Baby Love Read online

  Which brings me back to the matter at hand: Since I replaced the copious amounts of chicken and salad I was eating with soup, my stomach feels a thousand times better. Which is good because a nurse just told me that since I am leaving tomorrow, she is going to pull the morphine to see what happens overnight. I have become so dependent on the drip, I feel like a child being asked to hand over my blanket, pacifier, and favorite stuffed animal right after my mom has left the building. She’s in the car, driving away, and the people taking care of me say, Okay, let’s just have your blankie and your binky and your little piglet.

  The strangest thing is that the doctors and nurses act like it’s no big deal, like they’re just pulling a sugar-water drip out of my arm and not one of the strongest opiates on the planet. I want to scream out, But I love my little white button! Can’t I take it home with me? Which is the closest thing to addiction I’ve ever felt, if I don’t count shoe shopping.

  July 12

  Home!

  My levels are scary, way below normal. I went to see Marie, and she told me to eat boiled chicken, applesauce, something called congee, which is basically rice cooked over and over again until it is total mush, and vegetables overcooked 1950s style. She also told me to rest, and if possible to have people come and take care of me 24/7 for two weeks.

  Argh. The idea of people taking care of me 24/7 for fourteen days was hard to wrap my mind around. Who could stop working, parenting, and maintaining their own lives to take care of me every hour, seven days a week? Do people even do that anymore in our crazy culture? What, then, do sick people do? They hire caregivers, obviously. But then you’re living with a stranger, and I can’t think of anything more stressful and depressing. Maybe people can come in shifts? Of course Glen says he can do it all and doesn’t need help, but even though I joke about the imaginary cape he wears, he’s not Superman.

  Marie also told me to visualize a cute, normal, healthy baby, and a healthy remainder of my pregnancy. So that’s what I’ve been doing all afternoon, while making congee and burning three pots of rice in the process.

  July 17

  I felt a little sorry for myself last night. I’ve been doing everything I am supposed to, but my labs are not improving as dramatically as they should. I’ve really taken a hit. Today my hematocrit, which is supposed to be between 36 and 50, is at 27. My hemoglobin is holding at 9. It should be between 12.5 and 17. The only good news is that my white blood cells, which were completely wiped out, are coming back, with a reading today of 9.5, which is perfect.

  I refused to let anemia hold me back, though. Today I:

  • Watched three episodes of the sixth season of Sex and the City. I’m rooting for Miranda and Steve, even though that black Knicks doctor (Blair Underwood) is so sexy and it is nice to finally see an eligible, foxy black man on the show.

  • Baked and ate an entire organic marble cake. Delicious. I see much baking in my future.

  • Forced myself out of the house for a walk around the park. The sky was fiery red and purple, and there were lots of people out walking their dogs and riding bikes. I didn’t get far, but it was heavenly to get some air.

  • Pitched, to Salon and Slate, an interview with Spike Lee on his new movie, and did a little work on an essay for an anthology on guilt I agreed to write.

  I am tired, but not dead.

  July 19

  Dinner at my mother’s. She invited me with this loving, the-other-day-never-happened e-mail that of course sent me into a tizzy of indecision. What pregnant daughter doesn’t want to be close to her mother? There should be a support group: Ambivalents Anonymous.

  I asked Glen to come because I was truly, honestly, afraid of being alone with her. The last encounter was that disturbing.

  We went over and she was completely angelic, as if a month ago she didn’t tell me I was a piece of shit and threaten to ruin the reputation it has taken fifteen years to build. With Glen nearby, I let her feel the baby in my womb, and put her ear to my stomach to hear his little sounds.

  It was sort of nice, in a strange, disturbing kind of way. It was sad to notice that I was happier to leave than I was to arrive. I know it sounds crazy, but I kept thinking about Marvin Gaye and how he was killed by his own father.

  As a mother-to-be, I feel I have to look at these feelings, no matter how far-fetched they may seem. My protective instinct is way up, and there’s no way I am going to ignore it. It is abundantly clear that between my mother and me, I am the only one focusing on what my baby needs.

  July 20

  Feeling much better today. I woke up with that blissed-out, “I am pregnant woman, hear me roar” vibe. I must really be hitting the second trimester now. I feel the baby so much, his presence like a little glow in my belly. It’s way stronger than the quickening of a few weeks ago, that slight, supersubtle whisper of baby consciousness. Instead of the first hello, the first mutual acknowledgment of what exactly is going on here, now it’s like a whole conversation between us.

  I am having a baby!

  For lunch, Glen and I went to the French restaurant around the corner from the apartment. I am really showing now, and people everywhere we go look at me and smile and ask questions. There was a bit of a wait at the restaurant and the couple in front of us gave us their space in line. The woman said she remembered what it was like to be pregnant and hungry in a room full of other people eating.

  That is happening more and more, random women starting conversations about the trials and tribulations of pregnancy. I can tell by the way Glen shuts down when they approach that he finds it intrusive and strange, but I like it. It’s the first club I’ve unequivocally belonged to, and I understand tribalism much more as a result. The world really does become divided into the people who know this land and those who don’t.

  Over lunch Glen and I talked about the amnio, for which I have now missed three appointments. In my opinion, we’ve already done the pre-amnio blood-test version of the amnio, which came back normal, with no indication of Down’s or anything else, so why push it? The amnio would be a follow-up to that, a just-to-make-sure kind of thing, and we’d get to find out boy or girl. Glen says it is up to me. He doesn’t believe in a lot of tests, the whole cult of getting everything just because we can, just because it is available. In his opinion, the baby is healthy, and if it’s not, we’ll deal.

  I was into the amnio until I read about the one-in-three-hundred chance of miscarriage. No one I know has ever had a problem, but I just can’t get too excited about a huge needle that close to my baby. On the other hand, I have to be honest with myself about being able to care for a baby with special needs. I don’t think I can do it. And I definitely want to know ahead of time so that I can make an informed decision. On the third hand, I read that it is not unusual to get a false positive, and then you’re really in the wringer.

  After we ate, I got really, really tired and came home and went to sleep. I woke up still tired and with that run-down feeling that comes, I think, with a low red blood cell count. Sonam says that even though I am sick, I have to find a way to keep exercising, even if it is just a little. If I feel better tomorrow, I will go for a swim in the morning before I sit down to work.

  July 21

  Speaking of work. I have no desire to do any. My mind just doesn’t have any sparkle, which I find alarming, since my job basically depends on sparkle.

  Went to a prenatal appointment at Dr. Lowen’s. I mentioned that after the hospital visit I am thinking even more about a home birth. She said, You know, you have to make sure you’ve got your priorities straight. It’s okay to have a baby at home, but a home birth is more for the mother. You go to the hospital for the baby.

  My first reaction was anger: How dare she pit me against my baby! If it’s better for me, it will be better for the baby. But then I started thinking about the baby, and how wrecked I would be if something went wrong. I remembered my stepmother saying that if something happened to the baby I would never forgive myself. She’s
right.

  Glen is still against a home birth, and when I showed him The Birth Book, which Carl and Martine gave me, with all of the amazing pictures of people looking all natural and groovy and organic and healthy, he said, Yes, but they don’t put the pictures of home births gone wrong in the book, you don’t see those pictures. To which I countered that they don’t tell you about the hospital births gone horribly wrong, either. They don’t take pictures of all of the C-sectioned moms that could have had natural births. They don’t blow up pictures of episiotomies and put them up on the wall next to the cute one-year-olds.

  We did another blood test. Dr. Lowen doesn’t have any idea why I had the reaction I did to the antibiotics, and isn’t quite sure what to make of the fact that my counts aren’t back to normal, but she is reassured that now they are going up, and not down.

  Me, too.

  July 27

  I spent a good hour this morning standing in the kitchen in my underwear trying to figure out new and exciting ways to ingest iron-rich molasses. First I tried heating soymilk and dissolving the molasses in it, kind of like a molasses hot chocolate. Barf. Then I tried spreading it like peanut butter on toast. Super barf. Then I tried just sucking on a spoonful. Oh my God, I almost passed out, it was so disgusting.

  Solomon arrives in a couple of days for orientation at the new school we decided to send him to here in Berkeley. His mother found an apartment close to the school, and we have agreed that he should live with her primarily, and see me on weekends, and for meals during the week.

  I am nervous about the whole arrangement and feeling overwhelmed. I am not going to be able to take care of him as much as I usually do, but I don’t want him to feel displaced by the baby. To calm my nerves I made a little schedule that includes a few things I know he’ll like. He’s old enough to take care of himself a bit, and also be helpful to me. Right?

  August I

  Solomon left today. He didn’t help, exactly, but I did enjoy hanging out with him. Even though I am ginormous for five months, I can tell the baby thing is a bit abstract to him. I had to keep reminding him that I can’t do the things I used to do, like walk up five flights of stairs. Or work all day, go out for dinner, a movie, and then to the bookstore to look at magazines.

  Orientation at his new school seemed to go well. He came back with a big smile on his face and several new “friends.” He didn’t want to hear the lecture I gave him about throwing the word “friend” around with people you hardly know, though. After a few minutes he was like, Okay! Can we go to the burrito place now?

  Last night Glen and I talked about the difference between mothering and smothering. Mothering has to do with setting appropriate boundaries and giving kids room to be themselves. Smothering has to do with projecting all of your fears and anxieties onto kids and not giving them a moment’s peace. I am determined to do the former and not the latter, but it isn’t easy. I notice how much I problematize different aspects of Solomon’s identity, calling attention to behaviors that aren’t just so and constantly making little corrections. I notice that I want to know his thoughts and feelings a little too much.

  I asked Glen about his mother, and what she did right in raising him. She was abandoned as an infant, he said, and ended up graduating from Boston University at a time when very few women, and even fewer African-American women, were able to do so. She was also a single mother at a time when it was socially taboo. She went to graduate school, and then worked as a counselor in a women’s prison for twenty-six years.

  Tears didn’t well up in Glen’s eyes, but I could tell he was moved remembering her fortitude. She worked long hours, he said, but he always had a hot dinner, and never felt that he had to fend for himself. She created such a strong network of friends that he always felt he had three or four mothers. She gave him room, he continued, but she was also clear about her expectations. “I did well in school,” he said, “lettered in three sports, and almost died of mortification whenever I did something she didn’t approve.”

  She wasn’t a saint, he said, but she made some choices to ensure that he would have a better life. “The most important thing she did was move us from New York to California, to give me a chance to grow up without the judgment that came with being a child born out of wedlock in a community where everyone gossiped.” He paused. “She let go of everything she knew, family, friends, community, to give me an opportunity to live free of that burden, and looking back now, I’m sure it saved my life.”

  We kept talking about their relationship. Glen left graduate school just before getting his master’s degree to care for her when she was ill and then dying of cancer. At one point in the conversation, he said something that he often says when we discuss raising children and the state of masculinity: “Boys need their mothers.”

  It wasn’t the first time we’ve talked about his mother and the decisions she made, but after the last encounter with my own mother, I can relate a little more to the idea of leaving what is familiar to create a happy life for your child. I can see the importance of making decisions that enable your child to be not just physically safe in an environment, but emotionally and psychologically safe as well. If the well-being of my own child doesn’t inspire me to break through my ambivalence about a person or situation and act more decisively, I have no idea what will.

  August 2

  I’ve started swimming. Tonight it was just a teenaged couple and me wading around in the fog. A few nights ago it was me and an older woman who swims every night at nine. Both swims were relaxing. I could see the lights of the city through the steam rising off the pool, and the water was soothing and warm. So far, the baby seems to love being in the water. I imagine he goes right to sleep as I stroke and glide.

  On Saturday, I made the mistake of going swimming in the middle of the day, when the pool was overrun with, in my humble opinion, bratty, privileged kids. They bumped into me, swam across my lane, threw footballs over my head, and generally ran around paying no attention to anyone but themselves. I kept standing in the shallow end at the break in my laps so that their mothers would see that I was no ordinary lap swimmer, I was a pregnant lap swimmer, damn it. I deserved some modicum of respect, even if just for safety. But the mothers ignored me, too, and kept chatting and glancing approvingly at their kids as they whooped all around me.

  The whole time I was thinking about how I will be with the baby, and how he will never be so rude and how I as a parent will never be so checked out. Then I thought, Well, maybe those moms are over there talking about their mastectomies or their husbands’ affairs. Maybe this is the first break they’ve had in weeks. Who knows? They could have been talking about their vacation in Tahiti, but I certainly felt less bitchy toward them when I imagined that they, like everyone else, have problems.

  August 4

  Glen and I went to have the amnio. We went, even though I was on the fence and even though if there were something wrong it would be too late to do anything about it. “Something wrong” being Down syndrome or worse. “Anything about it” being an abortion.

  The receptionist warned me that it would be a three-hour appointment, because in addition to the procedure itself, I would need to undergo routine counseling. She didn’t say what kind, and when I asked, she made it sound like preparatory counseling, like you might get before taking an HIV test. How to be prepared for the worst. When we got there, the counseling, which we had to agree to have before they would administer the amnio, turned out to really be “genetic counseling.” We were taken into a little room by someone who worked not for the hospital but for a biotech company based in Los Angeles. This very nice woman proceeded to do a “genetic intake” on me and Glen, asking about the race, national origin, and health of family members as far back as we could remember.

  The flow from signing in to sitting in the woman’s office was so seamless that it took me about ten minutes to realize that something other than what I expected was going on. I was, like I suspect most of the young and middle-age
d women in the waiting room, so focused on doing something beneficial for my baby and so excited about seeing him in the ultrasound preceding the amnio that the nice woman could have been asking for rights to my firstborn’s stem cells and I wouldn’t have noticed.

  Glen was less distracted, and as I felt his discomfort I asked the relevance of the information being gathered. I also asked who would own the information, and if my privacy was protected by law. Again, call me paranoid, but I saw the movie Gattaca. Genetic discrimination, though not as prevalent today as other forms of discrimination, is not just a paranoid delusion. We don’t know what kind of world our children will inherit.

  The very nice woman explained that this was a way to screen for potential genetic disorders. She explained that all the information was confidential, and that her computer linked only to the company’s database and she had to have a special access code to even turn it on. She explained that the results, my baby’s genetic tree, would be shipped to a completely secure facility somewhere in Southern California. She explained that there are, in fact, laws in place that prohibit her company or any other company from using the information for testing, research, or anything else.

  I started to feel very uncomfortable. How harmless could it be if it required so much security? It is not too difficult to imagine my son’s genes being used against him. If he is predisposed to sickle-cell anemia and heart disease, for example, and potential employers can call this up with a stroke of the keyboard, will this make him less employable? If insurers can call up a family history of diabetes, dementia, or some other disease that is costly to maintain, will they insure him? At what price? These are only two scenarios that gave me pause. I shared them with the very nice woman, and she reminded me about the laws. I reminded her that laws change, you know, and usually to facilitate economic expansion. I can’t think of another industry with as much momentum as biotech.