I’m not saying I’m all offended that our culture prefers giant-breasted women; it’s just that I had carved this out as my one area of beauty confidence and now I must humor all of you joking about how my husband must be psyched and how much I’m going to be sad when these breasts deflate.
This is physically uncomfortable and it doesn’t make me feel more womanly or more attractive, so when I have to go along with all of you saying how much fun it is to have boobs now, I want to punch you a little bit. Just please, if you have to punch me back, not in the chest. Thank you.
eighteen
Babymoon in Vegas: Bet on a Crisis
On the way to Vegas, things start to go wrong, as they so often do, at the Mad Greek.
Within a couple of hours, I will be trying to locate the nearest hospital, but now I’m just waiting for the beefy leather-skinned guy in front of me to stop yelling at the clerk about his $3, and how it was her mistake, and how he’s going to file a claim with the state. Behind me, a man eats sullenly at a booth with his well-behaved toddler, who silently chews one fry after another.
The roadside diner smells of coconut sunscreen, with base notes of diesel and feta.
I had begged my husband to take me to Vegas, because I was doing what they call in recovery programs “pulling a geographic.” As in, If I just leave Colorado, I won’t wake up with festering facial sores and paranoia, because I’m not really a meth addict. I just need to move to Boston. Instead of going on a normal “babymoon” to, say, temperate San Diego, I decide that in Vegas I’ll be the old me.
Baker, California, is right off the I-15. I’ve broken down here many times. In the past, it was just my car overheating, or my psyche decompressing from a weekend with my mom and her wall of bird-themed paintings and her obsessive studying of restaurant menus and her autistic tuning out. This time, however, it’s my body. I’m twenty-nine weeks pregnant, it’s 110 degrees, I have no business being at the Mad Greek no matter how much I love their greasy pita bread and fresh strawberry shakes, no matter how much I think the me that will show up in Vegas for a last hurrah won’t look like she’s in her sixth trimester, or have trouble breathing, or be sure she’s washed up in show business or be concerned her baby won’t be healthy or his life won’t be perfect.
Ojai in the second trimester was one thing, but the third trimester is no time to head into a desert, much less toward Vegas, a city filled with smoke-choked casinos, frat guys who shove you blithely on elevators, free booze you can’t drink, mile-long walks to everything, hooker-strippers whose frosted hair and legginess are an attack on your swollen feet and maternity maxi-dress.
Unfortunately, wherever you go, you take yourself with you, which is another one of the annoyingly true bumper-sticker slogans they tell addicts. The same holds for pregnancy, and the crappy mood that has come with it for the last couple of weeks, and the not working much anymore and the visions of myself rocking a baby with spit-up on my shoulder staring blankly at a newborn and asking myself, “Is this how I’m supposed to feel?”
In Vegas, or I should say en route to Vegas, I am still big and uncomfortable and scared with a tinge of pre-postpartum. Only on I-15, I don’t drink any water because I’m nervous about having to pee.
At the Mad Greek, I order an omelet. When the cashier asks me what kind of toast I want, I hesitate, ask what they have. I mumble “wheat,” and look backward at my husband, as if to ask, “Do I really want wheat bread toast? Will that taste good to me? Would I prefer rye? Who am I?”
He snaps, “Yes. Wheat. Good.” Only I would know he’s snapping, because he’s a subtle snapper. My husband has a very long fuse and almost never loses his temper, but when you’re this pregnant, you can’t sustain even a small snap.
I slide into a booth as he waits for our order, sip on my fountain drink, eye the kid eating his fries. Feel a kinship with the little dude in his denim overalls, because we both seem lost and like we need our mommies.
My husband returns with our food, which we both just stare at until I tell him I didn’t like him snapping at me, and he apologizes, and admits he has spent the last two hours regarding the temperature gauge, worried he was going to break down on the side of the road with his pregnant wife. He’s been worried about lots of things, he admits: being a good enough provider for us, having enough room, making sure the air-conditioning is working and the windows are sealed. I tell him I don’t need much, and that he’s going to be a great dad. I start crying, wiping my eyes with scratchy Mad Greek napkins. He doesn’t touch his food, and his hands are shaking a little bit, which only happens when he’s really upset.
My nose starts to bleed, just a trickle. My stomach starts to cramp, and I figure this must be one of those Braxton Hicks contractions I’ve heard about, mild, irregular “practice” contractions that are usually felt by the second or third trimester. I wipe my bloody nose, wipe my eyes, don’t mention the cramps because I’ve just finished assuring my husband there is nothing to worry about, that we won’t break down in the desert, that we’ll get the windows fixed, that I know he’ll provide us with all we need, that he married a girl who cries and bends but doesn’t really break.
The wheat bread is toasted on one side and soft on the other, but I eat both pieces. We hit the road.
“This trip is going to be great from now on. I was just worried about getting you there. Now, I’m psyched,” Daniel says cheerfully. Soon, I will make him promise to take me to any hospital except the one twenty minutes or so from the Strip. My mom lives in Vegas, so I’m familiar with the place. I have no idea if what is happening to me is serious; all I know is that I don’t want to end up at the peach-colored hospital on the outskirts of town, because you go there to die, or at least my stepfather did. When he passed (as Hemingway would say, “gradually and then suddenly”), his death certificate described him as white and his cause of death as leukemia.
Only he was black. And died of congenital heart failure.
Probably an honest mistake, but it doesn’t point to great attention to detail. That hospital reminds me of sloppiness and slipping away, and while I have a long history of being lukewarm on my own existence, the pull to keep this baby safe is mooring me to this world like nothing else has.
The cramps abate until right when we exit the I-5 in Vegas. Only now, they are about ten times worse than extreme menstrual cramps, and we are stuck in Friday afternoon congestion. I have to take off my seat belt. I check the clock, and it’s been twenty minutes or more of this one cramp. I quietly Google “Braxton Hicks” on my iPhone so as not to panic my husband, and from what I can tell, those are supposed to feel like a mild tightening, but not painful. Another half an hour goes by, which is when I decide to tell my husband, just in case I’m actually having preterm labor.
I’m doubling over now. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to walk through the lobby of the hotel without some help, but I can’t spook the Mister because this whole stupid Vegas thing was all my idea and it was obviously completely idiotic.
Somehow, we make it to our room at the Palms. I will myself to walk upright but find myself stopping to lean against slot machines every few yards. We call our doctor, who says I’m probably dehydrated. Drink water and rest, she says, and if things don’t improve in two hours, call back.
My husband pours me a bath and I drink all four bottles of Smart Water he bought in the lobby. I soak and listen to CNN and read USA Today. In two hours, I’m fine. I glance out the window and look down at the Palms pool, where it’s “Ditch Friday,” a packed bash the locals call “sweaty ball soup” because of the preponderance of male attendees. Part of me feels like I’m watching children trick-or-treat from behind a curtain, nursing a case of mono, but most of me feels I’m exactly where I should be, cool and safe, away from the blaring Kanye and the pool-friendly canisters of Miller. I was never a party girl before, and you can’t go back to a place you’ve never been, nor should you ever want to dunk yourself into sweaty ball soup.
Often,
I wonder what’s on the other side of this pregnancy, whether being a parent will be a blissful shuffling of priorities or just something else that’s supposed to come naturally to me but doesn’t. I can’t possibly know how I’ll feel once I cross over, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to figure it out. One thing that’s becoming as clear as the acrylic heels on a showgirl ’s shoes, the old ways of feeling okay about myself were wearing me out. I’m done grubbing for gold stars to justify being alive, and I wonder if caring for another human being and loving him as well as I can will be gold star enough.
Sitting naked at the desk in the hotel room, cramp-free, my husband rubbing my shoulders, I think I’m almost ready to qualify as a mom, because I’ve never felt so protective. As long as Buster is okay, I don’t care about being a has-been (that barely was), or having kind of a double chin now, or wearing outfits Kate Gosselin would suggest are too “middle America,” or gaining forty-five pounds. I don’t care that I’m not at the party pool; I don’t dance, I’ve always hated crowds and I burn in the sun. I don’t want to be down there, or back home, or in my old body, or anywhere else. My husband demands I drink another bottle of water, and I imagine him with Buster in a Baby-Björn, holding my hand, and I don’t know how I ever got out of the desert intact.
I only know that as sure as I can take a wrong turn, I can right myself, usually by just sitting still.
nineteen
Are Breast-Feeding Classes for Boobs?
Here’s what you need to know about exclusively breast-fed babies: They can levitate.
That’s what I learn during a three-hour breast-feeding class.
They also are immune to disease, are more likely to win Nobel Prizes, recycle, live meaningful lives, understand James Joyce, love fully, donate to NPR pledge drives, stop to help distressed motorists, appreciate Rachmaninoff, have high credit scores, get appointed to important government posts, and have X-ray vision. Oh, and breast-fed babies live forever. The science on that isn’t totally in yet, but better safe than sorry.
Moreover, if you breast-feed, the baby weight will melt off of you. You will evade reproductive cancers. The release of the feel-good hormone oxytocin when your baby is “at your breast” will saturate your system with “delicious” feelings of attachment and contentment such as you have never experienced before. Mothers who miss out on this mommy morphine are likely to leave their babies in the middle of the road to be pecked at by turkey vultures.
Okay, that’s not totally true. Some mothers who skip this crucial biological bonding experience will simply leave their child in a basket at a fire station with $5 and half a pack of Benson & Hedges Menthol Ultra Lights in a box.
Breast-fed babies will have fewer ear infections, allergies, stomach ailments and a much lower chance of obesity. They will have higher IQ scores. So say the adherents. So says the teacher of this class, a tall, fit, broad-shouldered woman in her fifties who looks like she played high school volleyball.
A room full of us pregnant ladies, shifting around in uncomfortable plastic chairs and gnawing on free cookies with our husbands, are also given a stern warning: Never ever let the baby out of your sight at the hospital once it is born.
Some sleepy, overworked, well-meaning but ultimately venal nurse is going to hear it cry and give it ... well, what might as well be a cocktail of lead paint, asbestos juice and Southern Comfort: formula. That’s right, your precious baby’s ability to be exclusively fed at your breast, the way god and Mother Nature intended, will be forever compromised if you don’t step up with some major vagina power and tell the nurses they are not taking your baby out of your sight for one single second at the hospital. Once that baby gets away from you and into the hospital nursery, it’s a free-for-all and you can kiss your dreams of attending your child’s inauguration good-bye. Once it gets a taste of that plastic nipple and guzzles away at that easy-access bottle, forget that child loving you, crafting you handmade cards or even sitting in your lap.
We also learn some of the more subtle differences between bottle-and breast-fed babies. Like, babies who are bottle-fed stink. They smell foul. As for breast-fed tykes, their shit literally doesn’t stink, though it may be an alarming shade of black before it goes mustard yellow and seedy.
That’s what I learn in my breast-feeding class.
On the other hand, outside of the beige and pastel pink confines of this breast-feeding store, which is tucked away in an urban strip mall in Hollywood, out in the real mom world, some of my girlfriends just didn’t take to breast-feeding, and their kids seem fine. From my unscientific sampling of moms I know who chose to bottle-feed, I see no asthma, no allergies and no bonding problems with the babies. The moms lost the baby weight just fine. I’m not sure if the kids are a ticking time bomb or the moms are just enjoying a few years until the uterine cancer kicks in, but it seems unlikely. I also know mothers who were literally sick with grief when they couldn’t breast-feed because their babies had a “weak suck” or they just didn’t produce enough of the magical elixir to keep the little ones alive. I’m not sure why these women, who did their best, read every book and took every class, and dragged their newborns to appointments with lactation specialists, should be made to feel selfish and negligent because breast-feeding didn’t work out for them.
From where I sit—on my now numb ass—it seems like support groups for breast-feeding women are redundant. This whole culture, at least out here in Los Angeles, supports breast-feeding women. The gals who really need a safe place to compare notes and not have to hide from formula-sniffing dogs and do-gooding busybodies are the formula-feeding moms. There is so much pressure for women to succeed at the boob-feeding that if they fail they feel like they have to hide out so some idiot doesn’t spy a packet of powdered Enfamil in their diaper bag and chime in with the now standard “breast is best.” I buy that breast is best, but it isn’t always possible or practical, and I kind of just think we should stay the hell out of each other’s bras.
It’s difficult to find an expert or parent who doesn’t have a horse in the breast-feeding versus formula race, which makes it hard for us pregnant girls to truly understand our options and their repercussions. To be fair, hard data is difficult to come by, because there are so many variables that go into a child’s intelligence, or propensity toward allergies, or ability to bond.
Obviously, an over-Googling, fear-based creature like me is attracted to the idea of inoculating my child against all ills with my magical breasts, but there is also the matter of working to consider. At some point, me and the rest of the employed, semi-employed and hoping or needing to be employed moms in this class won’t be able to be around our babies every two to three hours, and though we can pump (they sell all manner of pumps at this store and others), that seems like having a second full-time job. All of this may be—probably is—worth it for the miraculous antibodies breast milk reportedly provides, but it’s still a major time “suck ” if it works, and a major mouthful of guilt if it doesn’t.
Our statuesque teacher, a certified lactation consultant and part owner of the store hosting the class, impresses me with her vast knowledge of boobies and extreme comfort in discussing latching and leaking. She even has a pink velveteen dummy breast, on which she demonstrates various breast-feeding holds. However, when she tells us about her own kids and mentions how healthy the now grown offspring are, she adds that one of them has a little bit of asthma, only when he runs. Wait a second; you mean this panacea doesn’t work for someone who was breast-fed for two years?
“The doctors told us it would have been way, way worse if I hadn’t breast-fed,” she explains.
Really?
Now that is some backward, biased data analysis if I’ve ever heard it. Look, the kid has respiratory problems and his mom is a lactation lady who did nothing but breast-feed him the “right” way for two years straight. That means one-third of her three children has asthma. How can this fact fit into the hypothesis that breast milk effectively staves off breath
ing problems? Would it really have been worse without the breast milk? No one can know that for sure, and while I like this woman, and her good posture and better diction, she does seem to be using a logic shoehorn to make sense of her own experience.
Along with the demonstration and lecture, we are also shown a grainy VHS movie, the production values of which can only be compared to an early snuff film, featuring a freckled, naked mother just after giving birth.
Her baby, possibly of German descent but it’s hard to tell because there is no dialogue, is placed on her chest and allowed to root around until she finds the nipple. This process takes about half an hour, after which the girl finds the boob and suckles away. I must admit that it’s beautiful to see, and who wouldn’t want such a natural, easy first nursing experience, a newborn all calm and snuggly on her mother’s chest? The lactation lady warns us of the dangers of getting the wrong kind of latch, which would be painful and perhaps impede the child’s ability to get enough milk. The imperfect latch could lead to nipple scabbing—for which the store sells plenty of remedies, of course—and we should be careful to gently open the baby’s jaw downward and mush the nipple out with our hands so the kid gets kind of a flesh sandwich, with a nice full mouth of both nipple and areola. I start to fade with mental overload and whisper to my husband, “Are you getting this?”
“Yes. Sandwich latch. Got it,” he answers, looking down at his watch. The room is stuffy. I notice a couple of the other husbands nodding out, but this isn’t latch lady’s first day at the sleepy husband rodeo.
“You in the front row, I know you’re tired, but stay with me. How often do we nurse a new baby?” she asks a man with disheveled black hair and maroon corduroy pants.
Exploiting My Baby Page 16