Maternity Leave (9781466871533) (19 page)

At seventeen, Doogan's been a senior for a while, and his vet said, maybe it was a few years ago, that it's normal for his eating to slow down. But maybe I should take him in. I'll see how he's doing later this week and make an appointment for next week. I'm sure he's fine. Just older. He's purring on my lap right now. I'm sure nothing's wrong. Right, buddy?

126 Days Old

It's time to try again. Sex, that is. I can feel the need emanating from Zach's body every time we watch an episode of
Game of Thrones
. Hell, I can feel it coming from him when we watch
Ghost Adventures
. Or maybe part of that is me? Maybe I'm feeling that need, too? I can't figure out if I'm horny or if I just really have to pee.

Tonight we watch a reality show where a hillbilly husband talks to the camera about how frisky he's feeling. He lights scented candles for his wife, but apparently they're the wrong scent. So he changes it up to candles that smell like food, and she gives it up.

“What kind of candles would you want?” Zach quizzes me. He knows I don't care for candles, and it's obvious he's of the mind that if these yokels are doing it, there is no reason why we shouldn't be, too.

“Barbecue chips and Slim Jims,” I jest. “Got any of those candles in your sexy arsenal?”

“Remember when you used to go to those sex toy parties your friends threw? You'd come home with all sorts of smelly stuff.”

“Those parties were such a pain in my ass. I always felt obligated to buy crap because my friends forced me to so they could get their pyramid-scheme kickback. How many feather ticklers and warming balms does one woman need?”

“Do we still have any warming balm?” Zach inquires.

“Yeah. I think that stuff expired four years ago. You don't want to mess with rancid warming balm.”

“No,” Zach concurs.

“And Doogan appropriated the feather ticklers as cat toys.”

“So I guess we'll just have to do with what God gave us.” Zach nudges me, and I try my hardest to look relaxed. He rubs my arm gently, then moves onto my back. “You get a very short massage tonight. I don't want anyone falling asleep prematurely.”

“And—” I start.

“Steer clear of your breasts. Got it.” He slides his hands down to the hem of my sleep shirt. “Can I still look at them?” he asks. I nod, although my inclination is to warn him to look away. They aren't the breasts of yesteryear. He slips my shirt over my head and doesn't comment, so he's either pleased with what he sees or smart enough not to say anything if he isn't.

He kisses me, and I try to pretend this is normal and I've done it a million times. Which it is, and I have, before my body became engorged with a human and then expelled it and is hovering somewhere between the two. I am so aware of all the new and subtle nuances: the darker areolae, the line down my belly, the pimple that won't retreat, the not quite as confident pee-holding ability. All of those things add up to a more lived-in version of my body with whom I still haven't quite made friends.

“How about we turn the lights off?” I suggest. As common as this appears to be on television and in movies, Zach and I never partook in the lights-out, good-feelings-by-only-feeling kind of sex.

“Do I look that bad?” he asks, and when I begin to argue the opposite, he says, “I'm just kidding. If that would make you feel more comfortable, I'm all for it. Anything that will result in me getting laid by my wife.” He grins.

“You really need to study your seduction techniques. ‘Getting laid' when you're pushing forty is not on that list.”

I reach over and click off the lamp on my nightstand. Zach does the same with his and scoots across the bed to spoon with me.

“Thirty-six is not pushing forty,” he argues as he kisses the tip of my ear, my earlobe, my neck …

“Whatever, old man Schwartz-Jensen.”

“I love it when you call me by my hyphenated last name.” He gently rolls me onto my back and kisses my mouth.

At first, I try to be me in the moment, remembering all of the moments just like this that came before. But my head quickly travels to me and Zach timing our sex to correlate with ovulation, peeing on sticks, trying again, lying with my legs propped up against the wall to give his semen an easier swimming job. Not sexy thoughts. I joggle my head to see if I can jar them loose, and Zach notices.

“Everything okay?” he asks. He has already rolled my undies down and off, and automatically I reciprocated. I can feel how hard he is, and a tiny spark of hope tickles my tummy as I recognize the desire to have him inside me.

“Yep. Do you have the condom?” It has been one hundred years since I've asked anyone that question, and the youthful request is another boon to the occasion. Crinkle crinkle.

“You put it on me,” Zach directs, and I do, harking back to many a tryst in my twenties.

Things are going smoothly—not to the point where I think I'll have an orgasm, but certainly better than full-on panic that he is near my vagina (
Don't think about your vagina … Don't think about your vagina
)—when Sam erupts in cries over the baby monitor.

“Ignore it!” Zach grunts, and I'm taken aback since I'm always the one who demands we turn off the monitor when I want to pretend for one squink of a second that I'm not at a tiny human's beck and call.

Sam must know we're putting him off, and his screams escalate. Zach is carrying on with his rhythmic business, and I'm trying dutifully to keep time, but it's not easy with the distraction.

“Why don't we turn the monitor off?” I suggest. Together, Zach still inside of me, we rock our way toward the nightstand. I stretch my arm over to reach the monitor button, and the struggle knots a kink in my neck.
Play through the pain,
I coach myself.
Just get in one good orgasm! You can do it!
I'm quite the cheerleader, but it's no good. The interruption and job injury leave the twenties me at some bar with a tall, dark hipster I just met, and the mid-thirties, postbaby me prays my husband doesn't notice and finishes his business quickly.

He must realize I'm not on my way to happy town because he asks, “Are you gonna—”

“Nah. But you go ahead.”

Zach makes no attempt at the obligatory double check and comes almost immediately. The benefit of almost five months (plus pregnancy time) of celibacy.

I don't bother to stick around for postcoital cuddling bliss, seeing as there wasn't really any from my side of the bed anyway. I attend to Sam, buck naked, and the one man in my house who's allowed to touch my boobs does so voraciously.

My body has officially ceased being my own.

127 Days Old

I'm on the phone with Fern, a rarity and not always an enjoyable experience. I adore her and miss hearing her voice, but between four kids screaming in the background, that horrid high-pitched-child-voice cell phone reverb, and Fern interrupting us every one to three seconds to either a) remind one of her kids that Mommy's on the phone or b) admonish one of her kids for hitting one of the other kids, I get in only ten to twelve words total. Somehow I manage to broach the subject of the complications of postbaby sex. “You must know something about it, since you managed to have four kids.”

“Ah, but two of them are twins,” she reminds me. “And I am freakishly fertile.” Fern doesn't elaborate, but I assume she's perhaps alluding to having sex only the bare minimum per pregnancy, which doesn't bode well for my sex-life improvement.

“Have you tried fantasizing? Role-play? Jacob! Do not touch your sisters right after you touch your penis!” Fern yells directly into the phone, then picks right back up with, “Adam and I used to do that all the time. Costumes and everything. Highly recommended. Put the knife block down, goddammit! I have to go.” Click.

I consider Fern's role-playing idea. I did do a little improv in high school, and Zach played
Dungeons & Dragons
all through college. Maybe it could help?

My thoughts of chain mail and sex games quickly shift to Doogan. His automatic food dish dumps out a new load of pebbles, but Doogan is too lethargic to get up and snarf them down. I really should make that vet appointment. Part of me is too scared to find out anything.

128 Days Old

Six weeks until I go back to work. I know I should be heavily researching nannies, but with Doogan acting differently I'm not in the mood. Zach suggests a trip to the county fair. Nothing says summer like gorging on corn on the cob and funnel cakes, then going on a Ferris wheel and realizing my stomach is aging as gracefully as my face. Sam slept peacefully through it all. Is that what it takes to get him to sleep? Is there a county fair supply store nearby where I may purchase a Ferris wheel for our backyard?

Or maybe I could just hire a carny as a babysitter. The toothless woman at the pick-a-duck game seemed particularly enamored with Sam.

Being at the fair did lift my spirits. I always equate it with
Charlotte's Web
and Templeton the rat scavenging the garbage and singing, “A fair is a veritable smorgasbord-orgasbord-orgasbord!” I try not to dwell on the ending, which makes me weep in both the book and movie formats.

We peruse the animal pens, but most of them are being auctioned for slaughter and I find myself down again. So we move on to the award-winning produce, and my mood brightens at the rainbow of ribbons adorning the vegetables and baked goods.

The county fair is a lot like life: up and down, tragedy and joy, winners and losers. Plus a whole lot of cotton candy. Or is that just my life?

FACEBOOK STATUS

Babies never seem driven by coolness.

129 Days Old

Doogan's stomach looks saggier than usual. I'll take him to the vet tomorrow. In other news, I told a girl in a Girl Scout vest who was acting like a little shit outside of the grocery store that she wasn't behaving in a Girl Scout way. I am both old
and
hilarious.

Later

No sleep tonight. A combination of multiple Sam wakings and nerves over Doogan's vet appointment. I watch two hours of Southwest jewelry on QVC. I don't know how the hostess manages to talk about essentially the same thing—a silver piece of jewelry with some variation of turquoise—for two hours straight. I am mesmerized and completely in awe of her skills.

“What's your secret?” I ask the woman on the TV. “How do you stay so happy when all you're doing is taking money from lonely people in the middle of the night?”

“It's all in the way you look at it, sugar,” the hostess answers, adopting a southern accent that wasn't there a moment ago. “I'm not taking people's money. They're getting something out of it, whether it's a nice brooch or necklace that someone may compliment one day in the future, or just a warm feeling from talking to me when they don't have someone else to talk to. Remember 976 numbers? People spent a buttload of money, pardon my French, on phone psychics back in the day. I'm selling happiness, sweetie. Looks to me like you could use some yourself.”

“Fine,” I concede. “I always wanted a turquoise-encrusted belt buckle. Now's as good a time as any to buy one.”

“You deserve it, cookie,” the woman sweet-talks me. “Remember: It's all in the way you look at it. And that's advice I'll give you for free. Well, $49.58 plus $6.73 in shipping and handling, honeybunch.”

Sold.

130 Days Old

Our vet, Dr. Irving, asked when was the last time I brought Doogan in for blood work. With the pregnancy and all those doctor's appointments and then the baby and all his appointments, we might have forgotten to bring Doo in for a checkup. But he's always been fine.

His stomach is distended now, and he's hobbling. How long has he been like this and I failed to notice? How could I not have? How could I not see my best friend struggling? All because I've only been able to look at this new edition, this baby.

The vet ran some lab tests and will get back to us with results in a day or two.

Sam has been strangely snuggly and calm today. Maybe he knows something is wrong.

131 Days Old

The vet is sending us to a specialist for an ultrasound this afternoon. Zach took off work to go with me. I am petrified about what they're going to find.

I may have yelled at Sam to stop crying in the middle of Target when I got off the phone with the vet. Which made me look like a psychotic hypocrite, since I was bawling myself. We made quite the pair.

Later

Doogan has cancer. He has cancer, and he's had it for months, and I just found out about it now. I could have found out about it a long time ago, but I was too up my own baby-making ass to take care of him. Dr. Irving says even if we knew a long time ago, would we want to subject him to treatment and tests and surgery? He's not a young cat. She gives us options, the first of which is draining his stomach to possibly make him a little more comfortable but would only prolong things a week or two. The cancer is everywhere, and even if it weren't, it would be a lot to subject him to. He won't have the chance to live a comfortable life either way. Dr. Irving says our other option, and the one she thinks is best for Doo, is to put him down. Before he gets so bad that he can't eat at all, and he's in so much pain that he cries and cries, and he can't control any parts of his body. His life is in my hands, and I don't know what to do. Sam is crying, and all I want to do is hold my furry friend, my friend whom I've known longer than my husband. My friend whom I have to put to sleep.

132 Days Old

Zach and I talked and decided against draining Doogan's stomach. Doo doesn't want to eat, but I'm coaxing him to have a few snacks by leaving out some of his favorite treats: tuna, yogurt, apples. I hide behind a chair so as to not disturb him and cheer at the victory of him eating a teaspoon of food.