Wiped!

by Rebecca Eckler

  Nanny Mimi mentioned to me that one of her friends recently had a baby and was miserable. Her friend would go to the mall every day and cry in the food court. One day she was crying so hard, her husband had to leave work to pick her up from the mall. So I know there are other women out there going through this. But that doesn’t make me feel better.

  Then there’s the Fiancé, who, even when I tell him that I can’t explain why I’m so sad or why I’m crying or why I just want to lie by myself in bed for hours, makes me feel worse because he blames himself and thinks he’s the one making me miserable. I don’t think I could handle making anyone else sad at this point. I’m already exhausted from feeling guilty about making the Fiancé sad about my being sad. So I haven’t told anyone really. I just keep taking my happy pill.

  Screw Tom Cruise, who criticized women for taking antidepressants for postpartum depression. He has no idea what it feels like. He’s a man and will never know what it’s like to have a baby. Just like I’ll never know what it’s like to have a penis. His views make me never want to see a Tom Cruise movie again. Except he is a good actor. And I do like his movies.

  2:45 A.M.

  I can’t sleep. I keep replaying in my head what I did to the baby on the airplane ride to Maui. Of course, I wake the Fiancé up to talk about my feelings. It was the first time I hurt my baby.

  It was entirely my fault. I had been lifting her up and down over my head and she was enjoying looking at all the passengers behind us, kind of like a game of peekaboo. Once we were in the air, the movie screens came down. But I hadn’t noticed the screens had come down, and I continued lifting the baby up and down. It was just my luck that one of those miniscreens came down right over our heads. I lifted the baby up, and BANG! Her head hit the movie screen. It wasn’t a gentle bang either. It was a hard bang.

  Of course, the baby did what any baby would do while playing peekaboo and then having her head bonked on a mini movie screen. She started to scream bloody murder. I cuddled her and kissed her, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” I felt terrible. I felt more than terrible. I felt like the worst mother in the world. Doesn’t the saying go that “a baby is an accident waiting to happen”?

  Here I was, her mother, the one who loves her the most in the world and is supposed to protect her from all danger, and I was the one responsible for banging her little head on a movie screen.

  I was also so completely embarrassed. I mean, there were only a hundred or so passengers sitting behind us who had seen what I had done to my baby.

  “Don’t worry, Beck. We’re in row four. There are only thirty-five other rows of people behind us who witnessed what you just did,” the Fiancé said.

  “Thanks. That helps a lot. That makes me feel so much better!” I said to him. The dozens and dozens of passengers in the rows behind us who had seen that I just bonked my baby’s head probably all thought what a horrible, careless mother I was. They were all probably thinking that I was not mother material. At the very least, they were probably thinking that I was an idiot.

  “Remember what I did to her back at home?” the Fiancé asks sleepily, as I fret to him while he’s trying to go back to sleep.

  “How could I forget?” I answer. “That was bad.”

  Two weeks ago, the Fiancé had thought it would be fun for the baby to sit on his shoulders while he walked around the condo. She could finally hold her head up well enough on her own.

  I had walked around the condo with her on my shoulders, and she loved it. So I’d told the Fiancé to try it. But unfortunately the Fiancé is about six feet tall. We hadn’t noticed, or rather we had completely forgotten, how low the ceilings in our condo are. It was fine for the baby to be on my shoulders, because I’m short. But when the Fiancé lifted the baby up into the air to put her onto his shoulders, her head banged the ceiling. Of course, she did what any baby would do upon having her head banged on the ceiling. She screamed bloody murder.

  Even though the Fiancé looked miserable and felt awful about what he had done to our child—he even looked like he was about to cry, that’s how bad he felt—I couldn’t help but grab her from him immediately, shooting him an evil look that said, “How could you do that?” while trying to calm the baby down. “Oh, poor baby,” I cooed. “Daddy didn’t mean it.”

  “I just feel so bad,” I moan to the Fiancé, “about bonking my own child’s head! How could I be so stupid? I keep replaying it over and over again in my head. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “You’ll get over it. It happens. You didn’t mean it. Go to sleep, please. She’s sleeping soundly. Let’s be happy about that.”

  “Do you think she’s sleeping so soundly because she has a concussion from what I did to her?” I ask. “Is that possible?”

  “Are you crazy? You’re being ridiculous. Please go to sleep. Everyone hurts their babies by accident. Good night,” said the Fiancé.

  Maybe the Fiancé is right. Maybe all parents hurt their babies by accident at least once. I remember my friend Jenna once telling me about the time she was pulling her nephew in a wagon. She kept walking and walking before she realized that she wasn’t hearing any sound from her nephew in the wagon she was pulling. She turned around and the baby wasn’t in the wagon! He had fallen out and was lying in the middle of the sidewalk on his back a half block away from her.

  I heard another story about a mother who was holding her baby and tripped down the stairs. Actually, I’ve heard a few of those stories.

  So maybe I wasn’t the worst mother in the world. You have to learn from your mistakes, right? The Fiancé has learned to look for low ceilings when he puts the Dictator on his shoulders. Jenna learned that if she’s pulling her nephew in a wagon, she should check behind her once in a while to see if he’s still there. Mothers who trip down the stairs while holding their babies, I’m pretty positive, walk down all stairs from then on very cautiously. And I have learned to always look to make sure there are no movie screens above my head when I play peekaboo with the baby on an airplane.

  February 3

  I wake up and immediately look at my pillow to see how many hairs have fallen out while I’ve been sleeping. There are at least a dozen strands on my pillow. I’m mortified. I feel like a middle-aged man. Middle-aged men do that, right? Then I immediately go check out my stomach in the mirror. The progress is slow. What can I say? I’m still flabby.

  After breakfast, we decide to head down to the pool. It only takes us about an hour and a half to get out the door. We take the stroller, bathing suit for the baby, diapers, wipes, towels, formula—everything we might need, and things we’re pretty sure we won’t need, but you never know. You can never pack too many backup pacifiers. You can never be too prepared when you have a baby.

  It will be the first time I’ve been in a bathing suit in public since I gave birth. I look at myself in the mirror before we leave the condo. It ain’t a pretty sight. I am wearing the same bikini I wore when I was seven months pregnant when the Fiancé and I came here on our last trip as nonparents, otherwise known as our “last vacation before we would have real responsibilities.”

  Yes, the bikini still fits, and that pretty much says it all.

  God, those were the days, when we could just lie out, reading books, and napping whenever we wanted. That’s not going to happen today, or ever again, or at least not until the baby turns sixteen. We don’t even bring books down to the pool. We’re always so tired that our attention span is, like, zero. Our brains have turned to mush. Books with words in them are no good. Magazines with large pictures of celebrities in gowns on red carpets? We can deal with those. Being a parent, I sometimes think, makes you stupid. It’s like the baby has sucked out all your intelligence. Plus, we actually now have to pay attention to the baby.

  We set up by the pool, basically taking over four lounge chairs thanks to all our supplies. It looks like we’ve brought luggage for a round-the-world trip. Under an umbrella, I undress down to my bikini. I
can’t stand my body. I hate how my stomach skin sags. I hate how my thighs rub together when I walk. I hate that even my face still feels bloated. Of course, I hate my ass. I’m convinced other people hanging by the pool are looking at me and thinking, “What the hell is she doing in a bikini? Doesn’t she know better?” in the same way I look at women I see in tight dresses or belly-baring shirts who really should not be wearing tight dresses or belly-baring shirts. You know the type.

  I put my tank top back on over my bathing suit and only take it off when I go into the pool.

  “Am I—” I say to the Fiancé.

  “Don’t even ask,” the Fiancé says. “You’re not!”

  “Well, am I fat? Do I look fat?”

  “You just had a baby!”

  “I know, but it’s been three months! Victoria Beckham lost all her weight in about four days. So did Heidi Klum. And Vivian lost all hers in a week.”

  “You ate a Big Mac every day for months and months. I’m pretty sure Posh Spice didn’t do that. What did you expect? I really can’t talk about this anymore, okay?”

  “So what you’re saying is that I’m fat?”

  The Fiancé doesn’t answer and instead picks up an Us Weekly. Of course, he would prefer to stare at skinny celebrities than at me!

  “I’m fat and I’m going bald and no one loves me,” I say.

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you, okay?” the Fiancé says while giving the baby a bottle.

  I jump into the pool. That’s the good thing about pools. You always feel light in water. In the pool, I actually feel skinny again. Even fat people float in water.

  February 5

  The good news is that I’m starting to “get” the baby. It’s like finally understanding a really difficult math problem. Suddenly, after you’ve been staring and staring at an equation, it makes sense. What I mean is that I’m starting to recognize the baby’s cries. And, somehow, I now can hear the difference. She has one cry when she has a shitty diaper (a vicious cry). Another type of cry when she’s hungry (a cranky cry). And another cry when she’s just being bitchy (an annoying, whiny cry). The Fiancé cannot decipher her cries, and he looks at me with inquiring eyes when she wails, and I’m like, “That’s her tired cry. She needs a nap now.” I can’t help but feel proud of myself that I finally understand this baby. I can’t help but gloat inside that I get her, and the Fiancé doesn’t. Maybe men don’t have an ear for baby cries. Which is amazing. Because when a car drives by the Fiancé can tell without even seeing it what kind of car it is and what year it was made, all by the sound of the engine.

  More good news. The baby is not eating and sleeping nonstop anymore either. I don’t know, maybe it’s true what people say. Maybe it does get easier after a couple of months.

  Sometimes I look at my baby and think it’s not possible to love someone this much. Maybe this whole having-a-baby-thing is rewarding, just like people had told me it would be.

  My hair, however, is still falling out. The Fiancé has started to recognize my cries, if not the baby’s. Or at least he’s getting there.

  “Are you crying now because you’re worried you’re going bald, or because you think you’re fat?” he’ll ask when he hears my sobs. “Wait! That’s the ‘I’m so fat still’ cry. Am I right? Am I right?”

  Usually I’m crying about both.

  February 7

  “This is so NOT rewarding! I need help in here! I need help!” I scream to the Fiancé.

  I’m in the washroom preparing the baby for her nightly bath. While the water filled the bathtub, I took off her clothes and was holding her in one arm, and feeling the temperature of the water with my other arm when I felt something warm and wet on my side. Yep. The baby had peed all over me. I’d been peed on!

  “It’s so rewarding, isn’t it?” the Fiancé asks as I hand him the baby and strip off my urine-soaked clothes, trying not to cry. The Fiancé is trying not to laugh.

  Why can’t anything be easy? I know it’s not the baby’s fault that she has no bladder control. I don’t want to scare her with yelling, “She peed on me! She peed on me!” It’s just slightly disgusting to be peed on. And who knew such a little bladder could store so much urine?

  “God, this is so gross,” I say. I know some women (and men) like to be peed on for sport, you know, as a sex thing. But I am not one of those women. Not even if it’s my own child peeing on me do I enjoy being peed on. I do not deal well with bodily fluids on me, especially bodily fluids that are not my own.

  I need to shower for the second time today. I can’t walk around smelling like pee for the rest of the night. But all I can think about is that all this showering cannot be good for my falling-out hair. Risk more hair falling out by taking another shower? Or smell like urine for the rest of the night? My two options are kind of like voting for a political candidate. Usually, you have to choose the lesser of two evils. I choose to shower.

  7 P.M.

  After dinner, when I’m freshly showered and the baby is freshly bathed, we are lounging around the condo. I’m in the kitchen when the Fiancé calls out. “Um, Beck?”

  “What?”

  “Did you leave the baby on her front?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because she’s on her front.”

  “She’s what?” I say, racing into the living room, where the baby is lying on one of those colorful mats, with toys hanging down from cushy bars for her to play with. “Whoa,” I say when I see her. As the Fiancé said, she’s lying on her stomach. She can roll over now. My child can roll over! And I missed it!

  Pretty soon, she’ll be crawling. God, everything is happening so fast.

  Next thing I know, she’ll be asking to get a nose ring, and to borrow fifty dollars, and my car.

  February 9

  I’m obsessed with a woman named Julie Aigner-Clark. This is a woman I had never heard of pre-baby. She is the founder of the Baby Einstein DVD line. The DVDs feature classical music and pictures of toys. All mothers these days are well aware of the Baby Einstein line of DVDs. Mothers put in these DVDs for twenty minutes so they can prepare dinner or clean up around the house while keeping their baby occupied.

  Like most mothers, I don’t really want my baby to watch more than twenty minutes of television a day. Yeah, right! I’m just joking.

  When we’re in our condo, I play DVDs for the baby almost nonstop. Is this wrong?

  My one problem with these Baby Einstein DVDs is that they only last, like, thirty minutes, which means I keep having to restart them. At the end of each one, there’s Julie Aigner-Clark, introducing herself and her Baby Einstein collection.

  Julie Aigner-Clark is a very pretty woman.

  I hate her.

  But not because she’s blond and pretty and has a very soothing voice. I hate her because she has come up with such a basic, brilliant idea, a product that babies and mothers love and that has made millions of dollars. I mean, really, I could have come up with the idea to film toys with classical music. I hate it when people come up with great, multimillion-dollar ideas before I do. Especially when the idea is so friggin’ simple. Of course, the fact that Julie Aigner-Clark is blond, skinny, and very pretty doesn’t help.

  February 10

  Our days in Maui are fairly boring, which is nice. When you have a baby, uneventful is a good thing, and so is boring. We get up, we lounge around, we take the baby for long walks, and hang out by the pool. One unfortunate aspect of our days is that although I know it’s bad, I like to suntan—who doesn’t look healthier with a bit of color?—but with the baby, who I definitely don’t want to get skin cancer and whose newborn skin would burn easily, we can’t stay in the sun for too long. I had no idea that you can’t put suntan lotion on babies younger than six months. I’m really hoping some genius out there comes up with a suntan lotion for newborns. Maybe Julie Aigner-Clark could create one. She’s obviously an idea person. Meanwhile, the Fiancé and I have to take turns. Mostly, we try to be in the shade, which
isn’t so easy, considering we’re in a sunny destination.

  I also learn that the baby hates hats. I force her to wear them, because everyone knows that babies should wear hats if they’re in the sun. And if your kid isn’t wearing a hat in the sun, trust me, other mothers look at you, and judge you, and think you don’t care about the well-being of your baby. I know this because when I see babies who aren’t wearing hats in the sun, I judge those mothers, like I can’t help but judge people in yoga who have dirty toenails. But keeping a hat on a baby is a very tricky process, mostly because my baby doesn’t like wearing hats. In fact, she hates wearing hats. I put her hat on. She takes it off. I put it on again. She cries and takes it off. I put it on again. She takes it off. We go back and forth like this about a million times a day until finally she realizes this is one battle she’s not going to win. I’m bigger and stronger than her, after all.

  Along with an adult pool, there’s also a baby pool at our condo. I like to call it “the Pee Pool.” Because along with the water in it, I’m pretty positive there’s a ton of pee as well. How many babies do you know who can control their bladders? And the water is unusually (disgustingly) warm. Exactly.

  Along with learning that babies shouldn’t wear suntan lotion, I’ve also learned what “swimmers” are. Swimmers are pull-up diapers non-toilet-trained babies wear in the water. (Another idea I could have easily come up with. Doh!) I have no idea if the swimmers are supposed to go on by themselves or over the diaper. They don’t give instructions on the package. Doesn’t the company know there are mothers like me who haven’t got a clue about these sorts of things? I put the swimmers over the baby’s diaper. I’m pretty sure swimmers were really invented to make other people in pools feel better about sharing water with non-toilet-trained kids.