The Mongoose Diaries
Jan 15: Left Vivian for the first time today. She stayed with James's parents while J and I went to a movie. I don't know about James, but I had no fun. My breasts started stinging about half way through the movie and by the time we got back to the car I couldn't sit still. Came right into the house and straight up to see her. She was in her crib, wearing red stripes, blushing pink, sound asleep with her hands flung up above her head. I almost cried. Vivi peeped herself awake, so we lay down together and she nursed until she fell asleep again.
I go back to work in three weeks.
Later: James said he did have fun at the movie, which makes me feel a bit hysteric. But my theory is that motherly anxiety is an evolutionary imperative. The minute the boobs start bugging you, the hindbrain kicks in: time to go check the baby. Make sure the hyenas haven't found her nest in the tall grass. Just take the nuts you've got and go. Whereas the boy hindbrain is still on day one of the three-day wildebeest hunt, whistling all the way.
* * *
Jan 19: One of the things about parenthood is it makes you shameless.
About flatulence, for instance.
You're sitting on the floor, playing with the baby and suddenly you, as Milton has it, make a trumpet of your ass. Husband looks up inquiringly, with some dread. "Oh, that was me," you chirp, and don't realize this is a shift in social norms until a visiting friend drawls, "Well, congratulations."
It's hard to feel much shame when you spend so much time so close to this warm, perfect, pink little body.
* * *
Jan 20:
Vivi and I were out and about today, and ran into a middle-aged woman in a coat with horses appliquéd on it, also out walking.
"What a beautiful little boy. How old is he?" she said.
"Thank you!" I said. "She's a girl, and she's 11 weeks."
The woman furrowed her face and put her hands on her hips. "She's wearing blue."
Bless me, June Cleaver, for I have sinned. I have colour-coded my infant incorrectly, causing strangers confusion and anger, and I have failed to wear pearls while vacuuming.
* * *
Jan 21: Vivi today is wearing the yellow gingham jacket with the ducklings on it, which I bought for her the day of the ultrasound, the day we found out she was to be a girl. In her yellow pants and orange booties she is sweet and very girly. But James puts his hands on his hips: "You're raising a hermaphrodite! There is no yellow sex!"
* * *
Jan 25: James counts it out on his fingers to prove to me that Vivi is 13 weeks, not 12. I must have missed a week at Christmas. I don't know how. It's hard to miss even an hour. Vivian lives every minute, she makes time seem big and round, pulled out like a penny on the track. And my time feels like that too.
The other day she was restless and squawky and I thought I just couldn't stand it, couldn't you shut up for just one minute? And I held her and she kicked and clawed at me and screamed, because she's so tuned in to the Universe and sometimes it's just too much. And I knew that, because I feel like that often, but still, I hated her just then.
But I held her against my chest and she slowly got quiet and fell asleep. And I sat there afraid to move, still tense. But she stayed asleep so I shifted round and lay down on the couch. She was lying with her head between my breasts, filling my cleavage up with drool. The television and the radio were off, just the furnace purring and the sun creeping up the building opposite as it sets, the snow on the hedge turning sea green.
Somehow when she sleeps she seems to get heavier and heavier, but also softer and softer. And so do I. My life was so thin before her, so brittle--it's a wonder I didn't blow away.
* * *
Jan 27: Vivi reached up and touched my face today. We were out for lunch, having dim sum off the carts, me nursing Vivi and James fetching pan-fried tofu. She was cooing in my lap, and I was taking the chance to bolt food, when suddenly she lifted her hand and patted my chin, touched my lips. I turned to her. She reached up again, again. I almost cried.
Later she touched James' face in the same way: pure magic. His last day of work today. I'm glad he'll be home for this. I wish I could stay too--
* * *
Jan 29, Chinese New Year: Took Vivi out to the in-laws for a New Year's celebration with her Grandma, Grandpa, and two of her many great aunts.
I did not do well in the new-parent showmanship trials. Vivs was pretty screamy. And, although I brought the diaper bag (okay, we had to turn the car back and get the diaper bag, but we hadn't gone very far), it had only two clean diapers in it, which turned out not to be enough. Also, her emergency suit from the diaper bag was too small. And I brought no toys or blanket. I am an inadequate parent, unfit to send my child out the door.
Where does it come from, this guilt? It's as if it comes in with the milk.
* * *
Jan 30: James is downstairs trying to give Vivian a bottle of expressed breast milk. The idea is to use the week in which we're both home to get Vivi on a mid-morning and mid-afternoon bottle, with a lunchtime nurse, the schedule she'll have when I go back to work next week. Isn't that sensible?
I can hear her choking and screaming.
I may die.
I can feel my throat closing up. I'm sitting in the rocking chair in her room, listening mostly to the soothing noise machine make soothing cricket sounds. Think I'll turn that up a bit. There's nothing more soothing than LOUD CRICKETS with an undertone of screaming.
15 minutes later: She stopped screaming. But she's probably not dead, right?
3 minutes after that: Not dead, screaming again.
10 minutes after that: James can be heard above the crickets. Call it LOUD COAXING. Time to go downstairs.
* * *
Jan 31: Bottle day two. More of the same. On the bright side Vivi slept through the night, from 11:00 to 6:30. All that screaming wears a girl out.
* * *
Feb 1: Sleeping through the night was a glitch, I think. She was up twice last night as usual. Today was a big day for our little family. I got a haircut and James got the vacuum fixed. These took all day and felt like major accomplishments.
I am told we should not vacuum or sweep or dust this week, in fear of sweeping away our New Year luck. But I am not worried: our luck is ground in.
* * *
Feb 2: I go back to work next week. Awake in the middle of the night to nurse Vivi am almost overcome with sadness, worry, tenderness, pain.
Everyone keeps telling me Vivian will be fine, that it is worse for me than for her. This is probably true. It strikes me as a strange comfort--to be told you are the one who will suffer the most. It's the sort of comfort only a mother would be offered; it feeds into an ethic of self-sacrifice which does no one any favours.
But it is comforting. I am comforted.
Vivian is three months old today.
* * *
Feb 3: We're giving up on the bottles.
This is the thing about our Vivs: she's a smart little mongoose. This is a delight, but it's also like having a smart dog. The kind of dog that, books will tell you, needs "enrichment activities." My mom's dog, for instance, is part border collie and could run a nuclear power plant. She needs lots of enrichment activities, or she's gonna destroy furniture. Contrast this with my sort of dog--a bulldog, say--that notices you're gone right around the time you're getting back.
Anyway, Vivi is smart. She knows I'm around. Scream long enough and I'll come. No need to put up with nasty plastic nipples when the real thing is wincing and cowering in the next room. So the revised plan is I'll nurse her this week, and we will hope she takes to bottles when I'm not around.
Besides, I can't bear to fight her this week. I feel as if we must cling together in the little time we have left.
* * *
Feb 6: My first day back at work.
Vivi never did take that bottle. I thought she might today, while I was out of the house, but no. She came up and joined me for lunch as planned. Was starving but not screaming. Likewise she decided to hang out till dinner. Seems content.
In fact, James says she cooed and chatted through out the day. Has a brand new interest in re-enacting the flood with her Noah's ark animals-- drowning them in drool. A happy, bright day.
I'm so relieved.
And crushed.
At least she was clingy tonight. Maybe she'll be really sad and miserable tomorrow.
* * *
Feb 7: Another good day for Vivi, says James. No bottles, no screaming in hunger. And no sad-eyed pining for Mom. She's taking it well.
I on the other hand am aching and soaking through two sets of breast pads an hour. Pumping in the purple room--a cinder block box off the woman's bathroom, actually beige but the lair of a lurid and dubious purple coach that tints the walls--just isn't the same.
* * *
Feb 8: The first thing that hit me at work, right through the door on Monday morning, was a call from the Associate Dean for Research, phoning from a conference in California. He got up at 5:30 his time to let me know a multi-million dollar supposed-to-be-a-sure-thing grant application had in fact failed its internal review, and needs to be re-written. It's forty pages long, bogglingly technical, and due Thursday.
I note this by way of saying I have a challenging job.
It's so easy. They let me pee whenever I want.
* * *
Feb 9: Vivi slept through the night last night--and so did I, for the first time in about a year. We were all in bed by 11:00. James was up at 6:00, realized Vivi hadn't been up, and then couldn't get back to sleep himself. He says he checked her three times and poked her once--to be sure she was still breathing. (I feel vindicated.) She had a nice nurse this morning, but James says she was really mad mid morning--missing that missed feeding, perhaps. I did too. By lunch I was at the little-discussed squirt-gun phase of lactation.
We're coping with our new jobs. I am proud of how the big grant is turning out. With a week I could work miracles. I actually like being here. Naturally, though, I feel terrible about not feeling terrible. Because uncomplicated guilt is for amateurs, and I'm Catholic.
James seems so happy, though also slightly glassy. The thousand-diaper stare....
* * *
Feb 10: Hey, hey, she slept through the night again. Does twice in a row qualify as a trend? I live in hope. If she doesn't start soon, they're going to have to add "zombie walking" under "other duties as assigned" next week.
* * *
Feb 11: More night sleeping! Three days in a row! Hurray!
* * *
Feb 13: Remember that night sleeping? I do, fondly.
Hated going back in again, another Monday. This weekend made me realize how much I love just holding Vivi to my body for hours at a time. Her, sleeping on my chest; her, sitting on my lap and leaning her fuzzy little curls right under my chin. She is so warm and strong, and she smells like unlit candles: holy.
Still, work is going well. I hate to admit that, but it is. I spent today reading and thinking and talking about nanotechnology. I used words with several syllables, and the left side of my brain. I quoted Feynman. It felt good.
Also, I am officially a working Mom: I arrived this morning looking extra spiffy, with a pink broach on one shoulder and milk barf on the other.
* * *
Feb 14: A new song for Valentine's day! It goes
Oh my Vivi,
oh my Vivi,
you have filled your pants again!
Yes, I heard you
make a turd, you
must come with me, Vivian.
There are three more verses. I sort of remember that I used to have a love life. I believe there was at least one occasion of sex. Right around this time last year.
* * *
Feb 16: Breaking Vivi news! She can roll over!
She was working on rolling over three weeks ago, but then--seemingly--quit. It turns out she was just developing a strategy, ready to be put into flawless operation. How we cheered! She rolled over five times in a row, then decided she'd had enough for now.
Dangerous, beautiful weather today: world thickened and chiming in ice. The university was closed. A good day. I had to write about nanotechnology, but I also held Vivian, and she did this amazing thing, and the sun in the trees was almost ultraviolet.
* * *
Feb 17: I have made it through two weeks of work. It is hard but easy. People yell at me sometimes, but they aren't important people. I can tell because they don't make me lactate.
* * *
Feb 18: Something sparking in those sparking little eyes. Suddenly, peek-a-boo is a miracle. An oooo, so cool, do it again magic miracle trick. Slowly, her eyes light and her mouth opens, first to an Oooo and then to a huge dimply grin. "Ah, ah, ah!" She shouts. Ah-ha.
Later, she spots herself in the mirror. Not this time the usual looking from my reflection to me, an unbothered: two of you, Foodsource. Huh. She leans closer to her own image, puzzled, intense.
* * *
Feb 20: Another Monday. Still alive, still showing up for work. Still coming home to a happy baby, a slightly shell-shocked husband. The house is sliding towards emergency management levels. Neither of us has any interest in cleaning. I pick up Vivian straight through the door. She lights up just to see me. She snuggles in as I sit down. Curls her belly against mine, and opens her mouth like a baby bird. My bird, my bird.
* * *
Feb 21: When I get out of the car, I can hear Vivi screaming. High pitched and constant and clearly been at it for a while. I hurry up to the door with my keys out, trying not to run. She's getting louder. The door opens before I can unlock it. "Here," says James, "take her."
She quieted right down for me, which probably made James feel terrible. "She's your daughter," he said.
And she is.