Conception: After psychologically disturbing visit to childhood home, solo, for Christmas, have crazy, drunken break-up sex with ex-boyfriend. Don’t use birth control.
Pregnancy: Be freelance and have the kind of “catastrophic” insurance that covers something if you are hospitalised, but not sonograms, medicine or doctor visits. Have no end of small problems for which you have to see the doctor, including thinking you are leaking amniotic fluid in seventh month. (Turns out it’s urine, which is at first a relief and then disturbing in its own way). Spend a week believing you have gestational diabetes, but later it’s discovered that it was the glass of Sprite you drank just before the blood test.Bonding: Ask timidly if you are “allowed to breastfeed.”
Birth class: Attend with ex, who openly resents any homework and bolts before class is over each week to get a drink at neighborhood bar. Wonder if it would be more or less embarrassing to go alone.
Labour: Wake up feeling crampy and dig out yellow Wonderbra you’ve never worn before; don it. Go to hospital five hours later and immediately beg for an epidural. Get an epidural that pools so that your left hip is numb but everything else is in full bloom of pain. Make mental note that you don’t have pain relief, nor will you get credit for having a natural birth. Say to anyone near you, at first abashedly but with increasing volume and abandon, that you “really feel like” you have to “poo”. Although all other clothing has been removed, keep yellow Wonderbra on for entire labour and delivery.
Birth partner: Ex is there but leaves during transition to make phone calls. When he comes back, he takes one look at your vagina and blanches. Ex attempts to comfort you through contractions by trying to pash you; stands on IV.
Delivery: Scream bloodcurdling scream until son finally comes out. Baby is immediately whisked to neonatal intensive care unit. Head to hospital room and become the only person on the floor without a baby. Feel foolish.
Bonding, phase 1: Visit child in NICU but feel like interloper. Ask timidly if you are “allowed to breastfeed.” When son finally comes home (day four), experience feeding child as akin to placing a snapping turtle on your swollen, chapped nipples. Notice son has little pimples and have flashback to terrible high school years when you had ackers.
Bonding, phase 2: Son is now covered in white and red pustules and looks not unlike the Singing Detective. When people come to see him, blurt out, “Can you believe how bad he’s got baby acne?!” so that they know you know it’s there. Feel bad that this is the first thing you say about your child. Try to pump bottles so Baby Daddy can do four a.m. feedings, but “allow” the occasional bottle of formula (okay, use formula every night).
Co-parenting: Swing between smugness that you and baby’s father literally share the work and expense of childrearing, unlike most “real” couples you know, and blind rage that you have to parent with irrational man you broke up with two years ago. Wag finger in ex’s face and whisper sotto voce threats that you won’t follow through with.
Bedtime: As child grows older, have him on late schedule so he’ll sleep in the morning. By the time he is twelve months, his bedtime is ten p.m.; by eighteen months, it’s midnight. Keep this a secret from friends, relatives, and your own parents.
School: Take son to pre-school the day after he turns two. Sneak out of school, sniffling, when he isn’t looking because that’s your strategy when you leave him with babysitters. Walk home talking on mobile to sister about how son is in school and next thing you know you’ll be leaving him at Uni when other line beeps in. Learn that son is hysterically crying, “desperate,” as the teacher terms it, and that you are to pick him up immediately. At the pick-up, start to cry when teacher asks if you even said goodbye to son before leaving.
Psyche: Notice son winds his tresses in his fingers as he is falling asleep, plucking out many strands during each nap, creating small bald spot.
Food: Son appears to consume about a gallon of milk every day, eggs, and very little else. He asks for Tic Tacs and cough drops as a treat, demanding in a loud, rude voice, “Need Tic Tac! Need Tic Tac!” Try to resist giving child Tic Tacs or cough drops, as it seems weird and he’s crunching them and probably going to break one of his tiny teeth. Despite anorexic’s diet, son is extremely tall. Sometimes he will emerge from his bedroom chewing on something and when you inquire what, he’ll say, “hair.”
Psyche, part 2: Notice son gets up from a nap covered in strands of hair. Call pediatrician for advice. Pediatrician says to ignore that son is pulling out hair ritualistically, that son is soothing himself, like thumb-sucking. Ignore hair-pulling for one day and then take to whispering intensely to son not to pull his hair; you’ll give him cough drops if he’ll stop pulling hair. Please stop pulling hair.
Love: At son’s school, three weeks into the term, as you are fluffing his hair to obscure thinning areas, receive wet, mentholated kiss from balding two-year-old. Wince as heart nearly breaks from how lucky you are.
Photo courtesy Nathan Kendall
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