Fries vs. Baked Potato

If Opal the Nurse were not working for my obstetrican in the suburbs of Dallas, she could easily be cast as a waitress in some tiny, deep-fried diner in Alabama.
“Oh, Honey!” she chortels, shaking a pencil from her blonde cotton candy hairdo, “You want a C-section or a VBAC, hmm?”
The tone is that of an expert who has served up a thousands of really tasty sliders with an array of potato sides that are always considered worthy. Whichever meal you choose will be just fine, don’t you know, but you go ahead and look over the menu just to make yourself feel like you’ve sat atop things for awhile.
I shuffled my paper gown and Opal pats my hand comfortingly without looking up from my chart.
The thing is, I really don’t know what to do about this whole birthing deal.
Last time around, I just wanted the babies out by any means necessary before I exploded. And in the end, my twins were still upside down and backwards at 34 weeks when, low and behold, my body decided it could take no more and went toxic. The resident OB took one look at my elephant-sized ankles, booked an surgery suite then scooped out William and Elizabeth in no time flat.
(My only actual birthing memory is limited to my telling “Sharon”--I couldn’t remember the doctor’s last name who was in the process of unzipping me--that I needed another hit of anesthesia. She must have complied, as I do recall the cold swoosh of a certain numbing medicine as it flowed into my veins.)
Anyhow, the birth sufficed. The babies were out and I was, thankfully, no longer pregnant.
But according to many of my gal pals, it really is a whole lot better to do it the way nature intended. Sure, there is some pain involved, they tell me, but in the end it is pretty quick to dissipate, the mother’s body heals in no time and you’re off to the breastfeeding races.
My girlfriend Anna makes it seem nearly romantic.
“And there I was,” she told me as I listened enraptured, “Emma just slide out as the elevator doors opened!”
Michelle talks about giving birth standing up then cleaning her closets two days later.
Dana reports feeling like a “lioness.”
Most importantly, they all add that their babies were born alert, peaceful.
So, I’ve gone ahead and found a “natural birthing center” that assures pregnant women that they’ll be taught to manage their own pain while in the company of caring professionals--and 22 relatives (or pets,) if they so please.
I don’t tell Opal any of this. My thought is that she’d probably endorse any of the pies in her store, but she’d think I was downright funny if I asked her about the sugar-free, vegan Jell-o.
Opal rounds out our time together with a dozen more questions then shoos me down to the lab for a blood draw.
I confidently sit down, roll up my sleeves and let the technician do her thing.
Only she can’t seem to quite close the deal.
There is much moaning on her part about my teensy veins and their tendancy to “roll.”
She pokes my right arm once.
Then twice.
Then three times.
She sighs and starts over on my left hand.
Suddenly, my vision goes blurry and I start sweating so profusely that I feel rivulets of salt racing down from my neck, my back, my knees. I am nauseated beyond belief.
I realize that I am not about to pass out--I am about to die!
Moreover, none of the five medial professionals in the room are getting out their paddles or oxygen masks.
Why, these uncaring droids! I think. I am having a medical emergency and noone is even paying attention to my plight!
“Huh,” says the nurse who is working my hand. “You’re looking a little pale…”
No, I think, I am walking towards the white light… This is it: The End.
I promptly begin the Lord’s Prayer.
Someone props and orange juice up in my free hand.
“Now, now, Dear, you’re going to be fine,” Nurse Can’t Finda Vein says.
I use every last ounce of strength to crack open one eyeball.
“Call,” I puff, “Opal. Decided on C-section.”
I’m sure she’d even bring me a side of coleslaw if I asked nicely.

Secrets

Men get to plan engagements but it’s we women that get to tell the greatest news of all.
And knowing this was likely the Last Gigantic Secret I’d ever tell, I decided at 4:21 a.m. on January 12 to carefully keep the news to myself until my husband came home from a prolonged business trip overseas. Like a hen tending her egg (pun intended), I would position myself carefully over my secret, hiding it beneath my feathers no matter if the rooster was gone for two months.
Of course, it was like sitting on a volcano.
Be proud of me, dear reader: In the end, I told my husband first…if you don’t count the many other friends and strangers that sort of knew ahead of time.
You see, I had to call my BFF but I didn’t so much as tell her as ask her to talk me down from the edge of a tall, scary bridge. In a matter of 30 minutes, she managed to find a forklift and eased me back into the river of life unharmed. If it hadn’t have been for Michelle, my twins would have been left with the responsibility of calling 911.
Then, my beloved sister-in-law called to wish me a happy birthday. And since she shares my husband’s DNA, this really means there are no secrets with her.
Next, I went on my morning power walk with my gal pal Anna--who clearly had to know my circumstance just in case I passed out at a crosswalk. (I do think I made it out of the parking lot, knowledge encased.)
That afternoon, I started panicking again and touched based with Dana in Wisconsin, my uber-wise granola-momma mentor who has three children and could explain to me the precise benefits of a larger family. Really, she’s more of a psychologist and we all that doctor-patient relationships are confidential.
Of course, I had to tell Aunt Cindy I had violated #20 on the Bridesmaid Checklist--the very one I had authored the previous week. I never even mentioned the “P” word but she knew darn well that #20 was “Thou shall not get pregnant and ruin the bridesmaid-to-groomsmen ratio.” (See previous blog post: “Cindy’s Wedding.”)
My former sorority sister Angie is a Sherlock-Holmes type who happened to be in the car with Aunt Cindy as they drove through a raging blizzard when I rang with news of the violation. Angie put two and two together on her own but I didn’t actually have a conversation with her, so she can’t be considered in the mix.
Of course, I had to e-mail Laura, another former sorority sister, when she e-mailed me the news of her own twin pregnancy. We all know that e-mail isn’t a real conversation.
I admit I might have let on to Stacey, my college roommate, but information shared with a girlfriend you’ve lived with for more than three years is like telling a sister and thus the rules of DNA apply.
Mind you, all of this non-telling happened over the course of eight day, which is really a pretty good secret-to-day ratio especially when you consider all the people I completely avoided telling when I heard from them.
This list includes:
My own parents, who I see nearly every day.
My lovely mother-in-law, who spent 45 minutes praising my parenting skills about 10 hours after I found out about The Secret.
Three of my fabulous preschool momma friends who chaperoned a roller skating play date, one of whom nearly got the news when we had a conversation about how “happy we are that we no longer have to carry all our baby gear around.”
W. & E.’s godmother Jessica, who is privy to every last one of my other secrets and called from Washington D.C. to catch up.
At least I didn’t have to worry about keeping mum around the passengers of Flight 1345 on Saturday, January 17.
The news was obvious to them: I stood at Terminal D24 at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport clutching in my hand a 3-foot-tall balloon in the shape of a cartoon baby. Dozens of complete strangers walked by me and congratulated me.
Still, it took my own husband and entire escalator ride to get the picture.
He started at the balloon in a fugue of jetlag.
“What the?” he said. “Were they out of ‘Welcome Home’ balloons?”
Only then did I crack the secret of the egg.

One For the Road

I took the test at 4:17 a.m., 14 hours and seventeen minutes after I’d turned 35, 21 hours after my husband had left for Korea on a business trip that did not include a determined return date.
I took it knowing my four-year-old twins would be up in 90 minutes looking for someone stable to make them breakfast.
I took it following my first foray back into a complicated reporting project that demanded my every attention to detail.
I took it believing that my reproductive system was eternally jinxed, as discussed by various highly paid medical practitioners working at nationally known clinics.
I took it after assuring my parents only the previous night that “We are done…we can not handle any more.”
There I sat on the potty listening to the January wind roar, my polka-dot jammies pooled around my ankles squinting with my now-middle-aged eyes at two lines on a white plastic stick.
Huh.
I fished around inside the trash can and pulled out the instructions.
Pregnanto.
Clearly, I should have paid better attention to my professor in my college Spanish course.
I turned over the directions and looked at the diagram.
Pregnant.
Huh.
Huh?
Huh!
There was a glorious, blue streak of pure joy—after all, we had figured that if nature ever cooperated, we would gladly accommodate.
Then, a prayer of thanks to the Lord above and a request for good health all around.
I might have cried.
I can’t remember.
Next, came this tumble of thoughts:
• Oh, shit!
• Shitshitshitshitshitshit!
• I’m going to start puking any minute and I still have the Christmas decorations up. I wonder if I could strap a bucket around my neck to keep the carpet clean while I strip the living room tree of ornaments?
• I’m going to have to explain to the twins how the egg actually meets the spe rm. Elizabeth is going to ask questions. She’s going to demand diagrams.
• Let’s see, if I conceived in December, this baby won’t be due until the fall, which means I won’t have to worry about academic red-shirting come, what, 2012?
• I am going to be really, really old by 2012.
• Did Brenda already sell those really cute designer maternity jeans of hers at the last twin club consignment sale?
• Maybe I can wait to tell Jim after the next Mastercard flips. Would that be unethical?
• Speaking of ethics, would it be unethical of me to call my BFF first for moral support, especially given that my husband is several time zones (and one day) ahead of me? Technically, Jim and Michelle would be hearing the news on the same day…
• When did I take all that Mucinex for my allergies?
• When did I drink all that wine with my girlfriends?
• Just how much Diet Coke did I consume in the past four weeks?
• We’re going to have to put up a fence around the pool.
• I like the name Charlotte. And Caroline. And Henry.
• I will seriously die if triplets are involved.
• Does one save a urine-soaked pregnancy test as a memento?
I pitched the test, pulled up my jammies, turned off the light and slipped back into my now-cold bed.
A new life had begun—it was going to require I rest up.

Housekeeping

My daughter Elizabeth has many delightful attributes, but to date “helpful” has not been one of them.
Unlike her brother William (I raise a glass to the mother who doesn’t secretly compare siblings), she negotiates her way out of nearly every undesireable situation and makes tangible excuses for the rest. Moreover, she does it in a most impressive way, with creative thinking, an impressive vocabulary and a beguiling grin that would convince Cupid to hand over his wings.
“Oh, I can’t possibly stop to pick up that wet towel,” she’ll say tossing that glossy blonde head of hers. “I’m on my way to build a castle. Brother is available though. And if he’s busy, you could try Daddy.”
Mind you, she’s four years old.
(Her father, however, is an attorney—and a very good one at that—so I’m blaming his DNA.)
Thus, I have to tell you about a lovely turn of events in our house: Elizabeth is on a cleaning spree.
In fact, she’s doing such a good job, she’s threatening to replace my marvelous housekeeper, Dana, who is very nearly a part of the family.
“Well, Momma, we have a sippy cup here,” she said tonight in her best sing-songy schoolteacher voice. “I’ll put it on the bench so you can take it downstairs after you tuck us in.”
The report did not come from Elizabeth’s bedroom—which she had already spent 30 minutes tidying—but from her brother’s.
You see, while Will was in the bathtub floating on his back and singing “Ralph” hits, she eschewed water play to line up his massive car collection by color and tip the toes of all of his shoes Northward. Then she had carefully arranged his stuffed animals sizewise on his bed and reshelved his books according to the Dewey Decimal System.
“Momma, do you want me to do the sink?” she asked eyeballing the Crest-encrusted basin.
“Uh.”
That was honestly all I could say. I was, after all, in a state of shock.
Next, she puttered on to the playroom moaning about the disarray of things.
“Oh, Momma,” she said, “who wants a child that doesn’t clean up? Not me, ohhh nooo.”
I had to sit down—and quick—before I passed out.
I could understand this behavior kicking in for a kid who is being raised by neat freaks. But neither Jim nor I fit that bill—we’re sort of happily mussy: I have piles of dirty clothes jammed in the laundry room, unsent Christmas cards stacked carefully atop my desk, five or so junk drawers, though the stuff is organized into sectioned plasticware. We have systems, see, but I still leave dishes in the sink for the higher purpose of playing with my children in piles of leaves.
And yet, here is this preschooler who could interview to work for Merry Maid.
Perhaps I can thank her Montessori teachers.
“Momma,” she said, snapping me out of my fugue, “Let’s take the trash out.”
Down the stairs and out the door we went to the behemoth blue trash bin.
“Now open the top and let me dump this in,” she said.
I cracked open the 5-pound lid and she gasped.
There, nestled amongst the egg whites and greasy paper towels were two crumpled drawings she had made me. They were not two of her best, which is why they were not hanging in our playroom art gallery.
So, I did what all good mothers do: I threw our beloved housekeeper under the bus.
“Um, I bet Dana didn’t know how valuable those are,” I said, extracting them from the bin carefully. “Thanks for having such good eyes.”
Sometimes, a kid can be downright too helpful.

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