Baby Love (15 page)

It was my first dinner with them as a ravenous, two-headed, big-bellied omnivore. My father got a huge kick out of watching me eat two California rolls, one filet mignon yakitori, a giant salad, an order of Agadashi tofu, two bowls of miso soup, and an entire order of steamed vegetable dumplings. He kept beaming and saying things like, So you’re eating for two, my Rebecca? Eat plenty for my grandson in there, the little schmutzky, and asking if I wanted the rest of his chicken-and-vegetable dish.

We went to my stepmother’s best friend Ronnie’s house to break the fast for the Jewish holiday of atonement, Yom Kippur. Jason, Ronnie’s black, white, and Jewish son, with whom I used to watch
The Love Boat
and
Fantasy Island
sprawled on his mom’s bed, was there with his new girlfriend. She’s Cuban, but has never been to Cuba. Of course this possibility didn’t occur to me until after I had talked about how beautiful the island is and how the people are so incredible. The blank look on her face tipped me off. Then I started obsessing about how her family must have lost everything in the revolution and they probably hate Fidel or at least have serious and legitimate gripes. Then here I come, a spoiled American, talking about it like just another place I visited and added to my places-I-have-gone-and-now-have-an-opinion-about list. Gross.

The question of naming came up again. Ronnie said, Tenzin? No, I don’t like that so much. Then my stepmother said, What are the kids at school going to call him? and my brother said, Ten. My father threw his hands up and said, I like Chaim, and I said, Dad, we talked about this, which we had, earlier in the day. I told him that I would not have anyone, including his grandfather, subjecting my child to even the merest hint of identity confusion. I said, What if Grandma had insisted on calling me Susan? And he paused and said, You’re right, I would have told her that your name was Rebecca. But how is he going to get a job with a name like Tenzin?

You know, he said seriously, there is a group of women with names like Shanequa speaking publicly about how their names have kept them from succeeding in the workplace. They’re all changing their names to Mary.

I told him that Tenzin was a perfectly respectable name, and part of a tradition at least twenty-five hundred years old.

Then I asked him how many jobs he thought Chaim would get, and we both burst into laughter.

The shower was yesterday. It blew me away. There were people from so many different parts of my life in one room, and for the first time I felt elation rather than dread at the thought of them all coming together. My East Coast family, the Yale mafia, the literary troupe, some Bay Area peeps who happened to be in the city, the buddies I got to keep after the big breakup, two rugged and beautiful idealists from the days I was running around raising money for nonprofits.

Even though I don’t see many of them often, the people who came are definitely a part of my tribe, that ever-expanding crew held together by the resonance of a three-hour talk one night at a club about a relationship, or a series of conversations about a TV show we developed together, or a lunch about an essay that led to a discussion about marriage and kids and where the hell our lives were going. I’ve never felt happier to be surrounded by such a warm and loving bunch, or more certain I was in the exact right place at the right time.

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.