Wiped!

by Rebecca Eckler

  The Fiancé had given up trying to settle her down after ten minutes. I didn’t blame him. I knew if I could barely calm her down, he’d never be able to.

  By the time we landed, she and I both smelled foul, like a mixture of urine and formula. Even her usually sweet-smelling breath reeked.

  “Why is she being like that?” the Fiancé asked on the plane.

  “Teething,” I answered.

  When we got off the plane, we found the elevator that took us down to the luggage area. We got on with a couple with newborn twins, who were also on our plane. (Once you travel with a baby, you always take note of the other babies around.) The twins were both sleeping soundly, and the parents, while they did seem a little tired, certainly didn’t look like they’d been spit out of a hurricane, like we did. I hated them.

  I notice this a lot actually. There are a lot of mothers who look good and put-together out in public with their babies. I wonder how these mothers have it in them to brush their hair, let alone put on makeup, and look not only presentable but ready to walk down a red carpet. How is it possible for them to look so tucked-in, while I look so crappy? There must be some secret they’re not sharing with me. Maybe there are some mothers who exist solely to make you feel bad.

  Ten Mommy Moments People “Forget” to Mention

  1. You will blame every cry on “teething.”

  2. You will forget the diaper bag. Your will need it when you do.

  3. You will become the world’s best tipper.

  4. You will find yourself participating in “baby-offs.”

  5. You will lose these baby-offs.

  6. You will get offended when someone doesn’t think your baby is the cutest.

  7. Your baby will say her first word. You think.

  8. Your baby will start to eat smelly baby cereal.

  9. You will feel guilty about wanting to go back to work.

  10. You will wonder if you can give it all up and be a SAHM (stay-at-home mom).

  April 15

  I have rented a cheap office space to work from. I’m just not cut out to be a stay-at-home mother, though I think about being one often.

  I used to play the “what if” game with the Fiancé, before I was pregnant. “What if,” I’d ask him, “Brad Pitt asked me out on a date? Would I be allowed to go?” Then, when I was pregnant, the “what if” questions became “What if I go into labor and you’re on the golf course and can’t pick up your phone and I have to deliver the baby all by myself?” Now the “what if” question has become “What if I decide to be a stay-at-home mother? Would you let me?”

  “You could never do that,” the Fiancé always answers.

  “I could too,” I always profess.

  “You’d last a week. You’d get bored.”

  It’s not that I don’t understand mothers who want to stay at home. Actually, I’m a bit envious of them. Not about the fact that they don’t work (because I know now that raising children is the hardest work in the world) but because they actually can get through day after day after day with their babies and not seem to mind the tediousness of it all. Is something wrong with me that I get bored and don’t know what to do with the baby after three hours?

  I read somewhere that it’s not the amount of time you spend with your children that matters but the quality of time. But it’s something I repeat to myself often to make myself feel better about leaving home to go to my office to work. It’s not the amount of time; it’s the quality of time, I say over and over in my head, every morning when I walk out the front door.

  You just can’t win being a modern mother. I remember a woman I worked with at the newspaper who had twins on top of already having a three-year-old. She was back at work within three weeks of giving birth. I couldn’t help but judge her. What kind of woman goes back to work three weeks after giving birth to twins, especially since she has the option to take a year off? But now I understand where she was coming from. If you really care about your career, you can’t help but wonder what you’re missing out on by not being in the office.

  You can’t help but become paranoid, believing that someone is going to take over your job and do better at it than you ever did. You can’t help but hate yourself for having spent all of your twenties working so hard at a job, only to suddenly give it all up because you had a baby.

  I also judge myself for wanting to work. In the big picture, what is taking a year off from my career? Why don’t I want to stay home with my baby? Why haven’t my priorities changed? Shouldn’t my baby come before my work? One minute I do think my baby is more important, but the next I just want a career.

  I feel guilty no matter what choice I make. I’m constantly judging myself nowadays, and every decision I make seems like the wrong one.

  8 P.M.

  The baby is freaking out.

  “Why is she being like that?” the Fiancé asks.

  “Teething,” I answer.

  April 17

  I meet my friend Tammy for lunch. Tammy is one of my new mommy friends I met through the Fiancé (her husband was the one who looked mortified when we met them for dinner and I put the pacifier that had fallen onto the floor back into the baby’s mouth). Tammy gave birth a couple of months ago. Like me, she has only a few mother friends. She also has a hard time being at home with her child every day and went back to work almost immediately after giving birth. It made me happy to know there were other mothers like me out there, some of whom I even knew personally. Yippee!

  After lunch, we decide to get a coffee at Starbucks. On our way there, her cell phone rings. “Okay,” she says into the phone. “That’s fine.” She hangs up.

  “Who was that?” I ask.

  “That was my nanny. She was telling me they’re going out for a walk around the block.”

  “Oh. She calls you every time she leaves the house?” I ask.

  “Yes, she has to tell me where she’s going. Why? Your nanny doesn’t do that?”

  “Um, no,” I admit. In fact, I have never called Nanny Mimi even once after I leave the house to see how my baby is doing. I never ask Nanny Mimi to call and let me know where she’s going with my baby either. Unlike Tammy, who has told her nanny where and when she can go, I’ve never told Nanny Mimi how she should spend her time with the baby.

  Which means I’m either the coolest, most laid-back, most trusting mother in the world, or I’m the worst. I’m not sure which is true. I do know I trust Nanny Mimi entirely. So why should I call? And why should she call me unless there’s some sort of emergency?

  Also, I’m not even sure I could ask Nanny Mimi to let me know if she’s heading out for a walk. I’m still worried about being a good employer. I don’t want to be overbearing, but I also don’t want Nanny Mimi to think I don’t care about what she does with my child. Oh, God. Maybe I should call her once in a while from my office, just to check in.

  I also hate to admit it, but once I’m working I rarely think about my baby. Yes, occasionally her face pops into my head, and I miss her in my gut. And, yes, I have made a photo of her my screen saver. But mostly, I’m too busy trying to get back into the swing of working to remember her or miss her. I feel guilty about that too.

  8 P.M.

  “Why is she being like that?” the Fiancé yells at me, over the baby’s wails.

  “Teething!” I yell back.

  May 1

  “This is the last time I’m going out to dinner with her ever,” the Fiancé is saying. “I mean it, Beck. We are not taking her out for dinner anymore.”

  The good old days of the baby just sitting there or sleeping through dinner are long gone. Now she loves throwing everything she gets her hands on off the table. She throws salt and pepper shakers off the table. She throws knives and forks off the table. She throws napkins off the table. She throws her bottle off the table. Fun for her, maybe, but not so fun for me and the Fiancé, who must bend down and pick up everything off the floor every two seconds. She also won’t sit still. She’s always sq
uirming around.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I say after we finish our meal in fourteen minutes. I think we may have eaten in record time. Although I do have a migraine and I am still starving, after spending most of my time picking up shit the baby threw off her high chair onto the floor, I don’t know if it’s possible for us to never go to a restaurant again. Which sucks, because I’d always thought the baby would fit into our lives, which means eating out with us.

  “That’s the last time!” the Fiancé says again. “That was the least relaxing meal I have ever had.”

  “Well, she’s teething,” I say, sticking up for the baby.

  “You say that every time she acts up!” the Fiancé says.

  “Well, she is! She’s teething!”

  “I don’t care. That’s the last time!”

  “Okay, I already heard you,” I say. “That will be the last time we take her out.”

  As if.

  9 P.M.

  “Why is she crying?” the Fiancé asks.

  “Because she’s—”

  “No, don’t answer! I already know what you’re going to say,” he says.

  “Don’t worry. We only have another 320 days like this. It will go by like this,” I say, snapping my fingers.

  Right.

  May 15

  “Happy seven-month birthday,” the mother-in-law says when she calls.

  Oh, my God. The baby is now seven months old. Wow. I hadn’t even realized it. Of course, I have more important things to worry about, like the fact that it’s time the baby got off formula.

  The baby is now eating baby cereal. Most parents introduce their baby to baby cereal when they turn four or five months, but we let it go while I was away in Maui and decided to get her on it as soon as we got back. Baby cereal is pretty disgusting actually. It comes in powder form, and you mix it with formula and try to get your baby to eat the resulting mush. It’s messy business, because my baby loves sticking her hands into the mush. It’s really hard to explain to a baby that it’s only supposed to go into her mouth. Also, most of the time, once it gets into her mouth, she spits it out. And, trust me, baby cereal does not smell like roses. Whatever is the opposite of roses, that’s what baby cereal smells like.

  5 P.M.

  “Come on,” I tell the Fiancé, “it’s her seven-month birthday. Let’s go out to dinner and celebrate with your parents.”

  “With the baby?” he asks.

  “Of course! It’s her seven-month birthday!”

  “Fine,” he says, sighing loudly.

  8 P.M.

  “I mean it. That was the last time we’re taking her out for dinner,” the Fiancé says in a déjà vu moment.

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it this time. I really mean it.”

  “All right. I heard you. You think I enjoyed being covered in Diet Coke?” The baby spilled my entire glass of pop all over me while we were eating. Let’s just say she needs to work on her hand-eye coordination.

  The problem is, neither the Fiancé nor I know how to cook. We’re take-out, eat-out kind of people. And the truth is, taking the baby out for dinner is a time killer. It’s just something to do. And we have to eat. It’s killing two birds with one stone.

  “I don’t think that Chinese restaurant is going to let us come back anyway,” says the Fiancé.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Um, Beck, she broke three ceramic spoons and threw a bowl across the room!”

  “Right.”

  I call Vivian when we get home, once the baby is in bed.

  “So, you never take your baby out for dinner?” I ask her, after she tells me her family never eats out. I couldn’t believe it. She used to eat out all the time.

  “Never,” she says.

  “Oh.”

  I like going out to eat. I don’t want to stop going out to restaurants just because we have a baby in our lives now. I’m sure my baby wasn’t the first to ever break a few spoons and whip a bowl across a crowded restaurant, and I’m sure she won’t be the last. And, really, no one got hurt. When you think about it, it could have been much, much worse.

  May 16

  “So, what are we doing for dinner tonight?” I say when I call the Fiancé.

  “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  “Do you want to go out for dinner?” I ask.

  “I guess so.” See? I told you the “this is the last time—ever—we’re going out with her” wouldn’t stick. The Fiancé can be a pushover.

  Dinner is another disaster. Babies are not good customers in restaurants, which is why the Fiancé and I are now officially the World’s Best Tippers. Our tips are in proportion to how messy and misbehaved the baby is. The messier and more misbehaved she is, the bigger the tip we give. We’ve tipped waiters up to 50 percent on really bad outings. In fact, I don’t understand why waiters don’t like having people like us, people who bring children, coming in. Sure, babies make huge messes and dump entire bowls of rice on the floor. But in return, the waiters get huge tips.

  We stay home the following night, ordering in Thai food.

  We both feel a bit like inmates serving a jail term. It might be six years before the Dictator behaves well in a restaurant.

  Maybe we should send her to etiquette classes. I wonder if there are any etiquette classes for babies less than a year old out there. You know, “Throwing bowl across room is bad. Putting napkin on lap is good.”

  May 17

  It’s my first Mother’s Day, and I’m super-excited!

  I’ve been talking up the importance of Mother’s Day for, well, since the baby was in my stomach. I had even wondered if I was going to get a present while I was pregnant. The Fiancé told me when he had proof, you know, when there was a baby in my arms, that’s when I would be a mother and get a Mother’s Day gift. So, no, I didn’t get a gift while I was pregnant, even though I tried to convince him that I was a mother because a baby was growing inside me. The Fiancé didn’t agree with my logic.

  Of course, the greatest Mother’s Day present would be something like a daylong spa experience. But I want to spend Mother’s Day with my baby, who has not a clue what Mother’s Day is. I don’t care though.

  The Fiancé has bought me a Prada purse as a gift, and I love it. Proof of being a mother? Good Mother’s Day gifts. And even though the Dictator has definitely not been on her best behavior today, all I have to do is look at my new Prada purse and I feel better about being her mother.

  There is only one thing that bothers me.

  “So, I shouldn’t be upset?” I ask Ronnie, when I called her this evening to brag about my new bag, wish her a happy Mother’s Day, and explain to her why I’m upset.

  “No. You’re being overly sensitive,” she says.

  I had called the very few mommy friends I have to wish them all a Happy Mother’s Day, and they wished me the same. But none of my friends who don’t have babies called to wish me a happy Mother’s Day. I had asked Ronnie if I was being too sensitive about this.

  “Before you had your baby, did you call me on Mother’s Day?” Ronnie asks, to prove her point.

  “I don’t know. Did I?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry. I should have. Happy Mother’s Day!”

  It’s like a good friend forgetting your birthday. I know it doesn’t matter in the big picture that none of my nonmother friends remembered my first Mother’s Day, but it still kind of stings.

  May 26

  “Da,” the baby says.

  “Did you hear that? Did you hear that? She said ‘Dada,’” I tell the Fiancé.

  “She did not.”

  “Da,” says the baby again.

  “She did! Didn’t you hear that? That was her first word! Her first word was ‘Dada’!”

  “It was ‘da,’” says the Fiancé. “Not ‘Dada.’”

  The Fiancé always has to be so pessimistic.

  “I’m telling you. I’m her mother and I know what she�
�s trying to say. I understand her better than anyone. She’s trying to say ‘Dada.’”

  I’m only slightly offended that her first word wasn’t “Mama.” Aren’t all babies’ first words supposed to be “Mama”?

  Or is that a lie too?

  Noon

  We’re pushing the baby in her stroller and walking to get some dim sum. The baby looks up at a stop sign and points at it.

  “Da!” she says.

  “She wasn’t saying ‘Dada.’ She just looked at a stop sign and said ‘da,’” the Fiancé cries out. “I told you she wasn’t saying ‘Dada’!”

  I pretend not to hear what he just said. The baby said her first word—“Dada”—and I’m sticking to it.

  “I’m telling you, she’s saying ‘Dada,’” I insist.

  “Nice try,” says the Fiancé.

  God, why does he make it so hard for me to try to make him feel good and special?

  May 29

  Okay, maybe the Fiancé was right. Maybe the baby wasn’t trying to say “Dada.” She looks at plants and says “Dada.” She looks at chairs and says “Dada.” She looks at a tube of toothpaste and says “Dada.” She even looks at me and says “Dada.”

  Of course I’m not going to mention this to the Fiancé. I’m going to let him think that I’m convinced the baby’s first word was “Dada.” That’s because I’m a nice person.

  9 P.M.

  “Why is she like that?” the Fiancé asks.

  “Teething.”

  “You still think she’s teething?”

  “I have no clue,” I say.

  “So why do you always answer ‘Teething’?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds good to say it.”