Maternity Leave (9781466871533) (18 page)

I try to remember what kind of look implies I'm in a sexy mood, but apparently I choose the wrong one because Zach asks, “Are you mad at me?”

I sigh. “No, I'm making my sexy face. I'm leading you into the bedroom seductively. Pretend you can tell.”

“Ah, yes, I recall that expression. It's been so long, I'd nearly forgotten,” he says, smirking.

We stand next to the bed and kiss. Pecks at first until we find our groove, and the memory foam of love starts bouncing back. We recline onto the bed, and that's when things, shall we say, turn less sexy.

Zach grabs my breast, which in the past would have turned me on in a manly, take-charge kind of way. Tonight? “Ouch. I've just gotten over a plugged duct, and it's still sore,” I warn him. He switches breasts, and that one is no better. “No, not that one either. Sam latched badly the other day, and my nipple is tender. Maybe you should just stay away from the breastal area today.”

We kiss and roll a bit, removing articles of clothing and giggling with joy and awkwardness. Then Zach slips his hand between my legs. “Whoa there!” I command. “I don't know if I want your hand in that area. What if things feel weird?” I ask.

“Like weird how?” he asks, sounding slightly disturbed. I'm a pro at the turnoff, I'm discovering.

“It's just that there were stitches, and maybe the area is a different shape or size. You probably knew it better than I did. I wouldn't want to gross you out or anything.”

“You just did, and it's not because of anything I felt,” he points out, then clarifies, “I'm not thinking about any of those things. I just want to make love to my beautiful wife.” He lays it on thickly, and I vow to myself to stop sticking my foot in my vagina.

“How about we get to the act? Maybe a quickie for the first go? You know, dive right in?” I suggest.

“If that's what you want, then I am not going to say no.” Zach doesn't seem nearly as uptight about this process as I am, and in a second he's on top of me. In another second, he's inside of me, and … It's not that bad. It's not that good, either, but I don't tell him. Maybe the ol' vageroo just needs a few test runs to get up to speed.

Zach is thrusting and moaning, and I'm happy he's enjoying himself. I try to remain still, just in case anything down south starts to, I don't know, go south. Several minutes of work on Zach's part, and he stops. “What's wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I answer.

“You don't seem to be enjoying yourself,” he notices.

“I'm enjoying myself just fine,” I say, not at all in a way that would convince someone I was, indeed, enjoying myself. “I'm just a little tense, is all. Keep doing what you're doing,” I tell him.

“I don't want to if you're not feeling it,” he complains.

“Oh, I'm feeling it. It's just … Never mind.” I shake the thought away.

“What?” he presses, and I'm worried that he's going to lose his erection and won't complete the task at hand.

“It's just that I keep imagining you picturing a baby's head squeezing out of my vagina,” I admit.

Zach rolls off of me. “Annie,” he moans, and not in the manner of David and the QVC chocolates.

“I'm sorry. I don't completely feel like myself yet. I don't know if I ever will. My body has turned into a baby factory—making him, housing him, feeding him. My back hurts, and my boobs hurt and my face has aged about sixteen years since Sam came out of me. I'm worried that I won't ever be as attractive as I once was.”

“You are. You're even more beautiful because you're a mom.”

“You're just saying that because you're supposed to. I feel heavy and squishy and old, and I see Alfred Hitchcock staring back at me every time I look in the mirror. I'm glad you claim to not see it, but in order for me to feel sexy to you I have to feel sexy to me, too. And that's not happening yet.”

“I get it,” he says disappointingly. “How soon are we talking here?” He rolls onto his side and smiles at me encouragingly.

“It doesn't hurt that you want to have sex with me, so keep trying and hopefully one day soon I'll be like a sixteen-year-old gymnast again.”

“You were never like a sixteen-year-old gymnast,” Zach informs me. “Which is good because I'm not interested in having sex with a teenager.”

“How about a twenty-something yoga enthusiast?”

“I'd be happy with a thirty-something English teacher,” Zach says, and he gathers me into a cuddle.

Instantly I'm asleep.

I have a dream wherein I'm having decent sex with several of the characters from
Battlestar Galactica
(not at one time; they morph from one character to another, as people do in dreams). I take it as a good sign. As though somewhere in the future I'll be having decent sex. Now I just have to make it happen with my husband.

119 Days Old

Nora spent the day with me and Sam, and it was a welcome break from the chaotic monotony of my life. Of course, after she left I felt like a traitor to womankind, but that seems to be more common than not since I became a mom and Nora is still trying.

“I've started fertility testing,” Nora says as she lies next to a calm and content Sam on the floor. Doogan is tucked against me on the couch. “It's god-awful. Every time I step into the office, I want to throw up. And then the things they do to me make me want to throw up even more. I screamed, ‘Fuck!' at the top of my lungs the other day while they were shooting iodine up my cooch. It took forever. So much blood taking and timing things and keeping track. It's the most unnatural, unsexy, uncomfortable process. It makes me question whether or not I'm supposed to even have a kid.”

“Of course you are!” I was overdoing the encouragement, but my guilty, evil soul was eating away at me. Just last night I was saying terrible things under my breath to Sam when he refused to go back to sleep for the third time. “There's no supposed to or not supposed to. If you want a child, you will have a child.”

“But don't you believe in fate, things happening for a reason, God giving us what we can handle?”

“And God will give you a beautiful baby that you will be able to handle. Maybe three or four at once if you don't stop asking for it. God probably knew I couldn't handle going through what you're going through. That I'm not strong like you are or patient. Maybe he was like, Enough already! Here's a baby. But I'll make him extra whiny just for you.”

Nora massages Sam's tummy in an instinctual way that I would never have thought to do. He loves it and basks in her gentle touch. I stroke Doogan just to prove I'm good at something. He bites my hand. “Ow! When do they tell you the results of the tests?” I ask, extracting myself from the couch in order to down a sleeve of Thin Mints I hid from myself during Girl Scout cookies season.

“In two weeks. What if they say I can't have a baby?” She continues rubbing Sam's belly like Buddha for good luck.

“You can. I know you can. You managed to get pregnant. More than once, even! You just have to make one that's worth keeping. I'm sure those other two—”

“Three,” she reminds me.

“Sorry—
three
were going to be serious underachievers anyway. Like, Blue Bird reading group all the way. Plus they were really ugly. Like tiny troll dolls.”

Nora snorts out a laugh. “Can you imagine if I gave birth to troll dolls?”

“And everyone would have to pretend that they're cute because God forbid someone says a baby is ugly.”

“I'd go to the park with the troll baby in a stroller, and old ladies would crouch over to ogle him and then hobble away screaming.” We're both laughing now.

“What do you name a baby that looks like a troll doll?” she asks, sniffing.

“Olga?”

“How about Grunderson?”

“Ooh. That's good. Snorbert?”

We spend the next ten minutes coming up with appropriate troll names for her ugly troll doll babies. We laugh, and Sam laughs along with us. And there is nothing like the sound of a baby's laugh to clear the pain from the air.

I bet even troll doll babies have cute laughs.

120 Days Old

To: Annie

From: Annika

Hey girl! Where've you been? Gallivanting around the local mall? Eating bon bons on the couch while you watch those god-awful talk shows? Why don't you call me? We should meet for brunch one day. My treat!

Gotta run. Busy busy busy!

XOXO Annika

That is not the first email I've received in this vein from Annika. She seems to think I'm not doing jack shit while I'm on maternity leave, and while it may be true that I've accomplished very little, not a moment goes by where I'm not either doing or attempting to do something but am quickly thwarted.

I write a hasty reply because it doesn't seem worthwhile trying to explain motherhood to her. She has vehemently announced that she has no intention of ever becoming a parent because she thinks kids suck, which she usually tells me in that way of people who always think what they're saying is fact, even if it is very much coming from a place of opinion. Plus, why would I agree with her when I just chose to give birth to a kid? Even if some of the time I do think he sucks. But I'd never let her know that.

To: Annika

From: Annie

Hiya! Busy here, too! Sam's a love who won't let me put him down. Trying to enjoy my maternity leave. It'll be over in less than two months! We'll have to get together before then.

Annie

I refuse to let Annika get to me. Instead, I watch daytime QVC and buy $200 worth of Joan Rivers jewelry that I will probably never wear. But I do it to honor Joan, and that's what's important.

122 Days Old

If I have to read about another celebrity who says how great it is to be a mom, I am going to drown myself in my arsenal of stored breastmilk. Don't tell me, obnoxious, holier-than-thou supermodel, that you're such a great mom because you're “multitasking” while you breastfeed in a hoity-toity makeup chair while someone else holds a cup with a goddamn straw for you and three other people fix your hair. Multitasking is hanging on to a baby while taking a shit and then realizing there is no toilet paper left on the roll. So, pants down, baby on tit, you rifle under the sink for more, but there is none there either, so with your pants still around your ankles and baby dangling you have to shuffle/hop your way down the basement stairs without falling in order to dig a package of toilet paper out of the closet, puncture it open with a leaking pen, carry the roll back upstairs, and wipe your ass, not to mention flush, pull your pants back up, and attempt to wash your one hand that isn't trying to prevent your baby from falling onto the tiled floor as he rips your nipple off on the way down.

#MULTITASKMYASS

123 Days Old

It's the middle of the night, and I can't sleep. Sam is going on four hours, but I'm so used to waking up that I can't manage to doze off.

There's a woman on QVC selling personal stair machines. It's 2:53
A.M.
, and there are three hard-bodied women, half-dressed, demonstrating how using the Sky Stepper will magically transform my gelatinous stomach into a rock-hard washboard.

None of the women are even remotely close to dripping with sweat. In fact, they're barely glistening.

“How do you do it?” I ask the TV. “How do you look so toned and glamorous at three in the morning? I can't look like that after a makeover at the MAC counter at Macy's and three pairs of Spanx. You're on live TV, for fuck's sake.”

“I haven't had anything to eat but energy drinks for the last twenty-four hours,” one woman admits, and I detect a twitch in her eye.

“I run Ironman every year,” the second woman tells me. “Walking on a step machine in the middle of the night is like laying on the couch for you.”

“Oh. That makes me feel better,” I groan. “And what about you?” I ask the third exerciser.

“I don't have much of a choice. My husband lost his job, and I have three kids at home who need braces.”

“Man, that sucks. Well, if it's any consolation, you look great for having three kids,” I tell her.

“I'd rather look like you and be in bed than be here, wiping sweat off my forehead every time they turn the camera away from me.”

“I knew it!” I shout. At that moment, Zach rolls over in his sleep and asks, “Is Sam up? Are you on the phone?”

“Go back to sleep,” I tell him, something I never have to say twice.

On the TV, the three women work out as though we hadn't just bonded. In their honor, I sneak down to the kitchen for a stick of string cheese, celebrating the fact that I can.

124 Days Old

To: Annie

From: Louise

Dear Annie,

Right now I am locked in the bathroom with my phone, and my two kids are outside the door screaming their fucking heads off. Literally, if I open the door, which I may never do and you can come over in three weeks to identify my decaying body sitting on the toilet, I expect to see both of my kids with their heads on the floor. Which would totally be an improvement because they won't SHUT UP. I just yelled that as I typed it. My kids are going to need so much fucking therapy. SO AM I (yelled again). The baby is in a bouncy seat, and Jupiter is seriously scratching at the door and rolling on the floor. I don't understand. How hard is it to sit and watch a cartoon while your mom has to take a shit? Sometimes I wish I had more in the bathroom besides nick-proof razors and infant Tylenol.

Help.

Lou

125 Days Old

I can't tell, but I think Doogan isn't eating as well as he used to. Maybe it's been years since he has. When he was a young cat, he was so rotund that we had to put him on diet cat food. Eventually we bought a food machine on a timer that spits out the right amount of food two times a day. The motor inside whirs before the food comes out, and Doogan used to perk up at the sound of it, then zip straight to the bowl for his meals. He hasn't done that in a while. Months? Years? He's been with me so long, it's hard to differentiate. His eating slowed down once before, right around the time Zach and I were married. We were so busy with the wedding preparation, we didn't notice until we went on our honeymoon. Doogan stayed with Fern, at her lavish apartment with more bathrooms than bedrooms at the top of a skyscraper in Chicago, with pristine white carpeting that Doogan promptly puked on the second Zach and I boarded our plane for San Diego (part of our honeymoon was spent at Comic-Con, the rest on a road trip up the California coast). It turned out Doogan had hepatic lipidosis, where his fat started invading his liver or something like that. Whatever it was, Fern had to take him to the vet, and I spent half our honeymoon on the phone with the vet (and several thousand dollars) making sure he was okay. Doo is such a sweet cat, the vet actually went into the clinic on her off-hours just to hang out with him. I guess he was at death's door, and the vet saved him, gave him seven years more and counting. We send her holiday cards every year.