Signs of Life (13 page)

But the reality, which I can’t say I’ve completely accepted, is that life, health, living into my nineties, having a “normal” baby, is no more or less guaranteed than it was before Josh died. Something bad could happen. If not tomorrow, sometime in his life something could go wrong. My co-worker Don Williams had a baby boy, Eric, who stopped breathing in the middle of the night when he was two years old. Aunt Hettie and Uncle Jim’s son Aaron was diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer at sixteen and died within two months of the diagnosis. Lauren Keller, a girl I went to school with, died at twelve from leukemia. Alley
Oberlein has a brain tumor. Conner Dembs is autistic. Dan O’Brien is a delinquent who has almost gotten himself killed on several occasions because he’s such an asshole. My child could be born with a severe physical disability, a harrowing mental condition, an emotional disorder. He could be the kid who wears a trench coat to high school and everyone thinks he’s going to bring a gun to school. He could be completely healthy but a total asshole or a big crybaby. The odds are he’ll be none of these things and he’ll be fine. But four months ago today I stopped playing the odds.

So tomorrow the worrying doesn’t stop. It only starts. Does he have a fever? Does his breathing sound funny? Is he too hot? Too cold? Is he eating enough? Is he eating too much? Are his toes supposed to look like that? Is his skin supposed to be yellow? I will worry for the rest of my life. I don’t know how to make sense of any of this.

The only reassuring fact, as dark and dismal as it may sound, is that everything is uncertain and worrying doesn’t make anything more certain. I remember when Josh was still here every night I locked the doors. I locked the doors because I worried that someone would break in. Every night I locked those doors. I applied heavy amounts of sunscreen because I worried about getting skin cancer. I worried about my dad getting skin cancer because he never wears sunscreen. I worried about a massive earthquake hitting Los Angeles and never hearing from Moo or Ads again. Then Moo moved to Miami and I started worrying about hurricanes. I worried about losing the baby once I got pregnant. I worried about everything. And then my husband was killed in a freak accident—an accident that involved an activity that I never worried about him doing. How ridiculous. How fucking ridiculous. So what’s the lesson? What do I take away from all of this? What conclusion do I come to on my last
night of being a nonmother? What do I tell myself? What’s my mantra? Shit happens? Don’t sweat the small stuff? Bad things
do
happen to good people and they
do
happen more than once so don’t get too comfy? Lightning
can
strike the same place twice? Sometimes I think that I never worried about Josh and that was the problem. Maybe if I worried about him
more often
, he would still be alive. I don’t know the answer.

My mom calls me and tells me to make sure I go to bed early. She is nervous I won’t be able to fall asleep. Deedee calls me with the same concern. “You’ll need a good night’s sleep,” they say. But I know they may need one even more. After all, they are already moms. They know what lies ahead of me and so they won’t be able to sleep. I have no idea what my life will be like tomorrow or the next day. My ignorance is my Ambien tonight and I’m okay with that. As I go through my hospital bag over and over again, I think about how not every woman in the world gets to pack her hospital bag in preparation for childbirth. Not every woman gets to watch her body transform over the course of forty weeks and create new life. I remind myself not to overlook that fact. No matter what happens tomorrow, no matter how hard my labor is, no matter what challenges lie in front of Baby Taylor and me, we get to be here. Four months ago I saw my husband lying in a coffin. Tomorrow I get to hold my baby boy in my arms for the first time. All I can do is savor the fact that I am still here and that he is about to be here. My son will take his first breath four months and one day after his dad took his last. He gets a chance. I get a chance to be there for him. There is something beautiful in that.

Just after 1 a.m. I go into labor. At 5:30 I wake Moo up. At 6:00 we call my parents. They pick up the dogs and drop them off at the boarding place. By 6:30 we’re at the hospital. I’m in a birthing room for a while with my family. By 9:00 I kick everyone
out. At 11:00 I get an epidural. A little after 11:00, Dr. Wiermiller says I have to have a cesarean, but I’ve had an epidural so I don’t really care what they do to me.

Moo comes with me into surgery. They numb my body and pull up a blue sheet. It feels like someone is tugging at my stomach. I stare at the ceiling for a while and all I can think is,
I just want to hear him cry
. Everyone is quiet. The doctors are all focused and working away. Where is he? Shouldn’t they have gotten him by now? Why can’t I hear him? Moo holds my hand. Where is he? Where
is
he? All of the sudden, I feel a very strange sensation. I feel like the air is being pulled out of my body through my stomach. My breath is taken away. And then I hear the greatest sound in the entire history of the world. He cries. I make Moo tell me everything she sees. I feel a tear roll down my cheek.

On October 18, 2007, at 12:10 p.m. Kai Joshua Taylor is born. Eight pounds, one ounce. His mother’s exact birth weight. Completely healthy. More than healthy. Madly healthy.

There is no literary connection for the birth of my son. No author has done justice to this miracle. There aren’t words to describe this day or the magic and power that surround the moment a baby is born. Emerson claims the only eye who can truly observe the beauty of a natural landscape is the poet. And while the natural world may hold its mysteries and miracles, it pales in comparison to the incredible experience of childbirth and the natural landscape of the human body. The best way I can say it is that when a baby is born, the ghosts of the world’s greatest poets stand and listen to the cry of a life that just took its first breath and even they can’t find the words.

After Kai and I make it safely into our recovery room and he gets his tests and first bath, we begin to enjoy our first calm moments together. Our family quietly files in, some in tears.
Suddenly Ashley bursts in and announces in a very loud voice, “Oh
my
God, that is the cutest
fucking
baby I have ever seen!” I picture Emerson’s ghost, in his nicely tailored 1836 suit, jolting at the use of such an obscenity and quietly saying, “Oh my,” and stepping out of the room.

Everyone comes to see me. Flowers fill the room. Flowers, bright yellow trucks, cards, presents, food, everything. Everyone holds Kai. He sleeps in the arms of everyone.

At night everyone goes home. I sleep while Kai sleeps. For the last four months I’ve been mad at the universe. I’ve been standing in line with a lot of other very unhappy people waiting to yell at someone about how unfair my life is. I’ve been mad and angry with everything. But when I lie in my room and I see Kai’s chest go up and down, I decide I don’t want to stand in this line anymore. “We’re just gonna,” I say, quietly stepping toward the exit sign, “no really, just forget about it, no big deal, just tell the Wizard of Oz, or God, or whoever is answering grievances up there that I’m not … we’re not … we’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”

Then Kai and I come home. It is a beautiful fall day. Mid-sixties, sunshine. We come home to our house.

in
the corner of my bedroom there is a stack of books. Throughout the school year and summer, the stack consists of mostly fiction. Some of the books are work-related, others are my own personal endeavors. Ever since Kai was born, however, the stack of books has changed completely. All of the fiction paperbacks have been shoved into the closet; I don’t have time to read them. The only thing I make time for are books about babies.

The Science of Parenting, The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers, Babywise, Your Child’s Health, Girlfriend’s Guide to the First Year, What to Expect: The First Year, Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child, Your Baby’s First Year, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer
. This is my list so far. Some of these have been given to me and others I’ve bought on my own. People always say, “Babies don’t come with a manual.” They do, actually. There are thousands of them, each with their own catchy title and slick cover. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on manuals.

As a first-time mom with no husband and too much stubborn pride to ask other people for help, I turn to these books for advice. I read passages over and over again, like I’m trying to perfect a recipe. (A recipe! What a ridiculous metaphor for caring for a newborn.) And every decision, no matter how minute it may seem on the surface, is a major decision.

The biggest issue is whether or not to feed on demand or develop a schedule. This is basically the Republicans and Democrats of baby maintenance; you can’t find two groups who disagree more on a topic.
Babywise
claims that babies on a schedule surpass nonscheduled babies on a variety of levels. The text states that scheduled babies are “characterized by contentment, healthy growth, and optimal alertness. People on the street will remark on a
Babywise
baby’s happiness.” People on the street will remark? How can I turn down that selling point? On the other hand,
The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers
argues that a schedule is ridiculous. “An emphasis on timing of feedings is an unfortunate legacy from a decade when babies’ lives were rigidly scheduled, even though those schedules frequently led to breastfeeding failure.” Unfortunate legacy? Breastfeeding failure! So what am I to do? Two credible authorities completely disagree. One recipe says add a stick of butter. The other says, for the love of God whatever you do,
don’t
add a stick of butter.

The problem with all of these decisions is that everyone in my life wants to weigh in on the debate. “You’re
waking him up
to feed him? [pause while question asker gives me a judgmental look] Hmm. That’s interesting. When I had [insert name of child here] they told us
never
to wake a sleeping baby.
Never.
” Questions about scheduling specifically piss me off because I am truly insecure about what I am doing. When people ask questions about it, I feel guilty and inept.

“Well,
I
never used a schedule,” Deedee tells me. “I mean, I’m not saying it’s
bad
, I’m just saying that I think it’s appropriate to feed a child when he is hungry.” She makes these narrow eyes when she says this. I am also annoyed because the women who tell me these things are usually in their fifties, which means they had children twenty-five years ago when the world had just discovered that smoking and drinking were bad for pregnant women. I know that my mother-in-law is a wise woman, but I am confident that the field of prenatal medicine and infant development has come a long way in twenty-five years.

One thing that I cover with my students during our nonfiction research unit is how to assess a source. I ask them, how is this person qualified to speak on the subject? Does she have a degree? Does he have firsthand experience? Where was the article published? I take into consideration these same questions when reading my baby books.
The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers
, for example, is written by a man, and although he is a doctor and has had decades of experience, he has never breastfed. I read his book because I know he’s a fantastic doctor, but I also know that he’s never walked into the bank and realized he has leaked all over his shirt or felt the pain associated with full breasts and no takers on milk. Ashley, however, isn’t a doctor and she has never had kids, but she still declares herself the Fountain of All Knowledge on all things baby.

In the last four weeks Ashley has made all sorts of suggestions about how I can and should improve on my care of Kai. Kai has developed scaly dry skin on his head. In the midst of showing it to my mom, she jumps in. “It’s called cradle cap. A lot of babies get it.” She rifles through his drawers and holds up outfits she bought over the summer. “Hey, Nat?” I hear her say from the nursery. I walk in to see her holding up a blue zip-up top from Old Navy. “Has he worn this yet?” I tell her no. She says she’ll put it on top—he’ll be too big for it soon. She buys me a car seat cover from Home Goods even though I already have one. Mine is a hand-me-down from a co-worker. “I’m not saying yours is bad,” she says. “It’s just that this one looked a lot warmer.” By “a lot warmer” she means not a hand-me-down.

Recently we had a conversation that went something like this: