Wiped!

by Rebecca Eckler

  Waaa!!!

  “Fuck,” he says.

  “I’ll go get her,” I say, like I’m doing him the biggest favor in the world. “I told you not to say that! I told you!”

  Don’t you just love being the one who gets to say “I told you so”?

  November 15

  11 A.M.

  Having a newborn is like going on the longest walk in the world. Sometimes I feel like the Fiancé and I are homeless when we go out for walks with the baby, which is what we do every Saturday afternoon now.

  We don’t have a destination when we leave the house. We just need to get out. We need to do something. One can stay in a two-bedroom condo with a newborn for only so long.

  “You know,” the Fiancé says, “before we had her, we never went on walks. Can you ever remember us going on walks?”

  “Not unless it was from the car to the restaurant or from the car to the movie theater,” I answer.

  “I’m now convinced that the only people who go on long walks are new parents,” he says.

  He’s completely right. The Fiancé and I had never walked so much in our lives as we have in the past couple of months. We walk and walk and walk, pushing the stroller, with no place to go. Not only because it’s something to do, but the fresh air knocks the baby out. In fact, I’ve learned that if we walk directly into the sun, it will force the baby to shut her eyes, and then she’ll fall asleep. There should be a book called Tricks to Get Your Child to Sleep. I’d probably pick up that book.

  “So, you want to go to the drugstore?” I ask the Fiancé.

  “Why? Do you need something?”

  “No. But why not?”

  “I guess we could.”

  “Okay, let’s go then.”

  This is another thing. I now make up destinations. I may already have two tubes of toothpaste at home, but I’ll walk with the baby to the drugstore convincing myself that we need more toothpaste, or we will one day. I mean, a person always needs toothpaste. These days I’m always too tired to read, but I’ll spend hours browsing in the bookstore and buying novels that I would love to read when—and if—I get my brain back. I may not want a coffee, but I’ll go to Starbucks just to kill an hour, with the baby beside me in her stroller.

  In fact, where I once noticed cute guys in drugstores and bookstores and coffee shops, now all I seem to notice are all the parents of newborns, who clearly are also out killing time, drinking coffee they don’t really want, and buying books they’ll never read. At least the in-laws offered to babysit tonight, so the Fiancé and I can have a nice, quiet dinner together, which is something to look forward to. We haven’t been alone, just the two of us, in a long time.

  When we get back to our condo, after getting a tube of toothpaste, a couple of magazines, and a coffee, I feed the baby and give her a bath.

  I like the baby today. She’s been good. She’s been an angel. I put her in her swing. And then she’s not good. She starts crying.

  Every time she starts crying, I look at the Fiancé to see if he’ll get up and get her. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he looks at me as if to say, “Your turn.”

  “You know,” he says, “she’s like a dictator. Every time she starts screaming, we come running. She’s a pint-size dictator. And that’s what I’m going to call her from now on.”

  “My Pint-Size Dictator,” I repeat. “Yes, it really does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  Later that night

  We’re home from dinner by 8:30 P.M.

  “Well, you guys didn’t go out for very long,” the mother-in-law said when we went to their place to pick up the baby.

  We had gone out for sushi. Our meal lasted forty minutes.

  It’s just that I missed my baby horribly.

  When Ronnie gave birth to her first child, she didn’t go out and leave the baby with a sitter, or even her parents, for six months. When she had her second child, she went out without him after two months. After her third child, she was going out after a week.

  I’d never had a problem leaving the baby. I mean, I only had a problem in the sense that right after I left her, I wanted to be back with her again. Why is it that after I spend the entire day with the baby, I can’t wait to leave her, but then, ten minutes after I leave her, I want to see her again? Why is it that when I hold her I want to put her down, but when someone else picks her up, I want to grab her from whoever is holding her so I can hold her again? Why is it that I can’t wait for her to fall asleep, and then, when she finally does, I find myself wanting her to wake up again?

  It’s kind of like whatever section of the newspaper the Fiancé is reading, I want to read that section immediately.

  Not only had I missed the baby horribly over dinner, I am also hating the fact that the Fiancé and I seem to have become worse than just roommates. We don’t have anything in common anymore but the baby, or so it seems, because that’s all we talk about.

  “Isn’t she cute when she wakes up?” I said to him over dinner.

  “Yes, she’s very cute.”

  “Doesn’t she have the most beautiful eyes?” I asked.

  “Yes. Isn’t it amazing how she’ll sleep all day and then be up all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “I just love her so much, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  I don’t remember what we used to talk about pre-baby. We haven’t seen a movie in months, so we can’t talk about movies. I can’t complain about work, which previously took up most of our conversations, because I haven’t been working. He never talked about his work with me before, because I don’t quite understand what it is he does. I can’t even tell him what books I’ve been reading, because I don’t remember how to read. My party friends don’t call anymore, so I have no gossip to pass on to him.

  We do talk about one other thing: my big butt. But that topic can only last five minutes before he tells me that “it took nine months to put on the weight and it will take nine months to get off,” and that just puts me in a foul mood.

  There’s no kidding ourselves. We have turned into, um, parents. I don’t think either one of us wanted to prolong our night out. He knew my mind was on getting back to see the baby. He knew I couldn’t wait any longer.

  The baby was lying quietly when I raced to see her, sleeping in her car seat on the in-laws’ kitchen table.

  “She was perfect. Just perfect!” the mother-in-law said. Why is it every time we drop her off at their place, the baby is perfect? Why is it she only screams bloody murder when the Fiancé and I are with her, and not anyone else? I think the in-laws were lying.

  The mother-in-law has also told me that when her son was a baby, she had “trained” him to never poo from nine to five, during the hours she was at home alone with him. I don’t believe that, and I don’t believe that the baby is always “perfect” when she’s with them.

  “Don’t you dare wake her!” the mother-in-law told me when she saw me hovering over the baby. Which immediately made me want to wake her. She was my baby—mine—and if I wanted to wake her, I would damn well wake her. Who was she to tell me what I could and couldn’t do?

  The fiancé sided with his parents on that one.

  “Beck, if she’s sleeping, that means she’s tired. She needs to sleep. Don’t wake her.”

  “Well, she wakes me up when I’m sleeping, so why can’t I wake her up when she’s sleeping?” Okay, I knew I was being ridiculous.

  “What are you, a child?” the Fiancé asked.

  I continued staring at the baby, and the second she made a movement, I picked her up. The in-laws and the Fiancé stared at me like I’d done something horribly wrong, like I’d murdered someone.

  “What? She was getting up anyway! I didn’t wake her!” I protested. (Unless me blowing air on her face woke her…)

  The Fiancé shook his head. The mother-in-law shook her head. So did the father-in-law. I didn’t care what any of them thought. She was my baby and I could hold her whenever I wanted to
.

  November 17

  8:15 A.M.

  I’m holding my baby, who looks like she’s been in a cat fight. Her face is covered with scratches.

  “What happened?” Nanny Mimi asks.

  “I don’t know. She woke up like this!”

  There’s nothing in her crib, where she slept last night for the first time, that could possibly have scratched her. Except her.

  I actually have a couple of scratches on my face, too, thanks to the Pint-Size Dictator. She’s a dangerous little thing, or she has been since her nails have grown. I’ve tried putting those sock mittens on her hands, but they never stay on very long.

  “Someone needs their nails clipped,” Nanny Mimi says.

  I find baby nail clippers, which we have, who knows why or how we got them. I hand them over to Mimi. “You do it. I can’t,” I say. I’m scared shitless to clip her nails. Her hands, and her nails, are so tiny. What if I accidentally cut off some skin? I never want to hurt the baby. Never.

  “We have to wait until she’s asleep, and then I’ll do it,” says Nanny Mimi. Why didn’t I think of that? Ahh, the baby’s first manicure. I have to remember this moment. I don’t want to take my baby out in public looking like this, all scratched up. What if people think I did this to her?

  November 18

  10 A.M.

  It’s Tuesday morning and I’m excited to get started on my day. Today will be the first day I’ve exercised in, what, nine months? I had meant to keep up with my workouts during my pregnancy, but I gave up after month four. I was enjoying giving in to my every craving way too much. I had done the math. I would have had to do eighteen hours of spin classes just to work off what I ate in one meal, so what was the point?

  “Hey, Mimi,” I say, “I’m just heading downstairs to work out for a bit.” Nanny Mimi is feeding the baby, and I kiss her on her forehead. The baby, I mean, not Nanny Mimi. She smells yummy. The baby, that is, not Nanny Mimi.

  “Okay, bye!”

  The one nice thing about living in a condo (aside from the fact we have a garbage chute in our laundry room, which goes directly to a bin in the basement, which means the dirty diapers get out of our place fast. It actually also means we don’t really even need the stupid Diaper Genie. Anyway…) is that we have a small gym on the main floor, which means I’ll have no excuse not to work out, once I get back into the routine. I’m going to walk on the treadmill for at least one hour and then go on the elliptical trainer for twenty minutes. I can already feel my ass getting smaller.

  It’s funny, but when I was sixteen I used to be embarrassed about my body. Then when I was twenty-eight, I missed that sixteen-year-old body of mine. And now that I’ve had a baby, well, let’s just say I want any body but the one I have now.

  10:15 A.M.

  “You’re back already?” Nanny Mimi asks.

  “Yes,” I say quietly.

  “Oh,” she says. She hasn’t moved since I left…five minutes ago.

  Uncomfortable silence.

  I could barely walk on speed 2.1 on the treadmill. Before the baby, I was running at 5.3. I suppose this is what eight months of lying on your ass and eating jumbo bags of Cheesies in bed does to a person.

  So I do what anyone else would do upon saying they were going to work out, only to return five minutes later.

  I lie.

  “I actually felt a little pain, so I thought it was better to stop.”

  “That’s probably best,” she says.

  Uncomfortable silence.

  I head to the bedroom and call the Fiancé to moan.

  “Well, you just had a major operation. It’ll take time to get back into the swing of things,” he says.

  Why does it seem like it’s been years since I had the C-section? When the Fiancé said, “It’ll take time to get back into the swing of things,” was he talking about me working out, or our lives?

  Even though I walked on the treadmill slower than a ninety-nine-year-old with a cane who’s just had hip-replacement surgery, for a whole four minutes, I’m exhausted. But before I can despair about the sad state of my body, Heather calls me back. Finally.

  “So, how’s being a mother?” she asks.

  “It’s great. She’s so cute,” I lie. Not about the baby being cute, which she most definitely is, but about being a mother being great. It’s definitely different. But I’m not sure “great” is the right word to describe it.

  “So, have you lost all the baby weight yet?” she asks.

  “No. But I just worked out,” I tell her.

  “So, are you ready to have another yet?”

  Gaa!

  “Another what?” I ask. Maybe Heather was asking me about coffee.

  “Another baby!”

  “Um, no. I’ve barely gotten used to this one,” I say. “I’m not even sure if my stitches have healed yet!”

  This baby has only been in my life for, what, almost two months? The funny thing is, Heather is not the first person to have asked me this question. Ronnie had asked when I was going to start trying for a second.

  “No way,” I had told Ronnie. “There’s no way. I think that’s it for me. I’m done.”

  “Wait. You’ll see,” she had said. “You just wait.” As if!

  “So, are you planning to ever get married?” Heather asks. Why is she asking me all these questions?

  “I don’t know. Maybe when I lose the baby weight,” I say, only half joking.

  I realize that getting married is no longer a priority in my life. The Fiancé and I pretty much stopped all wedding talk when I got knocked up at our engagement party. Plus, the Fiancé and I are living like an old married couple already. We don’t have sex. I call him a billion times a day, asking when he’s going to come home. I realize that not even my parents have been asking me when we’re going to get married. It’s all about the baby now.

  Anyway, most people, I’m convinced, get married only to have a baby. And I have a baby. Why do I have to get married now?

  Midnight

  The Fiancé is lecturing me like I’m five.

  “If you wake her up, you’ll have to deal with her,” he tells me.

  The baby has been asleep for hours and hours, and I miss her. I can’t believe how much I miss her, even though she’s right in the next room. I just want to hold her. The problem is, once I start holding her, I want to put her down after ten minutes, and once I pick her up, she doesn’t want me to put her down.

  “Fine. I’m not going to wake her. But she’s been asleep for so long now. I just want to hold her,” I tell him. “Can’t you understand that?”

  “If you wake her, you deal with her,” he says again, like I’m in a china store with the “You break it, you buy it” rule.

  I walk next door into the baby’s room. She looks so peaceful and cute I just want to hold her close to me and smell her. I’m not going to though. But she’s just so cute. It’s amazing that it seems I spend all my time when she’s awake trying to get her to go to sleep. Maybe if I just gently rub my finger across her cheek. There. Her skin is so smooth. She doesn’t move. Maybe I can gently pick her up without waking her. I slowly put my arm under her head. She doesn’t stir. Perfect. I pick up her entire body and inhale her beautiful scent, getting the baby fix I was jonesing for. No other baby in the world smells as good as—

  WAAAAA!!

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “I told you!” the Fiancé yells out. “I told you not to touch her, and now look at what you’ve done.”

  “I told you I’d deal with it and I will!” I scream back.

  “Fine!” he screams.

  “Fine!” I scream.

  “Fine!” he screams again.

  “Fine!” I scream back at him.

  It only takes three hours to settle her down. I’ve learned my lesson. Boy, have I learned my lesson. Never wake a sleeping baby, even when you ache for her. It’s not worth it. Especially when someone tells you “I told you so.”

  The Fiancé a
nd I are heading for a divorce, I’m sure. It seems we bicker a lot, and he refuses to talk to me right now. Not that I’m talking to him either.

  November 19

  10:15 A.M.

  Today I learned that having a child with a unisex name poses hurdles. We’re at the pediatrician’s for a checkup. I walk up to the counter to announce our arrival. The nurse pulls out the baby’s file, and I see the male symbol next to her name.

  “Actually,” I tell the woman, “she’s a girl. Rowan’s a girl.”

  “Oh, I never heard of that name for a girl. Interesting,” says the nurse.

  Interesting? What does that mean? Interesting in a good way or interesting in a bad way? I convince myself that she would have noticed that the baby is a girl if she had seen the pink blanket and her pink sleeper and her pink hat. But she was behind a counter.

  The nurse leads us to an examining room and tells us to undress the baby.

  “Totally?” I ask.

  “Yes, even her diaper.”

  Shit. The Fiancé and I look at each other. We didn’t bring the diaper bag. Instead, I had just thrown a bottle into my purse. I figured we wouldn’t be here very long. I undress her, trying to untape the diaper carefully to reuse it.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell the Fiancé, handing over the baby.

  “Where are you going?” he asks, alarmed that I’m leaving him alone with the naked baby on his lap.

  “I’ll be right back! I have to do something.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be right back!”

  Okay, I could lie and say that I was searching for diapers. The truth is I had noticed a scale in a room next to us. I hop on it to see what I weigh, since we don’t have a scale at home. The Fiancé won’t let me have a scale at home. Which is for the best. I’d be weighing myself every two minutes. So is it any wonder that when I see a scale I want to jump on it?

  I can’t believe this. I’m still thirty-some-odd pounds heavier than my pre-baby weight.

  Mortified, I go back to the examining room, where I pray the baby hasn’t peed on the Fiancé, because he’d be in a pissy mood.

  “I just weighed myself,” I tell the Fiancé.