“You know those stories I promised to do?” I tell my editor, a woman who has no children. “Well, you’re not going to get any of them. I can’t do anything anymore. I’m too uncomfortable to sit in front of my computer for more than five minutes, and my brain is mush.” I have unfinished stories on a matchmaking school and on a hip designer in town, and another feature on trendy nail polishes, none of which are going to get done. I’m past the point of feeling bad about letting my editors down. I’m really too tired to concentrate on anything.
“Well, I understand that you get your brain back two years after giving birth,” she tells me.
“Great.”
I decide to call my colleague Sheila to get caught up on office gossip. I’m not too tired to do that.
“Hi. I’m sorry, I’m not in the office until October 22nd. I’m away in Switzerland on assignment,” says her voice mail. “I’ll get back to you upon my return.”
Switzerland! What’s Sheila doing in Switzerland for work? Damn. That could have been me.
Talking on the phone doesn’t require any brain power at all. I call Sara today to tell her how my career is going down the tube. Maybe she’s worried too, seeing as she’s also going on maternity leave in a couple of months. Misery loves company. Rather, pregnancy loves misery, which means pregnancy loves company.
“My ankles are huge. They are like tree trunks,” she tells me. “They are so big that my husband has started calling them ‘chankles’—you know, ankles that are as big as my calves. Then at night they blow up even bigger and he calls them ‘thankles’ because my ankles get as big as my thighs.”
“That sounds awful. I feel for you. I really do.”
“And my baby is breech,” she continues. “Which means I’ll be having a C-section.”
“Hey! Just like me! Don’t worry, I’ll be able to tell you exactly what happens!”
“Yeah, that’s true. Do you feel a little bit badly that you’re not going the vaginal route?”
“No, I really don’t. Why? Do you?”
“A bit. I’m not sure why. I mean, I really just want the baby to be healthy. I guess it doesn’t really matter how it gets into the world.”
“Exactly. I’m more worried that my career is going down the tube.”
“Sexy Young Intern bugging you again?” Sara asks. She’s listened to me bitch about Sexy Young Intern before.
“She’s everywhere! They love her at the paper. They love her!”
“You’re going to have a baby! I think once the baby is in the world, you won’t care about Sexy Young Intern. You just won’t.”
“I hope so. I really do.”
“Beck, I’ve got to go. I have to go find another chair to rest my chankles on.”
OCTOBER 10
2:30 a.m.
“Wake up! Wake up!”
“What? What?” the fiancé asks, startled.
“We have to get the nurses and doctors presents. I totally forgot to do that. What are we going to get them? This is a nightmare! I have no time. I still have to get a pedicure and a bikini wax! There’s too much to do!”
“Calm down.”
“No, you don’t understand. We have to get them something good. Ronnie said that was the number one thing we had to do, next to me getting a pedicure, so that the staff will be sure to treat me super nice during my hospital stay. We need to bribe them with something!”
“I said, calm down. I already ordered fifteen really nice bottles of wine for the nurses and a bottle of champagne for Dr. Bono.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Okay. And you have to make sure you give it to him BEFORE he operates on me to make sure he does a really good job. Do you promise to do that?”
“Promise,” the fiancé mumbles.
“Promise again.”
“Promise.”
“Promise one more time.”
“I promise.”
“Okay, you promised three times.”
“I know. I’m just not sure he’ll appreciate a bottle of champagne at nine in the morning. And, Beck, you do realize you’re going to a hospital and not the Four Seasons, right? I’m not sure how good the service will be.”
“I know that. What do you think, I’m crazy or something?”
OCTOBER 11
2:30 p.m.
I can’t help but hate Saturdays now. As we inch closer and closer to the birth of our baby, Saturday has become Chore Day at the mall. I hate chores. I hate malls. I can’t believe I have to spend my last Saturday as a non-parent doing chores in a mall. We should be reading the New York Times over eggs. We should be sleeping in. We should be going to the movies. We should be doing anything but this on our last Saturday as non-parents.
“This is the second weekend in a row we’ve spent buying baby crap,” I moan to the fiancé as we try to find a parking space. “I hate this.”
“Well, we have to do it. We’re running out of time.”
“I know. It’s just so boring. Will it never end?”
“No, it will never end. Don’t you remember last weekend at the mall?” I don’t want to remember last weekend’s excursion.
Buying baby crap is easier when you can get everything in one place, which is why we go to the mall. The mall also has a maternity store. The Juicy Couture trackpants I have been wearing for weeks are stretched completely out of shape, they have been worn and washed so many times. “You mean you’re giving birth in just over a week and you haven’t had to buy any maternity clothes?” the saleslady asked me last weekend. “Yes,” I told her, “but I’ve been dressing like this,” I said, looking down with disgust at the stretched-out trackpants and one of the fiancé’s XXL sweat-shirts. I didn’t end up buying anything, though. Nothing fit right. Nothing at all. I left a heap of maternity pants on the changing room floor and walked out before I lost it and started bawling like a baby.
Then the fiancé almost lost it at Baby Gap. We had already bought a baby bathtub, a stroller, and a car seat. We needed some baby clothes and had already bought some at Baby Roots and Baby Old Navy. We were headed back to the parking lot when we walked past Baby Gap. We couldn’t not go in. But it was a mistake. By this point, we both already had Mall Brain—that feeling you get after spending way too long in recycled air. Symptoms of Mall Brain include getting hot, flushed, and edgy, and anxious for either a long nap or a tall alcoholic beverage. We had all the symptoms.
Baby Gap was packed. We had been in the store for less than a minute when the fiancé looked at me and stated in a hard voice, “I don’t think I can do this today. Can we go? Now?” I have never been with someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but the fiancé looked as though he was going in that direction. He was pale, and his mouth was in a thin line.
“Yes, let’s get out of here.” Mall Brain was also giving me a headache.
As we walked quickly—at least, as quickly as I could walk, being a woman giving birth in four days—I took in the scene.
“Have you noticed how many strollers there are in this mall? And how many kids shopping with their parents?”
“Yes. Welcome to our future,” the fiancé answered. “We are going to spend the rest of our weekends in malls.”
“Don’t say that,” I told him. “I know it’s true, but don’t say that.” I hadn’t thought about our baby growing up until then.
“It’s true,” the fiancé continued. “Kids keep growing and growing, and every time our kid grows, we’ll be back at the mall buying new clothes.”
“Now you’re trying to depress me,” I told him.
But here we are again, the following Saturday, back for more punishment.
3:15 p.m.
The fiancé and I stop for a milkshake after our visit to the mall. He needs comfort food to cheer him up. I am craving something fattening.
“I was thinking that we should get a bassinet,” I tell him, sucking on my chocolate shake, “so the baby can sleep anywhere for the first few weeks. Yo
u know, if we’re in the living room, the baby can sleep there too.”
“I was just thinking that the other day too.”
“Fuck. Does that mean we have to go back to the mall?”
“Yep.”
“Fuck!”
“I know. Fuck.”
“And we also forgot to get detergent for the baby. Babies’ clothes need special baby detergent.”
“Fuck. See? I told you. We will be spending the rest of our lives in malls buying stuff for our child.”
“I know. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
OCTOBER 12
7:00 a.m.
“Pancakes! Panc—”
“I know. I know. We have to get you pancakes. This is the last Sunday before this baby comes out of you, thank God. I am never taking you for pancakes again!”
Oh. My. God. This is our last Sunday without a baby.
I want this thing out of me. Now.
“You know,” I tell the fiancé as we’re at a table at Phil’s, “it’s customary for the father to buy the mother of his child a gift when she gives birth. Ronnie got a new car when she had her first baby.”
“Oh really?” the fiancé responds. “Ronnie has a really nice husband.”
“I know. Did you get me a gift?”
“Beck, it’s not becoming to ask for presents.”
Oh well. At least I planted the seed. If he didn’t already know about the custom, at least he does now.
OCTOBER 13
This is our last Monday without a baby.
The fiancé and I bought some parenting books earlier this evening. I’m just not sure we’ll have time to actually read them before the child arrives. I mean, she’s coming in two days.
When we got back home, I made the mistake of checking my work e-mail. Although I’ve pretty much given up on working, that doesn’t mean I can stop myself from checking my e-mail. How long before I get back on my feet and can work again? I’m already getting the urge to write a story. I’m already feeling out of the loop. Occasionally the boss will send out memos about recent staff changes or new hires at the paper. I received one of those. New associate sports editor, new human resources manager, and there—there, at the bottom of the list, was Sexy Young Intern. She has been hired on at the paper full-time. She’s in. I’m out. My career is over.
OCTOBER 14
10:00 a.m.
This is our last Tuesday ever without a baby. Tomorrow I’m going in for a C-section. Tomorrow, at this time, I will have a baby. Tomorrow, at this time, I will be a mother. Tomorrow everything changes. Right now, we have to go pick up my mother at the airport. My mother had to come in for the birth of her first grandchild. Plus a gal needs her mother around in times like these.
11:00 a.m.
I see my mother. She is heading toward the baggage claim and—gaa!—She is not—Please tell me that’s not—
“Mom! Over here!”
“Well, look at you. You are definitely ready to have a baby, I see.”
“Please tell me that’s not the—the video camera!” I moan, not hiding the disgust in my voice. For ten years—yes, that’s how old the video camera must be—I’ve been plotting to steal that thing and throw it out the window.
“Of course that’s the video camera,” she answers. “We need a video of you before giving birth, and of the baby!”
And I thought being pregnant was bad. Now it’s going to be on film. Forever. Maybe it was a mistake to ask my mother to come help out.
2:00 p.m.
After we took my mother out for lunch, she came back to our place and handed us a bag. In it was a sweater she had knitted. “It’s for the baby’s going-home outfit.” Gaa! Two days ago, the fiancé’s mother handed us a bag with the baby’s going-home outfit in it. I had never even heard of a going-home outfit. I can’t handle this stress right now—the day before my C-section. Someone’s feelings are going to be hurt.
4:00 p.m.
Maybe I’ve been too hard on many of my friends during these last few months. Maybe they really do care about me. They have all called wishing me luck tomorrow. Of course, I told them all about my scheduled C-section. What did you think? That I could possibly have kept something so juicy a secret?
8:00 p.m.
The fiancé and I are back home, after having dinner with my mother and his parents, to enjoy our last hours as non-parents. How do you spend your last hours as a non-parent?
“Can you believe that tomorrow we’re going to have a baby?” I ask him.
“No, can you?”
“No.”
“It’s very weird.”
“It is.”
“I’m still not convinced about the first name Rowan,” I continue. The fiancé and I, after hours and hours of discussion, have come up with the name Rowan, stolen from an issue of Us Weekly. Thank you, Brooke Shields, for having a daughter named Rowan! In all our discussions over the past few weeks, Rowan was the only name we both liked (Apple never did take).
“I like it and everything, but I keep thinking that our child’s name should have some real meaning,” I say. “Something between you and me, like your friends who named their child after that bottle of wine they really love, Salai. That’s romantic. We don’t have a name with real meaning for us. I can’t think of anything, either, and it’s all I’ve been thinking about for months. We could name her after an airline, because of our long-distance relationship.”
“You know we’re having the baby tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah, I was thinking that . . . Well, you know how I realized I was in love with you when we were in Las Vegas at the Palm restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how about the name Palmer?”
“That’s not bad. Hmmm. Palmer. I like it.”
“Do you like it enough to change her name to Palmer?”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. And about the middle name . . .”
“Listen, I told you the middle name is all yours. If you want the middle name to be Apple, you can have it.”
“Actually, I was thinking about the name Joely, after your cousin who passed away. How do you feel about Joely?”
“I really love that.”
“Okay, let’s sleep on it. How should we spend our last night together without a baby?”
“Don’t you have to pack for the hospital?”
Oh. Right. What a boring way to spend my last night as a non-mother.
“Yeah. I guess I better do that.”
11:00 p.m.
The checklist! I can’t find the checklist that Dr. Bono handed me during one of our appointments! I have no idea what to pack! The checklist had everything on it that the baby and I need for our hospital stay!
11:38 p.m.
Found the checklist crumpled in a ball in one of my jacket pockets. Phew. I lay out one suitcase for me, and one suitcase for our baby. I’m a notorious overpacker. When we went to Hawaii for ten days, I packed enough clothes for a month, or maybe two. But you never know. It could have snowed. Better to be prepared than not prepared. I am going to be in the hospital for three days. I pack sixteen pairs of underwear, five pairs of sweats, five long-sleeved shirts, five T-shirts, eight pairs of socks, a new bottle of shampoo, a new bottle of conditioner (there had better be a shower in my room!), a new bar of soap and new deodorant, four packs of maxi pads, and two pillows. For the baby, I pack nine sleepers, five undershirts, four blankets, six hats, and a pack of diapers.
“You do know you’re only going to be there for three days?” the fiancé asks, coming into the bedroom, where I’m on the floor, rolling everything into small balls so it will all fit into the suitcases.
“I know. But the list was kind of stingy.”
“How many diapers do you have there?”
“Eighty.”
“Eighty? Eighty?”
“Well, do you know how many times a day a baby needs to be changed?”
“No. Should we get the book out?”
“I don�
��t even know where those books are.”
“Me neither. So you’re all packed then?”
“Yep.”
“So we’re ready then?”
“Well, I’m not sure how ready we are to have a baby, but we’re definitely ready to go to the hospital. Hey, can you help me up?” I ask, sticking out my hands for a lift, hopefully for the last time.
THINGS I HAVE DONE WRONG
DURING THIS PREGNANCY
Ate like shit for nine months.
Had four Benedryls to help me sleep. They didn’t work.
Smoked the occasional cigarette.
Have yet to talk to my stomach, aside from telling the baby to stop moving while I’m trying to sleep. Have not played any soothing music to my stomach either, aside from putting airplane headsets on it for one minute, just to see if they would fit.
Did not lie with my legs up for ten minutes a day to keep varicose veins away.
Drank at least a couple dozen Diet Cokes. Had one large, caffeinated coffee a day.
Watched way too many hours of reality television.
Have not worked out in months. Have barely even left the house in the last month.
Constantly bitched and moaned.
Stressed out every day over work, Cute Single Man, my future.
Always woke up somehow sleeping on my stomach. Perhaps dented the baby’s head?
THINGS I DID RIGHT
DURING THIS PREGNANCY
Ate three salads.
Drank no alcohol (except half a glass of wine on my birthday).
Still haven’t bounced on a trampoline.
Watched way too many hours of reality television. (Perhaps the baby can be the next American Idol or winner of Survivor?)
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15
6:00 a.m.
The fiancé just got out of the shower. He has to head to his office this morning to close a deal or do whatever it is he does at work. He’ll be coming to pick me up at 8 a.m. His deal had better close on time.
One of my colleagues once told me how he brought his laptop into the hospital room while his wife was in labor. He set up his computer on the tray table over her bed, plugged it into the socket on the wall, and proceeded to write his column. I asked him if his wife got mad because he continued to work while she was in labor. “Well, it was taking a while,” he answered. Still, because of this colleague I had to make sure the fiancé would not be working while I was getting my C-section.
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