Baby Love Read online

  And yet I kept thinking about the Langston Hughes line: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up, like a raisin in the sun? What happens to all of these memories that dwell in the recesses of the mind like ghosts wandering the halls of some abandoned ruin? Where do these memories go, and what, if anything, do they ultimately mean? At the time, each of the encounters felt so meaningful, as if they were shaping the rest of my life, and yet they have all fallen away as mysteriously as they arose.

  I can’t help thinking of the shower that way, too. There was the idea of what we were doing, welcoming the baby and showering support and encouragement on the mom-to-be, and that is what we did. But the way we think of it, as a gathering that necessitates and facilitates the next gathering, and on and on until you’ve built a life, I didn’t really feel that. It was more like the whole party was in a bubble flying over Manhattan, and when it was over, the bubble burst and then it was gone.

  It reminded me of how I felt when I saw the vulture on the first day I found out I was pregnant. I feel as if the self I knew is fading away, and I have no idea who is coming to take her place.

  September 29

  Just back from a speaking engagement at Carnegie Mellon. Someone asked if I am experiencing pregnancy as the ultimate in Womanhood. It was an interesting question. I said that I feel more in touch with the animal qualities of the species, rather than the gendered ones. My sense of smell is heightened, I am ferociously protective of my developing offspring, my body is going through changes beyond my control in the service of species survival.

  I told her that I really feel like an animal when I am hungry. In those moments, when I am on the hunt for my next meal, I feel out of control, led entirely by instinct. When I get to the food, I can barely observe basic etiquette. I want to tear at the meal, to wolf it down. And it’s not all eco-friendly, either. I want big, thick, juicy steaks, and whole chickens. I want four scrambled eggs and six pieces of bacon. And then when I finish all that, I want a box of chocolate-covered donuts.

  It’s in the fact that instinct takes over, and the body is following intelligence all its own, that I find an inkling of an almost supernatural strength. I’ve always thought of myself as a pacifist. I painstakingly scoop up beetles and walk them outside. I tenderly coax house-trapped hummingbirds into my hand so that I can set them free without harm. But something else is activated in me now. I could kill someone standing in the way of my baby’s fruition. It wouldn’t even be that hard. The power to defend is that primal.

  The women in the audience looked a little shocked, so I softened it a bit by talking about the other side. The way the pregnancy puts you smack in the middle of the huge mystery of life. The way you can’t avoid the not-knowing, no matter how much the intellect tries to get a grip on the situation by taking tests and reading books. The way all you can do, really, is follow the cues you’re getting from inside.

  Ravenous, vulnerable, victorious. There is power in all of it.

  I told her what I now tell lots of young women who look at me with the huge question mark on their face that I used to have: Being pregnant is the best. I highly recommend it.

  I really do.

  While your baby may soon slow up growing in length (he measures about 15.7 inches from crown to toe by now), he will continue to gain weight until he’s born. . . . His lungs and digestive tract are nearly mature and he’s probably been able to open and shut his eyes for a while now, so he can see inside you.

  October 5

  Talked for a long time last night with Glen. Seemingly out of nowhere I suggested we name the baby Jonah, or maybe David. He went through the roof. Um, hello? We’re Buddhist, and more important than that, we made a decision. Please don’t tell me your name ambivalence is stirred up.

  But it’s not ambivalence, it’s guilt. I feel like I am letting down the clan. If the baby has a name that doesn’t resonate with my family’s biblical template, they may not bond with him. He’s going to need grandparents. Isn’t it my responsibility as a mother to make sure the seeds for these relationships are planted?

  I also want him to relate to his roots, to know what it means to be a part of this crazy tribe of people who mix love and arguing like chocolate syrup and milk, who use Yiddish proverbs as terms of endearment, and who manage to find fabulous YSL sandals in the mountain of lame shoes at the Barneys warehouse sale.

  Maybe guilt is the mechanism that holds families together. I heard somewhere that human beings, in terms of the way we organize ourselves, most resemble pack animals. As in wolves, dogs, wildebeest. We want everyone in our pack to smell the same. If they don’t, we’re not sure they’re really one of us, and if they’re not one of us, how can we trust them?

  October 9

  Sasha the birthing teacher came over today to teach us about labor. She had lots of props: videos of women squatting their babies out in Brazil, a miniature pelvis complete with slide-through baby doll, a diagram of the ten most helpful positions a labor partner can assume during a birth.

  We learned about effacement and dilation and the three stages of labor. We learned about breech births, posterior births, C-sections, and episiotomies. She had me hold a piece of ice in my hand to see how I managed the pain of ice burn. She encouraged me to talk about my fears, and to write down my hopes for the birth.

  Two and a half hours into the four-hour class, Glen asked the quintessential question: “Where’s the penis?” He said that everything thus far was about the vagina and the womb. Since the man was so involved in making the baby, there had to be an equally important role for him in the birth.

  As Sarah sputtered about daddies being support people and being emotionally connected throughout the labor, I cracked up and looked at Glen with pride. It was such a classic Glen question, I just had to marvel at him.

  We ended up having a long discussion of both the medical and natural childbirth models and the role they each have assigned to men. The medical model puts male doctors and a “masculine” institution in control, and the natural childbirth model relegates men to a relatively passive “support and behold” position.

  Glen was interested in neither, and insisted there must be another option, something in between.

  He mentioned the video of women squatting in Brazil, and asked Sarah if she had done any research in other cultures about the role of men in childbirth. I mentioned a tribe I read about in which men attach prosthetic babies to their stomachs while their partners are pregnant. During childbirth they beat themselves with dried leaves and branches to share the pain.

  Glen raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t sure about that, but he liked the idea of looking more deeply into it. I made a mental note to add it to my already bulging list of potential article ideas.

  All in all, the class was a good use of our time. By the time Sasha left, I was practically begging her to join my labor team. She’s worked as a midwife all over the world and has assisted many, many births. She was smart and had excellent boundaries, which I always appreciate. But alas, she’s traveling with her family in December, and can’t make it.

  But by then we may have discovered where the penis is in this whole process and won’t need her!

  October 12

  Today a checker at the supermarket told me she is never having a baby. Because I am such a sucker for these random pregnancy conversations, I took the bait and asked why not. She can’t stand the idea of dependency, she said. She never wants another human being to need her that much. The whole idea of it makes her sick. I asked her age. Twenty-three. I paused, considering my new role of crusader against maternal ambivalence everywhere. I tried to modulate my voice so I didn’t sound like too much of a zealot, and told her she had plenty of time to change her mind. She looked at me as if I’d suggested that she cut off her right arm.

  October 18

  I met another doula today. She was warm and knowledgeable. She has been a doula for twenty years and is known as the best postpartum doula in the area because of the meals she
cooks specifically to fortify breastfeeding moms. I liked her, but I am still not sure about opening up the intimacy of our family to a stranger. The more I think about another human being in our space, the more it feels, I don’t know, awkward at best, intrusive at worst.

  I told Dr. Lowen yesterday that I have officially decided to switch over to midwifery care for my delivery. She was sad to see me go and reminded me that she usually “lets” the mom have the second baby with a midwife, after they see how she does with the first. I left her office feeling guilty. Am I making a selfish decision that isn’t best for the baby? Why are there so many goddamn decisions to make? And why do they all have such intense consequences? Is motherhood just another word for guilt?

  Otherwise, the checkup was normal except that I am humongous. I’ve gained forty pounds so far and the nurse says I haven’t even hit the heavy months yet. She said I am lucky because I’m carrying entirely on my stomach and not in my hips and butt.

  Got home and puttered about. I cleaned out the refrigerator and all of the kitchen cabinets, and then moved on to reorganizing the hall closet. Spent an hour looking at beds online. Having a baby means that, in addition to a few other pieces of grown-up furniture, I must acquire a proper bed. It must have a headboard to lean against when nursing. It must be beautiful. It must have some kind of unseen storage element for baby blankets and baby clothes and all the rest of the baby stuff I am accumulating.

  It must be sexy.

  October 19

  Tonight I drove myself to the drugstore for a nail clipper and another bottle of Tums.

  Going out alone was eerie. I felt exposed in a way I’ve never experienced. Being a New Yorker, I am used to walking around at night. I know how to scan for danger without thinking about it. But I’ve never felt like I should be at home, behind closed doors, because the streets are unsafe. I definitely have never felt that I need to have a man by my side to protect me.

  But that is exactly how I felt. It was brutal. I felt like my stomach made me a walking target, as if predators could smell my vulnerability. I had thoughts about being mugged, raped, or kicked in the stomach repeatedly. What an awful, awful way to hurt someone. When I think of all of the women and babies who have endured that kind of violence, my mind goes into spasm. I want to vomit.

  Talked with Glen about it when I got home. He of course told me that I should not be driving around at night, alone, six and a half months pregnant. I was infuriated. I should be able to drive around any time I want and not have to worry about being bludgeoned to death. He agreed. You should be able to, he said, and hopefully one day you will. The real question is what are you going to do in the meantime?

  Indeed.

  October 22

  Maybe it’s that the rain hasn’t stopped for three days, but today I am bored out of my mind. I am finally doing what everyone says I should have been doing for the last couple of months, resting, but it feels more like jail.

  I have officially moved into the waiting phase of this pregnancy. Because even though I can go out and a part of me wants to go out, I really don’t have the energy to go out. I would have to get showered and dressed, climb into the car, start it up, and will it down the freeway. No matter where I decide to go, I would have to acquiesce to being the center of attention. I’d have to pretend I was wearing a shirt with a big arrow pointing to my belly and “Ask me about my baby” emblazoned above it.

  I am a lady-in-waiting. I am waiting for the big day, the big event, the arrival of the mystery. I know this is a sacred, spiritual time. I am reveling in the predawn of maternity. I am bonding with my baby. I am storing up energy for the upcoming marathon. I am taking care of myself by not exposing myself or the baby to violence, confusion, and chaos.

  I know all of this, and I am grateful that I have the luxury to hole up and hide out. I don’t have to do makeovers at the Macy’s cosmetics counter, I don’t have to harvest rice from sunrise to sunset, I don’t have to sit in front of the computer fielding interoffice e-mails because I am worried that while I am on maternity leave someone will steal my job.

  I know all of this, but still . . . All I can think about, besides being bored to death, is food. What can I eat next? In the last two hours I have had two bowls of chicken soup, three pieces of toast with chicken, two soy ice cream sandwiches, two huge glasses of organic lemonade, an apple, a pomegranate, and as I write this, I’ve got designs on a steak, a few pieces of sliced turkey, some brown rice, and an orange. Eat and wait. Eat and wait. Eat and wait. And watch movies. And answer e-mail. And write thank-you notes to the people who gave me gifts at my shower. And rub an infinite variety of oils on my bursting stomach to prevent stretch marks.

  Glen says I am peripatetic and that he always knew this would be hard for me. “This” being the slowing down of my mind and body, the near cessation of my endless roam. I shake my head at him and think to myself that I understand that this is necessary for family life. I know I don’t want to re-create my hypermobile childhood for this little baby.

  But there is a secret part of me that thinks he might be right. Who are you kidding? the little voice says. You have a nomadic heart, do you not? You have learned that wherever you go that’s where you are, but gosh, you sure like getting there and meeting yourself again.

  Seven

  TWO VERY POWERFUL and influential women were on television a few weeks ago, speaking triumphantly about the fact that they don’t need men. I understand that. If you can financially provide for yourself, you are no longer dependent on another for economic support. I get it. But there are so many other kinds of support. When I think about trying to have this baby alone, without an intimate other to console me when I am worried and cook for me when I am so nauseated I can barely look at the kitchen, let alone stand in it, my head starts spinning. I understand the wisdom of having good friends to get these needs met, but really, I think we need partners in life.

  I don’t know if it’s because I am a child of divorce, a Gen Xer accustomed to relating primarily though e-mail, or the daughter of a women’s movement ambivalent about the institution of marriage, but until I met Glen, partnership was elusive. My relationships, while not lacking in intensity, lacked the magical togetherness quotient you find in healthily fused adults. I had never achieved the ineffable calm of couples that don’t finish each other’s sentences, not because they can’t, but because they’d rather be quietly supportive of each other instead. I had never been half of a couple that checked in several times a day, no matter how mundane the conversation, to calibrate their movement as a unit from afar.

  The most significant obstacle I faced to joining the club of the deeply, truly committed was my complete and utter ignorance of the importance of partner choice. I simply did not understand the necessity of intellectual compatibility and, even more important, emotional reciprocity in relationship. I now believe that there should come a time in every young woman’s life when a more experienced loved one explains this absolute key point. It’s not about marrying for love or money, it’s about partnering for sanity, survivability, and the calculable probability that together the two of you will create something more gorgeous and powerful than you ever could alone.

  There was also my religion to contend with: absolute autonomy. I would rather die than give up travel, sexual freedom, financial independence, and the cordoned-off secret section of my psyche where only I could go. I kid you not: When I met Glen, I thought I could have a baby with him and another with Ade in Africa, shuttling back and forth every six months. It wasn’t until Glen reminded me that I almost died in Africa, and then gently suggested that my plan was completely unrealistic in terms of maintaining intimacy, that I realized I needed to get real and throw down the anchor.

  I didn’t have a visceral sense of what it might be like to merge with something or someone other than myself until I was thirty years old and listening to the Dalai Lama. He was talking about the myth of independence. If you are so independent, he asked, who grows your food?
Who sews your clothes, builds your house, makes sure that water comes out of your showerhead? How were you even born? The fact is, he said, we have not done one single thing alone, without the help of a small army of others, and yet we walk around talking about the necessity and supremacy of independence. It’s completely irrational.

  For a brief moment I felt a softening of my self-perception, a relaxation of my ideas about where I stopped and other people began, a letting go into inseparability. I was not autonomous and never would be. What a relief! The Dalai Lama went on to say that no condition we find ourselves in is permanent. Rich people can become poor. Healthy people can become sick. Young people become old.

  I flashed on this while watching the two women on television: the powerful and self-sufficient will become not so powerful and not so self-sufficient. These dynamic women for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect will both need someone at some point. I would wager that it would be more satisfying to them both if this someone did not have to be paid to show up.

  I am not blaming feminism, because without parity and equality, partnership is just another word for exploitation. But I am suggesting we take another look at what we’re thinking and saying in the name of “empowerment,” and how that shapes our actual lives and impacts the people we love. As a mother, I worry about how it makes boys and men feel to hear they are not needed, and can be made obsolete by the presence of enough money and a few good girlfriends. I worry about how it makes them feel to hear that we don’t care if they disappear from the face of the earth because we have enough frozen sperm to get us through the foreseeable future. And what about the millions of women who can’t afford to not need men? Is empowerment impossible for them?