Smorgasbord Mommy

Smorgasbord Mommy

Before my daughter’s birth, I was determined never to become that mom. You know, the one who forces neighbors within a twenty-mile radius to keep the pediatrician’s number on speed dial and who requires a second medical opinion when defining the proper consistency of a poopy diaper. No, I was going to plop my daughter down in the public park sandbox, spoon feed her dirt washed down with pool water, then cart her over to the cousins’ house for a chickenpox party.

Speaking of pounds, the lactation consultant scarred me into embracing childhood obesity as she sat at the end of my hospital bed while burping my newborn into a bobble-head coma and calmly described how fast breast milk churns through a little one’s system, causing them to hit infant starvation within ninety minutes of the last feeding.

“Their belly’s the size of a marble,” she said, winking at me although I had no idea why. “Your job’s to make sure that marble’s constantly refilled, and it takes sixty minutes to fill it.”

Coming from a family where hospitality means stuffing guests to the gills then requiring them to do jumping jacks so they can pack in more, the four words “infant starvation” and “ninety minutes” formed in my head a death sentence.

If I did not fill up my child’s “marble” for an hour every hour and a half, I could just imagine her little tummy sinking in, her cheeks hollowing out, and her eyes fluttering up in her head like an old-fashioned doll turned upside down.

It was a race against time. It was a race against infant starvation. It was a race to see how quickly I could lose my sanity along with my shirt.

Anytime Adelaide opened her mouth, I tried to fill it. It didn’t matter if she was yawning, screaming, or attempting her first smile, Mommy knew best, and Mommy knew that Baby Girl’s marble was going on ‘E.’

Due to the priority of turning my child into a glutton, visiting relatives — bearing pastel gifts and Saran-wrapped meals — were placed so far back on the burner, they couldn’t even feel the heat. I nursed while doing everything but taking a shower, and I only avoided that because I feared Adelaide’s marble would fill with water instead of milk and she would begin preferring a gallon of H2O over me.

Whenever I changed her diaper, which was in direct proportion to her number of feedings, I would pinch the tops of her legs to check for ounces lost or gained and would never admit how chubby she was getting until I went to pick Adelaide up from her bassinet and my arms spasmed beneath the unaccustomed weight.

Still, three weeks into motherhood, when I corked a pacifier into my daughter’s squalling mouth for five minutes of extra sleep and awoke two hours later to find her lids still skittering with dreams, I was ridden with guilt. I pictured the lactation consultant winking while saying my daughter’s marble had now shrunk to the size of a pea. I woke Adelaide up and fed her until I imagined her marble expanding to a golf ball. I knew that if I didn’t, she was going to spend the next three decades explaining to her therapist how she was neglected by her mother when she needed her the most.

After that night I inadvertently missed a feeding, I began having stress dreams that my daughter was trapped somewhere inside our down comforter. I would scream and thrash while pummeling the pillows in search of her (a really good thing she wasn’t in there). Completely “aware” of my surroundings, I wouldn’t fully awaken until my husband yelled to look over and see our daughter swaddled and sleeping despite her mother’s frantic screams.

(I really slept like a log after that; my husband, for some reason, had more trouble hitting REM.)

Today, a Saturday, I have been up since a quarter to seven but my hair’s still slicked in a headband meant to cover the grease around my temples and I am wearing a bathrobe that bears traces of spit-up from two weeks back. My daughter is sprawled across my lap while using certain aspects of my anatomy as her personal pacifier. Each time I get up to do something luxurious like brush my teeth or make the bed, she clamps down hard with her newborn gums, forcing me to sit back down or get maimed.

I glance over at the mantel clock: I’ve got four hours to complete a to-do list four cubits long. I look down at my daughter, at her pudgy cheeks and don’t-even-think-about-it eyes. I’ll give Precious here fifteen more minutes, and then I’m getting to my feet.

Perhaps reconstructive surgery is not so bad.