classes with me and we read each other the more inspired passages from What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
And then, the big-deal day, those first twinges of discomfort, similar to the onset of a menstrual period. The rudeness of the nurses when they learned I’d come to the hospital without being dilated enough, the walk back to the parking lot to get my coat, an interminable journey that took years off my life, I swear, as people looked on in horror, mothers pulling their children away when I had to lean against a cement pillar, and breathe with tears rolling down my cheeks.
“This sucks!” Jack said as he helped me back along the crosswalk to the hospital.
“Take me back upstairs,” I sobbed. “I think my water broke.”
A few contractions later, I was being eased into the dignified stage of labor and delivery, toted along on a gurney and an epidural of pain candy. Aaaah, the beauty of the epidural, the chance to give birth, to enjoy it and not hate the little dumpling whom you’ve been planning and prepping for so intently for nine months.
Our first daughter was born with a shriek of annoyance, a very clean baby, which she maintained through life, never drooling, rarely spitting up. I remember the smart set of her rosebud lips as the nurse placed her in my arms. Becca’s steely-gray eyes stared up at me, and although the childbirth info claimed that babies could not focus because of the silver nitrate drops put in their eyes, our Becca was quite focused, her stern gaze demanding answers. Who are you? she asked as she stared carefully at Jack and me. What am I doing here? How did I land with the two of you as parents? Do you really know what you’re doing?
Of course, we didn’t.
But we did our best to fake it. I will never forget the high anxiety in the car as Jack and I drove our first baby home. I kept turning to the back to check on her, sure that her silence meant she was sleeping, but Rebecca was awake and alert, eyes open as the world flew past her windows and the grill of a truck loomed in the back window, which she faced. “I can’t believe we’re taking a baby home,” I said to Jack.
He turned toward me, looking as if he’d never met me before. “What do you think is going through her head? I mean, what’s she thinking?”
“Rosy, warm thoughts, I’m sure,” I said. If I was correct, those rosy thoughts faded the minute Jack pulled into a parking spot across the street from our house. Becca started fussing and crying, her little head twitching and writhing in her car seat like an imprisoned nonagenarian. By the time we crossed the threshold, she was in a howling jag that didn’t stop for four months except for the occasional break to nurse or pass out from exhaustion.
“I read that the average newborn sleeps sixteen to eighteen hours a day,” Jack said. “Becca seems to be crying more than she sleeps. What’s up with that?”
“Is it colic?” my mother asked me one day when I was pacing the floor with the baby, reducing her bloody-murder shriek to a disappointed howl.
“The pediatrician said that colic only occurs in twenty percent of babies,” I answered. “Not that it would matter, as there’s no real treatment for colic, anyway.” Short of earplugs for the parents. And I mean those heavy-duty earphone types that you see the crew wearing at Monster Truck events. Although our baby Becca would nap in the morning and come alive with flirty eyes and cooing in the afternoon, she shriveled into a wailing wench by the dinner hour, crying and shrieking inconsolably until well after midnight.
“What’s her problem?” Jack asked me one night, genuinely concerned over our baby’s discomfort.
I just shrugged, feeling inadequate because I didn’t have an answer. I had researched the proper dimensions of crib bars and the most stimulating mobile colors for infant brain development (black and white), but I’d never anticipated having a baby who was less than content and blissed out. Jack signed us up for a newsletter that would teach us about the stages of development Becca was going through, and we studied it like budding behaviorists, sure that the answer to our inadequacies would be explained in the cheerful articles on gross motor skills and cognitive development. “Soon your baby will be grasping at things,” we were assured, even as another writer extolled the benefits of “tummy time for your baby.” Based on Jack’s reading we had Becca tested for gastroesophageal reflux, baby heartburn. Negative, of course. I knew it couldn’t be that easy.
By three months, Becca had taught us a few things. We learned that she didn’t like being too hot, that she hated being wrapped tight in a blanket, that she didn’t want to be cradled in our arms like a baby. I realized she cried less on days that she got out more than once, so I made it a habit to take her to the grocery store or the bank with me, to walk her in the stroller even on the coldest of days. But I still kept her out of restaurants during the witching hour—dinner-time. Jack was the first to figure out that Becca didn’t like staring up at the ceiling and devised a new baby hold that only he could manage, holding her face out with her bottom cupped in one hand, her back and neck supported by the other. Similar to the Popemobile or the Batmobile, Jack had devised the perfect touring vehicle for Becca, all in his hands.
By four months, the steady hours of shrieking faded away, and Jack was smitten by her all over again. Her googly eyes and generous smile had erased all memory of nights spent cringing from her howling cries, walking her around and around the living room, trying to dance her around to Hootie and the Blowfish. Becca became the light of his life, the reason to slip under the covers naked with me to try and make a sibling for her.
Recently I’d thought that the misery Becca had experienced those first few months had made her especially empathetic to other people. She tended to reach out to kids left out of the group and suffered when she saw news stories of famine in Africa or areas destroyed by natural disasters. When terrorists struck the World Trade Center, two of Becca’s classmates lost their fathers in the North Tower. One of the men didn’t even work in the building but was visiting for an early-morning conference. Devastation was all around us, but I couldn’t turn my focus from these little children, six years old. While other classmates had pulled away, Becca had wanted playdates and tried to organize games to distract the two.
That was when her insomnia began.
She worried that Jack would go to work and never come home, like Lydia and Andrew’s dads. She worried that one of Jack’s flights to Dallas would crash into a building. Mostly, I think, she was haunted by the knowledge that the world is not always a safe place, and as her mother, although I could promise that Jack and I would do everything to keep her safe, I couldn’t guarantee that bad things wouldn’t happen to her. In fact, I knew she’d have her share of heartbreak.
And so, we often lay together in her bed, Becca staring at the cracked plaster ceiling while I fought sleep, trying to save myself for a short conversation and a crime show with Jack.
“I’m just saying”—Ms. Nancy’s crisp voice brought me back to the milk crisis—“a girl your age need to drink her milk.”
“She eats lots of yogurt at home,” I said in Becca’s defense. “Plenty of calcium.” I moved over to Scout, whose head was bent intently over her pencil sketch. Her smooth, dark hair stuck out between the weave of her headband. “Hey, honey! I came to pick you up early,” I said in my most cheerful mom voice.
“But I’m not done.” Scout didn’t look up from her pencil sketch. “I can’t go yet. Mommy, can’t I stay for awhile?”
Nancy shrugged and gestured over the children—Raj building quietly with LEGOs in the corner, Tyanna working a puzzle. “All children love it here,” she said, as if she possessed a mysterious gift that eluded the rest of us. Ms. Nancy could be quite the salesman.
“You’ll be back tomorrow,” I told Scout. “Right now, we need to get home.”
“But I can’t,” my daughter said without looking up. “Ms. Nancy said that if I finish she’ll mail my list to Santa.”
“Everyone make a Christmas list today,” Nancy said proudly. “Your Rebecca has very small list. Only one thing she wants for Christmas.” She nodded approvingly