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Though I am so tired it is almost impossible to have a coherent conversation, there’s no point at all in trying to take a nap. God forbid I fall asleep and get woken up immediately—the dog barks, the baby cries—somehow that is worse than not laying down at all. Nap blue balls, I’m calling it.

**

When we bought our house, I had an office. That office became Rosalind’s bedroom and so our bedroom became my office. Now our bedroom is also Joan’s room so the desk is in the living room with Jimmy’s computer on it, so he doesn’t have to go downstairs to his basement office if he wants to work on something. I use a little lap desk when I have a few minutes of both hands free: to pay the bills or do an online grocery order. Yesterday I couldn’t even find the lap desk, not anywhere. The panic of not-getting-what-I-needed seized me like a hand to my throat, and I followed the feeling around our tiny house, looking everywhere. By the time I found it (in the backyard, on the picnic table) Joan was awake again. I guess there is something perversely satisfying about actually seeing my ability to get work done disappear.

**

My dreams lately have been hyper-realistic. How about this one, straight from my unconscious—that the government sent us a letter in the mail saying we’d only have to pay $270 a month for full time daycare.

**

“Joan is the queen of babies,” remarks Rosalind. She is one-hundred-percent correct.

**

My father forgets to call me on Mother’s Day. He is too exhausted, visiting my mother daily, bringing her a large bouquet of flowers that morning at the nursing home. I imagine the conversation as I’ve heard it many times before, my father explaining to my mother that they have a daughter, that their daughter has two children. “We do?” she asks, mildly interested. “She does?”

**

I was under the impression that “covered in spit-up” was a kind cutesy euphemism used by new parents to emphasize their general unkempt appearance. Rosalind never spit up. Joan does it like she’s getting paid for it. In kisses. Which, I guess, she is. Today I had to surrender three distinct pairs of pants to the laundry basket. Three!

**

At the park, Rosalind sees a pop up tent and asks to go over to it—her interaction with such tents usually yields a donut or a lemonade—but when we get there I realize it is an info booth for the Capital District Sanctuary Coalition. They are handing out pamphlets and whistles to alert people to ICE. We take one, and walking back I am tasked with explaining to my six year old who the “bad police” are that hide their faces to come after families. That it is probably not our family they are looking for, not yet anyway, that we are safe, even though no one is safe when we let evil like this grow unchecked. I try to explain that they are looking for people that have recently come to our country from other countries, who speak other languages, “like Spanish,” interrupts Rosalind, talking over my main point: that we believe everyone should be welcome here. I don’t know if she is listening.

Back at the playground, she sees a friend from school—another white girl—and runs over, hopping onto the swing next to her. I hear her telling the girl, as their feet reach towards the sky: “did you know you can be arrested for speaking Spanish?”

**

A grad school colleague is interviewed in the New York Times about her experience racing the Iditarod. I am salty, exhausted, reading her nostalgic description of the thousand-mile trek through frozen Alaska. “Motherhood is my Iditarod,” I say, to anyone who will listen.

**

When I am awake, nursing at 3am, the curtains that usually keep the unhelpful thoughts at bay are flapping, a huge gust of exhaustion blowing them wide open. I worry about the environment, big tech, my job, my daughter’s futures. More specifically, I worry about money right now. We should not have paid for those flights to Ohio, I think; I should not have signed Rosalind up for quite so much summer camp. I should not have replaced my high-quality skin oil, even though it cures my rosacea. In the morning, I text these thoughts to my grad school group chat, not expecting to be absolved. But Beatrice replies: “those are not even luxuries, Olivia—it’s seeing family, childcare, and skincare.”

“Oh,” I say. I guess she’s right.

**

Are you familiar with the gas station candy bar Charleston Chew? I thought of it yesterday, not as a craving, but as metaphor—how I feel, growing to accommodate the needs of two children. Cheap chocolate calcification crumbling off as my marshmallow filling stretches beyond belief. Also, sticky.

**

After one year of doing absolutely no housework (IVF; pregnancy; c-section recovery) I am back to at least loading the dishwasher and wiping down the counters, picking up the various socks and gum wrappers and band-aid backings that scatter across the floor at the end of each day. On the one hand, it makes me feel really good to be tending to the house. It feels lighter in here. On the other hand, now my personality is worse. Each act of bending down brings with it a scowl or a grumble. When the house was messy all the time, I had no expectation of cleanliness, and I could experience a modicum of stability and peace. Now that it is sometimes clean, I am somehow beholden to the clean, and it is terrible.

**

Another dream: I am at my mother’s funeral, which is for some reason held in Minnesota, where she grew up. Tons of tall blonde relatives I don’t know, and some I do, milling around tables covered in platters of hot dish. In the dream I am mostly confused about how I got all the way to Minnesota; the funeral is somehow beside the point.

**

Rosalind’s been asking a lot of hard questions lately. “Where is the shelter for humans,” she wants to know. I tell her there are a few around the city, including one in our neighborhood that we walk past often. “Why would you need to be a kid at a shelter,” she wants to know. I explain your parents might be really sick, or even dead, or in jail. “In jail for speaking Spanish” she says, nodding.

**

Rosalind shares a birthday with my father’s mother, who died before I was born. I love that connection between them, whatever it means. In the car the other day, she asks me when my other grandma’s birthday is—my mom’s mom, Roz. I realize I don’t know. It’s in June, but I don’t know the date. “We’ll have to ask…” I start, and realize that my mom won’t be able to answer this question anymore. We come to a stop sign, and I feel the brakes lurch beneath me. Suddenly I feel the magnitude of loss—of memory, of our history. There’s no one behind me, so I close my eyes and take a huge breath. “We’ll have to ask Deeda,” I say, which is what we call my dad.

**

A dream that I needed a Kleenex and then I got one.

**

“Remember how slow Mimi used to be buckling her seatbelt,” asks Rosalind, out of nowhere, in the backseat the other day. She’s giggling to herself as she does her own seatbelt, remembering her grandmother’s delightful ineptitude. It’s been over a year since we’ve been anywhere in the car with my mom. What a memory she has.

**

It turns out the dog-sledding grad school colleague actually does have children—my group chat informs me she has not just one, but two: toddler twins. “Ah,” I say. “This all makes sense now.” The frozen tundra, the camping, the frostbite—easier in so many ways than motherhood.

**

I had two hours of babysitting yesterday and worked on this post at the coffee shop. I got almost-done with a draft and then the time was over. I had most of the pieces written, ordered, but no ending presented itself. I left it, hoping to have some time later. Ha, ha. Then, last night, another dream about my mother: we had co-written a book—about what? Going to garage sales? Enjoying Golden Age mysteries?—and the publisher was sliding a contract across the table. We looked at it together, scanning for details. At the bottom of the paper, an offer for 3.5 million dollars. We hugged joyfully, thrilled at the news. So many things I wish for, rolled up into one dream.

**

Thank you for reading mom blog. 💖 Like 💖 this post if you liked it, for my health. Comment, if you want to: did your baby spit up? What wakes you up at night? Do you like Charleston Chews? (I do.)

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• Things I bought with money from my paid subscribers this month (thank you): a few hours of childcare, to write this post, the mouth-watering chocolate milk cold brew from Jacob Alejandro, a new notebook and nice pens in an effort to do more writing in my current life, which is rarely behind a computer and almost always sitting on the floor. I hope it works!

• Sephora gift card from Christmas, finally used on: a fancy new lipstick and then, because that maxed out the gift card, purple mascara (for green eyes) from Target. Treated myself because we got invited to a wedding:

Library corner:

• I just finished The Hunter, second in Tana French’s latest series. I love “going” to Ireland and I love atmosphere and I love Tana French’s mysteries but I let this one slide because the audiobook reader is horrible. Then I remembered I could just… READ it. Great if you love curse words, too: lots of mention of “hole,” etc., very fun.

• Reading aloud win this week: Lena the Chicken, by Linda Bailey. A delightful tale of bravery and individualism that wraps in a lesson on evolution. “Can we own this book, mommy?”

• Reading aloud, cursed edition: Look, Look by Peter Linenthal (see photo)

  

I hope you sleep all night long! I hope I sleep all night long, but I know I won’t :'(

Love,
Olivia

Jimmy discovered that the best way to get Joan to sleep is: in the baby carrier, in the kitchen, with the microwave exhaust fan blasting and the sink’s cold water gushing a siren song of white noise. He stalks around the kitchen in his underpants and robe, baby strapped into the “iron maiden,” as he calls it. Every ninety minutes it’s time to nap, and it always arrives as a surprise: all babies do is sleep and all parents do is try to get them to sleep. Time flushes by with an unbelievable rapidity, like the water from our sink. I feel guilty about wasting our most precious resource (water) on our most precious resource (child) but on the upside, I’m not taking very many showers these days. Also, I tell myself, I am not as bad as an AI data center. This is parenting in 2026: sizing up one’s morality by comparing oneself to an environmental disaster.

Draft titles for this post: “Eight Weeks with Joan,” “Nine Weeks with Joan,” “Ten Weeks with Joan,” “Eleven Weeks with Joan,” you get the idea. I began to think that maybe if I could manage to write one sentence a week I might be done in about thirty to sixty weeks.

**

Everyone asks Rosalind if she likes being a big sister. She does. She is in love with Joan, and vice versa: Joan loves the violent hugs from Rosalind, loves her long hair draping across her face. Joan tries to eat that hair now, laughing. Her eyes shine for her big, loud sister. She doesn’t remember the first time Rosalind held her, but I do. Joan let out a juicy fart so shocking that Rosalind, genuinely afraid, threw her off her lap. (Jimmy caught her.)

Reflecting on life with her sister the other day, Rosalind remarked: “My brain isn’t gotten used to Joan yet. She isn’t in my dreams.”

**

By three months my milk supply has regulated and I’ve gone from peak-Baywatch-Pamela-Anderson to… two wet ziploc bags. My supply is still good though, and powerful—Joan belches when she’s done feeding, a cavernous sound that seems to shake the whole house. “Joan JOAN,” yells Rosalind, shaking her head in mock disgust.

Jimmy kept a journal in the first weeks home from the hospital. I ask him for his notes for this post but he isn’t interested in sharing. “It’s more of a captain’s log,” he tells me, “nothing poetic.”

“I would make it poetic,” I assure him, but he changes the subject.

**

I am recovered now from the emergency c-section, at least physically. It felt like I would never get there—even standing up was hard work. How could my sawn-in-two body ever be one again? But that’s motherhood: I will never be one again.

I can carry laundry down to the basement now and hold a plank pose for a (limited) amount of time and pick up my now shockingly heavier big kid. Weeks of not lifting her and she’s changed forever too—life, going as it goes, forward forever.

**

Not everything feels linear: the gift of a second child is the journey back to the first one. For example, all the old songs come back again: “New Diaper for You, Bu-Bu-Bu-Bum” is a classic hit from the changing table. “Big Strong Girl” is another one, sung while baby is doing tummy time. “There’s No Poo-Poo in There,” for checking the diaper after a fart, unsung in our house for at least four years.

A sacred window to the past: the way Joan snarls and shake her head before latching when hungry, just like Rosalind did; those first smiles, radiant and warm as the sun.

The vinegary smell of cradle cap—“Joan smells like soy sauce,” remarks Rosalind, and she’s not wrong.

**

At a party we meet two dads with a seven week old baby. I make a beeline for them, comrades in the struggle. We compare details no one else is as deeply invested in—hours slept, ounces consumed, milestones achieved. They look wistfully at Joan, snoring in the baby carrier. Their son is almost wilfully awake, demanding more data from the world.

The dads, too, look like the world is new again, their eyes blurry with love. I measure myself anew against their timeline and suddenly Joan seems old, experience something like ordinary.

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When Joan rolls almost all the way over and gets stuck in the corner of the bassinet, we have to stop swaddling. I look everywhere and finally find the expensive wool sleep sack I’d gotten for Rosalind. It wasn’t until unsnapping it to put on Joan that I realize moths have gotten to it. It’s still usable—only parts of the gray lining are riddled with little holes.

The sight of it disgusts me. It’s not just the idea of the larvae burrowing into the material, but what it represents—six years in our basement.

Last year, a friend and I were bonding over our experience of IVF, which gave her two beautiful children. She summed up her experience to me: “I’ll never be over my infertility.” I think I know now what she means.

**

My c-section scar is healed but there are new issues now—the back of my ankles hurt again, just like they did after Rosalind was born. The NYTimes suggests an article to me—soon enough I have diagnosed myself with a condition known as “Dead Butt Syndrome.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: you’ve sat down for so long both cheeks have disconnected, spiritually, from the rest of your body.

**

By the time I get around to writing this particular paragraph, Joan suddenly doesn’t like the exhaust fan-data center-kitchen nap anymore. Jimmy is in our darkened bedroom with her, rocking her ‘til her eyes roll back in her head. Now I can finish the paragraph.

Before Joan was born, Maggie assured me that one benefit of two kids was that you wouldn’t experience the crushing boredom of staring at your baby, wondering what the hell you are supposed to do with them. There would be no time for that—everything would be nonstop crisis mode, keeping two children alive. For someone who experiences loneliness and boredom both as a kind of crushing physical pain, I can attest to her assurances. I am never bored now. I am: exhausted, weepy, terrified, relieved, ecstatic, filled with dread at the state of the world, but never bored. It is much more fun.

**

Sure enough, after adding in the newspaper article’s suggested exercises (donkey kicks, clamshells) to my little postpartum routine, I am no longer hobbling around the house like a cartoon grandmother. The dead butt is resurrected.

**

Already these early days are melting away. I wonder if it is actually not possible to report from those early weeks—if no one is allowed to see, just like I couldn’t have reported anything from inside of my own womb.

Already we are out of the darkest time, into the sunlight, into springtime, never to return again to that dark, beautiful season.

Thanks for reading mom blog. In the grand tradition of email newsletters I thought I’d add a few things at the bottom of my email. Here they are:

Things I bought with money from my paid subscribers (thank you)

• I preordered Katie Bennett’s book She Was Wild Grass. I was lucky enough to read a draft of this incredible memoir—picture me finishing it on my phone while I walk my dog through the woods—I could literally not put it down.

• A tank-top style nursing bra that I will continue to wear forever, I think, sorry to make a recommendation about a product.

Books from the library:

• Early postpartum we received so many sweet visits and delicious meals. One standout “gift” was from my mom’s friend who is a children’s librarian: alongside black bean turkey soup and a Trader Joe’s run, she dropped off a bag of hand-selected library books for Rosalind to enjoy. This is genius (and $0). One of our favorites was April and Esme, Tooth Fairies. Dreamy and silly and surprising storyline… on a hunt for all Bob Graham books now.

• In January I read like 12 books on my phone, in February like 5, and then March? Zero, as I am now getting “more” sleep (ha ha) and no longer feel too overstimulated for TV. Standout recommendation from that period is the absolute classic, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore. I don’t know why I’ve never read this before—I love her. Everyone copies her but there is only one original.

Listening to:

• New Alela Diane song, California

• Jimmy has been playing Tyler Ballgame in the house (I’m calling him Teddy Baseball by accident and on purpose). The music makes me feel like I’m in the early 1970’s but only in a good way.

• Rosalind’s playlist of favorites, which is mostly Ariana Grande, who Jimmy is calling Ariana Large.

Caffeine:

My cousin absolutely ruined our lives by sending us a big box of these frozen coffee pods by the brand Cometeer. (Google it: if I put a link here I think they might start showing up at my front door with flyers.) They are recyclable, incredibly convenient and fucking delicious. You just pour boiling water on the coffee ice cube and bam, a perfect cup of coffee. Top tier new parent gift, especially when bean grinding threatens your entire nap existence. Not sponsored but open to it lol.

We are out of pods now and planning to order more but today I treated myself to an American classic: a small iced coffee with cream and 2 sugars from Dunkin’. Sometimes, postpartum, you just need a laxative and a slurp of legal meth. What I like most is that they’re still working with completely antiquated coffee-sweetening technology: the sugar is just in there, crunchy. That’s my favorite part ❤️

I hope your children are enjoying their sugar rush, if you celebrate;

I hope you sleep all night long (because I most certainly am not) 🐣

xo,

Olivia

Mom Blog is going on parental leave after this post. I’ll be back in the spring! Miss you already!

A woman in my pregnancy workout class admits that her feet stink, like really bad, all the time. “I’m sure the doctor can smell them at my checkups,” she says to the rest of us, as we struggle back into our sweatshirts after class.

“No way,” I assure her. “It’s just your super-sensitive pregnancy nose. Don’t worry!” This is what I’ve been telling myself, anyway.

Later that evening, putting Rosalind to bed, she rolls away from me bellowing: “Mommy you smell so bad!”

**

“Where are all the captions,” I demand of my family.

“What?” asks Jimmy.

“Ugh what are they called,” I say, trying to find somewhere to set down my moisture-condensed jar of water.

It doesn’t come to me until I find one: the word is coasters.

**

Talking to a friend’s mother at a kid’s birthday party the other week, she asks about our small house. “Do you have enough room for another kid?” she asks.

“No,” I say, and we sit there in silence for a few moments as children scream in pleasure around us.

**

There is so much to get done, and an unclear amount of time to do it in. I will either make it to my induction date—or I won’t. I will either need to go early, go early on my own, or make it to the finish line. Right in the middle of all of those times is Christmas, a holiday for which nothing needs to be ready. Ha ha. I sit here, staring at my to-do list, paralyzed.

**

I’ve been thinking of one of our favorite books, This Is How We Do It, which shows a day in the life of kids all around the world. In India, the whole family sleeps in one bed. Pinterest keeps showing me the same two Apartment Therapy articles about how a family of 5 in Brooklyn lives in a 1-bedroom apartment. I click on it every time. Every time, the solution is the same: throw out everything you own and get a murphy bed. We have two bedrooms, which is probably enough, but only one toilet, which might not be enough.

**

Every time I call Rosalind over to feel baby kicking, the baby stops doing it. She is either soothed into silence by the presence of her sister or maybe alarmed into quietude by the volume of the shrill screaming: It’s me, Rozzy! Your sister!

Rosalind doesn’t let this deter her from experiencing kicks. “I feel it, Mama!” she exclaims, as nothing happens inside me. “I feel her! She loves me!”

She does, I agree. She does.

**

The worst thing about this pregnancy so far—and I can say this now as I am no longer (usually) nauseous—is the blood pressure readings. I am supposed to do one reading at home per day, just in case. Anne lent me her state-of-the-art home blood pressure cuff and the sight of it makes my palms start to sweat. The sound of the velcro cuff ripping open makes my face flush. The noise of it cranking into gear increases my pulse. So far the readings are normal or normal-ish, unless I’m having a panic attack, in which case they are high.

**

Everyone is doing that thing which drives me insane: glimmer in their eye, they say something like: “get ready” or “just you wait.” “You’ll be pretty busy in January,” they might say, unable to stop themselves. “Two kids is a lot different than one,” they instruct me, as though I am an idiot who can’t do basic math, a person who already can’t get a single thing done when one child is at home.

**

Driving home from work, a big lumpy cloud blocks the sunset. All I can think: it looks like my placenta. This pregnancy I have an “anterior” one, meaning it’s at the front of my belly, blocking family members from feeling her kicks. I drive on, experiencing everything around me as body, my body, body.

**

Sarah makes a special effort to send me cute sibling content: her son and daughter holding hands, walking through the woods, or her son lifting her daughter up in a big bear hug. I feel the sweet gesture of friendship more than I feel the intended message; right now it still feels impossible, impossible, unreal. The challenge of imagination is huge even as the longing is so tangible.

**

The only thing that calms me down for blood pressure readings is a white man singing Hindu devotional music and the Carmen Christopher Live From the Windy City standup special. I refuse analysis of this evidence.

**

Jimmy got me two pairs of shoes for my birthday, each one more horrible than the next. I had complained about the struggle of bending over to put shoes on, but I would rather bend over a thousand times than wear these alien carapaces lol. They have been returned. Love u baby.

**

The name we have picked out did not resonate with Rosalind at first. “I guess,” she said. “If the baby is fat,” she said, using her own cryptic logic as usual. “Or if the baby has black hair when she’s born, because that’s a Chinese name.”

**

Woken up by a sex dream about a certain handsome political candidate

Woken up by a rage dream that I hit Jimmy over the head with a cucumber, knocking him out, because of something he did wrong (in the dream)

Woken up, frantic and frustrated, by a nightmare that a senior colleague assigned everyone in her class the job of writing their own Mom Blog, even giving them the very title I had come up with in the dream: On Pointelle. “Just because you and I have the same cotton shirt from J Crew,” I wanted to scream, but didn’t—

Woken up blissful from a dream that the baby turned out to be twins: now I can use all the middle names we have picked out, I thought, thrilled. The dream skipped over birth and cut right to both girls latching easily and sucking hungrily at my milk. Easy! I thought, radiant and happy. Easy!

**

The name we have picked out is not what I think anyone else would describe as a “Chinese name,” but Rosalind's idea does represent a great fear of mine, more irrational than rising blood pressure, but not totally impossible. What if the baby is born and is clearly, visibly, not made from our genetics, a mixup at the IVF clinic, and we have to give her back. It’s happened before.

**

In the shower last week I realized why I hate the “just you waits” and the “you’ll be busies.” This type of comment also made me mad when I was pregnant with Rosalind but this time they make me sad, too—sad, I realized, because after two miscarriages I thought I’d already have two kids. I thought I’d know it all already, and wouldn’t need to be told. The memory of those alternate timelines extend even into my imagined futures, haunting them, too.

**

Sometimes I Google “babies born at 33 weeks” or whatever week I’m at just to see what’s really going on inside me. The What To Expect app’s illustrations and comparisons are so useless and, frankly, terrifying:

Right now the app says she is either as big as a butternut squash or Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates or a Windows 95 box or a swim fin or a party-size bag of chips. Crunch crunch.

**

Things that have made me cry recently: the government. How tired I feel. Taking my blood pressure. The Emily Oster chapter on preeclampsia, read several times in advance, just in case I get it. Verizon’s customer service that has been charging me for months on the cell phone we cancelled, the cell phone my mother no longer remembers how to use.

The fear that my love for each daughter will be somehow different: that I will love Rosalind more because she came first or that I will love this baby more because I worked so hard for her. The Ariana Grande song “One Last Time,” which is actually very sad if you really listen to the lyrics.

**

Last time it felt pretty embarrassing to be pregnant, the shape of my body evidence of my erotic activities. Walking belly-first into the classroom felt like being forced to say out loud, “yeah, I fuck.”

This time, perhaps because it was IVF, or perhaps because I am 41, already a mom, I feel no such way. Android pregnancy. Un-sexual. Workman-like.

**

Trying to remember that this birth will be different. Of course it will, the whole pregnancy already is, but specifically: it won’t be March 2020, during the topsy-turvy grief and loss of the early pandemic. Our doula will be with us this time. Jimmy will be able to leave the hospital room and come back, hopefully with an entire turkey-provolone-lettuce-tomato-onion-oil-and-vinegar sub from Ragonese Italian Imports. When we arrive to deliver, there won’t be a folding table blocking the staircase to L&D with a worker asking you to sign a form attesting that you have not recently been to Wuhan, China.

When I arrived at St. Peter’s last time I was already 8cm dilated. The woman at the table stood up to hand me the clipboard but was stopped by the shouts of a man behind her—who he was I’ll never know—worker, patient, father, grandfather, hero. He came to my rescue, shouting: “Let that woman GO. She ain’t been to no Wuhan, China.”

He was, of course, absolutely right and I was quickly swept off my shaky feet into a wheelchair, to cross the threshold, in a few short hours, into motherhood.

**

For a few weeks, my appetite was relentless. I could eat anything and everything and wanted more of it. Now nothing sounds good except: bagels with cream cheese, Amy’s Frozen Mac & Cheese with Cauliflower Bowl, peach Sour Patch Kids, and I guess fried eggs. It tastes, again, like a bird flew into my mouth and took a shit there.

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Jimmy goes to my parent’s house to help my dad take out his last air conditioner. I ask him to check, again, if he can’t extricate my childhood dresser, no longer being used for my mother’s things, to bring it home for us. Rosalind has the smaller one in the set, but if we can move her clothes into this bigger dresser, the baby will have somewhere for her tiny, precious things to go. All the drawers of this dresser are already in our basement, but my parent’s hallway is cluttered with my mother’s bookshelves, her extensive used mystery series collections, and Jimmy is certain the frame of the dresser won’t fit.

I find similar ones on Facebook Marketplace but everything is difficult, terrible. A woman sends me a snide comment after I ask for measurements: “the yardstick is in the photo for a reason,” she writes, and when I go back to look, yes, there is a vintage, wooden one in the photo but if I zoom in all the numbers are blurred to invisibility.

I picture the barren dresser in my parents bedroom, where now only my dad sleeps, tossing and turning, worrying about my mom not sleeping in her nursing home bed. I decide I don’t want this woman’s bad energy in my house, so I ignore her replies, ignore the laundry, ignore the to-do list.

**

I text Amy and Beatrice when it happens: at work one day, leaning over in the bathroom stall, I realize I can’t really reach to wipe my own ass.

No one appreciates the indignities of pregnancy, or responds with more fervor, than two women who have not had children of their own. I am grateful to them for their horrified replies.

And even the disgusting is somehow joyful; evidence that life keeps growing inside of me.

**

Jimmy, my hero: the dresser DOES fit. He brings it home in the trunk of my dad’s SUV and I set to work wiping it down and moving Rosalind’s extensive tutu collection to the bottom drawer. The little dresser is in our room now. The laundry churns in the basement, flipping and spinning the miniature clothes we have saved for years. The house hums with its vibration, with anticipation.

**

A lady at church—my mom’s age—stops me to ask if there’s an “exciting surprise” coming, pointing to my stomach. This is exactly what you are not supposed to do but I am grateful for it, grateful to be seen.

“Oh, I just know you’re going to take such good care of her,” she says, “and give her so much love.”

It is the perfect thing to say.

**

Visiting my mother this weekend she placed her hand on my belly. “Is this ok,” she asks me, knowing me, but not totally sure of our relationship. It’s a joyful surprise every time she sees my belly.

My father, operating in her world while we’re there, is constantly reintroducing me to the nurses, as though I’m the one who can’t remember. Yes, I remember Latasha, I will never forget Latasha, who has told me twice now how much I look like my mother, that she’d “recognize me anywhere.”

“It’s the eyes,” she explains.

I have never looked like my mother, who is tall, thin, and blonde. I have always looked precisely like my father, round-faced and freckled. Latasha sees a lot that I can’t see, that much is obvious.

“I feel something,” my mother says, hands on my belly “it’s very faint.”

I don’t feel the baby moving at all—this time of the morning she is usually asleep inside of me, but just like with Rosalind, I nod in agreement.

“She knows you’re there,” I say, and bite the insides of my cheeks to stop from crying. “She loves you.”

**

The urgency to pee is now completely divorced from the amount of pee in my bladder. It strikes me, unrelated to amount: teaspoon, tablespoon, pint; it all feels the same.

Everything is big now. Every amount is a lot. Everything is heavy, looming. Everything is expectant.

Thank you for reading mom blog. 💖Like💖 this post if you liked it.

Comment below any oxytocin-releasing shows you can recommend me as I prepare a postpartum list of things me and Jimmy can binge: top of our list is a re-watch of Girls5eva. Bonus points if it will lower my BP.

I hope you sleep all night long (through the whole winter! I know I won’t!)

xo
Olivia

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Comment below: your thoughts on spirit week, the worst thing you’ve ever been forced to celebrate, or what you’d wear on Wacky Wednesday.

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This week’s essay is an oldie but goodie, published way back in 2021, when we were just starting to leave the house again, vaccinated and wary. I chose it this week for a few reasons: one, I am so tired and burnt out by the end of every day that new content is simply beyond my capabilities at this exact moment, and second, in a special effort to create Valentine’s Day Magic for my family, I purchased my husband a box of underpants from Macy’s, which is a theme you can read more about in the following essay (or listen to in the podcast in much more detail). (If you were a mom blog subscriber back in 2021, you might remember this essay, but you’ve never heard me read it before—this was pre-podcast times—so, enjoy!)

Friday night I went out. Out! Down the driveway, down the street, away from my sleeping baby and basketball-watching husband, the three minutes it takes to drive to Anne’s house, where I waited in her driveway to collect her. Her children came to the door one at a time. First, her older child, a daughter, peered through the screen door suspiciously. Then, her younger child, a son, appeared dutifully, flanking the daughter. They were forming a human shield: no one must leave.

I watched as Anne tried to step gracefully between them, angling her body to squeeze out the door without losing anyone, like a goat farmer, sideways through the kennel gate. Their dad helped from inside, roping an arm and possibly a leg. As she hurried towards the passenger door of my car, her son’s face broke into a red tragedy mask and his sobs could be heard echoing off the row of houses across the street.

I put the car in reverse. “GET IN,” I yelled. “We’re going to the MALL.”

Though I have been to the mall, this mall, maybe one thousand times in my life, the experience was going to be a strange one. We were not going to the mall but rather back to the mall; it was our old mall but it is a new world.

A friend who recently started seeing a therapist said that the therapist told her there are three kinds of people who have started therapy in the past year. The first wave were the people anxious about getting sick. The second wave was the people coping (or not) with the isolation. The third wave, which is now, are those of us anxious about reentering society. This thing we have looked forward to for so long, so long, is fraught with unforeseen detail.

We arrived at the parking lot sprawl. I chose a spot, parked the car and took a deep breath. Anne secured her mask. I secured mine. We patted our pockets for our hand sanitizers.

“Remember,” I said, “We can leave at any time we want. We’re in charge.”

At the entrance, I reached for the door with the edge of my cardigan. I looked over to see Anne use the billow of her black sundress to reach for the other door. Safety first. We stepped inside. A whoosh of cool air and with it, the familiar blast of mall smell: french fry + car exhaust + plastic bags + tags + nail polish remover + Yankee Candle. This time, the smell was filtered through the cotton mask I’ve been leaving on the dashboard of my car. Familiar mall smell + cotton + breath + hot car dust.

My mouth felt dry. I felt a bit dizzy. Was it exhaustion? Perhaps—Rosalind has been waking up at 4am as she works through her bottom molars. Was it allergies? Probably. Was it the mask, was it anxiety? I realized I’d forgotten to pack a water. Luckily, this was America: whatever you need is available for a price. There was a vending machine glowing and sentient a few feet from the entrance. I approached it with trepidation.

“I don’t think I’ve been to a vending machine in over a year,” I said, “maybe longer.” I usually used the vending machine at work, to get Jalapeño Pop Corners for the long drive home. Last year I taught remotely; the semester before that I was on maternity leave. I think I haven’t used a vending machine since 2019. I grasped for my wallet.

Someone had wrapped masking tape around the card reader of the Dasani machine. “It’s broken,” I reported. “No it isn’t,” I said, noticing a second card reader below the first, taped one. “Yes it is?” I asked aloud to no one, “Do I have cash?”

“I don’t know, do I?” said Anne.

I was reminded suddenly of being in a foreign country. I had forgotten the rules of engagement. I didn’t have currency. It was like the time I went to Budapest with Amy, and, trying to check out of our Airbnb, we got ourselves locked inside of the apartment complex, trapped behind a giant cast iron gate that enclosed the courtyard and the first-floor apartments. We’d returned the door key, as instructed by our Airbnb hosts, in the (locked) metal mailbox near the gate. And then, after following the rules precisely, we realized we could not let ourselves out without that very key.

The taxi driver we’d called to take us to the bus station was waiting outside. Everyone we’d met in Budapest, up until that point, had spoken some English. I had managed to learn, for the few days we would be there, only “thank you,” which is “köszönöm,” “please,” which is “kérem,” “no,” which is “nem,” and “hello, which is…“helló.”

The taxi driver could not understand, from that smattering of language, what was going on. We were going to miss our bus, the bus that would take us to Kraków, where we would be greeted (and rescued) by our friend Beatrice, who was living there, spoke Polish, and knew generally what to do.

The first thing we tried was using my bamboo travel utensil set to break into the metal mailbox. It didn’t work, and I lost a good spoon. (It got stuck inside the mailbox). The second thing we tried was screaming. “Help!” I yelled. “Please—Kérem!” “Kérem!”

It was quite early in the morning. Nobody was walking by. I didn’t want to disturb anyone’s sleep but we had to get out of there, and we had to get to Poland. We couldn’t stay in this courtyard forever. Finally, a man crept slowly and nervously out of his apartment. He seemed exhausted, or maybe still drunk from the night before—either way, he was wary of us, as I would have been if I were in his shoes. Two frazzled American women with rolling suitcases and bamboo knives, yelling at the top of their lungs.

I couldn’t explain, in words, what the problem was, so I walked over to the gate, grasped it with my hands and shook it like a wild chimpanzee. (Reflecting on this behavior now, I feel a burst of empathy for my toddler. How difficult to be non or pre-verbal!) The man, taking pity on us, walked over to the damp wall next to the gate and pressed a button. The button, we would come to find out, unlocked the gate. This was a regular thing in Eastern Europe, and somehow we had made it three days without either pressing or noticing a single one of these buttons.

We’d make it to Poland, if only barely—the ride through Slovakia took us along narrow mountain paths, thick with snow—and at a rest stop halfway, we realized we still had Forints, not Euros. This meant we could not pay the small fee necessary to enter the bathroom. An older woman took pity on us and gave us some coins. The German man who’d asked us lots of questions on the bus about the indignities of being American (“why does no one get a vacation in your country?) simply hopped the turnstile.

“Nobody knows what to do anymore,” I said to Anne, as we walked towards Old Navy. I was sipping my water by surreptitiously lowering of my mask. “Like these,” I said, pointing to the ground at the arrows, designed to keep customers in forward facing parallel lines, as though viral droplets could read. “Are we following these anymore?”

“Olivia,” she said, “I think all the rules are off now.” She pointed at a man just ahead, with a large, fluffy dog on a leash. “See!” she said. “Animals in the mall!”

At Baby Gap, where I was hunting down a pair of velcro sandals for Rosalind, we saw a tall woman in what can only be described as a bright red bathing suit. She was at the register, asking for something—hand sanitizer? A paper bag? I couldn’t tell. I touched Anne’s arm lightly to draw her attention away from the sale rack. We peered at her in admiration and shock. As a woman, I felt impressed. As a mother, I felt worried. Either way, it was wonderful to see people again.

At H&M, I was looking for some shorts for Jimmy, and also some underwear. I don’t normally buy Jimmy underwear. That’s his job. But I’ve done it before, and only ever out of complete desperation. This month it turns out Jimmy has thrown almost all of his underwear away, because he “doesn’t like it anymore.” Some of the rejected underwear was underwear I’d gotten him years ago, at Muji, my favorite store. “They don’t have dick holes, Olivia, I can’t live like this.”

I looked through the plastic bags of H&M underwear. It was unclear from the photograph of the model if the underwear had “dick holes” or not.

“Do you think I can open this?” I said to Anne, but I already already started ripping.

“No rules,” she reminded me, and we agreed one of the great pleasures of shopping at a place as enormous and unethical as H&M was the ability to do things like this, meaning, rip one bag open a little bit to feel around with my fingers for a dick hole. Unfortunately, all the boxer briefs in the bag were designed for an austere and chaste customer, one who wanted to keep their genitals smoothly encased at all times.

Jimmy was so desperate for underwear (and so desperate to be featured in the blog that he agreed I can write this) that he was forced to wear a pair of my underwear yesterday, which are high-waisted and beige and made from an eco-friendly bamboo fabric. I got them at the co-op, just like the travel utensils. He’d made fun of me for wearing bamboo-co-op underwear before (“What did you say they were made of? Wicker?”) but who’s laughing now? Were they comfortable? “Kind of.”

Rules. Are. Over.

At DSW, we wandered aimlessly through the aisles. “It’s so wonderful to shop in person,” said Anne, “and see things!” We laughed at the simplicity of that sentiment. We touched everything. We considered everything. Everything. Did I need Dr. Martens? Another pair of Crocs? Did Rosalind?

It was difficult to know what I even liked anymore, without having everything tailored so disturbingly to my own tastes by the Instagram algorithm. It reminded me of being in Hungary again, where Amy and I went for brunch the first morning we got there, hungry and delirious with jet lag. The restaurant was totally empty except for us, and our server gave us our eggs and then proceeded to broadcast an entire Coldplay album. I had previously considered myself “too cool” for Coldplay but both of us listened in sleep-deprived reverence and a kind of strange, immediate homesickness. Now whenever a Coldplay song comes on the radio I am reminded of that moment of disorientation, and I am glad.

We had a wonderful time at the mall. Driving back, exhausted and drained of our money, ready to go home again, I thought about how motherhood, too, is a foreign country. Pulling into the driveway, I thought about how our whole house looks different now—we have a plastic horse and a little kitchen with a little hot dog in it, we have outlet covers and bibs and tiny little velcro sandals caked in mud now. We have a perpetually dirty bathroom. When we get ready to set out in the stroller, we ask Rosalind, “do you want to go on an adventure?” and she knows what that means now, stomping her little feet towards the kitchen door. We are lucky to have these adventures, big or small.

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Here’s what Jimmy got me this year for Valentine’s Day (I love it):

💖Like💖 this post if you liked it. Comment below with how you celebrated V-day, if at all. Milk Duds? Date night? Macaroni and cheese? I don’t know. Or tell me what the best underwear is (for any gender). If you listened to the podcast and enjoyed it, consider becoming a paid subscriber (they always get the podcast!)

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On March 18th, 2020, when the pandemic shut our world down, Jimmy’s office called to say they would be transitioning to work-from-home. There is a photograph of him from that time that I think of often: headset on, filled with glee at the new status quo. He would work from home for exactly one day before Rosalind was born, blasting into our lives on the first day of spring. Despite everything that came after, and how horrible the pandemic was, Jimmy never retracted this position: he loved working from home. No button down shirts, no commute, and the ability to fry up a sardine patty1 for a cat’s lunch at any hour of the day.

For awhile, we both worked from home. We were both parenting at home with no daycare and we were both alternately glued to our computers, doing various tasks for our paid positions; Jimmy answering emails and me, trying to deliver the impossible (teaching on Zoom). We toggled relentlessly between gratitude (we were safe at home, not getting sick) and agony. But we were living through History—we couldn’t really demand something different. Anyway, the pandemic would be over in like a month anyway, right?

I fucking hate working from home. Right now, for example, I am working from home, waiting for my Zoom office hours to begin and writing a first draft of this blog. I am sitting at my desk, which is wedged between our dressers and underneath a window that leaks cold air. If I move my chair too far to the right, I’ll knock over the space heater. On my left is a stack of… materials: my daughter’s art, a printed out draft of the book I am working on, a doll my aunt crocheted whose red yarn mouth got pulled out. On top of that, though my daughter has been potty trained for almost two years, is a tube of diaper cream. On the other side of my desk is a different stack: mail I don’t have time to open, a nail file, an almost-used up lint roller, and an umbrella, which I hope is not…wet. A nearly-dead plant. Behind me, every item of clothing my family owns, clean, in a massive pile on the bed. Instead of removing them from my Zoom background, I am working on this essay. The pile is thematic to this essay. The pile represents (and literally is) an encroachment into my creativity, and a loss of personal agency. It’s just socks and shirts! But socks and shirts are their own kind of threat.

This summer, Jimmy lost his WFH job2. For a few, glorious months, his only job—besides looking for a job, doing his creative work, and being a dad—was to be my wife. When I went to work, Jimmy stayed home. He picked up Rosalind every day, kept her busy and happy until I came home whenever I got around to it. I was researching things I hadn’t had the bandwidth for in five years, like grants, residencies and agents. I enrolled in a mentorship program for UDL: Universal Design for Learning. My brain fired and snapped with excitement. When I was done teaching for the day, I could sit in my office, checking off my list, editing the course site, making notes about what I might improve next semester. In the quiet of my office, removed from the keening whines of my violently annoying lapdog, away from the sink full of dirty dishes, with a desk devoid of problems that would never get solved, I had the freedom to think. And as the day geared down, I didn’t have to check my weird little IKEA clock sixty five thousand times to make sure I was home in time to relieve Jimmy… I just.. stayed. Because I had a wife.

In this essay I am using the word “wife” as defined by Judy Brady in her satirical (or is it?) essay, “I Want a Wife,” from the seminal (ovulary?) issue of Ms. Magazine, excerpted below.

She writes:

I want a wife who will take care of my physical needs. I want a wife who will keep my house clean. A wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced when need be, and who will see to it that my personal things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need it. I want a wife who cooks the meals, a wife who is a good cook. I want a wife who will plan the menus, do the necessary grocery shopping, prepare the meals, serve them pleasantly, and then do the cleaning up while I do my studying. I want a wife who will care for me when I am sick and sympathize with my pain and loss of time from school. I want a wife to go along when our family takes a vacation so that someone can continue to care for me and my children when I need a rest and change of scene.

I want a wife who will not bother me with rambling complaints about a wife’s duties3. But I want a wife who will listen to me when I feel the need to explain a rather difficult point I have come across in my course of studies. And I want a wife who will type my papers for me when I have written them…

My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?

Jimmy, for one, was pretty happy as a wife. A few weeks ago, he started a new job, an in-person job. For nine hours a day he is not at home making sardine patties, Rosalind’s lunches, our family breakfasts, dinners, or listening to me while “explain a rather difficult point I have come across in my course of studies.” He is in an office, wearing an ID badge. He did, however, find time to reply to my email when I asked him what he liked about being my wife.

“Well it mostly ruled hard. I loved doing pick-up. I loved the reception [Rosalind] gave me—her hero has arrived to release her from this fun for-profit prison she’s been in all day!”

How did he feel about being the one most responsible for cleaning?

“The desire to be noticed and complimented for housework was so powerful, I couldn’t stay quiet about it! I of course don’t do quite as much cleaning as you do. I’m more of a the surface guy, dishwasher, laundry etc. No vacuuming for me thanks… if it’s not a Dyson? I’m not touching it!”

What was it like to deal with being “unemployed?”

It felt good going to bed and not having ‘a job’ to worry about. I didn’t worry about Rozzy or you or any house stuff…it seemed so easy to me. But as far as being a wife guy….It mostly ruled. The lost of time for creative or professional pursuits was palpable but if I was just a regular ass bimbo (nothing wrong with being a BIMBO!) that didn’t care about that stuff it would super duper rule hahah. But I’m a creative ass slut who has to be making something. haha.

Unfortunately, our lot in life now is such that the one of us who loves our job (me) is also now the primary parent; the one of us who works a job just to save our family from financial ruin (Jimmy), is not home to do any of it. After the first week of our new life, Jimmy came home on Friday exhausted and resentful. I opened the door for him, exhausted and resentful. All week I’d arrived home with my child forgetting that it was me who was supposed to make dinner. All week my synapses were lengthening and creaking and blasting to accommodate the new load of information I was responsible for, and at the end of the day, I was unable to turn it off. I slammed a frozen pizza in the oven and chastised Jimmy for leaving his boots in a pile by the door, after tripping over them trying to get to the freezer. We glared and seethed. Instantly I thought: this is why people get divorced.

“This is why people get divorced,” I said aloud, and Jimmy nodded emphatically. In this new world, nothing was set up to support us. In this new world, dinner would no longer be soups or stews or salads or anything that required use of, say, a knife. In this new world we’d both collapse onto the couch on Friday to dissolve into the fantasy world of The Great British Bakeoff, watching as much for the delightful personalities as for the dream of someone else doing your dishes.

It is embarrassing to be mad at your life. I know that. Things could be so much worse! I know that too! You might be reading this like, bitch, this is how the rest of us have been living. I am so sorry! This is not ok!

I have been writing Mom Blog for four years and I have to say that the most mentally incapable of writing I’ve been was not from sleepless nights, pandemic terror, relentless daycare sickness, finals week, or anything else like that. No, the biggest barrier to my creative work is being the primary parent. The… wife.

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In a strange twist of fate, the only reason this essay is getting done today is because Rosalind is home sick. Last night, I lay in her room next to her, stroking her back and wiping her face after she vomited again and again. Each time a new serving of orange puke presented itself, Jimmy met me at the doorway to catch the barf jammies and run them down to the washing machine. I remember thinking: I’m glad this is happening at night, when we can work together.

Today, winter sunshine streaming in, Rosalind and I sit on the couch together watching Shaun the Sheep. I cancelled my work-adjacent plans for the day, am ignoring the massive stack of grading (would not be fair to the students to receive feedback under my current working conditions) but you, dear reader, will understand. You are used to working under these conditions.

Thanks for reading Mom Blog.

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See you in January,

xo,

Olivia

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