JEFF'S LIFE
 by Jeff Stimpson

Dear Diary

12/12: Jill and I rent “Rosemary’s Baby” because she’s always wanted to see it pregnant. She laughs when the husband tells Rosemary that switching physicians “wouldn’t be fair” to the witch doctor. She also cries at the end.

12/13: We got a sonogram. Baby comes in at 5 lbs. 3 ounces. The technician calls in a doctor. The doctor presses a few buttons, then turns to Jill and tells her to lie on her left side after she eats and count the kicks. “If you don’t count ten in two hours or you don’t feel the baby moving at all, call us right away,” the doctor says in a tone I recall from the spring of 1998. Jill is sad.

When we get home, however, there’s a message on the machine from the sonogram people. They misread the measurement. Baby is seven pounds. There is a different feeling this time, isn’t there?

12/17: We (I'm on paternity leave for a while) duck into the Baby Gap for a leopard onesie for Baby. The guard there looks at Jill’s stomach and pronounces, “It’s a boy.” “How’d you know?” replies Jill. “Care to guess the weight?”

Oh no, the guard replies. “Oh go ahead,” says Jill. “Uh,” says the guard, “13?”

“Pounds!?” says Jill.

Later, she calculates that if the guard guesses boy with all the pregnant women who come through the door, he’ll be right about half the time. “No,” says Jill, “more than that because not everybody know what they’re having.”

In Williams-Sonoma, I need a bathroom. A clerk comes out of the back room and informs us that the bathroom is not public. Jill is with me, and tells the clerk that the bathroom is for her. “Oh please?” says Jill. The clerk looks at her stomach and replies, “The bathroom’s for you? Go ahead.”

We finish holiday shopping, and are walking down the sidewalk for the last time, probably, as the parents of an only child, when Jill says, “Look at all the shopboys flirting with the girls today. I sure don’t get a welcome like that.”

That night, Jill is packing for the hospital. She needs a CD of “Coppellia.” She calls a music store, but they don’t have it. Neither does her stepfather. She makes a phone list of people for me to call after The Event, adding, “You know, the hospital could be good for getting work done.” I suggest instead she round up a staff member to help teach us how to take care of a new baby, which we have really never done before.

“Preemiedom teaches you that there’s no such thing as a normal baby. That’s crazy,” says Jill. “If all goes well, they’ll take him away, maybe put him under lights for a few days, and we’ll take him home.”

Jill packs and takes a bath, and when she returns to our bedroom she tells me, “Here’s a household tip for you: Folded things don’t dry.” I had taken a shower a few minutes before and folded my towel over the rack. She’s on me about towels. I think how she’s going into the hospital tomorrow and she’s hardly mentioned it except for frequently repeating the phrase, “I’m going to be cut open!” and then I think how tomorrow night’s Rams-Buccaneers game should be a good one.

12/18: Alex cries at 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. Nothing calms him. Does he know? We take him in bed with us, where he hogs the middle.

Aunt Julie arrives at 6:20 a.m. to watch Alex. Our eyes are gummy and stinging, but we must leave for the hospital for an 8 a.m. surgery. “Have fun,” Julie tells us as she closes the door.

In the cab, Jill insists that the driver take a certain turn on the approach to the hospital, and she almost gets us sucked onto the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey. “Well, I’m sorry,” she says. “You shouldn’t listen to a pregnant woman.”

They told us to get to the hospital by 7 a.m. We did. And there we sit until nearly eight. “We’ve gotta hurry up here,” Jill notes. “We’re having a baby!” “We’re in the middle of a shift change,” explains an admitting nurse. “We’re trying to find your records. Are you having a baby today?”

By 7:50, they have strapped the heartbeat monitors across Jill. Thump thump thump thump. They have to take Jill’s fingerprints for some form. “These aren’t my clothes,” Jill says, wiping the ink on her hospital gown. She lounges in her fake pashmina scarf and reads a Times magazine story about the Ford rollovers. “Wow, they knew these things were dangerous and they put them on the road anyway...”

We wait. We wait. By 9:25, they take her in for her spinal anesthesia. She wanted to lean on me for this, but they said no. I wait outside. I peek through the window of the OR door and see her midsection in there, big and basted in something orange.

At last I’m allowed in. I take Jill’s hand, gingerly avoiding her IV, and we look at each other in our paper OR bonnets. The surgeons talk. I hear wet smacking sounds and the occasional click as of cutlery.

9:50: They are carrying something to the table over there. “Alex Alex Alex!” I think, for I see a skull that is that gray-blue of two years ago. That was Alex being born. But Alex is home running Aunt Julie breathless. This isn’t Alex.

This kid is bigger than Alex. Where the docs dived on Alex immediately, one pediatrician flicks the new guy’s feet, suctions his throat, and then walks away. “I guess he wasn’t very interested,” says the surgeon. The nurse takes Baby away for weighing. Six pounds, 15 ounces. Call it seven. He is swaddled and they hand him to me. He feels taut and alive; I suddenly have no doubt that he is here. "Hi," I tell him. "I'm your dad. I don't have a job. Your mom's thinking of getting a job but she hasn't sent any resumes out yet. Do you have any skills?" He opens his eyes. They are depthless and dark, and they travel from my face to Jill’s and back slowly. They have intent and a remarkably calm regard, at least from one so young. (December 2000)

The Treasured Time

I keep about four books on my side of the bed. Right now they are a biography of Damon Runyon, a history of the Revolution, Shirley Jackson’s Raising Demons, and Dale Carnegie’s How to Influence People. I like the variety; I never know when I get into bed which books I’m going to nibble on until the sleeping tablets make the lines swim. “Jill,” I announced the other night, “I really treasure this time before bed to read and unwind.”

Perfectly sane thing to say, except that Edwin was howling for his three-hour pre-sleep feeding. Jill had been wrestling with him for half an hour. At least that’s what she and the bedside clock claimed. She said that my treasuring this time was “special.” I’m not sure what she meant. Edwin cried for more food. Jill is breastfeeding. She says she likes looking at Edwin’s fat little arms, at how solid he is, and knowing she did that.

Edwin hits what Jill terms “his witching hour” during my treasured time. Despite trying to keep him awake during the day, he opens his eyes around 11 o’clock and cries for food. He snacks in Jill’s lap for a few moments until his eyes close again. Jill sets him down between us. In a few minutes his eyes open again, and he starts to cry. Jill picks him up and feeds him again. His eyes close again. On a good night, Jill gets to read maybe five pages of her book.

“Jeff, can you just pick him up?” Jill says, her eyes closed and her head finally on her pillow. It must be something to have that little guy sucking on you all the time.

I do pick him up. I do. But the sleeping tablets have dug into me by then, and I usually unleash some comment stupid in a new dad, such as “How long before he gets night and day straightened out?”

“He’s a baby, says Jill, me unsure of which of us she’s referring to. “This is temporary. This is normal. Can’t you just pick him up?”

Indeed it is normal. We never had this before, though Edwin is our second child. Alex spent his first year in hospitals. I can still hear myself speaking into the phone at 11 o’clock. “Hi, this is Jeff Stimpson. I was calling to check on my son, Alex. Who’s his nurse tonight?” Having a baby in the hospital and not with you there at bedtime is unnatural torture. Anything after that has to be easy.

“Waaah!” says Edwin.

“Just pick him up!” says Jill into her pillow.

Okay. I hook my elbow behind Edwin’s head, rest my hand on his rump, and commence a gentle rocking. Neither of us sits up. In the darkness I see his eyes are open. Luminous big pebbles. In the darkness. Doesn’t he notice the darkness? Doesn’t he hear his mother’s deep, slow breathing? He does lie still for a moment. Then I feel his feet twitch, then his arms, then I feel his head move side to side. I can feel his face crinkling. I can feel that tiny furrow start above his eyes.

“Waaah!”

I shift to a half sit-up and cradle Edwin more firmly. He goes still. His feet brush my arm; on my skin I feel his fuzzy head. He starts wiggling down there in the darkness. Doesn’t he see the darkness? On his dozy, dozy afternoons, doesn’t he see the sun coming in hard on his face? I envy him his afternoons.

Hang him upside down so he gets his schedule reversed, suggests one reader. He’ll work it out for himself in about three weeks, suggests his pediatrician. At two in the morning, it becomes you against this thing, suggested one father I knew once.

Crinkle. Squirm. Crinkle. “Waaah!”

“Jeff-” says Jill from her pillow. Jill says I always want to have a discussion when we have to do something with Edwin in the middle of the night.

“All right,” I say to nobody. I sit straight upright. Straight upright at 1:30 in the morning. Remember when I was a freelancer and 1:30 was the middle of my workday? Remember the naps?

“Waaah, waaah, waaah ... ” Oh, he's revving up.

“All right,” I say, finally getting up. I snatch a pillow and head to the living room. When we moved recently, we got a new couch that isn’t quite as comfortable to sleep on as our old couch -- I did sleep on it once or twice, okay? -- and I drop the pillow and place Edwin in our car seat/carrier on the coffee table. He settles in and I settle in. We both settle in and he says, “Waaah!” The windows seem to shake. What lungs on this kid. “Ned, c’mon,” I say, just picking him up. Picking him up and standing -- standing -- right there in my living room at almost two in the morning. I cradle and rock him. He idles in whimpers. I feel him move, his legs and arms hitting my skin like sudden, strange, soft things.

“Waaah!”

I put him the car seat and rock him. Alex used to use this car seat. Alex is asleep in the next room now.

“Jeff?”

Jill isn’t coming out to chat. Many nights I’ve come out to the living room and Jill has never followed me out. “Jeff, let me have him. I’ll take him.” She disappears with Edwin into the dark. I crawl back to bed and get re-acquainted with my pillows. Edwin is quiet again. “Maybe he needs a pacifier,” I say.

Jill’s voice comes at me in the dark. “No, he doesn’t need a pacifier. But if you want to buy him one, go ahead.”

Since I don’t want this to turn into a discussion, I roll over. I feel Jill put Edwin down between us. I feel his arms and legs scrabbling at my back. My head spins and my thoughts fall all over each other. Pretty soon I am asleep and I think Edwin and Jill are, too. They will both wake up around 3 and again around 7. Jill lets me sleep through those times. She knows how I like to sleep. (January 2001)
 

Face to Face At Last

For a long time Ned didn't do anything except lounge around, eat, poop, and cry. He always cried with reason, those being: 1) he was hungry; 2) his diaper needed changing. His big thing seemed to be crying during his "witching hour" of around 10:30 p.m., when, as Jill explained, he wanted to go to sleep "but doesn't know how." He had no voice.

During his conscious hours we parked him in the carrier section of the car seat. He didn't seem to mind if we put the seat on the kitchen floor, bed, or dining room chair; He could silently nod off, like an old man, in any room. We envied him. I thought about trying the car seat myself.

Ned may have been a presence in our household - particularly at 10:30 p.m. - but I wasn't used to an inactive kid. Alex spent his inactive infancy in the hospital, plugged with tubes and often wiggling inside a plastic box. He didn't come home until age 13 months, when he was as active as the remaining tubes would permit.

"Ned doesn't do anything," I said to Jill.

"He does so!" replied Jill, who is breastfeeding and so I think knows better than I.

Then I noticed Ned's legs jerking around. His arms soon followed; every now and then I'd look over and see the bassinet trembling, and soon I'd see a flash of tiny wrist of ankle. He began to suck a binkie (Jill's cousin, also a mom of two boys, calls binkies "plugs"), at first soft in confusion, then clamped with entitlement. He started to smile, the corners of his fine mouth coming to little points as he found some spot on the handle of the car seat uproarious. At least once he's rolled over onto his side.

Around then, Ned started to speak. His first word was "gla." He emitted this by fixing his bright eyes on the car seat handle and sticking out his chin to launch the sound.

"Gla!" exclaimed Jill. "He said gla!"

I can get him to say "Gla!" with even more enthusiasm than Jill by stroking his lips. The other night Jill and I were watching TV on the coach. Ned was in the car seat beside me. I was concentrating on "The Sopranos" when Jill said, "He's staring at you." I looked over into two tiny blue-gray shotgun barrels. "Hey fella," I said, reaching over with one finger. Best is to trace a long Mexican mustache or a Van Dyke on his nose and chin. He likes a tickle under the chin. He likes it when you rub the bridge of his nose, like some dogs.

"Isn't he so cute and perfect?" says Jill.

"Gla. Eh gla!" He's no longer silent.

The list of Ned's "no longers" grows longer itself. He's no longer terrified of the bath, for instance. We turn up the kitchen counter lights, and if he's bawling he stops the minute his rump touches the water. He waits patiently while you splash his belly. The other night Jill dribbled water onto his hands and chest, and got a smile. He often tries to stand in the sink.

My mother used to say she liked babies because they stayed where you put them. I never agreed, finding an active baby inherently more interesting. Still, it feels heavy to look at Ned and think that he's my last child and that a time of his life is gone already. It saddens Jill when I mimic the face Ned made when he came home and wanted to eat: wide-eyed, sweet, a blossom. Now, sometimes when he smiles it's with the face of a New Yorker who's found a cab in the rain. If we hold him when he can't sleep, he pounds our shoulders. He squawks and curses like Yosemite Sam. The other night I was slow with a diaper, and the barrels locked on me and made scared for the future.

He clamps on the binkie - "plug" be damned - when he's ready to go back to sleep. Wave of hand, kick of leg, and his eyes droop.

Gla. I'm told that all this activity will continue. If it must, I hope it continues until it exhausts him by 10:30. (March 2001)

©2001 Jeff Stimpson

MENSIGHT CORPORATE SPONSORS Syndicated careers columnist Dr. Marty Nemko offers open public access to his archive of career advise: How Do I Become a Corporate Sponsor?   Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at http://www .jeffslife.com