The rent-a-nanny tells me the baby was a perfect angel. To which I say, “Are you talking about my baby?” I’m just joking. I don’t say that. I only think it.
“I’ve rubbed baby oil on her cradle cap,” the nanny tells me. “It was getting really bad. It’s practically gone now.”
“Oh, you did! Wow! I had no idea how to get that off. Thank you.” I’m really happy about this. I hadn’t really known what to do about the very dry, scaly skin on the baby’s scalp. It was disgusting. And now this woman has gotten rid of it. I don’t mind rent-a-nanny, even if she lies on my couch watching Sex and the City DVDs while my baby sleeps. Hey, at least she isn’t watching porn. I would definitely have a problem with that.
March 10
By seven-thirty each night, the baby goes to sleep. I’m in bed by nine-thirty. For the first time in what seems like years, I’m actually starting to feel healthy again, physically and emotionally. The spin and water-aerobics classes make me feel like I’m on my way to losing weight. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I don’t have a scale here, so I can’t weigh myself. I can’t believe I’m now falling asleep at 10 P.M., after reading a book for half an hour. I feel like an Olympian in training. I don’t even remember what it was like to leave the house at 10 P.M. to go out and party and not get home until 2 A.M. It’s sad, maybe, but you really do feel better when you go to bed early night after night. You do feel happier in the morning. I can’t believe these words are coming out of my mouth. Who am I? Have I really changed this much?
March 11
7 A.M.
Argh. Okay, I might now enjoy going to bed at an early hour, but I am definitely still not a morning person. I’ve never been a morning person. Even when I was six years old, I liked sleeping in like a teenager. Will I ever be a morning person? The baby wakes up at the ungodly hour of 7 A.M., and I give her a bottle and put her in her portable crib in the living room, placed in front of the television, so she can watch a Baby Einstein DVD. Thank you, Julie Aigner-Clark!
Maybe I should send her a thank-you card.
I fall asleep on the couch. If the DVD runs thirty minutes, that means thirty minutes more shuteye for me. My baby loves these DVDs. For her, watching toys on television is the most fascinating thing in the world. She watches these DVDs like men watch dancers at strip clubs. I don’t feel bad about plopping her down in front of the television. Hey, it’s not like she’s watching Girls Gone Wild or anything.
I recently found out that Disney bought Julie Aigner-Clark’s Baby Einstein company for millions and millions of dollars. So now I kind of hate her even more. I’m really jealous that I don’t have a business Disney would want to buy for even ten thousand dollars. I have to think of some idea for babies so I can become the next Julie Aigner-Clark. Yes, I am way too obsessed with this woman. But at least I know who to blame if my child turns out to be a television addict. I’ll blame Julie Aigner-Clark, that’s who. She’s the one who came up with the idea to film toys. My child’s television addiction will have nothing to do with me. Nothing at all.
March 15
“You sound sad. Is something wrong?” the Fiancé asks, calling me on my cell.
“My hair! It’s still coming out!” I moan. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have bald patches soon. “You don’t understand how much hair is falling out!” I continue. “I thought it would have stopped by now.”
“Beck, you’re not going bald. Are you taking your medication?”
Asking someone if she’s taken her antidepressant is kind of like asking a woman if she’s having her period when she’s in a bitchy, unreasonable mood. I find the question annoying and stupid. “Yes,” I answer.
“Do you think it’s working?”
“I think so. I don’t mind getting up in the morning now.”
“That’s a good sign.”
It is. The happy pills must have started to work. I still feel slightly sad sometimes, but it is certainly getting better. Life no longer seems devastating and pointless.
After I hang up, I decide to call Ronnie. Though I have told her about my postpartum depression, I know she didn’t suffer from it herself, so she couldn’t entirely understand, even if she wanted to. But I know she’ll at least understand my paranoia about my hair loss. She has three kids. So she must have lost a lot of hair in her lifetime.
“Oh my God. You don’t understand how much hair I lost,” she says when I ask her about it.
“Really? Tell me. How much?”
“Tons. And it came out for months and months.”
“Months? Months and months?”
“I clogged the drain in the shower. Seriously. We had to get a plumber to come in and unclog it.”
“Fuck.”
“Don’t worry. It will grow back. And then you’ll have these really ugly tufts of hair by your hairline when it does.”
“Fuck!”
March 16
The baby is lying on her back on her colorful play mat. She’s making the cutest sounds in the world, like “Gaa goo goo gaa gaa.” I race to grab the phone because someone else—aside from me—should hear these adorable, albeit slightly weird, sounds coming out of her. I call the Fiancé first, and his voice mail picks up. Oh sure, when something amazing happens, he’s not around.
“Rowan,” I tell my daughter, holding the phone to her mouth when the message beeps. “Make those sounds again now.” She remains silent, looking at me like “What the hell are you talking about, Mommy?”
“Hi. I swear she was just making the cutest sounds. You snooze, you lose. Bye!” I say into the phone.
Just as I put the phone down she starts making her goo-goo-gaa-gaa sounds again. So I call my mother, who, thankfully, picks up and gets to hear. She thinks it’s adorable. It is. It is the most adorable sound I have ever heard. I wonder what they hell she is trying to say. It’s like looking at a dog and wondering what it’s really thinking. You just never know.
March 17
It’s amazing what you learn to do when you’re alone with a baby day after day. I’ve learned that I can undo my pants, pull them down, sit on the toilet, and pee, all while holding the baby in my arms.
The baby doesn’t like when I put her down on the floor while I pee. This afternoon I took her to a restaurant I had wanted to try out and I had to go to the washroom. I couldn’t very well leave the baby by herself in the restaurant. I’m not that clueless. So I took her with me. I managed to hold her in one arm, and unbutton my shorts and pull them down with the other hand. It wasn’t easy, but I did it.
Lunch, however, was a disaster. The Dictator was cranky. Apparently, she wasn’t in the mood to go out for lunch. As soon as my meal arrived, I had no choice but to ask for it to be wrapped to go. I was getting evil stares from all the other customers, who were trying to enjoy their peaceful lunches. I swear I heard a collective sigh as I was walking out the door.
March 20
I can’t believe it happened again! Again, I almost killed my baby! She almost choked today, and it was all my fault!
I was talking on my cell phone, holding the baby in one arm, preparing to put her into her car seat, so we could go for a drive to the grocery store. I had given her the car key to hold to amuse herself and was yapping away to Ronnie. Because we have rented a car here, the key ring has a piece of paper on it with the license-plate number.
Still gabbing, I glanced at the baby, and realized there was only half of the piece of paper left on the key ring. “That’s weird,” I thought to myself. “Where did the rest of it go?”
Then I looked at the baby, who was making all these funny faces. I opened her mouth, looked in, and saw chewed-up paper all the way at the back of her mouth and on her tongue. I immediately dropped my cell phone and stuck my finger into her mouth, hooking the paper and getting it all out. She could have died! All because I was too busy gossiping to my friend and not paying attention to my baby, who, of course, puts everything in her mouth. I should know this by now. I feel like I almost had a hear
t attack, that’s how much my pulse was racing. I also think I’d better learn how to do CPR. The only good thing was that it was pure maternal instinct that made me stick my finger into her mouth to get the piece of paper out so she wouldn’t choke. Who knew I had that in me?
I checked the baby’s mouth again, just to make sure it was all clear, and put her into her car seat.
Just as I was about to drive out of the parking lot, my cell phone rang.
“What happened? Did you hang up on me?” Ronnie asked.
“I had a little issue over here. My kid almost choked on a piece of paper.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yes, she’s fine. I’m not so fine though.”
I was actually sweating buckets. I realized that if my baby really had started to choke, I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do. I really have to start paying more attention when I’m gossiping.
March 22
10 A.M.
My baby is ignoring me. Yes, that’s right. Only five months old and she’s already ignoring me. If she’s in front of a Baby Einstein or Barney DVD, she doesn’t move when I wave my hand in front of her face. She doesn’t even blink. I can rub her arms and she pretends I’m not there. Maybe television is more interesting than me. I’m starting to wonder if Baby Einstein DVDs are like crack. And if my baby is now an addict. She does look completely stoned when she watches. Her eyes get glassy. Or maybe she’s just memorizing. In any case, isn’t she not supposed to start ignoring me until she turns twelve? I can’t help but admit my feelings are a little hurt that she would rather spend time watching television than, you know, pay attention to me. Have I really become that boring that even a five-month-old thinks it too? I decide to turn off the Baby Einstein DVD.
Noon
I turn back on the DVD, so I can prepare myself lunch. Baby Einstein has turned into a great babysitter, what can I say? Who am I to fight a multibillion-dollar business? Who am I not to let my baby do what she wants?
March 23
My sweet-natured baby has turned into the Devil Child. She’s cranky and crying for no reason. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m losing my mind. So I call my mother and tell her that the baby is being bitchy. (I didn’t use the word “bitchy.” I said, “super-cranky.” I’m thirty-one and still not comfortable using swearwords in front of my mother.)
“She could be teething,” my mother says. Right! I forgot about that possibility. I open her mouth and look at her gums. Sure enough, the bottom gums look a little swollen, as if something—a tooth—could pop through any day now.
“You’re right! She’s teething,” I tell my mother.
Although it can pain me to do so, I have to admit that sometimes mothers are right. They do know more than we do about this thing called parenting.
March 24
It’s raining today, so I take the Dictator to a mall. It’s all fine and dandy until we’re on our way home. During the car ride, the Dictator screams for half an hour nonstop. I don’t think I’ll make it home. At least I don’t think I’ll make it home without killing her or myself. There is nothing worse than a screaming baby in a car, while you’re driving. It’s enough to make you want to check yourself in to a mental institution. Usually, when I take her in the car, I give her a bottle. But while I was getting her into her car seat, I dropped the bottle and it rolled under the car. After buckling the baby in, I looked under the car, but the bottle had rolled right under the center of the car. Even if I were skinny, there was no way I could fit under the car to reach it. Driving home, I so regret being lazy and not trying everything to get it. Because now I have a baby screaming bloody murder in the backseat of my car and she won’t shut up and there’s nothing I can do to settle her down because I have to pay attention to the road. It is quite possibly the worst car ride in the history of car rides.
“What do you do when your kids scream in the car?” I ask Ronnie later that night, after popping three Advils for the second time since getting back.
“Um, I turn the music up really, really loud,” she says.
“Oh. That’s it?”
“Well, I’d buy her some baby CDs. They like listening to those,” Ronnie suggests.
Ah, I have a plan—a destination time killer—for tomorrow. I’m going to buy the Dictator some CDs.
March 25
I see a tooth! I see a tooth! I’m excited but the baby is miserable. I’ve bought Infants’ Tylenol—bumble-gum flavor—and I give it to her every six hours. She seems to like it. And, I must admit, it does smell yummy. Some people don’t believe in giving drugs to their children. But hey, it’s Infants’ Tylenol, and why should I let my child be in pain if she doesn’t need to be? I believe in pain medication for pain.
I also give her frozen tooth rings to suck on, which she does, for about thirty seconds.
“So, how long does this teething thing last?” I ask Ronnie, whom I have started to call now daily with mothering questions. She is so much easier than a parenting guide. And, like most mothers, she’s only too happy to share her experiences.
“Oh, about a year.”
“A what?”
“About a year.”
“You’ve got to be joking!”
“No. That’s how long it takes for all their teeth to grow in,” she says. Ronnie suggests I give her watermelon rinds to suck on. I do. And it seems to work well.
This whole teething thing just seems unfortunate because she had just started being kind of good—well, not good, but not bad. The Dictator had started to act bearable and seemed happy, and now she’s teething and she might be bitchy like this for an entire year? A year seems like a very long time. A day with a cranky baby can seem like a year. So, if I do the math, a year of baby teething will seem like 365 years.
March 26
I can’t stop thinking about my friendships. I still talk to some of my friends on the phone, all the time, but I feel myself trying hard not to talk about the baby, at least to my single friends. “Oh, she’s so cute” is all I’ll say when they ask how she’s doing, because I’m not sure how much, or how little, they want to hear.
My friend Vivian says she never talks about her baby unless people ask her first. Sometimes, some of my friends, in thirty-minute conversations, don’t ask at all about the baby, which I find hurtful. I ask all about their dates and the parties they go to, and about their careers. Why can’t they ask about the most important thing in my life? But, on the other hand, I am becoming closer to Vivian, because she is a mother. I’m becoming closer to all of my mother friends, because mothers love hearing about your child and their progress, and I love hearing about their children’s progress.
So, as some of my friendships are getting stronger, I can’t help but feel the distance growing between me and some other friends. It makes me sad, and I wonder if this happens to every woman after having a baby.
“It happens,” says my friend Debbie, who recently got married and has a baby. “It happens even when you just get married. Suddenly, your single friends drop off the earth. Now that I have a baby, I don’t even get spam e-mails from some of my closest friends anymore. And these are friends I used to talk to every day.”
Maybe there really is a great divide between those who have children and those who don’t. I’ve now realized I’m on the parent side. There’s no fighting it. I’m on a different team now.
March 27
The Fiancé is back in Maui! It’s good because I’ve missed him. It’s bad because my two-month “vacation” is coming to an end.
“You look really good,” says the Fiancé when he walks into the condo. I had planned to pick him up at the airport, but his flight was delayed, and waking the baby, putting her in the car seat, and driving half an hour to the airport seemed like a lot of work, when he could just as easily jump into a cab to get here. What’s the point of having a baby, if you can’t blame not picking someone up at the airport on the fact that your baby’s sleeping?
I have been swimming laps an
d doing spin classes every morning since I hired the rent-a-nanny. I have also been taking long walks every afternoon with the baby. The baby weight has finally come off. It was hard work, but I did it. Not as quickly as Vivian or Posh Spice, mind you, who lost all their baby weight in, like, two hours. It took me a few months, but it’s finally gone! And it was very weird how it happened. Although I have been working out, for the longest time nothing was happening, even after numerous spin classes and swimming laps for hours and eating a protein-only diet. Then, one day, I woke up and the weight had just disappeared. Not only that, but under the fat that I had lost, there were muscles. I look more toned now, in fact, than I did pre-baby. The Fiancé told me I look “hot.” I’ve never felt happier (save for the day the Dictator was born).
Now I like looking at myself in a mirror again. At night, once the baby is sleeping, I try on all the new clothes I’ve bought myself. I don’t feel silly doing this. It’s like looking at a whole new person.
And I can have sex again, and not worry about suffocating the Fiancé under me. So we do. The Fiancé and I have great sex. For the first time in fourteen months, I feel sexy. Plus, how could I not fuck his brains out after he told me how hot I look?
March 30
I can’t believe my month alone with the baby is over and we’re at home. I’ve learned a lot. Mostly I learned from being alone with the baby for a month that being a single mother is hard work. I really respect single mothers. I have spent days upon days here not talking to any adults—except for “Can I get that sushi to go?”—which was hard.
The plane ride home was painful. The baby spent practically the entire six hours screaming. Just as I’d settle her down in her car seat, she’d start screaming again, so I’d have to pick her up. I’m not sure if it was her teething, or what. It was an overnight flight too, so added to the pain that was her screaming was the guilt that all the other passengers, who were trying to sleep, couldn’t because the Dictator wouldn’t shut up. And the lights were off, so it was impossible to find all her supplies. Try pouring a can of formula into a bottle in the dark. It’s messy, at best. I drifted off a few times but could never get comfortable, because the baby would only sleep lying on my chest.
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