This is a promising endorsement. I wrap up the call and thank her, saying the name Edward to myself over and over as I chew on the moniker and a large pretzel. The only problem is that the name is so strongly linked to my grandfather.
When Grandpa Eddie was in a manic phase, he would bike ride with his grandchildren for miles, take us to the movies, teach us how to sneak in candy we bought beforehand, haul us to the natural history museum and take us to a second movie, all in a single day. On the way home, he would ask my cousins and me what we thought of the film, and if we had nothing to say he would shout, “Stupid! You have to have an opinion. Start talking.”
He would often let me sit on his lap while driving and allow me to hold the steering wheel of his beloved powder blue Oldsmobile. The car was striking on the outside, shiny and iridescent like drugstore eye shadow, but suffered numerous intractable engine problems, prompting my grandfather to compare the vehicle to “a Swedish whoooore” (Bronx accent, pronounced like “poor”). “Beautiful on the outside, rotting on the inside.”
Because my mom was underwhelmed by the joy of parenthood, my grandparents took me for long stretches during summers and school holidays.
Grandpa Eddie, who called me Butterball when I was chubby, which was most of the time, was about as much fun as a manic grandfather could be. At his funeral, I confided to my brother and cousins that he once pulled me aside and told me that I was his favorite grandchild, because I wasn’t quiet and submissive like my female cousins who ran to do dishes after dinner while I pretended I needed to take a shower and hid in the bathroom reading. He loved us all, but had to admit he loved me the most. Turns out, Gramps had similar conversations with all of us, who all thought we were his favorite. Despite this, in my heart, I believe it truly was me, because I was the most broken and had the most to say about the movies we saw.
The downside of being manic-depressive is obviously the depressive part, and when that hit my grandfather a couple times a year, he would take to his bed for weeks at a time, leaning against one of those giant pillows with armrests while staring at the wall.
It was the best of times, it was the most bipolar of times.
As Grandpa Edward’s brain chemistry did to his mood, the name pulls me in two directions. There are great memories and painful ones, and maybe I just want a clean slate with my child, a name with no baggage.
Now when I see movies, I not only think about the reviews my grandfather would demand, I not only listen for character names that might work, I also scour the closing credits for baby names. Maybe a gaffer has a name I like. At the bookstore, I stare at spines for authors’ first names. I spend hours on baby name Web sites. Every new male I meet is just a name I’m trying on for size. This is my moment, my time to come up with something special but not too special, sentimental but not too closely associated with a specific person, creative but not Apple or Audio Science or Moxie, masculine but not butch, cool but not too easily mocked. Yeah, taking folic acid and not shooting up, those were critical maternal decisions, but this, this feels like the biggy.
I wait. I wait and I hope the baby gives me a clue.
You know how your car stops making the noise the second you take it to the mechanic? That’s what my Baby No Name does with his kicking.
The second I put my husband’s hand on my stomach, the little guy just stops moving. Today, though, the boy gives a good kick to the palm of my husband’s hand for the first time. We’re sitting in bed watching Dateline as I try breathlessly to get comfortable on seven pillows.
“I felt it. I felt the baby,” he says. There it is, our first shared physical experience of our child. I want to get out the camera and videotape it, but grainy footage of happy moments always reminds me of what they show on Dateline when someone dies, to reinforce how happy the deceased used to be before being cruelly ripped from this life by a guy they met in a chat room or a drunk driver. I’m too superstitious to tape it, but I try to be still inside myself so I can remember the feeling.
I warn Daniel that I might start crying, which I do.
And it is so sappy and nauseating I’m glad I’ve already taken a Zantac. I see myself from the outside and think, Who am I? I make fun of people who get choked up by things like the miracle of life. I feel superior to people who take this stuff so seriously that they cast plaster molds of their pregnant bellies. I mean, I know it’s serious, but these hormones are making me lose my edge, the edge that’s probably a fake and carefully constructed defense mechanism to begin with, but it’s mine now and I hate to see it crumble.
Struggling to regain it, I stare down at my hand resting on my stomach and blurt, “Quit kicking me, buster!”
“Buster,” says my husband. “I like it. Buster.”
Until we come up with a real name, Buster it is.
fourteen
Babies ’R’ Ripping Us Off
The baby industry says you need to buy everything from nasal aspirators to anal thermometers to layettes and Moses baskets and other possible rip-offs. This triggers my overriding sense that The Man is always trying to gouge me, the same sense that almost made me skip the baby thing in the first place. I didn’t want to be “had” and I still don’t.
Now big baby stores and ad-driven baby Web sites are trying to convince me I need dozens of products I have never seen and don’t understand.
I’ve never even held a baby and now I have to know whether I really need something called a bouncy seat. Isn’t my knee a bouncy seat after an espresso?
These lists overwhelm me and my mind shuts down when forced to confront a world in which bulb syringes, teething toys, colic tablets, bumpers, bassinets, breast pads, burp cloths and tub spout covers play a pivotal role. Most checklists I find for “baby’s first year” include upwards of sixty items.
Because I’m superstitious, not to mention paranoid and resentful about perceived consumerist trickery, I figure I’ll outsmart the system by simply ignoring it.
I’ll wait until the baby is born, see what I actually need, and thus not overbuy—nor tempt fate by filling a nursery with things for a baby that may or may not make it home alive. I know, that sounds dark, but we Jews, after a few thousand years of pain and suffering, really like to manage our expectations. In fact, baby showers were taboo for Jews until pretty recently, and many of us still don’t buy so much as a diaper before the baby comes home safely. We avoid broadcasting our good fortune and thus tipping off the evil eye or dark spirits or whoever snatches your baby if you’re rude enough to basically brag about it or take it for granted by buying shit. I’m not very religious, but something about this cultural imperative not to get too cocky speaks to me.
Legally I have to buy a car seat, though, which is why I sit down one morning at the kitchen table with my laptop and a toaster waffle and one simple goal: order a car seat online.
Two hours later, I’m sobbing in bed, yesterday’s mascara smeared across my pillowcase. I am weeping like Sally Field in Steel Magnolias’ big funeral scene, yelping in staccato bursts, only no one has died. Nope, I just can’t figure out which car seat to buy. Disproportionate emotional response + crying in bed before noon = typical outcome when trying to accomplish difficult task while pregnant.
I consider calling someone, but how can I explain that I’ve gone full Sally Field because I can’t figure out the difference between a Snap-N-Go and a SnugRide?
I had wandered into an online underworld of car seat bases, attachable stroller frames, locking clips, five-point harnesses, boosters and retractable sun canopies. It’s like I didn’t get the travel warning from the Department of State telling me that going to the Republic of Car Seat by myself was a bad idea. It may look like a peaceful country, but that just makes it all the more dangerous when you don’t speak the language.
When I find an expert online to translate, I read this advice: “Parents often ask which of the many car seats is the best car seat on the market. The truth is, the best car seat is the one that fits your vehicl
e, your budget, your baby and that you will use properly each time your baby rides in the car.”
Thanks! That’s so helpful it requires an ironic exclamation point.
You ever go to therapy, and instead of just having your thoughts and feelings mirrored back to you (you seem angry at your mother, sounds like work is really frustrating right now), you really want the shrink to tell you what to do (break up with him, resign, move out, move in, go back to school, go back to your wife, get a day job)? Sometimes you need clear direction, you need your GPS to tell you which way to turn, not to ask you which route you think is best for you right now at this juncture of your life. Thanks, baby car seat expert, for telling me I have to look within myself to find the car seat that’s right for me, but I wouldn’t be going to you for answers if I had any clue so just give it up. There must be an overall best one. Give me a link, I’ll give you my credit card number, and let’s do this thing. Just tell me what to do. Please don’t make me become a car seat expert when you can save me the trouble by having made yourself one already.
This isn’t a life-or-death decision, I try to tell myself as I click around. Oh, wait, I guess it is.
While I can’t find anyone to just tell me what to buy, it’s no problem finding dire safety warnings about everything from the dangers of buying a recalled model to the likelihood of installing any brand improperly. The implicit communication: If you don’t figure it all out, it’s on you if the baby flies through the moon roof. It’s on you.
Worse than the overload, the onslaught of products and the fear-mongering and the confusing plastic parts are the reviews from moms on consumer sites. Wow. These are some opinionated ladies, and they know it all, know every detail about why this travel stroller is too bulky for a trip to Costco and why that one has subpar anchor straps.
Um, I just wanted to have a baby with five seconds to spare before my fertility window slammed shut on my fingers. I didn’t want to know about anchor straps.
It’s difficult to work up any tolerance for these product-reviewing mothers, who post four-hundred-word treatises on the relative merits of Britax versus Graco. They intimidate me with their superior knowledge of which brands are the most useful, and they rattle me to my very core with their single-minded momminess. I don’t like how repelled I am by these well-meaning mavens, who just need to share with the world, or at least those on Amazon.com, how the cup holder on the Nautilus 3-in-1 car seat system stroller frame is just too darn narrow for baby’s fave sippy cup.
And maybe it’s not just about my inability to purchase the ideal base, seat, stroller combination that has me freaked. Maybe it truly is the neighborhood. The enemy doesn’t wear a military uniform but a pastel yellow Slurp & Burp nursing cover-up. I’m in my second trimester. I live here now.
For the same reason I resisted baby gear, I was hoping I could avoid buying maternity clothes. I always thought they were a rip-off, but it’s futile to resist.
Not buying maternity clothes is like refusing a Xanax on an airplane. Don’t be a hero.
A couple of weeks ago, a woman I barely know, but who must now in retrospect be considered a saint, gave me a bunch of hand-me-down maternity clothes. Some fit now, some seem like they’ll never fit, but I know they will, and they sit in a stack, waiting.
I never would have purchased this stuff myself, because of my desire to not let the maternity clothing industry squirm its grubby hand into my chubby pocket, but now that I’ve experienced the magic of roomy camisoles with built-in bras and Empire-waist cotton dresses, I can’t look back. The thing about maternity clothes is that they aren’t just bigger, like plus-size clothes; they are cut differently, roomier in the right places, and in many cases feature a band of extra-wide, yummy elastic where the waistband of your skirt or jeans would normally be. Anyone who has been pregnant knows this, but it was news to me. Even if you aren’t that big, maternity clothes are like Ugg boots for your gut: so comfortable you don’t mind looking like you just stepped out of a food court in Lodi clutching a shopping bag from Wet Seal. That’s right: You won’t look cool—unless you splurge on pricey name-brand maternity denim—but cool is rarely comfortable, and A-line terry-cloth bathing suit cover-ups from Target certainly are. Yes, the maternity stores can jack up prices because they have a captive and nervous audience, but Target, Gap and Old Navy sell some basics that are so cheap you don’t feel like a sucker.
And if you hand your maternity clothes over to another pregnant girl when the breeding is all over, you can relish the knowledge that in some small way you are still sticking it to The Man. That’s how I justify it, and I plan to pay it forward by passing my black maternity dress pants and every other maternity garment on to the next pregnant chick who is sure she won’t need them.
Buying maternity clothes is nowhere near as complicated as buying a car seat; you wear the same size as you did in regular clothes, and if you have a reflective surface, you know whether or not it looks right. You’ve probably been trying on clothes your entire life, so you know what colors look good on you, you understand the basic idea that pants have two legs and sleeves cover your arms and buttons keep oxford shirts together. This territory isn’t so foreign.
Car seat shopping, however, is still breaking my balls.
After hours of searching the Internet and more hours of crying over the fruitlessness of my search, I make the decision that I can never, ever go car seat shopping again. I hand this task off to my husband, and I’m heartened to find that it also makes his head explode. A few days later, we accost a couple on the street with a baby and demand that they give us the make and model of their car seat, which they do, but I think I saw the lady feel around in her purse for her pepper spray. Anyway, that’s her problem. We got what we needed, ordered that car seat and had the local fire station install car seat bases in both of our cars.
Comprehending and obtaining this one simple baby product took many days and even more tears. This is an inauspicious beginning for me. How the hell am I supposed to deal with the intricacies of battery-powered, music-playing baby swings? I’m going to have to get a grip on what exactly I need to buy and learn.
Speaking of buying and learning, on top of all the baby and maternity products that are marketed to us pregnant ladies, there are also a bevy of classes, workshops and seminars for sale. Sure, Colonial-era women, or women on the prairie, or women working in a field somewhere, they never needed to take breast-feeding class, swaddling class, infant care seminars, infant CPR or childbirth preparation, but everyone I know seems to be signing up, and that makes me wonder if I should, too.
Our doctor says the infant CPR class is the only one we really need, and I keep thinking how terrible I’ll feel if my baby expires because I didn’t want to spend a Saturday afternoon in some horribly lit hospital conference room fake-liking other future parents and giving chest compressions to plastic babies.
Maybe I should just find a class and suck it up. Which reminds me, I’m going to have to understand baby bottles, bottle cleaners, bottle warmers and bottle drying racks, which really sucks. Glass bottles are heavy and can break, but plastic bottles contain bisphenol A (BPA), which can, especially when heated, leach into the formula or breast milk and might—or then again might not—be a carcinogen, except for the plastic bottles that are BPA-free; that is, if they’re made of nonpolycarbonate plastic like polyethylene or polypropylene.
Figuring out baby products reminds me of doing a crossword puzzle; it makes me feel both stupid and bored.
At least I have a car seat. Anchor straps, nursing bra straps, changing table straps ... it seems like you’re either tethered down or you’re free-falling. Only nothing is free. Except the hand-me-downs, of course.
People I Want to Punch: Maternity Models
I’m a back sleeper. At least I used to be, until I learned you aren’t supposed to sleep on your back after your fourth month of pregnancy, because your huge abdomen chokes off the blood supply to both your heart and the fetus. You’re s
upposed to sleep on your left side, but that feels unnatural to me, and no matter how I situate myself, there is always the sense that I’m suffocating.
This is why I succumb to the pregnancy pillows available online. I buy two, the Snoozer and the Snoogle. (What, the Slumberjack was already trademarked? Couldn’t patent Preggy Pillowzzz?) When they arrive, the packages feature photos of pregnant women luxuriously sleeping on these long, noodle-shaped pillows and modeling all the delightful ways one can use them.
It’s not that I have anything against these maternity models; it’s just that I kind of want to punch them.
For one thing, they seem to be sleeping so peacefully, while I spend my evenings gasping for air and obsessed that my baby isn’t getting enough oxygen. While I know they are just models directed to pose in restful tableaus, I hold them responsible for creating what appears to me to be a pregnancy fiction.
For another thing, I’m not even sure if these ladies are even really pregnant. Are they models who just happened to get pregnant and are now trying to get whatever gigs they can until they return to a size zero? Or are they standard models wearing fake stomachs to sell us shit when they aren’t even gestating? Who are these women? Hating models is so predictable, and generally, I have nothing but love for beautiful women, but some of these ladies must be fakers. Sure, they have bellies, but their limbs seem suspiciously slender.
And their feet. Let’s talk about their tiny, dainty, perfectly manicured feet.
Here’s the news: I was a size 9 before the pregnancy and I’m already wearing a 9.5 and inching ever closer to a 10. When this thing is over, I’m pretty sure I’m headed to some kind of special shoe store for ladies with giant feet or transvestites. Maternity models, however, don’t have swollen ankles or enlarged feet or even chipped pedicures.
Exploiting My Baby Page 13