How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane (31 page)

So yes, maybe it's true that my relationship with my dog did change when I had a baby. But then again, so did my relationship with my husband, my parents, my friends, my work, my nipples, my body, and pretty much everything else in my life.

Now we have Dogboy, with his normal-size heart and his habit of licking our feet like the pandering perv that Eddie would have made him out to be. Though he may be no Eddie (it's not his fault, but he's not even close), Dogboy has mended the baseball-size hole that was left in the kid's heart. Sometimes I catch her playing with him in her bedroom, dressing him up in her doll's clothes, and calling him “baby brother”—which sometimes I find creepy, and other times spot-on.

*
Because isn't that how all normal people react to a natural disaster?

twenty

ONE IS ENOUGH

I
am lying on my back, feet in stirrups. Dr. V. Jay snaps on a plastic glove and gives me the old “scootch toward me.” This is not how I planned on spending my Tuesday morning.

I have lived by the motto “Jump and the net will appear,” and not just because I have a thing for firemen. That simple philosophy has inspired me to lead a life of frequent and deliberate change. Hairstyles, apartments, boyfriends, careers . . . I cycled through them all with the ease of an iPod shuffle.

Right now you're probably thinking, “Wow, what a flake.” And you'd be right, only I prefer the term
change junkie
. It's more accurate, and besides, I kind of like the badass connotation.

But that was the old (young) me. Now I'm the new (old) me. I'm a mature (well, this point is debatable) woman; I'm a wife, with a kid, and a husband who wants another (kid, not wife). Unfortunately for him—and for three sets of eager, salivating grandparents—the concept of change now totally freaks me the freak out.

Screw that “Jump and the net will appear” crap. There could be three half-naked, six-pack-having firemen standing outside my window yelling, “Jump, you're ovulating!” and I still wouldn't budge. When it comes to this second-kid decision, I don't even have the guts to pry my body off the floor.

Let me explain: I killed at pregnancy. I was a genius at delivery. And despite my fears that I would give birth to an ugly moron, the daughter turned out to be one of the good ones (I have seen some of the bad ones, and when they go bad, it's a Thomas the Train Wreck). We're a very small, very manageable, very happy family of three. A trio. A triptych. A triangle. The strongest shape in the known universe. So why, for the love of carbs, would we push our luck? I'd always been a good gambler, and even though my experience was limited to the nickel slots in Reno, I knew when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away, and when to run screaming from the prospect of another kid.

But then came the vacillating. I don't know how it started, but some days I'd find my brain playing Good Cop/Crazy Cop with itself. One minute I was scheduling a vasectomy for my husband based on the fact that two out of three finalists on last season's
American Idol
were
only children; the next minute I was gazing longingly at my daughter's baby pictures and telling my husband to “HURRY UP AND STICK IT IN BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND!” Most times, though, I could fight the impulse.

And then, it happened.

Oprah happened.

It was a Sunday afternoon. The husband was out, the kid was napping, I was shaving lint balls off the couch. I turned on the TV and began watching an episode of
Oprah
, and it was a doozy. I won't go into much detail because if I do I may start crying, and until I can afford a waterproof computer I'd rather not run the risk of electrocution.

I'll just say that the topic was siblings and the lengths to which they will go to protect each other. Never mind that I grew up with two brothers whose idea of brotherly love was to fart on my head simultaneously; the episode killed me. It was as though Oprah herself had reached through the TV screen, torn my heart from my chest, had her personal chef sauté it, and then ate it with a full-bodied Bordeaux. I bawled my eyes out, heaving, sobbing, and snotting all over the place (luckily, my laptop was well out of range). When my daughter awoke from her nap, in order to quell the liquids pouring from my face I had to pinch my upper-arm flab and imagine the least pleasant thing I could think of (i.e., that time I accidentally caught a glimpse of my dad bending over in his bathrobe. PS: It worked).

My husband and I “did it” that night, the Night of the Oprah Effect. Afterward, I pulled my legs up to my chest, stuck a pillow under my rear, and tried to will the smartest
of the sperm (out of the way, dum-dums!) to penetrate my lonely egg hanging out in her fallopian palace.

I awoke the next morning in a spiral of regret. “Another kid? Now? What about my career?! My time?! My life?! My boobs?! What the farg was I thinking?!”

But then I reminded myself of the odds; it had taken us well over a year to conceive the first time, so I figured chances were slim that this one would stick.

A few days later I felt an odd twinge-y/cramp-y/ PING! in my lower abdomen.

Oh no.

A wave of remorse washed over me as I remembered all the times I'd mocked those hippie chicks who claimed they could “feel” the moment of conception.

In an instant I was hit with the reality of what we had done. It was sharper and more startling than stepping on a Barbie shoe in the middle of the night. How could I have allowed Oprah to ruin everything? We'd clearly used up all our good genes on the first kid; Number Two would undoubtedly be a disaster. But not an ugly moron, no. This one would be bad. “Bad Seed” bad. Mean, nasty, wicked bad. We were nine months away and counting from Stephen King's next literary inspiration.

And then, as if to compound the emotional torture, a strange set of symptoms appeared. First up: a hot, red rash that started on my arms and then migrated across my chest and stomach. I checked in with my old doctor friend (
www.webmd.com
) and learned that many women experience hormonally induced hives in the beginning stages of pregnancy.

Terrific. An angry red rash: not just a pregnancy symptom, but further proof of the red-hot mistake we were making.

Then came the vertigo. If you've never felt it, vertigo is like the bed spins you felt the first time you got drunk, but without that margarita aftertaste. I'd lay awake at night clutching the bedsheets, feeling like Jimmy Stewart falling off a three-story building in
Rear Window
, only with much better special effects.

Great. So not only were we about to destroy our perfectly manageable little family setup, but I was going to spend the next nine months stumbling around in a dizzy, rashy, gassy body. (I may have neglected to mention the gassy part, as I'm not entirely certain that was a pregnancy symptom.)

The husband suggested I pick up a home pregnancy test, but it was still too early for that. Anyway, I figured, why waste the thirteen dollars? We'd need every penny since we'd soon be moving into the poorhouse. And even if we were able to keep the house, that money might come in handy when Number Two's parole officer required a bribe.

A few nights later, the most graphic proof: bright-pink spotting. I didn't even need to surf the web for this one, it had happened during my first pregnancy. This was the brightest, pinkest nail in the coffin. It was time to rewrite our future. No longer would we be the mobile, relaxed trio. Now we would be the harried, overstressed, financially unstable family of four. No more family vacations at Disney World; now we would spend holidays sorting trash at the city dump.

Still, I had to admit that even if Number Two was a disaster, it would be nice for our daughter to have someone else—a friend, a compatriot, someone to victimize, and a partner to lean on when her parents become decrepit and needy (more than we already are, anyway). And sure, her Ivy League education fund probably wouldn't be enough to cover both kids, but it would divide nicely into community college tuition for two, with enough left over for family therapy.

As I felt the boulders of long-held notions being rearranged in my mind, another unfamiliar sensation took over: a surge, as the light spotting turned into heavy spotting, and the pink turned a deep, dark red.

This was no light spotting. This was serious bleeding. Heavy, worrisome, almost like . . .

FWAP!
Dr. V. Jay snaps off his plastic gloves and tosses them into a trash can.

“It's your period. A heavy one, yes, but just a period.”

So what about the other symptoms? The rash? The vertigo? The uncontrollable gas?

My doctor shrugs. “I don't have an answer for you. But thank you for waiting until after the exam to tell me about the gas.”