Maternity Leave (9781466871533) (2 page)

Now Sam sleeps serenely on Zach's chest. A nurse walks in, sees the diaper commercial visual, and announces, “What a good dad.” Bitch said nada about me being a good mom, even though I'm the one who recently excreted the kid out of my body and am now busting a tit trying to, oh, I don't know, sustain his life with nourishment from my very being.

What does a girl have to do around here to feel a little love?

Later

Sam is in his bucket again, and Zach is squeezed in next to me on the hospital bed. I warned him to stay away from the crinkly blue pad underneath me, which may or may not be catching God knows what liquids that are dribbling from my body. I still look about five months pregnant.

“How about this one?” Zach has his laptop out and flips through pictures of me and Sam taken right after I gave birth. We're prepping the obligatory Facebook birth announcement, and I'd like a picture that doesn't say, “I just shat on a table, and all I got was this slime-covered baby.”

I veto several shots before Zach suggests, “This one is nice.”

“I have a gimpy eye and twelve chins,” I note.

“But Sam looks cute.”

“This is not about Sam, Zach. Sam is going to look cute no matter what because he is a baby. And even if he doesn't look cute, people will ‘like' the picture anyway while reassuring themselves that their babies were way cuter. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that dozens of ex-classmates and three or more ex-boyfriends will be seeing this, and I don't want to look like a hideous, gelatinous troll.”

We finally settle on a decent shot (merely two chins, maybe two and a half) where one can only slightly detect that my hair is crusted onto my forehead.

“What should we write?” Zach poises his fingers above the keyboard.

“How about, ‘At one forty-three
A.M.
we welcomed Samuel Schwartz-Jensen into the world—'”

“Wait,” Zach interrupts. “Are we sure about the name? This is forever, you know.”

“Yes, but technically it's not forever. He can change it when he's older. But why would he want to? It's a good name. Solid. Normal. Now if you had let me go with Starbuck…”

“That's a girl's name,” argues Zach.

“The original Starbuck was a guy,” I offer. Zach and I have had this argument before about naming our son after a character from
Battlestar Galactica,
but we could never agree on any of the names; the characters' real names were boring, and their Viper pilot call names (Starbuck being one of them) would have tempted ridicule for the rest of our kid's life. Zach and I chose Sam, after the S of his father, who was Stewart. I like to pretend Sam still has its roots in geekery: Samwise Gamgee from
The Hobbit,
Sam Winchester from the television show
Supernatural,
and Sam, a Cylon from
Battlestar Galactica
. Luckily we didn't have the baby during our
Harry Potter
binge-watching era, or the baby may have been named Severus.

“Type in Sam. We settled on that a month ago,” I command.

“You're right. I know. We're sure there aren't any horrible nicknames someone can make up with Sam, right?” Zach was traumatized as a sixth grader when his bus dubbed him “Zach the Sack,” and it stuck well into high school.

“Assholes can sniff out a mean nickname no matter what your real name is. That's what they do best. I don't think any testicular words rhyme with Sam, though.”

“What about poo words? Or fart words?”

“You tell me. You're the expert on those subjects.”

“Looked like you were the expert there in the middle of that one push.” Zach chuckles.

“Oh my God. I'm never pooing again.”

“Don't worry. I'm sure I would shit everywhere if I was the one giving birth.”

“If you were the one giving birth, they would've had to knock you out the second your contractions began, the way you whine.”

“What? I whine in a very manly manner.”

“Uh-huh. Let's post this picture before it's time for Sam's bar mitzvah. ‘Sam no-middle-name Schwartz-Jensen.'” My mom didn't give me a middle name, and her mom didn't give her a middle name, so we're continuing the tradition. “But I don't know,” I waffle, “I always wanted a middle name. What if Sam feels neglected because he doesn't have one?”

“We could barely agree on a first name. Let's just stick with this for now. Like you said, he can always change it.
We
can always change it,” Zach decides.

“Fine. Samuel Schwartz-Jensen, six pounds, seven ounces, twenty-one inches. You have to include the stats. People eat that shit up,” I encourage him.

“Anything else? How long you were in labor? How many centimeters you were dilated? How many pints you pood?”

“Don't be a butthole.”

“I don't know what you people share with your FaceFriends.” Zach, while working with computers for a living, wants to keep his digital presence to a minimum, therefore he abstains from Facebook. Plus, he essentially hates everyone from his childhood.

“FaceFriends?” I chide.

“You whippersnappers and your newfangled technologies.”

“Can you imagine what the technology will be like when Sam is our age? People will be living on the moon and ordering food from their walls.”

“And then the lion in Sam's playroom will eat us,” Zach muses, referencing a favorite Ray Bradbury story.

“We can only dream,” I concur. “Post it.”

2 Days Old

“One hundred fifteen likes. Wow, that's pretty impressive. Even that girl who was a skinhead in high school liked that I had a baby.” I'm not ashamed to say I'm obsessively checking my Facebook page for little red alert bubbles every five minutes. Maybe three. Time moves at a different pace in a hospital. Or perhaps I'm just glazed from watching thirteen straight hours of
Call of the Wildman,
a reality show about a man sorely lacking in teeth but not in the chutzpah department. He helps people catch wild animals that wreak havoc in their homes and businesses with his bare hands. I never watched the show before, but it's benignly entertaining, and the Turtleman, as they call him, is surprisingly clever.

“Why are you friends with an ex-skinhead when you were not actually friends with her in the first place? I would never want those fuckwads from my high school looking at my business.” Zach cuddles Sam in his arms. “You're never going to show anyone your business, are you, Sammy? No, you're not,” he babbles to Sam.

“I like it. It's like we were all reborn as adults or something. I mean, the ones who survived. Did you know there have already been seven deaths from my high school class? I barely knew any of them.”

“And now you'll never have the opportunity to look at pictures of their kids or what meals they eat.”

“Speaking of meals, I wonder if Doo is eating.” Doogan was once a plump cat whom the vet was always trying to put on a diet, but is now a slim senior who we have to make sure eats.

“Your mom checked on him yesterday and said he ate about half his food. Better than none.” Doogan's aging is something I hate to think about. Sometimes in the middle of the night I imagine his death and can't stop myself from crying. If I ever become an actress, this is the mental trick I'll use to help me cry on cue. Not that I want to be an actress. You never hear about middle school English teachers breaking into Hollywood at thirty-six anyway.

“I hope he likes Sam. I'll feel really guilty if he doesn't. We've had seventeen years alone together.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Zach asks.

“What are you, a seventy-five-year-old man named Manny? And no, you are not chopped liver, but Doogan was like my first baby, and now he's my old baby and I'm bringing in a new baby and I don't want it to upset him. Remember that woman I used to work with who had that crazy cat with thumbs who somehow figured out how to open their deep freezer and ate all of their ice cream bars?”

“No, but continue,” Zach laughs.

“Well, they had to get rid of the cat after they brought the baby home because he kept trying to jump in her bassinet and lick her head.”

“Maybe he thought she was an ice cream bar. Besides, we don't even have a bassinet,” Zach points out.

“True. But Doogan is half Siamese. What if he's like those cats in
Lady and the Tramp
? ‘We are Siamese, if you please.' What if I have to choose between Sam and Doogan?” I panic.

“Obviously you'd choose Sam.”

“Why obviously? I only just met Sam. I've known Doogan seventeen years, and—”

“Doogan is a cat, Annie. I love him, too, but Sam is our
baby,
remember?” I well up, and Zach tries to backpedal. “I'm sure it will all be fine. Doogan is an awesome, mellow cat. I'm sure Sam will be an awesome, mellow baby.”

“You're sure?” I sniffle.

“Positive.” Zach kisses me on the top of my head.

“He better be,” I warn. Is it my imagination, or did a maniacal laugh just sound from the bundle in Zach's arms?

Later

My mom stopped by the hospital to meet her first grandchild. Sometimes I feel like my mom is secretly filming a sitcom of her life when she says things like “I'm not going to cry … I'm not going to cry … I'm going to cry!” Zach documents the moment on camera, and I envision us airing the footage at Sam's bar mitzvah. If either of us makes it that long. I'm still having heaps of trouble getting him to nurse. The stress has forced me to indulge in the splendor of the hospital's food offerings. It's like ordering room service, if budget motel chains offered room service menus with not a single choice of an entrée you actually wanted to eat. I sent Zach down to the cafeteria twice to pick up pudding parfaits. In general, I tend to avoid formless desserts, but pudding in a cup, layered with Nilla wafers and spray-can whipped cream feels like an absolute delicacy. Plus, I've got to bulk up if I'm ever going to get this breastfeeding thing right. That's my new perspective on breastfeeding: I'm going to treat it like a sport. I've got to train. I've got to practice. I've got to fuel up. And someday I'll be one of those women with a six-year-old boy hanging off her boob on the cover of a magazine whom people both respect and think is endlessly creepy.

Now if I can only take a dump. Going to the bathroom is just about the most terrifying thing on earth. I know I should poo, but there are stitches down there that could erupt, creating an ass chasm the likes of which the world has never known. My only friend is this strange little squeeze bottle whose specified purpose is to be aimed at my butt while I'm using the toilet. Is that why this bottle was invented? Was there someone at a hospital-supply design company whose designated job was to create an ass-spraying squeeze bottle? If so, bravo to them, because he did a bang-up job. I don't know why I assume it was a man. Men should do something right by women in the land of maternity, and by gods if this squeeze bottle wasn't it. I wonder if it has a name. The ass-juicer? Butt-squelcher? Hole-sprayer?

Zach has just heard me laughing out loud at myself in the bathroom and assumes I am crying.

“Still no poo, honey?” he calls from his chair.

That just may be the sexiest thing that someone's said to me this week.

To: Annie

From: Fern

Annie!

OMG! You had the baby! He is so cute. You look awesome. Beyonce's got nothing on you. Or Princess Kate. Who just had a baby? I can never keep track. Nor do I care. My four are keeping me busy with various ailments. It seems like Dov is always barfing, Hannah is always pooping, and Jacob has it coming out both ends. Oh the joys of kids! You'll see what I mean.

We'll be back in town in a couple months. I wish we could be there now, but I'm stuck out here in sunny California where everyone thinks 50 degrees is going to give them frostbite. Pussies! I miss Chicago. And you!

Let me know what you need. Send me an Amazon wishlist or Toys R Us or whatever, and I'll send you some stuff.

Enjoy Baby Sam (not short for Samhain, right?)

Hugs!

Fern

Fern is my best friend from high school who, even though she married a wealthy screenwriter in L.A. and has four small kids, still likes to talk about Satan like we did in high school (just a short-lived phase, between our Wiccan period and the house-on-the-corner-psychic era). I adore her and wish she lived nearby. I don't really have any close friends with kids since Zach and I moved to the suburbs a few years ago after he declared he needed more space and was tired of “smelling our neighbors.”

My mom lives closest to us, at fifteen minutes away, but pretty much everyone else, including my sister, Nora, and her husband, Eddie, lives in the city. How does one go about making mom friends in the sprawling suburbs? Will I be forced to join a playgroup? Does that involve potlucks? I hate potlucks. So many casseroles with their quivering cream of mushroom soup. Just another way I'll be ostracized from the parenting community. Because most parents actually know what to do with their kids.

3 Days Old

They claim we are ready to take the baby home. I have managed to get Sam to latch with a spectacular contraption called a nipple shield. While it's not very shieldlike in appearance (it is a clear silicone cover that fits over my nipple and areola), I suppose it is shielding me from the debilitating pain of the suck. Why did they make these things clear? Couldn't they be jazzier, with wacky patterns or sports teams or band names? Or maybe that would defeat the purpose of trying to get the baby to latch on to my actual boob once he figures out how to latch well with the shield. If it was patterned, then I'd have to start decorating my nips just to keep things consistent. As it is, I already feel like a hooker from the future with these things perched on my tits.