High Anxiety

So far a lot of parenthood seems to be about ruling out the horrible. Or maybe that's just my version of parenthood, but either way I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that Milo isn't doing or hasn't done yet or might not do in the future. Which means that when he started smiling a few days ago, my first reaction wasn't "omigod that's so cool he's smiling!" as much as, "thank God the kid is smiling, at least I don't have to worry that I'm going to raise a child with a broken smile I mean what if he never smiled and then I'd have this sad, unsmiling kid and who knows what else might be wrong with him." And when he reacts to loud noises I think thank God he's not deaf, and when he noticed my existence a few days ago I thought well, at least he's not blind or otherwise visually impaired and he can recognize faces and stuff so that means his brain is probably okay too.

It also means that I apparently never get to have a dream at night that doesn't involve Milo being in danger or dying or almost dying and being resuscitated by me at the last minute, except for the other night when I dreamt that my uterus fell out (a welcome, light-hearted relief from all those nasty death dreams!).

I think I never realized just how high one's anxiety level can reach once one is responsible for another human being. I've never thought of myself as a particularly anxious person, but lately I've found that I'd much rather have a good stiff drink at night than Nutella, and for me this is very strange behavior indeed. And the worst part is that I'm fairly certain the anxiety will never go away. Maybe it will lessen, maybe I will learn to deal with it better, but the proof is in my own childhood experiences, those moments when I forgot to call home or came in a few minutes past curfew or told my parents I was one place only to have them find out I was somewhere else, those seconds after I would walk in the door and see the look of sheer terror on my parents' faces, quickly replaced by a combination of relief and anger.

But of course, it never goes away. When I mentioned to my father that Milo seemed to be sleeping a lot while the nurse was here, he said, "Maybe she's drugging him." When I was crying and miserable and couldn't pull myself together those first few weeks after Milo was born, both of my parents said to me, "I'm not worried about your baby. I'm worried about my baby."

I guess this is what I have signed on for - a lifetime of worrying about my baby, whether he is sixty days old or sixty years.

Rollercoaster Ride, Part 2

New low point of motherhood:
A tie between taking off my sweater last night and discovering that I had walked around all day with a dried river of spit up down the back, and my referring to the baby as "a huge time suck."

New high point of motherhood:
Milo's new fascination with my face. When I stand next to him as he swings back and forth in his hideously ugly yellow swing or vibrates on his bouncy seat he looks up at me with a look that says, "Are you my mother? I think you are!"

Experiments in Victorian Living

This week we have a full time nurse living with us and helping with Milo so I can work on my new project and Steven can finish writing his paper. As we crawled into bed last night in anticipation of a night of sleep uninterrupted by Milo's "la! la! la!", which always then progresses into "aahh! aahh!" and from there into all out screaming, Steven turned to me and asked, "Did you kiss Milo good night?"

"No," I said. "Did you?"

"No."

There was a pause as we both buried ourselves deliciously under the covers.

"I'm afraid the nurse is going to think we're bad parents," Steven said.

"We were good parents for the first six weeks," I countered.

"You're right," said Steven. "That should be enough."

What I Learned From Gammy

1. Always dress nicely
I was packing on Thursday for my grandmother's funeral, pulling pre-maternity clothing out of boxes, trying to squeeze myself into suits that once fit, visiting with blouses and sweaters that I once love, feeling betrayed by the fact that they no longer button. After about an hour of trying to fabricate a decent oufit out of odds and ends, I pulled on a stretchy black skirt and a turquoise sweater set from a million years ago and stared at myself in the mirror. The skirt hadn't really been all that nice when I bought it at least six or seven seasons ago; the sweater set was sort of stretched out and although I vaguely remembered it was stained, I couldn't find the stain in the dim December light. Had it been anyone else's funeral, I would have shrugged, told myself that I'd just given birth a month ago and no one expected me to look that great, and been on my way. But because it was Gammy's funeral, I heard her voice in my head saying, "That's what you're wearing to my funeral??" And so as soon as I arrived in Palm Beach I had my brother drive me to the nearest Ann Taylor. I ran in, leaving him with a screaming baby, and came back out twenty minutes later with an outfit that fit properly.

2. Women can run their own businesses
My grandmother was the first business woman I was ever aware of. She ran a wholesale bead business in the garment district for decades. She was always flying off to Germany and Japan to buy beads, and sometimes when I would visit her in her office on West 38th St. she'd be meeting with customers in a big glassed-in conference room. She had a booming, distinctive voice that would rattle the walls of the room as she pulled on her glasses to inspect various beads, or pushed display cases across the table for customers to view. It all seemed very important and glamorous, but never so important that she didn't have time for me. She kept a big tin of beads in her office for me to play with, and let me run around in the stock room in back. one of my favorite memories from my childhood is the way that stock room smelled, like a combination of dust and cardboard. It was dimly lit and held rows and rows of plain boxes filled with beads. I loved to pull open the boxes because you never knew what kind of beautiful bead you might turn up.

3. Be generous
Gammy was always sending us an endless stream of presents. As a kid I used to think the UPS man worked for her. I remember the sound the truck would make as it pulled up to our quiet suburban house. It would idle in the driveway like a little piece of Manhattan right in our front yard, and the UPS man would hop out with a surprise package. Sometimes the packages were for me or my brother, sometimes she'd sent several pieces of jewelry for my mother to chose from. The arrival of the UPS truck was always the highlight of my week. To this day, when I see a UPS truck I think of Gammy.

4. Never wear fake jewelry

5. Put your stockings on one leg at a time

6. Always be glamorous

7. You can never be too happy to see someone
Gammy always made me feel like my phone call, my visit, my appearance in a room was the highlight of her year. It wasn't until her funeral that I realized she made everyone feel that way. Her face would light up, she'd give you a big hug and kiss and tell you how thrilled she was to see you. I'm not sure I will ever get over the fact that she will never meet Milo, and that he will never get to experience her unmatched ability to make someone feel special and immensely loved.

8. New York is the best city in the world
My grandmother loved New York, and she especially loved Manhattan. As a kid I would arrive in Grand Central with my mother and the world was instantly transformed. Gone was the quiet, bland greenery of Connecticut, replaced by the glorious bustle of commuters, the echoing high ceilings of the train station, and I'd know we'd arrived in the only city glamorous enough to be home to my grandmother. This was New York in the early eighties, when it really wasn't all that glamorous, when there were scores of homeless people living in Grand Central, when garbage piled up on the streets during the garbage strike, when SoHo had good streets and bad streets and a hologram museum that we used to visit after dropping our bags off at my grandmother's office. But Gammy's New York was a wonderful, exciting place full of trips to the theater (pronounced thee-tah), whirlwind shopping expeditions through Lord and Taylor (itself a place of unmatched beauty, filled with the scent of a million perfumes and an old-fashioned art deco escalator), and dinners at Shinbashi, where Gammy was on a first-name basis with the kimono-clad waitresses. It is no accident that I have chosen to make New York my home, and that Milo can be proud to call himself a fifth generation New Yorker.

I will miss her very much.

When I Said I Wouldn't Write About My Breasts I Lied

Monday was my first day back in the working world. After a short morning sprint through the 34th St. subway station (during which two people yelled at me "Don't run!"), across 32nd St. and into the bowels of Penn Station, I met my client and traveled into the wilds of Philadelphia for a four-hour meeting. The meeting was pretty typical of the types of meetings I tend to find myself in, where a bunch of people sit around an oval conference table and complain about stuff and ask me or whomever else they've hired to fix it, and all was fine for the first hour or so. Until my boobs started to hurt.

At which point I found that my brain started thinking about Milo and breastfeeding him and how cute he is when he's trapped under my enormous right breast (which has always been the more over-achieving of my breasts, and as such not only produces more milk but is also currently the size of Texas) and I stopped being able to concentrate on my meeting. And I also began to wonder how on earth I was going to be able to get myself out of the meeting, which naturally was filled with men and therefore under no circumstances would I have felt comfortable announcing that I needed a ten minute break to go pump my breasts.

And so I sat, and my breasts filled with milk, and I thought about my little baby who I suddenly missed so much I thought I might die, and every half hour that passed made my breasts hurt a little bit more. Which explains the To Do list I doodled during my meeting (other people make little smiley faces or boxes or copies of Munch's The Scream when they doodle - I make lists):

1. call editor to touch base
2. find out about night nurse
3. rent Stairmaster?
4. review publicity proposal
5. I am my boobs

Thankfully the meeting ended an hour early and I rushed off to the bathroom with my hand pump, locked the door and spent perhaps the most ridiculous ten minutes of my life stripped naked from the waist up, suctioning milk out of my breasts in a large office building in downtown Philly. Some part of me had thought that pumping at work would be more glamorous. Working mother, business woman by day, nursing new mom at night. But it wasn't remotely glamorous, especially not when the pump slipped and I splattered my pants with breast milk.

And it continued.

Once I arrived back in Manhattan I tore through Penn Station, hopped on the subway and raced up the stairs and out of the station, trying to get home as fast as I could. I called Steven on my cell as I ran down the street.

"Is he awake?" I shouted into the frigid night air. "Did he eat yet? I'm on my way! The boobs are on their way!"

"Ma!" Steven screamed down the hall. "Don't give him the bottle!"

"Can she give him a pacifier?" I said. "I mean, if he's starving let him eat, but try to hold off for ten minutes. I'll be home as fast as I can."

Ten minutes later I flew in the door, unbuttoned my shirt, popped the pacifier out of a very crabby baby's mouth, who wanted to know why the hell he couldn't just have some formula, and shoved him on my breast.

As I sat on the couch and nursed Milo I forgot that I was starving, that I'd had to pee since Philadelphia, that my nose was running from the cold street air.

"I missed you so much," I told Milo. "I missed you more than I've ever missed anyone in my life."

Rollercoaster Ride

New low point of motherhood: my running past the baby's room while he was crying, yelling "Self soothe!" at the door.

New high point of motherhood: Milo's amazing smile, which doesn't quite make it all worth it, but at least makes you forget for an instant just how tired and crabby you are.

Conspicuous Consumption Baby

A few months ago, back when i had time to indulge all of my obsessive-compulsive tendencies, I created a big spreadsheet of all the baby items people had told me to purchase. I looked around for these items online and wrote down on the spreadsheet the store that had the best price, as well as the price and how many of the item people said I would need. The spreadsheet had everything from diapers (100 newborn size, 100 size one) to a changing table listed on it. The only thing I left off was the stroller, because most strollers aren't made for infants and therefore don't need to be purchased until the baby reaches at least three months.

But I still investigated the stroller, which, in New York especially, is sort of the ultimate baby purchase. Strollers in New York are super status-y, since you take them everywhere and use them constantly and sometimes use the money you would have put towards a car for the stroller instead. And so, every conversation I had with my baby-owning friends about strollers began with the question, "Are you getting a Bugaboo?" The implication being that if you are about to purchase a thousand dollar stroller, there is no need to have any further conversation with you on the topic because clearly you are completely out of your mind. And so i would always reply, "Of course I'm not getting a Bugaboo, I'm not insane."

Bugaboos are everywhere in Park Slope. You can see them from a mile away, their bright red canvases glowing through the grey winter air, the Bugaboo logo screaming out, "I spent WAY too much on my stroller and am possibly overcompensating for the fact that I work a million hours a week and never see my kid." Their position as a status symbol surpasses even that of a Gucci bag or a pair of Seven jeans. And I always feel sort of sorry for the kids being pushed around in Bugaboos, those poor tykes who will spend their lives showered with labels and grow up refusing to even set foot in Old Navy.

That was until last week. When a very generous friend of the family offered to purchase Milo a Bugaboo. And on the one hand, I am SO opposed to conspicuous consumption when it comes to my child, and I don't want him being pushed around in an over-priced status symbol on wheels. On the other hand, have you seen the way the Bugaboo handles all the cracks and bumps in a New York City sidewalk? And what about that gorgeous design? And how cool would I look pushing a Bugaboo down the street? Or would I be embarassed?

And then I realized that Milo is already totally enveloped in labels and status-y crap, simply because all of our friends and relatives bought him gorgeous, totally overpriced toys and clothing. He owns the entire fall line from Baby Gap, he sleeps and spits up on Dwell sheets, he naps in a beautiful velvety receiving blanket from Polo. And while I simultaneously love this stuff and think it's utterly ridiculous, Milo could care less if his t-shirts say Le Petit Bateau (especially since after a few hours of wear he has coated them in Le Grand Merde).

And so, twist my arm, I will take the Bugaboo. I will push my baby around in a status symbol on wheels; I might even push it into Old Navy. But only because it's a really good stroller. I swear.

More Proof That If There Is A God He/She Has A Wicked Sense Of Humor

Milo is now breastfeeding. Yup. After trying with the tube, without the tube, pumping, driving both him and myself crazy, and finally deciding to wean myself from the pump and quit altogether, Milo randomly decided to latch onto my breast on Sunday. Now he is all about the boobie.

And now of course I feel like, wow did I make a big deal over nothing.

I swear to you dear reader, with God as my witness, I will never write about my breasts again.

Perhaps In the Near Future I Will Write About Something Other Than The Baby Or My Breasts

So it looks like I am going to be returning to the working world in two weeks, bringing my alleged maternity leave (unclear whether one can actually take maternity leave when one is a freelancer) to an abrupt end. This is one of a handful of decisions I have recently made that have resulted in me feeling like I'm probably a crappy mother. Or at least, like the women of Urban Baby would feel comfortable comparing me to Joan Crawford. The other decision that these women, and perhaps the vast majority of female society, would probably totally chastise me for is that I'm probably going to quit pumping breast milk for Milo around that time.

The second decision came about because the pediatrician told me, when I asked what the recommended time was for me to continue pumping, that breast milk is only important for the first week of life, and that after that formula is just as good.

"If it feels good to you to give your baby breast milk, give him breast milk. If you hate pumping and it's making you miserable, stop," was more or less what he said, in an Australian accent that for some reason I found reassuring. He then went on to say that all the studies proving how great breastfeeding is are politically motivated, and that formula is now so well made that it's almost identical to the real thing. He pointed out that Milo has gained two pounds and grown two inches since birth, and seems to be a perfectly happy baby despite the fact that he is only eating breast milk about fifty percent of the time.

All of which made me wonder what sort of force would be behind a politically motivated breast milk study. The breast pump manufacturers? People who organize things like this? Or maybe it's The Man, keeping us down by making women feel like terrible, horrible people for wanting to do something other than attach their breasts to either baby or pump every two hours?

Either way, my breasts immediately rebelled against this information by forming into hard, painful slabs of concrete when I tried to skip my first pumping session in order to start weaning them off pump. Evil pump; highly addictive.

The return to work at six weeks post-partum means that I have absolutely no clothing that fits me. My shirts are too short because my boobs are ginormous, and my pants are too tight because my hips and ass still think we're pregnant. It also means that now I'm going to have to think about something else other than baby baby baby all day long. Which I'm looking forward to, but also a bit terrified by. What if my brain has been permanently altered by childbirth and I can no longer have a coherent thought about Information Architecture? What if my boobs start leaking in the middle of a meeting? What if I miss the baby and this is all a huge, terrible mistake and I've signed on for an 8-week project and I can't get out of it and in those 8 weeks Milo does something totally amazing (like...um...smiles, I guess? Rolls over...maybe?) and I miss it and we're never able to bond ever again and he grows up to be a heroin addict all because I went back to work when he was only six weeks old?

Milo and I had a big bonding moment a few days ago. I was sitting at my computer holding him in my left arm and he suddenly flailed his big head in that way he does, like a big floppy fish, and his head smacked straight into my keyboard. He looked stunned for a minute, and then turned bright red and let out a massive wail. I looked at him all red-faced and miserable, and knew that if I was responsible for him suffering some kind of permanent damage all because I wanted to check my email that I would never be able to live with myself. Which is to say, I felt his pain and it caused me pain in a way I had never experienced.

I got him calmed down fairly quickly, then called the pediatrician, who assured me that Milo was fine (and also added that she had whacked her son's head on the door frame on several occasions). And then Milo went to sleep and I burst into tears. And I think that for both of us, it was a weird bonding moment. Milo learned that he can whack his head into the keyboard and Mommy will make it better. And I learned that I care deeply about whether or not Milo whacks his head. Which will be good for both of us to remember when I abandon him and go back to work. (Just trying to keep you in diapers, Milo. The good kind.)

Trumped by Triplets

Over the past few years I have managed to create a life for myself where I don't have to talk to anyone I don't want to. This is very important to me, because I'm shy and generally distrustful of other people. I don't want to get into any conversation that I can't easily get out of; I figure it's only a matter of time until one person says something that offends, or at the very least confuses, the other person. And so I work from home, I turn down projects that require me to go into offices (actually, that has more to do with the fact that I loathe commuting and fluorescent lighting), I talk to my friends and my family and that's about it.

All of that started to change when I got pregnant. Because strangers like to talk to pregnant women. The more pregnant you are, the more people want to ask you 1.when are you due and 2. is it a boy or a girl. I have no idea what causes people to ask these questions, and what they plan on doing with the information once you answer them. It's like there's a plainclothes cadre of poll-takers out there, all doing a massive survey of pregnant women to find out when they're due and what sex their babies are.

Truth be told, at first I found the attention almost exciting. It was like people were saying to me, hey, you're different! We noticed! I especially liked talking to other random pregnant women (because when you're pregnant and you see another pregnant woman you're basically required by law to stop what you're doing and ask her where she's delivering and how her pregnancy has been going) because at least they sometimes had useful information, like what maternity store was having a sale. This changed somewhere around my ninth month. At that point, I'd HAD IT with being pregnant and I just wanted everyone to stop talking to me and leave me alone in my misery. I didn't want to compare any more notes with any other pregnant women. I found myself wanting to tell people who asked the sex of the baby that it was of a third, as-yet-unnamed sex.

And now that I have joined the stroller-pushing ranks I've discovered something horrible: it only gets worse. Not everyone has the guts to walk over and start talking to a pregnant woman (there is the off-chance, after all, that she is just oddly shaped and not pregnant at all). But everyone loves a baby.

The conversation currently falls into a fairly predictable pattern. 1. Is it a boy? (Milo is usually dressed in a fluffy blue bunting at these outings, so boy is a pretty good guess). 2. How old is he? Whereupon I give his age in weeks (currently 4, for those keeping track) and people say one of two things. If they are without child they say some variation on "Oh, wow, tiny." If they are with child they say, "You're brave for leaving the house so soon."

Then things get more complicated. Because if they are also pushing a baby in a stroller, I am expected to say to them 1. Is it a boy or a girl? followed by 2. How old is he/she? followed by 3. He/she is SOO cute! But, of course, I don't want to say these things. Because I didn't want to be having the conversation in the first place. At which point I am basically screwed either way. My choices are to continue the conversation by asking questions that I don't care about hearing the answer to, or to be unspeakably obnoxious and not ask the expected questions.

After four weeks of living as a sort of magnet for the baby-obsessed, however, I have come to expect that if I go out in public with Milo someone at some point will try to talk to me. So i was somewhat surprised when yesterday I walked into Connecticut Muffin and no one said a word. I ordered myself a Chai tea and sat down, wondering what strange vortex I'd walked into. Wasn't my baby still cute? Didn't anyone want to know how old he was? Then I noticed that everyone in the store was looking out the window. The door to the store swung open and in walked a woman pushing a stroller that contained not one baby, not two babies, but triplets. The entire store erupted into a loud clamor of "ooh, are they triplets? how old are they? triplets, can you imagine?".

I looked at Milo, sitting quietly in his stroller, his big blue eyes transfixed by the light fixtures. Oh yes, he loves lighting that boy. "You've been trumped by triplets," I told him, then settled back into my seat to enjoy my Chai, and the fact that no one was talking to me.