How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane (8 page)

More pushing and grunting and pushing and grunting, and then in an instant I feel the heat of a thousand suns in my nethers. And that's the moment that I become fully educated as to the precision of an epidural, i.e., it dulls sensation completely—but only up to a point. One millimeter beyond that, there is absolute, total, full-blown
feeling. I have just gone, sensation-wise, from zero to
YAAAAARRRGHHHHH
!!!

(Much has been said about the noises that emanate/emerge/pour forth from a woman in labor. Having been raised on the Canadian prairies, I can say with authority that what I most sounded like in that moment was an angry moose about to crap a full-grown bear.)

And FLOP! out comes the kid, like a flying fish jumping into a rowboat. And in an instant, watching that video, I know exactly why we taped it. Because that moment is pure magic. She wasn't there . . . and then, she was. It didn't matter how it happened, whether naturally or with drugs or by hypnosis or silent chanting or with a set of pneumatic vacuum tubes like the ones they used to have at drive-thrus in the '70s. The only thing that matters is she's here.

That moment was—and still is, as pictured here on my computer screen—pure, breathtaking magic.

And then some more gross stuff comes out, and suddenly it's a party all over again. The grandma is laughing, the in-laws barge in, cameras start flashing . . .

In the video, the husband is rubbing my arm and kissing me. I am smiling and crying. He leans over and says over and over again, “She's perfect . . . She's perfect . . .”

Just watching it on my computer makes me tear up. I look at my husband sitting next to me, glassy-eyed and beaming at the video screen. I smile at him and say the only thing that makes sense:

“YOU SAPPY BASTARD!!”

*
I accidentally clicked on it while searching my computer for a video of a penguin shoving another penguin into an ice hole. The screen grabs were eerily similar.

*
Also, if I'm being totally honest, I'm pretty sure I went along with the whole thing just to impress that one guy in English class who could really work a pair of Hammer pants. Though why I thought that shuffling across the stage like a chicken would impress a thirteen-year-old guy—your guess is as good as mine.

*
And if you know what that is, then I apologize for putting that visual in your brain.

*
FIRST(!)

*
One of several comedy movies packed into our “birthing bag”; other movies included
Napoleon Dynamite, Anchorman
, and
Raising Arizona
, just in case it's true that, as Linneah said, “laughter is conducive to a painless labor.” Other packed items included: one yoga ball upon which to bounce/relax/roll around to help ease contractions and to serve as a conversation starter with hospital staff (“Why, yes, I do yoga. I pretty much kill at Tree Pose”); one pair of flannel pajamas featuring an ironic cartoon skull pattern to indicate that even though I'm now a mom, I'm still hip and relevant; an iPod loaded with ten-plus hours of hypnobirthing audio tracks; and a selection of books and magazines to enjoy during all that “downtime” I was sure to have.

*
“Vagisthesia.” You're welcome.

three

SPOILED MILK

M
y breasts
^*
have always been my best quality.

I'm not bragging when I say that; they're just great relative to the rest of my body, which is a gallery of horrors in comparison. There are so many problems with what's below my belly button there's not time enough to list it all (although if you're familiar with the myth of Medusa, then you've got a pretty good idea of what it looks like inside my underwear). By default, my breasts were my best girls, and historically the first things to be
revealed on a blind date, a game of strip poker, or during a sale at The Home Depot.

There was no reason to believe that my breasts wouldn't be up to the task of nourishing the new human that I (with a little help from the husband) had created. And oh, they were! Because after the epidural worked its rubber- legged magic, and after I took a breath and squeezed out that nine-pound, ten-ounce baby like I'd squeeze a watermelon seed through my fingers, the kid latched onto my nipple and nursed like she'd been doing it all her life (which, if you do the math, she had).

I'm not sure if there does exist an actual “Mother of the Year” award-giving body, but if there is, I was well on my way to winning, if not a Lifetime Achievement Award, then at least a sweet Runner-Up Plaque.

That is, until our one-week pediatrician appointment revealed that our perfect baby had lost 20 percent of her birth weight—double what was acceptable. “Failure to thrive,” he called it. Even though she was nursing every three hours, she was literally starving.

My breasts were a bust.
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The pediatrician suggested we switch to formula right way.

Whoa, Dr. Cowboy! This is not my beautiful motherhood experience. I know what happens to children who don't breast-feed. They become drug addicts, serial killers, and socialites. I know that Michael Jordan was breast-fed
until he was three and that Charles Manson was not breast-fed at all. But since I was two hundred years too late to locate a wet nurse, I conceded to give the child formula, but only until she had gained the requisite amount of weight. After that I was determined to breast-feed my baby for one year, minimum.

It was suggested that I visit a lactation consultant by the name of Binky. If Binky wasn't available, I was to see Corky. Those names are so real I don't even have a joke worthy of them.

We drove to Binky's office in the San Fernando Valley, whereupon she proceeded to examine my breast-feeding technique. Her findings? What was coming out of my nipples was something closer to puffs of milk-scented air than actual milk. My supply “sucked.” That was the bad news. The good news is that it was the baby's fault, not mine.

The baby had a bad latch, which led to my breasts being engorged, which led to my milk supply drying up, which led to my sitting in a small windowless office while a grown woman named Binky milked me.

That's right. I was milked by a Binky.

Binky grabbed my nipple and pinched it hard—I realize this sounds like porn for Teletubbies, but it was about as sexy as back acne, (i.e., not at all
^*
) .

She grabbed my nipple and jammed it about twelve inches into the baby's mouth. At that moment, the moment
of my first proper latch, it became clear to me that my baby was part piranha. I'm not sure how I managed to conceive a child with the genes of a carnivorous freshwater fish from South America, but it seemed the only way to explain the excruciating pain.

I stamped my foot on the floor repeatedly, mostly to keep myself from punching my baby in the face. (Truth is, I would never punch my baby. I may, however, wait until she's fifteen years old and give her one retroactively. I'm fairly certain she'll deserve it by then anyway.)

Two hours and several hundred dollars later, Binky sent us away with a hospital-grade pump, which I was to use every three hours until my supply could match my daughter's demand.

When we got home, the husband bottle-fed the baby while I zipped on my hands-free pumping bra, turned on the pump, and then watched it stretch my nipples through a transparent sleeve, like Augustus Gloop going through the pipes of Willy Wonka's chocolate river.

Now that I could actually see the milking process, I understood the problem. Milk wasn't flowing, it was eking out of my nipples, like tiny beads of Elmer's glue. One hour of Hoover-strength milking left me with a grand total of a half-ounce of milk. And most of that came from the right breast; the left was completely useless. If my right breast was a slacker, my left was its illiterate cousin who lost half his brain in a tragic pig-farming accident.

But I would not be beaten. Over the next few weeks the husband bottle-fed the child, while I pumped every three to four hours for up to an hour at a time.

I learned all about “galactagogues,” which, though it sounds like an alien form of governance, is actually any substance that encourages lactation. As a result, I ate oatmeal in large amounts, drank Guinness beer in small amounts, and ingested an herb that made my skin smell like a combination of maple syrup and curry (mostly curry).

I took a prescription medication for reflux, one side effect of which is increased lactation, another side effect of which is depression. A positively hilarious situation for a new mother, if you think about it!

I went to breast-feeding support groups and listened to other new moms complain about their problems with excessive flow, saying things like “Ah-ma-gad! I am literally gussshhhing! I'm storing the excess in our freezer—looks like we'll be drinking breast milk with our coffee for the next twenty years!” I smiled with empathy while imagining punching them in their overflowing gazongas.
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