“Olivia”

Olivia was our baby nurse. She was my sister-in law’s baby nurse too. And a lot of other – what are we called? Yuppies? Yuppies from Boston to Philadelphia who paid cash to ease the transition into parenthood. For two weeks, Olivia lived in Juliet’s room, waking up with her every night. I’m not sure how often. I was sleeping.

Olivia was strict despite her soft sweet voice. But we liked her rules. We liked knowing what to do. We breast feed for 25 minutes on each side. Not 24. We Purelled our hands, and made everyone else too as soon as they walked in our apartment. We rocked her to sleep like Olivia showed us, and put her down as soon as she was asleep so she wouldn’t get used to sleeping on us.

Olivia gave me a list of things we needed from Buy Buy Baby. I went by myself. A mistake. It was easier to get lost in Buy Buy Baby than it is in IKEA. Spatially and emotionally. The aisles are wide and the shelves are a hundred feet high, full of a million mini-sized products. It’s like the stars in space.

I labored through aisles of organic baby wipes and Oscar the Grouch pee pee tepees. My cart was still empty when Melissa called to add to my list.

“Nipple guards,” Melissa said.

I wrote it down at the top of my list - nipple guards. For nipples. Which nipples, I wasn’t sure. I looked at a wall of nipples to the ceiling. No guards. I looked back at my list, hoping to find something I could find. “Rectal thermometer.” Yes. It was. And I was starting to feel as if I had a fever.

That’s when I saw her, bobbing up and down behind a rack of onesies. The Buy Buy Baby river nymph. She had a haircut like a Pinocchio doll. Short, black, little boy in Germany hair. I saw it every couple of seconds, bouncing into view, moving closer and closer. Then, she was in front of me. Four feet tall. Spritely. The demeanor of a chipmunk.

“Need some help?” she asked.

She grabbed the list from my hands.

“I’m Rachel,” she chirped.

Rachel scanned the list, nodding at each item. She mentally mapped our route. I was saved.

“Ok - nipple guards!” she sang.

Rachel sprouted wings and flew up to the top of the nipple wall, where they keep the nipple guards. Actually, they keep the guards on a small shelf, right behind where I was standing.

“Do you know how to use these?” Rachel asked.

Rachel took one out and held it against my nipple. Over the shirt. Of course.

“The milk comes out there,” she said. “See the little hole? Sucky sucky!”

Rachel looked back at the list and skipped off down the aisle. She found the $400 portable hands free breast pump. The Dr. Brown’s bottle scrubber. The Aquafor butt jelly. Soon, the cart was full. I had everything. And all of it had to do with eating or shitting and pissing.

I was a hero.

When I got home, Olivia was teaching Melissa to breast feed. She had one hand on Juliet’s head, the other on Melissa’s – you know. A lot of women had had their hands on Melissa in the past few days. It hadn’t been as hot as I pictured.

“We want Juliet’s neck back when she’s feeding, Melissa,” Olivia said. “And with your other hand, massage the breast where it is hard.”

Olivia massaged Melissa. I dropped the enormous plastic bags.

“It still really hurts,” Melissa said.

Olivia took the bags and began rummaging through them. She put things into piles, and ordered me to put certain piles in certain places. She found the nipple guards, and unwrapped them. She pulled Juliet off of Melissa and armored Melissa’s nipple.

“Oh my god,” Melissa said.

“Good?” I asked.

“Amazing.”

“Daddy,” Olivia said. “We’re also going to need these things.”

Olivia gave me another list. In the two weeks Olivia was with us, I went back to Buy Buy Baby 9 times.

Rachel was always expecting me. She had the video monitor waiting for me. I was having the same experience as every new parent who went into the store. Needing all the same things, everything. And each thing worked when I brought it home, like it was supposed to. For every problem, there was a solution wrapped in plastic.

Olivia watched our every move, and corrected it. Our baby was eating and sleeping and pooping like a baby should. Maybe better. We were well rested, relaxed. At the end of two weeks, we were ready.

Olivia left. And it all went to shit.

"After the After Party"

Our last night at the hospital, we sent Juliet to the nursery. We felt bad about it. Like we were bad parents. We had asked for this, after all. In the middle of the night, the Mean Nurse brought Juliet in crying. She had learned to wake up when she was hungry. Phew.

Shit.

The Mean Nurse ripped off Melissa’s shirt and stripped Juliet.

“Skin to skin,” she said.

When Juliet felt Melissa’s chest, she opened her mouth wide and flailed her head, side to side. Like a fish, out of water, but wanting milk. Even with Melissa’s help, Juliet struggled to latch. When she did latch, she did it wrong and Melissa screamed. The scream startled Juliet and Juliet pulled away, taking a piece of Melissa’s nipple with her.

The screaming attracted another nurse’s attention. She came in and grabbed Melissa’s boob and Juliet’s head and mashed them together. While the Grabby Nurse grabbed, the Mean Nurse massaged, to help the milk flow. So she said.

Finally, Juliet got just the right grip. She took three hard sucks and fell asleep. We figured she was full.

The next day, they said we’d be out by ten. It was almost four when the fourth resident stopped by to repeat what the first three had said. Feed the baby. Bath the baby. Baby the baby. He had us sign a form. It said don’t shake the baby.

Eventually, the Attending came to inspect the carseat. Not the baby, not the base of the carseat in the car. Just the seat. That’s all you need to take a baby home. You can’t drive the car without passing two tests. But you can have a baby if you can get a boner and a carseat. You don’t even have to prove you put it in. Not the boner, the seat.

It still hadn’t hit me when I walked through the door with Juliet. I had thought that would be the moment. My oldest brother said there’d be a moment.

Juliet cried most of the night while we tried to figure out breastfeeding. We felt accomplished when she ate for five minutes. I got out of bed and put her over my shoulder to burp. We walked into the living room and stood, looking out the window at the lights on the Ben Franklin Bridge. I sat down on the couch and Juliet wailed. I stood, and she calmed down. I sat. She cried. I stood. She stopped. And it hit me. Daddy’s home.

“The Afterbirth”

Dad looked at Mom. Mom looked at baby. Baby looked at nothing because babies are blind. We could have sworn she saw us though. Her eyes flitted around the room. ‘So this is what all the fuss was about,’ Juliet thought.

Juliet still hadn’t cried when the nurses took her for tests. We had gotten a non-crying baby. What luck.

We went to our new room. There was dried blood on the shower floor. And on the toilet. That’s where I made the first call.

“Mom,” I said.

“Ahhhhhhh!” my Mom yelled.

“Mom,” I heard Melissa say in the other room.

“Ahhhhhhh!” I heard Melissa’s Mom yell.

When nurses brought Juliet back, she had on a bracelet and an anklet. Her anklet said she was Juliet. Her bracelet said she was Lewis, a baby boy. We looked at her and weren’t sure. We compared her to our pictures. We checked for her vagina. She was no baby boy.

The Bubbies fluttered into our room. They both claimed that Juliet looked like us when we were babies. Juliet slept through it all. They wondered about the color of her eyes. We wondered if she was Lewis, and if Lewis was a hermaphrodite.

As the sun went down, Juliet had slept for the better of ten hours. We had asked the nurses if we should wake her. They laughed, one after another.

The Bubbies came back with dinner and baby pictures of Melissa and me. My Mom also brought one of herself. At the very least, she explained, Juliet looked like she did, from the top of the mouth up. We all examined her tiny toe nails and tiny eyelashes. Melissa hoped they’d get longer, in time.

Hours passed. The trickle of nurses slowed. Juliet was bundled head to toe in pink and light blue. She slept in her bin between Melissa’s bed and my chair. Melissa and I hadn’t slept in over a day, and now we were afraid. But exhaustion trumps fear. Around midnight, 30 hours after Melissa had gone into labor, our eyes shut.

And Juliet’s opened. Our luck ran out. She screamed. I picked her up and she stopped. I put her down and she started again.

“We can’t give in to her every whim,” I said. “It sets bad precedent.”

“You can’t spoil a baby,” Melissa said. “It’s impossible.”

Hours passed. Juliet cried. We picked her up, and she stopped. We put her down, and she started again.

“We’ll take turns,” I said.

“One hour shifts?” Melissa said.

I kissed Melissa’s forehead, then Juliet’s. I cradled Juliet in my lap, and she looked up at me, I could have sworn. She furrowed her brow like something had just occurred to her. As the sun rose, Juliet’s eyes suddenly shut. She hadn’t known about day and night. The morning nurse told us most babies don’t. Moms feel them kicking at night because that’s when they’re awake. The stillness keeps them up. The motion during the day makes them sleepy.

“You have to reverse that,” the nurse said.

We tried to keep Juliet awake all morning, to reverse her. She didn’t want to be reversed. She wanted to reverse us. We couldn’t all get our way. Something would have to give.