Maternity Leave (9781466871533) Read Free Page B

stuff.
    Enjoy Baby Sam (not short for Samhain, right?)
    Hugs!
    Fern
    Fern is my best friend from high school who, even though she married a wealthy screenwriter in L.A. and has four small kids, still likes to talk about Satan like we did in high school (just a short-lived phase, between our Wiccan period and the house-on-the-corner-psychic era). I adore her and wish she lived nearby. I don’t really have any close friends with kids since Zach and I moved to the suburbs a few years ago after he declared he needed more space and was tired of “smelling our neighbors.”
    My mom lives closest to us, at fifteen minutes away, but pretty much everyone else, including my sister, Nora, and her husband, Eddie, lives in the city. How does one go about making mom friends in the sprawling suburbs? Will I be forced to join a playgroup? Does that involve potlucks? I hate potlucks. So many casseroles with their quivering cream of mushroom soup. Just another way I’ll be ostracized from the parenting community. Because most parents actually know what to do with their kids.
    3 Days Old
    They claim we are ready to take the baby home. I have managed to get Sam to latch with a spectacular contraption called a nipple shield. While it’s not very shieldlike in appearance (it is a clear silicone cover that fits over my nipple and areola), I suppose it is shielding me from the debilitating pain of the suck. Why did they make these things clear? Couldn’t they be jazzier, with wacky patterns or sports teams or band names? Or maybe that would defeat the purpose of trying to get the baby to latch on to my actual boob once he figures out how to latch well with the shield. If it was patterned, then I’d have to start decorating my nips just to keep things consistent. As it is, I already feel like a hooker from the future with these things perched on my tits.
    Have I mentioned that my boobs are like boulders right now? Gigantic and rock hard. I look like I might float away at any minute, but their density makes me think I’d sink like a stone if dropped into an ocean. I’ve been told that cold cabbage in my bra might help, so I’m sending Zach to the grocery store for a head as soon as we get home. And then demanding that he make me some coleslaw.
    All of this teat trouble makes me question if my goal of nursing for Sam’s first year is complete madness. Isn’t all of this complete madness, though? I am still baffled that a human being came out of me, a “human being” who can’t do a single thing on his own. Scratch that—he seems to be highly capable of both filling his diaper and crying so people in neighboring counties can hear his nuanced shriek. Does it fill their bellies with panic, too? Do other moms feel this way, or am I completely evil?
    I look at Sam, and, yes, I am in awe that he is a real, live baby. My real baby. But he is also a complete stranger to me. I knew him better when he lived inside my body, waking me up at night with his hiccups and kicking me as I drove my car listening to speed metal. I was certain I was going to spawn an adorable little headbanger. I looked supercute in my maternity clothes, and everyone gushed at me when they asked what I was having and I answered, with a loving pat to my belly, “A boy.” We had a good thing going.
    Now they’re trying to kick me out of the hospital, as though I’m actually ready to raise a person from start to (my) finish! People do this all the time, yet I never thought about how terrifyingly fucked up it is that before I came here I just had myself to think about and less than three days later I am completely responsible for a human life. How the fuck do people do this? I don’t know how to comfort or feed or cuddle him as well as I did when he lived inside of me, perfectly contained and cozy, drinking his own pee. We are strangers, and yet I am wholly responsible for his well-being. Everything I do from now