From Here to Autonomy

Femalities: A breakdown of SXSW and a lot of other stuff from a woman's point of view

Don't know what it is--the fact that I've just emerged from a weekend at SXSW, it was International Women's Day on Friday, I got snubbed by a "prominent" male investor/entrepreneur that in the virtual world I respected, though in person not so much--but I am feeling my womanness of late. And no, guys, it's not because it's that time of the month. If anything, it's the world who's experiencing a hormonal shift.

A digital analyst that I bumped into at SX in the lobby of the Hilton asked me what struck me as the big story at SX. I gave him a safe answer that belied the unbelievable growth the BlogHer Network has experienced on mobile platforms </shill for my company> and realized there's a better, more encompassing answer: WOMEN.

You know, those people at SX who like to hug, code, and grab coffee. They've been at SX before (we partnered with SX in '06, developing programming for them around women and have been involved as attendees or board members </shill my business partner> since). They're not really that new in the space. Like content marketing they were around in the Web 1.0 days too, but there are new distinctions that folks seem to be making, in part because, like Facebook, some broke out and went public.

Yes, we don't need to say Sheryl SANDBERG or Marissa MAYER out here. Everyone knows who you are talking about when asked, "What'd you think about Marissa's decision?" or "Lean In, you agree with Sheryl?" It may have been International Women's Day on Friday, but it seems the celebrating here in Austin was delayed for the official launch of "Lean In" instead.

Even my ungeeky friends have reached out and asked me, "So do you think this Lean In stuff is valid?" For the record (and since I was supposed to represent BlogHer on a CNN panel to discuss this Friday, but the topic was bumped to today and we talked about DOMA and Justin Bieber instead) I want to put what I thought was a damn well-conceived opinion out there, to the two of you reading my blog:

I love what Sheryl has done with her platform as resident SV untouchable badass to highlight the issue of women and work. It seems that when women who haven't taken companies public try to do so, the media responds with a tad less enthusiasm. And while I understand the criticism of some of the fembloggers who feel that Sandberg's privileged background makes her an unreliable advocate for those of us who actually have to work, I think someone had to get this conversation started. My hope and intention is to invite others to the conversation who have lived in fear of being fired and feel they have to fake leaning in, or who don't have the resources to lean in without keeling over from the exhaustion of having a full-time career and being a caregiver.

I don't believe that women have an ambition problem. When it comes to having a family and high-powered career they have a power problem.

I attended Jessica Coen's Interview of Anne-Marie Slaughter and felt for the first time in a long time like a pig in shit at a SX session. My people! And I saw plenty of men in attendance at her panel. One even approached me after I asked Anne-Marie my question (Do you think men are equally at risk of having difficulty on-ramping back into the workforce after being at home raising the kids?) and told me how he managed the transition. Finally I can come back from SX with some takeaway for my amazing Stay-at-Home Husband.

And I attended a panel led by John Gerzema that walked us through the research done for his book The Athena Doctrine--which provides powerful examples of men and women who have manifested massive change in the world by adopting feminine qualities such as flexibility, intuition, generosity, and empathy. Gerzema argues that it is the embracing of feminine traits (defined as feminine via a global survey of thousands) that is required to be effective in today's political, economic, and societal realms (and to the "professor" who took issue with Gerzema's omission of his female research partner--who did not co-author the book--on the cover: Consider the maleness of your body language and accusatory tone and Gerzema's open, accepting, perhaps FEMININE response to your attack. Personally, I prefer that he have my back).

And I capped off a long day having dinner with some crazily inspirational women who got where they are (at the top echelons of their companies and running their own) via a killer cocktail of chutzpah, yes, but also of being tireless connectors and interpreters of what the rest of us are going to care about in the future. None of them had the asshole personal interface that I experienced on Saturday, as mentioned earlier that I experienced from an investor entrepreneur who speaks a whole lot about the need to empower women entrepreneurs, just so long as he doesn't actually have to SPEAK or LOOK at any of them at SX. I must say, I've attended countless investor meetings with all-male VCs, tech conventions with mostly male attendees, board meetings with mostly male members, and never have I felt disrespected like I did when I encountered this person and said hello. (To place in Evernote in a file I've reserved for notes on a book I one day intend to write that explores the correlation of assholeness with effectiveness as a visionary. Sadly there often is one, but I'd like to make a case that there doesn't have to be).

I hung out in pubs with men and women who talked about their kids as much as their work projects and who had thoughtful commentary on Marissa Mayer's decision to reverse Yahoo's remote work policy (for the record I'm in the "she's a CEO first" camp. In the future I hope she will address the MANAGEMENT problem that led to the degradation of morale among the remote workers and re-institute flexible work policy.)

Last night, I didn't sleep, and for the first time in a long time, something other than an infant kept me up all night. I had a realization, borne of this combination of aforementioned events, that women are on the cusp of big reckonings. I can feel it pulling me out of my 5-year blogging slump.

I remain true to my belief that being a woman doesn't keep you from getting VC funding--a shitty business plan and weak management team do--and entrepreneurism is accessible to all (Steve Blank, whom I finally got to meet in person at SX, I continue to bow to you). But there continues to be a lack of respect for things female. Note again, I didn't say WOMEN, I said for things/traits female. I think that is going to change. And pretty soon.

Scenes from Maternity Leave, Installment #1: Nesting

Some people have a rodent problem; at my house it's the catalogues that seem to enter through the walls and procreate. They showed up in trickles and then seemed to arrive at a steadier rate the closer we got to the arrival of my second daughter. Now, a week into her life, it seems they are being drop-shipped in bulk. Or perhaps I'm just noticing them more.

I try to resist earmarking every page of the LL Bean catalog. It's a funny thing--the hormonal shifts that accompany the post-natal period. All of a sudden I could see myself in a chamois cloth shirt … in multiple colors, even Butter and Baltic Blue. I could see myself in a different shade of comfort fleece every day of the week.

It seems a bit early to buy flannel sheets for the baby's bed, especially given she hasn't yet transitioned to even a crib. Still, it also seems reasonable to stockpile on bedding now, while it's available. You just never know when there will be a shortage of linens. I play out how the green ticker-tape pattern on the pillows would look against pale green fitted sheets.

I call out to H-band: "Where will they put their mittens?"

He's used to these outbursts and knows I'm talking about our girls. "It's the beginning of September. Do we need to think about it now?"

"If we don't think about it now, winter will come, and we'll start losing things." I play this out in my mind as well. It will start with a lost mitten, then eventually we'll find hats and scarves in the back of the closet underneath the vacuum cleaner.

I instruct H-band: "See page 41 in the Pottery Barn catalog. There's a shelf unit for the mud room with little bins." We don't officially have a mud room, but that hardly matters. I'm confident we'd transition a space into one.

I notice that the shelf needs to be mounted to the wall, and I'm reminded of something. "The artwork! You need to put it up today, while Liv's at the Nanny share. Today … now!"

I suppose that, technically, I could put up the new pink and green panels I purchased off of Gilt Groupe back when I was only six months along. They sat in our dining room the past three months gathering dust. Then, the weekend before Vi was born I felt this coming urgency. Not quite the head coming out of my uterus kind of urgency, but not dissimilar.

"Uh huh." H-band says. I don't know if he will actually mount the artwork, but at least I can move that item to the "Delegated" list in my brain.

I know there's more retail research to be done, but my mind can't stay engaged on any task for long these days. I've learned to prioritize and apportion time in chunks of activities to do in-between feedings. To plan more elaborately is more than I can handle until I get more consistent sleep. I end this particular exercise by opening up EverNote and listing the items I've discovered today, naming the file, "To be revisited".

I dare not get more specific than that; I know that these retail urges come on and then often disintegrate. I still bristle when I look at some of the utmost urgent clothing purchases I made with my first daughter, when I was at the peak of my engorgement and convinced that my boobs were going to stay that way indefinitely. What I had defined as casual chic for the nouveau Mama became Weekend Muumuu wear that I turned to on those days when I wanted no one to recognize me in public. I had also harbored fantasies of packing up everything in our urban abode and relocating to a farmhouse; the waffle tees and lug-soled shoes had seemed mission critical. Now, they were novelty items; good to have for my next barn dance.

This time I get similar twinges. I've started a recipe file, for when I start to bake and jar my own jams while I catch up on the front page of All Things Digital. I've managed to stay on top of my headlines, but have not yet made anything. How can I, I rationalize, while I'm still working my way through the food from friends and neighbors? In truth, this amounts to a bowl of bolognese. It just FEELS like there's more in the fridge.

But there's still time. Once I pick up a latte at Starbucks I can refocus. And after I see what the baby's crying about ...

On working and having babies

Bless you Marissa Mayer for taking the helm of Yahoo while being six months pregnant. I'm not joking!

While you are hardly the first CEO/Mama to exist, you took the job at the height of your career, which just happened to coincide with those years when mothers/gynecologists/childbearing friends start to needle with good intentions about the approach of the "cliff"--you know the one; when good ovarian eggs suddenly become less easy to come by. You were in a position of power, and already pregnant, when a board concluded that they needed your talents. You didn't need to be apologetic or cryptic about your intentions to have a baby when things were less hectic, or when the time was "right." You know the cosmic joke: The time is never right.

Like you, I had my first baby in my later 30s and will be expecting my second daughter in just a few weeks, at age 40. I must confess, while I was in the "thinking about" stages of building a family (something I hadn't even contemplated until age 36, as I was quite busy starting a company and not thinking about making babies), I wondered if others might think I wasn't serious about my career, now that I was having kids. I was also uncomfortable--having done many things professionally at a relatively young age--being in the position of the newbie and asking 25-year-old moms how to get a kid to latch properly.

Even now, when I go to executive functions while very pregnant, I am aware that some people have judgements. Recently one male exec said to me, "Aren't you a bit old to have kids now?" I wasn't sure if he meant biologically old, or too far in my career to have to now manage babies at the height of their neediness. Women who were sitting near me insisted that the question was nonsense--women are having babies later now, after they've established their careers. But when I asked them when they had their children they said that their kids were older or even grown up. They got the baby-making phase of their lives "out of the way" early in their careers.

When I learned I was pregnant with my first child I agonized about whom to tell and when. I reasoned that bearing children was my right, a right that plenty of male executives exercised. At the same time I made plans to work at full speed--including travel--up to the very last possible moment. I pushed myself harder than usual in order to prove I wasn't less committed to my career now that I was going to be a parent. I took mental note of all the powerful women execs who were parents and wondered when they managed to fit the kids in. You see, there isn't a lot of how-to out there about having babies and high-powered careers. You can read a lot about preparing for little sleep and negotiating a maternity leave, but so many of the women I talked to confided that they winged it, often kept their Mommy status on the down-low, or even traveled for business abroad with baby and nanny in tow to make the transition unnoticeable to colleagues and bosses.

But even with an air-tight system of nannies, assistants and various professionals there to help, there remains the inevitable identity shift that occurs when you become someone's Mama. I recall being on a flight back from New York to San Francisco (one of many I took the first year of my daughter's life) and realizing that, you know what? I'd rather be home tucking her in. You'll be able to rationalize these bouts of momminess and get back to the email at hand, but you can't turn it off indefinitely.

I just read a piece about the various camps of judgement over your move to Yahoo. Some praise your decision of taking a high-profile position while pregnant, and some condemn it. Some argue that with your considerable compensation package you can hire all the help you need to nurture your baby while you handle business. I suppose that's true. But even in these scenarios that many working moms could only dream about, there's the biological tug that you will feel being a mom that makes a demanding job even more demanding. It will sometimes feel like a sacrifice, even when you are lucky enough to afford help. Even knowing that you don't want to be a part- or full-time stay-at-home Mom, you will still wonder what it's like to spend more time with your child.

I don't mean to say you should feel guilty about your choice. Frankly, I would have made the same choice to step up up the career if I'd been offered. I'm only saying that as a Mom and CEO, life won't be pangless. You'll get pangs in the weirdest places--in boardrooms, in TV interviews. You will feel a little lessened when you perceive that your kid laughs a bit more with his caregiver than he does with you. You might sense that you are not as bonded to him as you were when he was just born. And you won't take yourself so seriously when you remember that earlier that day, you were wiping someone's butt.

But I congratulate you on your choice to step it up. And I hope that, while you don't owe anyone details on how you are managing this choice, that you will be open to talking about it and sharing your experiences with other working moms.

Passing the Gymboree Test

Last week I signed up Olive for Gymboree; actually I guess I signed both of us up. Weekends have become my time with Olive, given she's with Daddy full-time during the week. He gets on his new custom cross-bike, helps me tuck Liv into her stroller and sees us on our way. Previous Saturdays I followed her around the house, took her to the park, ran errands, read to her and tried to coax her into taking a nap. I craved more structured time with her, where she could be around other kids, where she could play age appropriate games and stand on things meant for little people.

Liv is on the cusp of two of the Gymboree-defined age cohorts. The group leader suggested we go for the older-kid session, due to her inclination to climb on everything and verbally refuse to do things. As soon as I get her shoes and jacket off she runs to a climbing structure. She attempts to run up the attached slide and succeeds. When the group leader starts to sing, a subtle call to parents to corral our youngsters and engage in a group activity, I attempt to nudge her toward the center of the room, but she'll have none of it.

After a group song, the group leader sets a large, padded cylinder across two brackets and invites the kids to walk across. Liv wants to go first. Then Liv wants to go again. Then Liv wants to go again.

"Let's let Ella go now, Liv," I say, referring to the youngster standing next to us with her dad.

"Zane is going now Sweetie. Let Zane go."

"Will you let William go? Let's let William get on."

Later, Liv spots Ella with two balls and makes her way over to her to relieve her of one. I know I am supposed to apologize to Ella's Dad for Liv's presumption. And he does his part as well.

"Share your ball, Ella," he says.

Liv bumps into a little boy.

"Oh please do excuse us!" I say.

Liv slides down a makeshift slide and then attempts to walk up it when Haley is trying to go down.

"You've had your turn, Liv. Now let the other kids go."

Liv walks up to a girl and half-waves.

"Wave back at Olive," her Mom says.

"Say hello, Liv!" I say.

The group leader lays out a parachute, blows bubbles into the air, and invites all the parents and their toddler to join her there. Liv stands on the center of the parachute, watching the bubbles float over her head and slowly drop to the floor.

"Come join Mama, Liv! C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! Cmon!" I start singing the parachute song to the pretend child in my lap. I am the sucker who keeps clapping my hands when the clapping stops and everyone places their hand on their heads. The only other person whose hands are not on her head is Liv.

"Bub-boos … Bub-boos." She says to the air.

The class is already ending. It was built to be short, like a child's attention span. I'm exhausted and watch Liv run across the room to another apparatus. I know it is my job to follow her.

"Come get shoes on, Liv."

She shakes her head no.

Ella and her Dad are about to leave.

"Say goodbye to Olive," Ella's Dad says. Ella weakly waves. Olive stares back,

"Say bye-bye Liv.

Say bye-bye!

Say bye-bye!

Say bye-bye!

Say bye-bye!

Say bye-bye!

OK, wave bye-bye!

Wave bye-bye!

Look at Ella!

Wave bye-bye!

I tell her there's juice near her shoes; if she follows me to them she can have some. I lied. Before she discovers this is the case I grab her, put her on my lap and put on her shoes.

We both need a nap. Once home the phone rings; it's my husband calling from the top of some peak he just climbed with his new bike.

"How'd she do?" he asks.

I say: "We did fine."

Rituals

When I was a kid, we had a post-Thanksgiving ritual of setting up the Christmas decorations. This had to occur the Friday and weekend after Thanksgiving. My Mom is a pack rat so this was no small chore. The kids had to cart huge boxes in from the garage and storage room; boxes full of tcotchkes--Christmas tree ashtrays, red and green felt wall-hangings, macrame santas, and ornaments. Hundreds of ornaments. Ornaments were Christmas currency in my extended family. No adult walked into a family gathering without ornaments for the kids. My aunts were very craftsy and often made our ornaments. Each one we received had our name and the year inscribed on it.

Since Olive turned one, I've been thinking about how even the most seemingly mundane traditions are developed, and how they create meaning later in life. This weekend, I pulled out a box that my mother sent me of all of the ornaments I had received as a child. Had she not sent this box I would have nothing to put on our Christmas tree--the one we have yet to purchase.

"This is your deal," Jesse said to me. Meaning, because I'm the one who celebrates Christmas in our household, I am in charge of the tree. But this really wasn't true. Even though Jesse is Jewish he does have a say, because anything impacting the house immediately falls into his bucket. If I weren't a Gentile I would have recused myself from holiday decorating altogether. All these years I've lived on my own I've never had a Christmas tree. It made no sense to buy one, as I always traveled to my mother's or my sister's house during the holidays. But this year is different. We've decided to stay home for Christmas, and I want Olive to be as excited as I was as a child by the ritual and spectacle of holiday decorating. Sure, she may be only a year old, but we started early in my childhood home. Very early.

A part of the decorating ritual that I did not like growing up was setting up the Christmas Tree, or more accurately, "building" the tree. The trunk was a series of camouflaged tubes that connected to each other and was slipped vertically into a small stand, followed by the branches labeled A through F. Dad did the high branches. Next came the tinsel, which Mom did, then the lights, which Dad did. Then came the ornaments, which all of the kids did, with coaching from my mother:

"Sweetie, don't put the heavy ones on the looser branches ..."

"Put the broken ones toward the back."

"Put the ones Aunt Mary made for you there..."

"Let your brother put his on!"

This part took an hour or more.

As a kid I didn't realize that people actually BOUGHT real trees. For years now I've fantasized about getting a real tree, but Jesse feared that wasn't sustainable. I had to agree.

This weekend I researched artificial trees and was shocked to find that they now come pre-lit--a feature that has probably been around for years. There were so many options. Jesse did more research on PVC, a common chemical in artificial trees and decided that the off-gassing involved with an artificial tree was worse than the sustainability issues he had with buying a live tree.

"We'll buy locally," he said, "and we'll compost it." On the one hand I was relieved--we'd live out my fantasy of having a real tree in the living room. On the other, more practical, hand, I was worried. We'd now need to buy lights and a proper tree stand. I'd have to keep the tree hydrated every day. Would Olive pick off pine needles and leave them in random corners of the house?

Jesse and I debated the timing of purchasing the tree. My take: I leave on a business trip tomorrow--no time like the present. Jesse's more thoughtful take: Let's buy the accessories now and wait until you get back before buying the tree. It made sense, but it poked a hole in my ritual of having the house set up the weekend after Thanksgiving. Granted it was a long-neglected ritual, but I still kept it close.

Jesse didn't understand that without a tree we couldn't have a family picture--another piece of my holiday fantasy once Olive was old enough of having a yearly family photograph embedded in a lovely holiday card. I'm not religious, but in the past I've been religious about sending holiday cards, until about five years ago when the business took over every crevice of my free time. I gave them up begrudgingly and temporarily forgot them. Last year Jesse reasoned with me that our birth announcements added up to enough snail mail correspondence with family and friends to hold us over until the next year. I told Jesse of my plan this year to get a picture done in time to send out cards before the holidays.

"No way," Jesse said. "You are cramming in way too much! You are traveling up to the holidays. And I won't have the time to do it."

"I'll make the time," I said.

I totally understood where Jesse was coming from, but I felt like I'd run out of excuses for not doing the things I loved to do around the holidays. I feel ready to embrace them again. Not because I have the time, but because I want Liv to be surrounded by what I had as a kid--the feeling that for a few weeks time stood still. No one had to be anywhere else. Family and friends meant everything.

Concerns of a Mom returning to work

This is the last weekend of my maternity leave, which I've anticipated for a long time. I've been planning the timing of things in my head and practicing on the breast pump--which for all its necessary function also is a bit dehumanizing. Even as I rely on them, I'm a bit repulsed by the pump, the plastic milk storage bags, these poor facsimiles of maternal role replacement. I know, I know, many women have done this before me; broken the seal of the little bubble of constancy created around them and their child. It has to be done sometime, but I still find myself recoiling from the inevitable pop.

I remember asking a woman in my office who had recently returned from maternity leave how she felt to be back. She was glad to be working again but confessed that she cried dropping her son off at daycare. A friend of mine who returned to work three months ago said she cried every day for two weeks very morning, after dropping off her daughter with a shared nanny. I'm lucky: My husband will be staying at home with my daughter--no emotional drop-offs; no wondering if she's clean or scared. I don't imagine myself crying, but rather digging in to work like I've done for the past 17 years. Work has a way of helping me temporarily forget things. But I worry: what if I don't temporarily forget? What if I find it too easy to forget?

I must confess, I miss being focused on things for longer than three minutes, with no distractions.

My child has not been away from me for 3.5 months. There was one day when Daddy took her out thinking he would come home sooner, but, amazed that she took a bottle in her sleep, he stayed out a whopping six hours. Aside from that anomalous day we've been apart no longer than three hours. Never has a relatively short eight hour work day seemed like such a hurdle.

We've tried to get her to take a bottle (asleep or awake) for two months, and we have had no luck aside from the aforementioned "dream feed". Sometimes she screams during our attempts; most times she plays with the nipple of the bottle, thinking we're offering her a new toy, happy to chew on it for a few seconds but ultimately rejecting it. We've offered the bottle with Mommy out of sight, with Mommy in the room, with Mommy subbing it in for the breast during a nursing, with experienced Grandmas and Aunts helming the effort, with Daddy begging her to consider, with bottles that look like boobs, with bottles that look like pacifiers, and with bottles that look like bottles, but nada.

We're now resorting to what friends tell us is the final, most effective method: Mommy goes back to work and makes the baby take a bottle or starve. This option is more than unsettling.

The babe also doesn't like to sleep in her crib. The past three months has elapsed over a long series of hand-offs between me and my husband; and if you are the one she falls asleep on, you must transition her to the nearest bed-like surface. Sometimes this can be a crib, or co-sleeper, or reclined baby swing or couch. The transition is done with the grace and precision of an experienced tai chi practitioner, as the babe cannot feel any slackening, dropping, or fidgeting or she will wake up.

This on-demand service will be impossible to continue when I go back to work, including the days when I'm working from home. In other words, unless we get this kid trained to fall asleep on her own, in her own bed, my husband will be the sole set of arms for eight-hour stretches of time. I've been praying for him and reminding him that, in retrospect, these times pass by all too quickly.

There were short stretches during my leave when I took a work call, sat in on an important meeting, responded to email, jotted down some thoughts I had about something business-related. All of these moments were all-encompassing. I know myself, and while I often multitask, I cannot integrate mothering with working. Both must be done exclusively during the times I've designated for them.

This, in itself, is a mixed blessing because it forces me to keep these realms separate, but it also forces them to compete. The work side can no longer sneak in minutes, that turn into hours, pursuing unscheduled ideas and entering spontaneous discussions. All of my spontaneity will be paradoxically planned; hemmed into my work day. The Mom side has to acknowledge the future I'm building at its short-term expense. I'll miss some milestones of my daughter's development and catch her at the crankier end of the day.

And I'll abandon someone I once left before, years ago, with whom I'd become reacquainted over the past three months. She knows how to sit in a room without looking at the clock. She forgets appointments. She sometimes forgets to bring her cell phone with her when she's out. She calls her friends in the middle of the day and apologizes if she catches them working. She finds joy in crazy things like changing diapers. She's not hankering to go places. She gets weepy from looking at babies, particularly ones she has to leave.   

Am I a Bad Mother?

Am I a bad mother if:

• I'm typing this while an infant is feeding on my right boob?
• I forgot to ask you to wash your hands before holding the baby?
• I stick a finger in her mouth to suck when she's tantruming and there's no Purell in sight?
• I pee while I'm wearing her?
• I eat while I'm wearing her, and you can find granola crumbs and errant drops of the frozen yogurt in the folds of her neck?
• I have a three wet-fart rule? No change of diaper until I hear at least three.
• I file nails badly? My baby has scissorhands and wakes up from naps looking like she was in a cat fight.
• I drink a glass of wine and nurse less than two hours afterward?
• I'd rather go back to my old size than keep the pounds on my hips recommended to nurse optimally?
• I can't remember the words to a lullabye to save my life?
• I sing Bob Marley instead?
• I sing the same verse from Three Little Birds over and over?
• I hum Tori Amos' "Putting the Damage On" as backup?
• I request that you let me put on a bra, and maybe some mascara, next time you decide to shoot pics of me with the baby and post them on Facebook?
• I haven't planned where we'll live in five years so that we can be in a good school district?
• I let her watch Burn Notice when I saw that staring at the TV calmed her down?
• I let her have all the immunizations recommended by her pediatrician without an interrogation?
• I use disposable diapers?
• I pray that she doesn't inherit my hair?
• I still use my picture in my Facebook profile and not hers?

The Practical New Mother

I struggle to remember what for years I've heard during the safety instructions on flights--something about securing your air mask before attending to your child's...

I try to remember this as I clean hummus that has lodged in the fold of my daughter's neck. Sure, I could have waited for her to have fallen asleep, but after two aborted attempts and her long bout of hiccups I hedged my bets and, holding the baby with one arm, started to pull immediately edible items from the refrigerator and cupboards: hummus, crackers, yogurt, and a block of cheese.

I find a knife and with the hand not holding the baby, slice off a chunk of white cheddar. It's too large for the delicate wheat craker I've managed to liberate from its package--it crumbles while I attempt to nibble, and half of it falls to the floor. I negotiate with myself: Pick it up now or "remember" it later. There are many things that I've opted to "remember" around my house. Things that H-band later finds and tries to question me about. He knows by now that if the item fell during a particularly challenging period with the baby he's going to get a look from me. A look that says, "Don't." He's learning to pick his battles, and I'm learning to pick mine.

I find a cocktail sauce spoon--the only clean utensil in the drawer, and start to eat hummus directly from the tub in which it was bought. I feel a little guilty. Years ago when I moved to New York City after college, I used to eat my leftovers right out of the Tupperware. I had two roommates from Beverly Hills (with whom I was connected through a friend of a mutual friend) who used to watch me do this and question why I didn't spoon my leftovers on a plate. I told them, why dirty another dish? They looked at me funny--Midwestern girl...never learned to eat leftovers properly. I rationalized that I was simply being practical, efficient. Like I'm rationalizing now.

I finish my lunch standing up and put away anything that I can wrap/clean/close with one hand. The crackers remain out of their package. H-band will question me about this as well, and I will tell him I left them out so that he wouldn't have to open a container. I'm saving him time. Again, practical and efficient.

When you learn your child isn't the most beautiful in the world

She was when we left for New Mommy Pilates class--the most beautiful baby in the world. The stork bite marks and baby acne were temporary. Hopefully we've prevented future scratches on her by filing her nails while she nursed. When she smiles, she smiles more brightly than any other human. No one has as beautiful a smile as she.

It's Day Two of our 10-day Post-Natal Pilates series, meant to help Mommy from continuing to piss herself 20 minutes after drinking a glass of water, and to help put her back in her skinny jeans (or, at least her fat jeans). When people ask her why she's going to Pilates she says it's to get out of the house and to have some quality time with her baby girl. But really, it's to fit back into her jeans.

That doesn't mean she doesn't appreciate quality time, but she knows full-well that most quality time with the baby occurs when she's half naked with a breast pump on one boob, her baby girl on the other, not when she's laying with a yoga ball between her knees, tucking in her tummy and praying that she won't wet herself.

Liv isn't too excited about class today she prefers to keep sleeping; she screams when Mommy puts her into her carrier and locks her into the car seat. She screams when Mommy gets off the highway and finds herself stuck in traffic due to an accident ahead. She screams the whole time that Mommy lugs her 500-lb portable car seat into the Pilates studio, apologizing profusely when the seat accidentally dings a wall and hits a cactus.

Mommy is particularly proud of herself, because she's brought Liv to class early, as was requested, so she could nurse her screaming, hungry baby right before. The thinking makes sense: feed baby now and let her sleep for the next hour. One other woman is going to be in the class, though she hasn't yet showed. Mommy feels quite proud of herself for managing to get her baby to calm down and nurse peacefully.

As class is about to start, the other mom arrives, also lugging a "portable" car seat. She looks fairly calm; "she hides it well," Mommy thinks. She sets up next to the bouncy chair where Liv lies calm, peaceful, and beautiful.

She places her little boy, clad in a midnight blue velour jumper, into the bouncy chair, where the class baby sitter could play with him. I'm not sure if this is a proper word to use to describe this baby, who is Asian, perhaps Phillippino, like his mother, but darker, like gooey caramel, and his face as smooth as if his caramel skin was stretched taught over the most perfect, round apple. He is stunning.

Mommy figures he must be older than Liv.

"When was your Little Guy born?" I ask.

She tells me. After digging around for more specifics I glean that he's five hours older than Liv. Hah, he's had plenty of time to round himself out. Liv is still a newborn for God's sake.

As we start our stretches, the Little Guy coos and Liv sleeps.

"He's beautiful," the instructor says to the other woman, and not in that way that everyone is supposed to say it to new parents. She says it with a tinge of disbelief, as in "How in the world could a baby turn out to be THAT beautiful?" I smile and wait for a reciprocal comment about my sleeping beauty, but there isn't one.

"You must just look at your baby all the time," the instructor says to the other woman.

"I do," She and I both reply.

Near the end of the session, Little Guy has graduated from cooing to crying, and his mother has to stop to attend to him. I feel proud now to see Liv still conked out in her bouncy chair, nonethewiser.

I can't help but notice the Little Guy's cries--not exactly lusty, but more like little "wah's", almost polite.

"Liv will sleep though anything," I say.

"Uh oh," the Babysitter says ominously,"She's waking up."

I'm doing leg lifts and secretly mouthing to myself--"Please-let-me-get-to-my-left-side-please-let-me-get-to-my-left-side." I start picking up the pace, prompting the instructor to remind me to slow down.

"Didn't you nurse right before class?" I'm asked. I nod my head yes.
 
Then, it erupts. The babysitter provides 1.5 seconds of warning.

"Here she goes," she says.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

I know that cry. It says, "You thought that 10 minutes of nursing would cut it? You silly, silly woman. I hate you Mommy! I hate you!"

"She's got lungs," I say, somehow needing to explain why my child could be a military weapon.
 
"Let's stop here," the instructor says. I get up and go to Liv.

"And you'll want to change that diaper," the babysitter says, "she just made a big one." For a second I think she's talking about me.

"She's quite the pooper," I say, inexpicably acknowledging that my child has a digestive system.

While the instuctor and the babysitter leave the room, I opt for the triage process for when she's screaming that I've honed over the past six weeks: Left boob, diaper change, right boob.

The other woman and I nurse our little ones, sharing notes on feeding and sleeping. She neatly packs her boobs in and places the Little Guy, now cooing, into his carrier.

"Maybe I'll see you next time," she says on her way out.

I smile back, not realizing that Liv has unlatched and milk is spewing out onto her face. I've forgotten my burp cloth in the diaper bag across the room and elect to collect milk in one hand, attempting to drop it into Liv's mouth and missing.

The instructor comes back to find I'm still there and leaves me to finish up. "Just close the door on your way out," she says. I nod and wave with my elbow. She doesn't know what I know is about to happen, looking down at Liv writhing. She will not be soothed today with extra boobage. She's tense, and my nipple is just a finger in the dyke.

She stays attached to me for 20 minutes and I start to get nervous--will the instructor come back to teach another session and find me here, milk stained and helpless? I apologize to Liv and pack her screaming into the baby carrier, realizing I've forgotten the "diaper" portion of my process.

"F&*$ it," I say to myself and shuffle back to my car.

Liv screams most of the way back home. I try to make up for it by offering up more boobs. She'll nurse for a while, then fall asleep. And then H-band will come home and ask me what smells and ask me why I didn't change Liv's diaper. And I'll say I forgot and please don't lecture me. And he'll change his cooing daughter and remind me that she screams because she's wet.

But for now I'll look at her, and she'll take a break from nursing, look at me, and smile. It's the most beautiful smile in the world. From the most beautiful baby in the world.

My New Venture: Olive Des Jardins Markman

 

This post has been a work in progress since September 16, two days after Olive was born. Every day I added a paragraph to the account of her expedient birth (four hours all-told of labor; I'm told I'm an anomaly), of the range of emotions that followed, of my struggle to back away from the computer (which c'mon people, why the hell not browse the Internet while nursing?). And every day, a new distraction that has kept me from finishing this post. I have several versions, each with a new start. Today, I finally said, to hell with it. Just start writing, and once you have a semblance of a schedule and more than five minutes to devote substantive thought toward a more organized post THEN I can get all prosy.

H-band just asked me how I'm feeling. I'm feeling good. Relieved and grateful to the point of tears that when I look at Liv I see the universe has delivered well past my hope for a healthy baby. And I'm feeling like I'm living in molasses. Every accomplishment--whether it's eating lunch or just getting dressed--requires a plan, and is often thwarted. I endeavor to return to my cup of yogurt, or finish flossing, and often get sidetracked. I often feel half-done, and distracted by this little girl when she struggles to focus on me. I stare at her and realize that the day is already over.

Staring at Liv is perhaps the most inefficient thing I've ever done. There's no multitasking involved, and it could be a while before she realizes that the face attached to the boobs belongs to Mom. But I've set a new goal that I intend to reach: When she finally can focus her little eyes on me I want to be looking back.