain people breastfeeding Nazis. “I got two calls after I came home from nurses who kept trying to convince me to breastfeed,” she had told me. “I dreaded picking up my phone.” I couldn’t believe that people actually did that. Breastfeeding Nazis were worse than telemarketers. I wasn’t breastfed, and I, mostly, turned out okay. The Fiancé wasn’t breastfed, and he is a corporate lawyer, with four degrees. He really turned out okay. Plus, my friend Ronnie, who breastfed all three of her children, was constantly complaining about her sagging boobs. “They’re ruined for life,” she’s always moaning, and she wonders how she can save money to get a boob job. She also wants a tummy tuck, but that’s another issue.

  Not that the possibility of sagging breasts was the reason I had decided not to breastfeed. Well, that wasn’t the sole reason. What can I say? I like my breasts.

  The checkup goes fine. I guess we pass, because Meredith packs up her things and says she is heading off, but not before asking us if we have any questions for her. Once again, the Fiancé and I have nothing prepared to ask. Meredith looks at us expectantly. I feel bad. I make a mental note to think up questions to ask these professionals, who always want to know if we have any questions. I kind of think it makes us look bad, you know, the fact that we never have anything to ask about our baby (although it would be nice if someone we knew could tell us how the Diaper Bitch works).

  We should have a million questions, shouldn’t we? We really should. Shouldn’t we?

  November 14

  9 A.M.

  I wake up to hear laughter in the kitchen. I wonder who could be here at this hour, aside from Nanny Mimi and the baby, who definitely doesn’t laugh. As I head down the hallway toward the kitchen, I recognize the voice. It’s the mother-in-law.

  As soon as I walk into the kitchen, she starts explaining that she just stopped by to drop off some new undershirts that she had bought for the baby. Maybe she’s aware that I don’t exactly love these surprise drop-ins because she’s telling me why she’s here and I haven’t even asked.

  This is the fourth time she just “had to stop by to drop something off for the baby” in the last week.

  I say a grumpy hello, grab my cell phone, and head back into my bedroom. I’m still not a morning person, and I don’t like speaking to anyone before a cup of coffee. I don’t like it either that the mother-in-law seems to get along better with the nanny than I do. I’m her boss! Nanny Mimi should want to suck up to me, not my mother-in-law!

  “Why doesn’t your mother just say she wants to see the baby?” I ask the Fiancé when he picks up the phone. “That would be okay, you know. She doesn’t have to make up an excuse and buy something for her every time she wants to see the baby. It bothers me that she does that.”

  “They’re just trying to be helpful,” he says. If I hear one more time that “they’re just trying to be helpful…”

  “Do you know what it’s like for me to not even feel comfortable in my own house? I don’t want to wake up to have them here. I don’t want to see people when I just wake up,” I moan. “Can’t they just call first? How hard is it to pick up a phone?”

  “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  “They’re your parents! You tell them they have to call first.”

  “Okay, I’ll say something, but it’s going to start a fight,” he huffs.

  “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a phone call before they come over.”

  I’m torn. It’s true, they do mean well, and they’re always happily buying things for the baby. They do make our lives easier. I don’t know why I’m being so unreasonable. I just feel like being unreasonable, that’s all. I feel like starting a fight with the Fiancé. I feel like being a royal bitch.

  4 P.M.

  Do all mothers dread weekends? Weekends used to be fun for me. Weekends used to mean sleeping until noon, going to a spin class, going out to brunch, taking a nap, and going out for dinner or drinks. Now it just means I’m going to have to take care of the baby all by myself for forty-eight hours. The Fiancé, don’t get me wrong, is super-supportive and helpful and will be with me for the next forty-eight hours. But for some reason I believe I can feed the baby and hold her and calm her down better than he can. Every time he picks her up, and she doesn’t stop screaming immediately, I take her from him. Every time he tries to feed her, I’m convinced he’s not doing it right. Every time he goes to burp her, I’m convinced he’s going to drop her. But maybe I’m supposed to feel like I know better. I’m her mother after all. Isn’t it true that mothers know best?

  “So, when are you going to be home?” I ask when I call the Fiancé.

  “Beck…”

  “What? I’m just asking when you’re going to be home. I’m allowed to ask you a question, aren’t I?”

  “Soon. I’ll be home soon.”

  “Okay, good. See you soon.”

  It was only the fifth time today I’ve asked him that question. I think I’m progressing.

  8 P.M.

  We had decided to meet friends for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We now only seem to go out to eat ethnic foods, which I like, don’t get me wrong. But mostly the reason we go to these types of restaurants is because they’re always full of customers, which means they’re always loud. If the baby acts up, we feel less guilty about it. Plus, all the action in these noisy restaurants tires her out, so she sleeps. Luckily, the baby sleeps through the entire dinner, which is a blessing. I barely eat anything and stay away from all the fried foods. I think I’m getting used to feeling like I’m always starving. I know that all doctors would tell me that the way I’m dieting is unhealthy. But I don’t care. I just want to lose the damn weight already.

  “Stop!” I yell at the Fiancé as we’re driving home.

  “What?” he says.

  “You just went through a red light!”

  “I did?”

  “Yes!”

  “Oh God, I’m so tired,” he moans.

  “Be careful! God, we have a baby here!” I say.

  I’m starting to understand those BABY ON BOARD bumper stickers. Not that I’m ever going to get one. Please. I’m not that type of person.

  8:02 P.M.

  “Stop!”

  “Shit!”

  “You did it again!” I cry.

  “I didn’t even see that stop sign!”

  “We’re going to die,” I moan. “We’re going to die!”

  “I really shouldn’t be driving.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  I laugh, though. And so does the Fiancé. It’s the first time we have laughed together in a while, even if it’s because we could have gotten into a car accident. Maybe I am the type of person who would drive around with
a BABY ON BOARD bumper sticker. You know, they’re not a bad idea. Not at all. I know now that what the signs really mean is “Sleep-deprived parent behind the wheel. Watch out!”

  8:15 P.M.

  We’re at home. It’s a miracle. I wonder how many traffic accidents are a result of sleep-deprived parents of newborns driving. I open the back door and take the baby, in her car seat, out of the car. I feel like kissing the concrete floor of the underground parking garage. But I don’t want to make the Fiancé feel worse than he already does about almost killing us, so I just silently thank God we’re alive.

  “Are you going to take her out of the car seat?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  I can’t believe the baby has been sleeping so long.

  “I just hope she doesn’t get used to sleeping in the car seat,” the Fiancé says.

  It’s true. The baby spends more time sleeping in the car seat than anywhere else. She just seems to like it better than her comfortable crib, which cost a small fortune, and her bassinet, which is so soft that if I were smaller, I’d sleep in it.

  “Do you really care where she sleeps as long as she sleeps?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Thought so.”

  9:30 P.M.

  We’re both in bed.

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am to be in bed,” the Fiancé says.

  “Me too.” The baby woke up for a feeding and we changed her diaper and her sleeper. We played around with her a bit and then she started getting cranky. We put her in the swing and she fell asleep. She spends a lot of time sleeping in the swing, too, come to think of it. I’m okay with that, as long as she sleeps.

  “Maybe she’ll sleep through the night,” the Fiancé says.

  “Don’t say that! Why the fuck did you have to say that?”

  “What? What did I say?”

  “You said, ‘Maybe she’ll sleep through the night.’ You’ve just jinxed it.”

  I’ve learned never to think, let alone say, “Maybe this will be the night she sleeps through,” because as soon as I do say it, or even think it, she starts screaming bloody murder.