There’s a slice of pizza painted on the sidewalk in front of the bar on the corner of our street. The bar used to be a pizzeria, and I remember exactly what we ordered the one time we ate there the week we moved into our first apartment. I also remember the summer in between the pizzeria and the bar, when we used to sit on the steps of the empty building every Sunday while we waited for the laundry to dry and I would smoke and read my latest fifteen-cent paperback and Diego would complain about my smoking and read parts of articles out loud to me and we loved each other so, so much that even doing laundry was a date.
That little triangle fades a tiny bit every year, and it’s getting to be where people who don’t know to look for it won’t know it’s there.
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I’ve got a lot to say about having a baby. There are exactly twelve other documents open on this computer right now containing disjointed thoughts on my pregnancy (can’t say anything about it without careening into a sermon on reproductive rights), childbirth (everything went according to plan, completely by accident), and the walking-into-walls exhaustion and hallelujah-praise-Aslan elation of transitioning from fetus-in-uterus to infant-in-arms.
If I could organize my thoughts, I’d tell you about why we (I) (we) switched to formula after less than a month of breastfeeding, why the real reasons nothing to do with latch or supply, why I feel next to no guilt about “not trying hard enough,” et cetera (absurd) and why I think the way anyone feeds their babies is so politically charged**; I’d tell you about choosing an OBGYN over a midwife (insurance and geographical convenience and uh that’s it) and about what it was like having a (mostly) natural childbirth in a hospital setting (challenging but not impossible) (but nearly impossible) (good grief). I’d discuss how helpful it was that I happened to be taking a class on eugenics during my first trimester (I know what you’re thinking: Full time work plus full time classes plus full time nausea and full-body exhaustion sure sounds like full time fun!! and you know what you’ve never been more right about anything I recommend it to anyone). I’d copy a little something from my previous complaints about street harassment and paste it into a shiny new complaint about the special harassment that pregnant ladies and moms face, e.g., men on the street or bus shouting “THAT’S A BOY!” whilst pointing to a woman’s belly and then arguing with that woman when she tells them it’s a girl (which she didn’t have to do because she’s under no obligation to engage with you or anyone especially since the thing she wants least to do at that or any moment is to have long discussions about the size and position of her increasingly large body) or the strangers at the store who loudly and insistently insist that her baby is in grave danger of freezing to death even though it’s fifty-nine degrees and sunny and the baby is literally strapped to its mother’s very warm and squishy body and not that it’s any of anyone’s business but the baby’s head fits very snugly inside the wrap for when it actually does get cold you know like when we’re outdoors and not inside a temperature-controlled store being harangued by cashiers and men who have nowhere better to loiter at two in the afternoon on a weekday thank you very much g’bye.
Maybe one of these days I’ll throw it back to 2011 and write a “My Labor and Delivery Story” on here. (And by saying things like “throw it back.”) Are people still doing that in blog form? Are people still doing anything in blog form besides asking if anyone else is still blogging?
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Yesterday I made strawberry rhubarb pie filling during Zoe’s catnaps. This morning I got an email from Target informing me that they were cancelling most of my order, including the pie plate I bought specifically for said strawberry rhubarb pie. (Don’t worry, baby Christmas pajamas and a can opener are still en route.) I’m choosing to view this cancellation as an early Christmas gift from the universe (and Target) since honestly it’s been about six years since I last made a pie and it will probably be at least six more until I make another one; there’s really no place for a pie plate in this home. Anyway besides pie the only thing I really look forward to about Thanksgiving is that it’s the earliest Diego will tolerate me putting up the Christmas decorations and this year I’m putting our names on brand-new stockings to celebrate our brand-new family member so those five pie-plate dollars can be glitter-glue dollars instead. Nothing like the smell of fresh glitter glue to usher in the holiday season, am I right? (Glitter glue, and Mrs. Meyers peppermint everything. Tis the season for our apartment to smell like Santa’s house.)
** It seems like you’re going to get shit no matter how you feed your baby, which is about the dumbest damn thing I can think of. It’s so, so weird to me that there are people that get weird in an outraged way about a woman breastfeeding in, say, a restaurant. Everyone else is eating, what is the problem? And like, women in countries who breastfeed for longer periods of time and with overall higher breastfeeding “success rates” also typically get a shitload more maternity leave and have more postpartum support in general. Cave ladies had each other to rely on, and also weren’t subjected to a lot of the fuckery that we modern ladies are today - like how if you do breastfeed your baby you have to make sure you cut them off at an age that society deems appropriate instead of what feels right to you. Fuckery, honest to god. Additionally, “breast is best” is only true if you add “…unless breastfeeding is a threat to your mental health, your relationship with your baby or your partner or your other children, a physical impossibility, or if you can’t or just don’t want to for any reason in the world because you’re a living breathing human with access to healthy alternatives and the ability to make an informed decision.” Those three snotty words put so much unnecessary pressure on mamas who are already physically and emotionally vulnerable and create a dynamic wherein properly caring for your baby means putting your own needs last. Anyway, just wanted to clarify that I’m all about breastfeeding, I just didn’t want to keep doing it. Not advocating for anything except that women get support for whatever choices they make. I’ll sit next to anyone with my boobs out in solidarity at absolutely any time while my own baby tries to talk and drink milk from her bottle at the same time even though I keep patiently explaining to her that it doesn’t work that way. I’m serious. Call me.
