The New One

by Mike Birbiglia

  Then Nick tells me, “In six weeks their bodies start to settle.”

  Then Nick tells me, “In three months their bodies start to settle.”

  Then I realize, Oh no. Nick is full of shit and her body is never going to settle. Which makes sense because my body never settled. And Jen’s body won’t settle. We have a family full of bodies who won’t settle. Or sleep!

  A sleepwalker and an insomniac walk into a bed… and create a baby whose body won’t settle.

  When your baby won’t sleep, people send you all of this crap.

  They say things like, “This is a chair that shakes the baby!” and “This is a blanket that smothers the baby!” and “This is a Magic Sleepsuit!”

  That’s an actual item. A. Magic. Sleep. Suit. You’re so desperate for your child to sleep you will believe in magic.

  At the risk of telling a “bomb joke,” I can only describe what happens as a bomb going off in our living room—a place we formerly knew as a den of peace and solitude. Now it is stuffed with crap. Literally and figuratively.

  There is:

  The Boppy

  The “Brest Friend,” which is what I thought I was

  Bibs

  Binkies

  Balls

  The toddler rocker

  The Rock ’n Play

  Ollie the Owl, which is an owl-shaped speaker that tells you to stop talking

  The Moses basket, in case you want to ship your baby down a river

  Slumber Buddies

  Dream Dust, which they also sell in Washington Square Park

  The sleep patch, in case your baby won’t quit being awake

  The baby nasal aspirator—where you suck snot out of your baby’s nose through your own mouth. You can re-read that if it’s helpful

  Rattles

  A rain stick, in case your baby’s a shaman

  That’s about half of it.

  And none of it works. Then everyone gives you advice.

  “Have you tried sounds of the ocean?”

  “Yes, we’ve tried sounds of the ocean.”

  “Have you tried massaging her legs?”

  “Yes, we’ve tried massaging her legs.”

  “She should be sleeping.”

  “We know she should be sleeping. My wife hasn’t slept in weeks… though I’m sleeping pretty well.”

  To be fair, I feel guilty about it, but I have a doctor’s note. I have a rare and dangerous sleepwalking disorder. Jen and I are so nervous that we go to my sleep doctor.

  I ask my doctor, “Is this dangerous?”

  He says, “Oh yeah. There are people with REM sleep behavior disorder who, in rare instances, have dreams that their son is a football and they kick him through the goalposts, which are above the fireplace.”

  I say, “I wish you hadn’t put that image in my brain, but I see your point.”

  He says, “One thing you might consider is sleeping in a separate bedroom from your wife and daughter and installing a chain lock from the inside.”

  So we do that. This is our final bit of nesting. I am a dangerous bird who needs a cage. We install a chain lock on my bedroom, and then, to supplement the sleeping bag, I create a fitted sleep sheet that fits me into my mattress. I take a regular fitted sheet and I cut out a hole for my head and one for Jen, though she never used it. And I secure the sheet under the mattress with a rope and a camping clasp. Imagine you’re in a psych ward and they have a special sheet to keep dangerous patients in their beds at all times and it only has a single hole for the patient’s head so he can breathe.

  I made that.

  So now I’m a relatable Hannibal Lecter. I make this custom sleep sheet, but I need multiples so that I can have one in the wash. I take the prototype of this straitjacket sheet to the tailor on my corner and I say, “Can you make more of these?”

  He stares at the sheet and looks perplexed. Then he says, “No.”

  I say, “But it’s a really simple thing. It’s a sheet with two holes in it.”

  He gets out from behind the counter and touches the sign on the wall that says “Shirts” and another sign that says “Pants.”

  Then he says, “Shirts! Pants!” I believe this final touch is just in case I can’t read.

  Then he walks me out. Clearly, he thinks it’s some sort of S and M sex sheet for Orthodox Jews. Which it is not. It’s a homemade medical device.

  You might remember we also have a cat. Her name is Mazzy and she was a street cat so she wakes us up every morning by scratching our faces, which, I believe, is a survival instinct from the streets. But in a domestic setting that kind of feline violence is much less charming and can be dangerous. You can’t have that around an infant, so we lock Mazzy in the bedroom with me. Which means that every morning Mazzy wakes me up by scratching my face, but I can’t protect myself because my arms are bound by this weird super-sheet. So now I’m alone in the bedroom shouting, “Outta here, street cat! Nobody wanted you!”

  If you have a cat, you know that we also have to keep the litter bin in the locked bedroom, and that first week I forget to scoop the litter and Mazzy pees on this antique linen chair. I don’t know if you’ve smelled cat pee, but it’s like if regular pee… took a shit.

  Before we had Oona, Jen said, “This baby isn’t gonna change the way we live our lives.”

  And I feel like it has.

  Because now I sleep in a straitjacket in a room that’s chain-locked from the inside, filled with cat litter dust and super-pee, and every morning I’m awoken by a wild animal trying to murder me in my sleep.

  I feel like this baby has changed the way we live our lives.

  I don’t have a bed.

  I wander back and forth from the bed of a baby to the bed of a sleepwalker.

  By the time I get to the sleepwalker’s bed my shirt is still off my nipples still wet and pointed and wanting to be touched by anyone but a baby when he puts them in his mouth.

  When we are done I sleep with the baby.

  HICCUPTOWN

  I’m addicted to working. I work and work and work and then go to sleep, dream about work, have a sleepwalking incident about work, and then roll out of bed and head to work.

  As a parent, however, I can’t do enough.

  I don’t do enough that first month. I don’t change enough diapers. I’m not around enough. I don’t say the right things at the right time. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but my vision at the time is twenty over a billion. As a parent I am legally blind.

  I am quickly demoted to the intern of the family. I run around. I do errands. I say, “Does anyone need coffee? I’ll clean up your crap! Someday I hope to be a member of the family!”

  I pick up diapers at the natural diapers place. I buy cat food at the natural cat food place. For the first time in my life I shop for my wife’s underwear and for some reason I choose thongs. Jen didn’t previously own any thongs, but I have never purchased women’s underwear so I ask the clerk what she recommends and it’s thongs. Thongs, it is!

  When I bring home three pairs of rainbow-colored thongs, Jen says, “Thank you,” but I think she means “Thank you?”

  I’ve made so many jokes about birthing class, but when we bring Oona home I eat my words.

  I finally get it: the fourth trimester. It does make sense.

  Jen and Oona are in sync like ballerinas in the New York City Ballet. And I am the drunk clown who stumbles onstage in the middle of the ballet and trips on his own pee.

  Over coffee one day I confide in my friend Nick my deepest fears about not feeling connected and Nick says, “During the first few months it’s hard to connect with the baby.”

  Then I talk to Nick a few months later and he says, “The first six months it’s hard to connect with the baby.”

  A few weeks after that Nick tells me, “The first year it’s hard to connect with the baby.”

  Then I realize Nick is definitely full of shit and that I am screwed. I might never connect with my own baby the way I see other par
ents connect. I might never connect with my wife in the same way again, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I’m mostly just scared. This monkey in a jumpsuit stares at me with this look like—I don’t know anything. Do you know anything?

  I’m thinking, I don’t know anything either.

  I can’t find my role. When we get home from the hospital, I try to give Oona a bath. I had heard she might be a “bath person” and Nick told me a good thing to get involved with is bath time because it’s not that hard and it gives your partner a break. When he told me this, I thought, That sounds perfect! Not too hard! But when it comes time to do it I freeze up. I’m afraid that I will somehow mess up the bath. I will accidentally drown our daughter. I will squeeze her too tight and she’ll slip out of my hands like a bar of soap. Maybe she’ll break into soap pieces and go down the drain. We’ve all read the internet.

  Jen doesn’t remember me trying to give Oona a bath. It’s just another “Who did?” She insists it didn’t happen, so either:

  A. I tried to give Oona a bath,

  or

  B. I thought about giving Oona a bath but instead cowered in fear in a linen closet.

  I try to change diapers because that’s what President Obama recommended. I hear his voice in my head saying, “Don’t freak out.” But I freak out. Every time I change a diaper I feel like I’m doing it wrong. I think, I don’t even know how to wipe my own ass never mind another person’s. No one is winning here. I’m too neurotic to wipe someone’s ass. Am I even wiping my own ass correctly? No one taught me this. I’ve been wingin’ it for years. People are gonna see me wiping her ass and they’re gonna be like, “That’s how you wipe asses? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Jen becomes so good at being a parent so quickly that it’s unnerving. She changes diapers while on the phone and cooking an omelet, which isn’t sanitary but it is impressive. When I change a diaper it takes fifteen minutes and looks like a papier-mâché sculpture of a broken chair. Jen moves like a ninja—swipe-wipe-stick-done. I try to rock Oona to sleep and she screams. Jen holds Oona and soothes her as though her voice is a lullaby.

  lullaby

  little-milk-breath of

  morning,

  you sip me as day-bread.

  you give me no milk-break

  milk-drunk of wee-hour,

  you little mustache.

  little-milk-mouth of cloud-break you suck in the dusk-hour,

  you suction the turtle-tide,

  little milk-shake of lunch-hour, you little mustache.

  you yawn.

  dawn.

  yawn into milk.

  I should point out that I’m a decent intern. I work hard. I show up on time. I follow directions, but I’m relegated to junior-level activities. Jen puts Oona down for a nap and then she sticks her in the stroller and says, “Take her for a walk and when she wakes up, return immediately.”

  One day I’m pushing sleepy Oona around the neighborhood when an elderly neighbor shouts, “What’s her name?”

  I whisper, “Oona.”

  “What is it?!”

  “Oona!”

  Oona wakes up and I return her to Mom. As I push screaming Oona home I make eye contact with a fellow zombie who is also pushing a screaming baby.

  We share a look that says, I think we’re doing it wrong.

  Everything I can do Jen can do better.

  I start to picture the rest of my life as a full-time intern for my wife with occasional trips to go out and make money for the family. It’s the first time I’ve thought of myself this way. When it was me and Jen I thought, We’ll figure out how to buy food. When we have Oona I think, I will buy food and rent and college! This is my purpose!

  I run errands because I know how to do that. I’ve been an intern before. I know if I mess up, no one will die. And that feels safe. The whole thing makes me realize how much of my life I live in fear. I make decisions out of fear. I dodge obstacles because of fear. The same way I avoided computer science class in college and took extra English classes to puff myself up. The same way I had weaseled out of a middle school track meet by faking an injury. I have dodged everything difficult in my life that didn’t come easy to me. But I can’t dodge this. It’s right in front of me. I can’t dodge my own daughter.

  All I can think is How could Jen be so good at this and I be so bad? Does she think I’m bad on purpose or that I was just worthless in every way to begin with?

  I retreat into work. Work is familiar. Work I can do. Maybe that’s all I’m good for.

  One night Oona has the hiccups. Grown-up hiccups are odd but they’re not alarming. Infant hiccups are like if a baby were possessed by the devil. It’s like if the devil transformed your baby into a squeaky doll and then squeezed it every twenty seconds. It makes her whole body convulse and make a squawk sound. I’ve always been good at getting rid of Jen’s hiccups. I distract her with something stupid. A story. A song. A dance.

  So I pick up my guitar and improvise some lyrics:

  “Come on down to hiccuptown to hiccuptown to hiccuptown! Come on down to hiccuptown to hiccuptown we go!!!”

  Oona smiles and coos. Her hiccups go away.

  The next day Jen hands Oona to me when she’s crying. I rock her in my arms.

  That doesn’t work.

  I walk her around the kitchen table.

  That doesn’t work either.

  So I walk her around the table and, as I rock her, I improvise a country ballad:

  “I’ll walk you around the table… I’ll walk you around the table in a circle! And I’ll walk you around the table, I’ll walk you around the table in a circle!”

  Oona calms down. And for those few moments I’m doing something right.

  I’m treating it like a gig.

  WE WUB YOU

  When Oona is seven weeks old I visit my mom at a hospital in Massachusetts.

  She’s recovering from knee surgery. It’s the first time I’ve seen my mom since Oona was born. When I hear she’s in the hospital, I drive straight there and walk in and see the look on my mom’s face and I think:

  She loves me.

  I know that might seem obvious but it’s not. My parents rarely told me they loved me as a kid. Instead, they’d say, “Take care.” Their affection was akin to a cashier at a museum gift shop after bagging a starfish paperweight. “Take care.”

  Every once in a while my parents would say a variation on “I love you,” but it wouldn’t be in a real voice. It would be: “We wub you.” It’s not the same thing. And, by the way, “we wub you” only came out when things were dire. These were the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency types of situations. This was when I was crying. A lot. Like when my childhood dog Leo got hit by a motorcycle and I could barely speak or breathe. My parents said, “We wub you.”

  So here I am at the hospital with my mom. I’m thirty-six years old and it’s the first time I understand that “I wub you” means “I love you.”

  I know this because I can see what it looks like when a mother loves a child. I know what it looks like because I spend most of my days interning for Jen, and that’s the face Jen makes all the time. It’s unmistakable yet indescribable. It’s a color not available in the Crayola 64.

  I drive the six hours from Massachusetts to Brooklyn. I park the car by the Rite Aid in our neighborhood and grab diapers and cat litter. I walk into our apartment and Jen is on the couch, crying. A lot. Like, pretzels level.

  I say, “Clo, what’s wrong?”

  Jen sobs in her soft, sweet voice, “Oona’s never gonna be in my belly again.”

  A toast to the small gash

  To my doctor casually asking: thinking of having another?

  And myself: suddenly sobbing—

  I don’t want to be pregnant with anyone but Oona.

  I don’t want to be pregnant with anyone but Oona.

  When Jen says, “Oona’s never gonna be in my belly again,” it melts me. This was the most profound level o
f love I had ever witnessed and… I was there too.

  It’s almost like I didn’t know what nothing meant until I became a dad and then I thought, Oh, that’s what nothing is. I was so nothing. I was this pudgy milkless vice president of the family. Huge title, no power, also oversees Congress.

  Oona is seven weeks old. Jen is a mom. And I am nothing.

  DATING MY WIFE

  When Oona is two months old we’re strolling her through the park and I say to Jen, “I was thinking we should set aside one night a week and get a babysitter.”

  Jen looks at me as though I suggested we sell Oona into slavery.

  Oona starts screaming in my face like the meanest heckler I’ve ever encountered, like a heckler who hates not only what I’m saying but every word individually in any context. Jen looks at me with a straight face and whispers in her soft, sweet, thread-counted voice, “Oona doesn’t like it when we talk.”

  This baby isn’t gonna change the way we live our lives. That said, she doesn’t like it when we talk.

  In the spirit of “Who did?” I will point out that Jen feels that her delivery of “Oona doesn’t like it when we talk” was not with a straight face but with a “we’re in this together” smile. Jen also pointed out that she didn’t look at me as though we were “selling Oona into slavery.” She looked at me as though she hadn’t slept in seven weeks and could barely see me. She knew that getting a babysitter and going on a date would push her past her point of exhaustion. She was working around the clock and this was the only time she didn’t have a baby on her body. This was the only walk she had without pushing a stroller or worrying if the baby was hungry or too hot or needed a change. This was the only moment she could feel a breeze—and I had stolen that time from her by implying that she was failing our marriage.

  Meanwhile, in that moment, I feel like I’m talking to someone who has decided that this marriage is over. I don’t want that.

  I grew up with parents who were married for life, so that’s how I viewed marriage. Richer, poorer. Happy, unhappy. These were irrelevant details in the equation of marriage that I had understood. Jen grew up with divorced parents. Jen’s sense was that our marriage could end, as sometimes marriages do. I know this now because we’ve talked about it, but in that moment I feel it. I’m a dead man walking.