One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir (34 page)

Jane suggested that if the opportunity ever re-presented itself, I should put more emphasis on the word
you
, as in, “When are
you
due?”

Lorene shook her head. “It’s not your size, it’s the way you walk and everything else. You don’t look like you want help.”

Jane and I had one last child-free weekend. On Saturday we went to Western Mass while Lorene worked. And we spent Sunday with Lorene, picnicking and sunning ourselves on conservation land south of Boston. Then on Monday, Jane hung out with Bruce while Lorene and I went to our birth-education class.

It was our last class, and some of us were still referring to the people who would deliver our babies as “doctors.” Our instructor would chide, “health care providers,” since others of us had chosen alternative birth settings. Our instructor was still referring to us as moms and dads, and a dad corrected, “moms and partners.”

We had achieved our learning objectives; we had done things Lorene claims I could only have done under the influence of pregnancy hormones.

We were asked for one last round of sharing. “I’d like to know what you’ve come up with for birth rituals.”

It was a hot August night and the maternity center’s air-conditioning wasn’t up to the task. Some of the big-bellied moms were clearly feeling the heat. Lorene finally raised her hand. “Cutting the cord.”

“Lovely. You’re going to cut the cord.” The instructor made a full sentence out of Lorene’s answer.

As Jane was getting ready to leave, she pointed to a spot in the backyard. “You have to plant a circle of sunflowers for her so she can stand in the middle. My mother did that for me.”

“
You
will have to do it. No, I’ll do it, and you’ll come back when they’re six feet tall,” I said. She promised she would.

Auntie Lorene and I had a full Sunday of nephew-sitting ahead of us while Meredith and Jonathan went on his company’s summer outing. We packed up to go over to their place; it was easier, especially when naps were involved. Dog barking made Henry cry, but he didn’t blink when Meredith raised her voice. Meredith said it’s all about what they get used to in the womb.

“Our baby won’t blink at the sound of a dog barking, and she’ll cry at the sound of men,” I said to Lorene.

“Now, why would you say that? For starters, our baby has spent every Saturday with your best friend Bruce.”
Could be I’m worried about her being raised by two moms.
We weren’t in San Francisco or Cambridge, which was fine for us. We could deal with being different. I just wanted everything to be okay for our kid.

It turned out that the company outing was a decoy for our baby shower.
Surprise!
There were twenty-some guests, a game—guess the circumference of my belly—beautiful food, flowers, and a mountain of presents.

We were completely worn out from being the center of attention, opening presents, and subjecting other people to present-opening in the sun. Lorene begged me not to work when we got home, but if I inked and painted one page, I was on track to finish
Manny’s Cows
by our birthdays, which meant I’d have a full month of maternity leave. A few hours later, I was carrying the finished page down to show Lorene. I missed a step and took the flight of stairs on my back; the finished page never touched the ground. Lorene came running from the other side of the house. “Let me see.”

There were welts all down my back. I was crying. “I didn’t hurt her, did I?” I whispered into Lorene’s neck.
Eight and a half months, oh please, don’t let me lose her now.

We saw one of Dr. Bunnell’s colleagues at our appointment that Thursday. We had gone from the every-four-weeks to the every-two-weeks plan. The black-and-blue marks on my back didn’t even warrant a note in my file. Our questions may have, though.

Q: Should we be doing perineal massage?

A: Will probably do more irritation than good.

Q: How about breast-feeding classes? (Most of my yoga classmates were enrolled.)

A: It’s like taking a bicycle class without a bicycle.

Q: What do you know about expressing colostrum?

Q/A: Where did we ever hear of such a thing? Nipple stimulation induces labor.

Then Lorene asked the capper. “Do you think my milk will come back?”

“Hmm. Maybe. When was your child born?”

“Twenty-five years ago.”

The doctor didn’t laugh in front of us. She kindly said, “We usually say five years is a long shot.”

Lorene and I had dinner at a deli in town afterward. I was hungry for, possibly craving, gefilte fish. I also ordered matzo ball soup and a pickle, an homage to craving.

“Well, did the tour make it seem more real?” Lorene asked. “Did it scare you?”

“It made the due date more real—it’s almost here and we still have a ton to do. I don’t think I’m scared. We did the class. You’re a doula. Even if my labor is twenty-four hours”—Lorene labored with David for forty-one hours—“it’s like Ride FAR. Okay, I don’t really know what I’m talking about, maybe it’s worse than Ride FAR, but there’s an end, and we get a baby.”
And even if I was scared, admitting it would only scare us more.
“Are you scared?”

“I’m not scared about the birth. You’re going to be wonderful. I’m scared about the next eighteen years. I just didn’t know how to help David through school. The public high school was wrong, but I don’t know that St. John’s was right . . . ”

“I feel pretty good about the school part. We’ll make sure she gets good teachers, and I’ll help out in her classroom.”

“Things that weren’t hard for me were hard for David, and I didn’t get it . . . You think your kids are going to be like you and it’s a big surprise, they’re not.”

“Well, I won’t know what to do if she’s popular. If it all goes to shit in high school, we can always send her to Steve, remember?” She smiled.

I gave birth to a small baby doll. We were all in the backyard for her naming ceremony, and partway through, her plastic head fell off. I quietly looked around, sure it couldn’t have gone very far, but then it was time to hold her up and I had to make an announcement. Everyone helped us look, but no one could find it. Someone suggested it wasn’t a big deal, any baby head would do, they’re very easy to replace, and I felt relieved because I realized it was true.

L
orene and I went back to Vermont for our birthday weekend. We wrote up our birth plan and we met with Julie, the officiant at our Vermont wedding, to put together some kind of a naming or welcoming ceremony in early November, the Sunday before Steve would head back to Melbourne.

Robin met us for a birthday dinner in Shelburne Falls. She had made us bracelets.