Baby Love Read online

  Listening to John, I got the feeling they are all in jail. And then I thought, If I have a boy, how on earth will I protect him?

  June 9

  Went to a screening of Spike Lee’s film about a man who impregnates lesbians to make ends meet after being fired from a lucrative biotech job. I have to give it to Spike: He takes risks. The film was a little messy, but I don’t think people appreciate how far Spike took the discussion within a conservative mainstream context that doesn’t want to look at the possible obsolescence of the adult male. Reduced to sperm donors for rich, sexy lesbians? Come on, how easy could that have been to get funded?

  I especially liked the scenes in which our hero feels objectified, used, and demoralized during and after sex, a trope usually reserved for women on-screen. It takes a lot of courage to reveal that men have these same anxieties. As they lose a sense of power and control at work and in their personal relationships, their psyches struggle to make the adjustment. I also found myself identifying with the women’s intense quest for motherhood, and I appreciated how our hero ultimately partners with two of the women he has impregnated.

  It was good to see people I haven’t seen in years. Everyone patted my growing belly and seemed genuinely excited for me. Of course I had to pee like a million times and was sweating like I had my own personal sprinkler system hidden beneath my clothes. Have I documented that new side effect? That I get these raging hormonal surges that make me hot and flushed, and dripping with perspiration? It’s quite attractive.

  Went out to dinner with friends afterward, and then walked sixty blocks back to the apartment. I must be feeling better because my energy is way up and my brain seems to be clear and firing for the first time in weeks. Maybe, just maybe, I am coming out of this damn first trimester into what is supposed to be the fun part. I feel calmer, back to myself, not quite so hysterical and on edge.

  Or maybe it’s just New York. And the extra dose of the antidepressant Marie prescribed back in San Francisco.

  Either way, I talked to Glen as I walked, my boots clicking against the filthy New York pavement, smiling and imagining walking the same city streets with him and the baby.

  June 14

  Heartbeat! Oh my God. The most outrageous thing I have ever heard. I went in for my second prenatal with Dr. Lowen and, as usual, it was in and out, but the “in” included hearing my baby’s heartbeat. Dr. Lowen was completely unimpressed, and she’s allowed, considering she hears a gajillion baby heartbeats a day. But I was completely, totally, stupendously overwhelmed. I was floating all over the office. It was all I could do to keep myself from grabbing the Doppler ultrasound and holding it to my stomach for hours.

  I am happy to report that the heartbeat is absolutely perfect. Strong, fast, well paced. I took this as another sign that I really do have a baby inside of me. This isn’t some vast conspiracy to trick me into believing something that isn’t true. In six more months, a real live baby is going to come out of my body and make me a mother. I know, I know, it sounds crazy. But it’s true.

  To add to my growing distaste for the whole doctor vibe, on my way out the receptionist handed me my “complimentary” diaper bag. It was full of formula samples and coupons for several other baby products. I could take the appreciative and noncynical tack, but I can’t believe doctors allow themselves to be the middle-men and -women for these companies. In the intimacy of my doctor’s office, where I am, by design, vulnerable and open to her suggestion, seeking it even, I am being marketed to. Am I being too sensitive? It’s like commercials at the movies times a hundred.

  When I gave the bag back to the nurse, declining politely, she looked at me like I was crazy. Just keep it, she said, you might need it. I just put it on the counter. I don’t think so, but thank you so much. Then I worried for an hour that I had come across as an arrogant, ungrateful bitch.

  Glen continues to think I should find another OB. He was over Dr. Lowen when we went in for the fertility consultation and she made a remark about men getting bent out of shape when women, “who do so much,” ask them to “do a little thing like take a motility test.” He felt the remark was insulting, considering all he does, and insensitive, considering the societal mandate that “real men” be virile in the same way that “real women” should be fertile. Even though it isn’t a big issue for him, he thinks it is callous for a doctor to miss the fact that motility can be a sore spot for men.

  He’s right, of course. He totally clocked one of those gynic moments that make me cringe. Moments in which women intent upon “claiming their power” do or say things that belittle the men they say they love.

  I mostly agree with Glen about finding another doctor, but the idea of starting the search makes me want to go take a nap. I have been seeing Dr. Lowen for a few years and, I tell Glen with a grin, she’s got biracial kids. Glen has accused me of being a sucker for the parents of mixed-race kids more than once. I project noble qualities onto them and make excuses for their bad behavior.

  Glen shakes his head. He’s not happy that the criteria for staying with the gynecologist who might deliver our baby is her biracial children, but he doesn’t revisit the highly contentious discussion we’ve been having lately about how all of the big baby decisions seem to be made exclusively by me, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the respite.

  June 22

  Had a long discussion with my lobbyist friend Rachel about how many women rely on the samples given to them by their obstetricians because, unlike most developed nations, America has no social support system to speak of for new parents. Paid parental leave, which can be up to two years in countries like Sweden and Denmark and divided between two parents, is virtually nonexistent here, with American women getting only six weeks, if they’re lucky. High-quality public child care for preschool-aged children is also the norm in countries like France, but completely unavailable in the United States. New parents have to work long hours to even have a shot at affording excellent child care.

  It’s hard to understand why our country, one of the wealthiest in the world, seems to care so little about its children. Even from a purely capitalist point of view, you would think that well-looked-after, well-educated children would ensure a competent workforce and stable populace. And studies show that women are able to be more productive with this kind of support, so it’s not like we’d lose half the GDP. Rachel thinks it has to do with the low expectations of families in America. Women have been getting six weeks to three months for so long it seems normal, an unquestionable standard.

  But I think it also has to do with our cultural ambivalence about the role of biology in women’s lives, and how it has been used to suppress and control women. For generations, women have been portrayed as the weaker sex, more emotional and less physically capable than men, and so biologically unsuited for positions of power. In response, women have said no, we aren’t biologically anything at all. Shaped more by culture than anatomy, we can be anything we want to be. Tactically, this was a smart move. If women are inherently the same as men, we deserve equal treatment under the law.

  Women gained a lot of access using this strategy, but on some fronts, it may have backfired. Case in point: If men and women are inherently equal, and men don’t get “special treatment” like extended paternity leave and on-site childcare, why should women? A question that leaves most infants in the arms of hired caregivers instead of their mothers. This strategy has also left women somewhat ambivalent about maternal desire. Is it a biological yearning that should be denied in the name of sameness and women’s empowerment? The whole polemic puts women in the ridiculous position of wondering whether wanting a baby is proof that women actually are the weaker sex.

  I think that parental, rather than maternity, leave is a good way of negotiating this point in the public sphere. We avoid the potentially divisive and ultimately unknowable question of whether women are fundamentally different from men by saying that both parents need and deserve to take care of their children.

&nb
sp; But what if we are fundamentally different? Before I got pregnant I would have vehemently rejected this idea. Now I’m not so sure. Now I might try a different tactical approach: Do men and women have to be the same to be treated equally?

  I left Rachel’s house thinking about what it really means to cut taxes in this country. It means that the bond between parents and children is not supported with programs like extended parental leave, and children’s psychosocial and intellectual development is neglected in the absence of decent child care. It also means that many people can’t afford to have children at all, let alone provide them with what they need to succeed.

  In a country, a world, as rich as ours, this is unacceptable. Reflecting on what this process has meant to me already, in terms of experiencing what it means to be human, I can’t help but feel that having children should be a right, not a privilege.

  June 23

  I met with my midwife Sonam again today. She tested my urine by having me pee on a stick that changed colors, took my temperature, measured my uterus, and listened to the baby’s heartbeat with the Doppler, talking to me about baby stuff the whole time. She suggested I start doing prenatal yoga, gave me the names of a couple of teachers she likes, and told me to eat wild salmon and leafy greens. I told her that all I want to do is wander from room to room, have sex, eat, and sleep, and she laughed. That’s okay, she said, but remember, labor is a marathon: You have to train. Shoot. You mean I can’t just lounge around my boudoir for nine months?

  We talked a little business, like what I think about the hospital where she has privileges being public and twenty to thirty minutes away. When I asked what she meant, exactly, by the public part, she said that the hospital is well equipped and has a great neonatal intensive care unit, but serves a very different population than the hospital I usually go to.

  She said it’s not one-thousand-percent spotless, either. It’s an older building and hasn’t been renovated. For the most part, the nurses are excellent and she loves her supervising doctor, but the best thing about the place is that she has full privileges there, which means she would be in charge of the birth unless something goes wrong.

  What can I say? I wish the public and private hospitals weren’t so different. I wish I didn’t have to negotiate race and class just to have my baby. I’m going to visit and see how it feels, but I’m pretty sure I’d rather have Sonam deliver this baby in a lean-to than risk having an unnecessary C-section in some spotless shrine to the medical establishment.

  At least I think I would.

  June 28

  Today I met June for lunch. We talked about our new creations: hers, a new publishing venture; mine, the little one growing in my belly. She told me she long ago decided not to have children. She said that several of her friends had children because they thought they should, only to realize too late that they didn’t make the decision consciously. Where are they with it now? I wanted to know. They’ve got kids they don’t want, she said, shaking her head.

  Yikes.

  When I asked more about her decision, she said she didn’t feel emotionally able to take care of herself, let alone a defenseless child. Her body was too weak, having weathered a few major illnesses, and her energy too elusive. Her husband wanted kids, but when she asked if it was him or the culture that wanted them he conceded it was the culture. Then she brought her sister’s kids home to prove her point. The kids exhausted both her and her husband.

  I tried not to get judgmental about her choice. I tried to minimize the whole baby thing and just talk about work stuff, creative stuff, and the machinations of the publishing world. I tried not to gush about how long I have wanted a baby, and how miraculous it is to have another human being growing inside of me.

  But it was damn near impossible.

  Am I turning into a baby supremacist? One of those people who thinks a woman without a baby is like a fish without an ocean? Who thinks a woman without a baby may be stuck developmentally just shy of true adulthood forever? As June talked about her new office and staff, I thought about how much she’s missing and how appalling it is that I can’t tell her because the whole thing is so unbelievably primal and indescribable. I thought about how hooked human beings can get on external accomplishment, but how at the moment, the most dramatic and exciting changes of my life are happening inside and I have no desire to go back.

  I know I’m setting myself up for some serious refutation, and it’s all valid. My thoughts aren’t rational. They’re hormonal, irrational, psychopharmacological.

  And so incredibly real.

  Four

  IT’S NOT THE SAME. No matter how close you are to your adopted son or beloved stepdaughter, the love you have for your nonbiological child isn’t the same as the love you have for your own flesh and blood.

  It’s different.

  I met Solomon when he was seven and I was twenty-six. It was a sunny Los Angeles afternoon, and his mom, whom I had been dating for several weeks, was taking us to the beach. Solomon was wearing blue pants and carried three small action figures. He was quiet and cautious, with intermittent bursts of chattiness. His parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce, and he reminded me of myself at his age, trying to figure out who to be after my parents sat me down and told me their marriage was over.

  Within hours of meeting Solomon, I had projected a lifetime of alienation onto him, ascribing to him all the pain and confusion I felt after my parents ended their marriage. Within weeks I had fallen for him. I loved the way he took my hand when we were out in the city. The way he asked deep and seemingly bizarre questions like, When people die, do they remember who they’ve been? I loved that he thought he remembered being in his mother’s womb and described it as warm, red, and mushy.

  Before I even remotely knew whether a relationship with his mother was something I wanted, I dove into Solomon’s life and began trying to create the positive post-divorce family I never had. Without thinking it through. Because I thought he needed me. Because I knew my inner seven-year-old needed me. And I had to save her. By saving him.

  And so it began. The trips to the orthodontist and ophthalmologist, the monthly talks about schoolwork and conduct with the teachers of third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and then, finally, ninth grades. We had the obligatory struggles over homework, diet, and violent video games. I suffered the endless negotiation of the politics, socioeconomic and otherwise, of play dates. I hired helpers, bought and read books on teen sexuality, coalesced and counseled members of the extended family.

  I did so much that friends wondered if I wasn’t doing too much. I wasn’t his actual mother, after all. And wasn’t it true that if I did too much, I would enable her to do too little? What would happen if his mother and I should break up? Shouldn’t I legally adopt him to protect my investment in our relationship? I understood their concerns, but my inner seven-year-old was undaunted. She wanted—no, needed—me to keep going.

  I wasn’t just reparenting myself, though. I was securing my position in the relationship. Love me, love my kid. That’s what single parents say to potential lovers, partners, and spouses. Even when they don’t utter the words, it’s a running subtext. And don’t we potential stepparents respond, if we believe we can make a genuine go of it, with our own subtext? We make dinner for three and watch Princess Mononoke. To the exciting new adult in our life we say: Your child is my child. To the adorable child before us we say: I think of you as my own. When we are in deep, and can see that the well-being of another human being is at stake and his ability to trust us actually matters, we look straight into his eyes and say: No matter what, I will never leave you.

  At least that’s what I said. It didn’t occur to me that some people would predict a messy endgame and keep their distance. These people would have gone down the “Your child is my child” road with other lovers and friends, only to devastate some unsuspecting kid and get wiped out in the process. But I hadn’t yet lost a child, and so I said all of the things I said because I meant
them, and because I did not see a way to proceed in the relationship without meaning them. I said them because I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I said them because I was in love and didn’t yet know how to think with any organ other than the one in my chest.

  In the end I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t save me and I couldn’t save him and I couldn’t save her and I couldn’t save us. It was an untenable situation and none of us had the skills to make it otherwise. The only thing I can say on our behalf is that we were in our twenties and early thirties and the relationship epitomized our developmental limitations. It was passionate and histrionic, fun and tragic, romantic and stupid.

  Being young and coming from families that didn’t stay together, we thought if we just loved long and hard enough we could destroy everything a thousand times and put it back together a thousand times, and then one day everything would fall into place. We thought it was like taking the train from the city to the beach. Concrete, traffic, pollution, and then a little less concrete and then a little less traffic and then a little less pollution and then voilà: the vast, undulating blue-green sea.

  That was how I tried to hold my first child. As if one day all the arguing and moving about would be over and we would look at each other with the knowledge of all that came before and a deep appreciation for the peace we managed to create. After my separation from his mother, I still hold him that way. As if the cloudy day will pass. As if the distance and lost time will be eclipsed by a newfound togetherness. And it may. But it also may not, and there is very little I can do about it.

  Already, months before his birth, I do not hold my second child this way. For starters, I no longer believe in the redemptive power of the calm after the storm. The wreckage on the shore does not disappear because the winds have moved on. When I think of my baby’s soon-to-be-born face, full of wonder and unmarred by proximity to rage, I register the value of circumnavigating the storm, of moving inland where it is safe. Even though in the moment it may be more difficult, I now prefer to face the challenge rather than be left with the heartbreaking reality of irreparable damage.