I have an essay called “The First Time Around” in an anthology that is coming out soon, From the Heart: A Collection of Stories and Poems from the Front Lines of Parenting. It compares my first year mothering to my first year teaching high school and explores the desire for a do-over, to fix all the mistakes you made the first time around.

So now I am a week and two days into parenting a second child and feel compelled to document this slice of now with a Venn diagram. Alas, I don’t know how to do that on Wordpress and have only so many (how many is never something I can predict) minutes until I will be called to nurse again, plus writing lying down is not the most comfortable thing. So I’m just going to make some lists. Please excuse the lack of parallel structure.

We’ll start with that thing about positions by giving a shout out to the few things that I look back on fondly from my first weeks after my son was born in 2006 via c-section (for a breech position and short cord that prevented him from dropping).

Positives about baby #1’s first weeks

• I could sit. Seriously. A c-section hurts a whole lot, but once you’re upright, you’re cool. I cannot wait to sit without pillows delicately arranged or frozen peas in my underwear.

• I had only one child. There was no monstrous four-year-old lurching around, slamming into his parents, kissing the baby ad nauseum, or needing to be taken to the park to preserve family sanity.

• My husband did everything. I don’t think I changed a diaper for two weeks. (See above that we didn’t have another child to take care of).
  

Similarities across both experiences

• I still have trouble sitting up from lying down and getting up to stand from sitting. It doesn’t hurt in my gut like it did when I was cut open, but the truth is I have no abdominal muscles now anyway, and it does hurt my bottom to switch positions.

• I love looking at my baby.

• Every day is a bad hair day.

Positives about baby #2’s first weeks

• At home! Sunshine instead of yucky florescent light, no strangers waking you up to poke at your progeny, no separation from the baby for hearing tests, no people bringing me (who is gluten-free and dairy-free) a cheeseburger the day after abdominal surgery and the next day, when I begged for something I could eat, telling me, “It’s hard to accommodate special diets.” In the hospital?

• No drug hangovers!

• Milk coming in right away! And like gangbusters! What a concept! After three years of nursing my son, I found out there was still a lot I didn’t know about breastfeeding! But apparently I do know how to get a baby to latch well in any position. No trips to the lactation consultant this time, at least not in the first week.

• A calm baby who seems comfortable in her own skin. Maybe just her temperament, but maybe from coming on her own terms or helped out by the flower essences I took during labor and gave her right after or the essential oils we used. I’m sure actually getting nourishment helps, too.

• Friends helping out — with food, with support, with childcare. And a whole lot of baby clothes.

• Having something of a clue as to what I’m doing and a lot less anxiety about what I’m doing wrong.

• Having a little boy who looks adoringly upon his mother and sister (with a head that seems a lot bigger than it did two weeks ago) and says sweetly, “It’s nice having a new baby.”

Although we are not media-free, I’ve avoided full-length feature films and had not considered taking my son to a movie before the age of six, at least. It just seems like way too much stimulation, not to mention the whole Waldorf thing about media stifling kids’ imaginations.

But when I saw the trailer for the movie Babies after a friend suggested we moms go as a night out, I felt like it would be a good thing for my husband and me to see together to jazz up our anticipation of baby #2 (as opposed to just wondering how the hell we’re going to handle such a drastic change). Then, thinking about paying for childcare to see the movie, I considered that maybe our four-year-old would enjoy it. And heck, it was only going to be 79 minutes!

So today, knowing another pregnant friend and her husband were taking their two daughters, we went as a family, arriving about 90 seconds before the lights went down so as not to have to waste any preschooler patience (and just because we are never early to anything).

It was great. Well, the last 20 minutes, the boy managed to tip over a chair (this was a drafthouse theater) and try out sitting in at least three others, a redheaded Goldilocks. But other than that, he saw lots of cool things. There were tons of animals and four amazingly different locales and ways of life. And four babies just being babies.

I love that his first experience of a movie was of one without narration or fast-paced cartoon images. I love that he just watched and for the most part appreciated — life just going on. He laughed, he said, “Aw” a lot, he asked a bunch of questions. He saw a whole lot of breastfeeding and tender mother-child moments, which I think is great considering he’s getting a sister in some four weeks.

As for his parents, we were struck (as many almost-upper-middle-class white parents in the Western world might be) about how silly are our notions about doing things solely for our kids and spending so much time reading to them and reading about parenting. Not that I’m never going back to a Music Together class, but how can you not remark on the juxtaposition of those white folks in a San Francisco rec room singing that Native American chant “The earth is our mother, we must take care of her” against images of the boy in Namibia (who needs no instruction other than simple living to understand that concept) gleefully dancing to his mother’s clapping.

I don’t mean to essentialize as though rural folks are all inherently good and simple and us selfish and complicated American consumers are just burdens on the world. That’s not a very nuanced analysis. But I do agree with my husband’s assessment of the film shortly after we got home: “Kind of makes you feel stupid for wanting anything.” Yes, and sort of embarrassed for letting the entertainment or edification of a child become so darn much its own thing instead of letting the child learn by observing and participating in  its community.

There’s more to process, but I’m glad my husband and I saw the film together as partners expecting a child. We’ve already referenced the film several times, including in a childbirth prep class. And I’m glad we took my son to help him see the idea of having children as something people do everywhere, and also to see that people live in a lot of different places and ways.

Call me a sucker, but I’m so glad I finally got to see the new baby gorilla at the National Zoo. It is just so darn cool to see such an expressive and tiny face on another animal, especially when the baby is naturally clinging to its mama like I’ve tried to mimic by using a sling.

When we last visited the zoo in January, we could only see the baby’s “teeny tiny hand!” as my son later reported, because she was nursing up on a platform. This time the mom left the Great Ape House moments after we got there for feeding time. We rushed outside and got there moments before she turned around to go back inside. I let my sister and her kids go up ahead to meet up with their friends while we made one last attempt. My son and I got a good view and snapped this photo and some video. When my husband met us, my son demanded he go in to see the baby gorilla, too.

So there’s another big to-do about breastfeeding with the publication of Hanna Rosin’s article, “The Case Against Breastfeeding.” There are debates/opinions all over the email list on DC Urban Moms and I’m sure every other moms list out there. I’ve looked over a few posts, but I’m blogging to say that I’m kind of sick of debating this stuff. (Yes, I get the irony.)

Rosin ends her article saying that she isn’t sure why she continues to breastfeed when really she’s tapping her foot, waiting for her son to finish and that if she had to work outside of the home instead of from the home, she’d give formula with no guilt. So why doesn’t she just quit nursing? She can’t explain — breastfeeding is “intimate and elemental,” something you can’t explain with facts and figures, she acknowledges. I don’t think that’s so far off from what many breastfeeding advocates say — that it has immense value that can’t be quantified and can’t be held up against a mom’s potential salary or future corporate power in some kind of cost-benefit-analysis.

So why are we subjecting this kind of thing to a debate — a case “for” or “against” where the people who care deeply about something are fascists instead of just people who live true to their commitments? I am just so sick of this kind of public discussion with people who never see each other’s faces. I haven’t read The Mommy Wars, and though I’m interested in how my feminist background mashes up with my current reality as a rather attachment parenting mom, I don’t know what this kind of back and forth accomplishes.

I saw Hanna Rosin live on The Today Show because a neighbor was kind enough to call and let me know it was coming on. Rosin seems like a perfectly nice enough woman. My neighbor, too, is sweet to my son and has lots of toys he loves to play with. I watched her baby when she took her son to his first dentist appointment. It’s nice to have neighbors who have your back, especially TV-watching neighbors who alert you to stuff you’d never have known about. But it doesn’t mean she or any other mom has to be my best friend.

And that’s what pisses me off about this article — this idea that somehow moms choosing to spend time with people who make similar choices is a cruel practice, a terrible byproduct of the pro-breastfeeding movement that is ripping women apart. The author complains about how breastfeeding, organic-food-eating moms size each other up and reject other moms whose choices aren’t deemed good enough. But who the hell says we all have to be great friends with each other if we have really different values and ideas about how to raise our kids? And if Rosin really feels good about her choices, as she claims she does in parts of the article, what does she care about other people’s opinions?

I’m happy to know lots of people who have lots of different priorities about things. They are great as neighbors and colleagues and family members and friends. But when I want advice for a mothering issue, I’m going to turn to someone who has a clue about my situation and who has either been in my shoes or could have. My close friends are not all identical, and of course we make different choices, but there’s got to be some kind of common ground, right? If you care a lot about one thing and spend a ton of time and energy on it, it’s nice to swap stories with people who’ve been in your shoes.

If, for example, you think that it’s important to use physical means to discipline your child and you’re making that a priority for your parenting, you’re probably not going to be able to share a lot of strategy talk with a parent who doesn’t believe that and, in fact, thinks physical punishment is really yucky and harmful. That’s pretty fundamental. For some breastfeeding moms, nursing is not just a choice but part of a lifestyle commitment that hits at emotional, physical and spiritual levels, so of course they aren’t going to feel as close to someone who blithely throws off a comment about not doing it. If we believe in something, we believe in it.

That doesn’t mean anyone should be mean to someone who has struggled or who is struggling to breastfeed. But if the person cares about the same stuff, then they tell you — you learn their story and find out what makes them tick. Friendships are about getting to know people and what they care about. I cared a lot about having a natural birth. When people ask where my son was born, I explain that we had a c-section because of his breech position and short cord, making it clear that was a bummer for us but that we knew it was the right decision. If a pro-homebirther wants to judge me for what they don’t understand, tough. Then they’re not someone I want as a friend. If in my description of my experience, the person shares that she’s pro-surgical delivery for any reason, then I know where they stand and that we don’t share the same commitment. They don’t have to be wrong, but they also don’t have to be someone I’m going to share my feelings of loss with (or my hopes for an eventual VBAC).

So sure, you can choose not to nurse your kids, and we can be friendly. But if I want to hear, “I know what you mean,” I’m going to look elsewhere. I refuse to believe that makes me a bad person or a pawn of pro-breastfeeding paraphernalia.

Today was the first day I’d had any childcare in two weeks. There was snow, then a fever, then my boy’s dad got sick and needed tending. Today’s four hours of babysitting went fast, but when they were over, I had a supremely lovely time with my son. It was a chilly rainy day, and I decided I was just not going to leave the house. E had had a mini outdoor excursion with the sitter and the other little girl who came over, so we just hung out. After spending a week nursing him like he was a newborn and hearing “can you hold me?” and “can I nurse” in that weak voice punctuated by a cough, it was great to have my buddy back.

I have a journal I’m developing to help me record developments and special events month to month, but I don’t often sit down and just write to my kid. A friend gave me The Mommy Journal, and I almost picked it up tonight, then thought about writing his “birthday letter” a month early (I did one at one year and think I never did year two – yikes!) but somehow I feel right now like I can get so much more down through a keypad.

So here’s part of the letter I’d like to write to my son today.

Dear E,

I write a lot about you, my dear boy, some for blogs, some for essays that will probably never make it into print, some for poems and essays that have. If something happened to me, you’d have a lot of insight into my mind. But every once in a while I realize that it would be wise to tell you to your face and to write directly to you simply how I feel about you in a way that is not skewed to the side of frustration or mommy-self-exploration. So this is the long version of my looking into your eyes and saying, “You are so much fun.”

In fact, you are a rock star. Your dad and I cannot believe the things that come out of your mouth, except that I keep hearing myself or him or some cosmic combo of what we’d say if we turned into one person. This morning, your dad left late for work because he was still a little sick, and he was still here when W got here to watch you and S for the morning. You were telling W about the valentine that D made for you the other night, describing in detail the cute flowers that pop up. I thought your story needed illunstration so W could appreciate how spot-on you were, so I fetched the card off the mantel.

You then went on to point out to W that behind where the card had been was a photo of Barack Obama. It’s actually a photo your grandma took on Inauguration Day, of you looking at Obama on the television screen, and it’s pretty cool. (In case you haven’t heard the story enough, your dad biked down to the Mall that day, and I left early, before either of you was awake, to go with a friend to see the ceremony from seats right in front of the Capitol. It was amazing, but it was a long day, and I had a hard time fully appreciating the privilege I had. In fact, you’ve heard so much about my tale that you‘ve been telling me, “Then the Metro was broken and you had to get out and get a taxi cab. And you were frustrated!”)

Anyway, W asked you, “Who is Barack Obama?” You answered in the clearest voice imaginable for a child who is not even three years old, “He’s our President!” Your dad and I were wowed that you responded that way totally unprompted. (And, lest you wonder about my politics if I should turn colors in old age, underneath our pride and astonishment in you was a deep relief that this reality has come to pass and that you will know this man as your first memory of a president.)

But we really shouldn’t be amazed by your sharp replies. They come out of your mouth all the time, with joy, with exuberance, with delight at the ability to express yourself. You were telling me today about someone “offering” you something — maybe it was when T peeled you an orange the other day at your dad’s band practice. Sometimes I wonder if the Waldorf education police are going to come after me for talking to you too much or making you get too big a vocabulary for your little stature.

But it’s not all fancy words. You know how to work it with slang, too. Yesterday I wrote on my other blog about how you said to me “C’mon” to get me to rethink my complaint. But when I wrote that, I’d forgotten that you used that phrase earlier in the day looking for a colorform/sticker of Murdoch, one of the Thomas trains (whose names you suddenly know after I relented to just one of your many desires in Staples last month and bought you that goofy workbook). You said, “Where are, Murdoch? Come on, Murdoch. Oh, there you are. I found you.” There are big and small stickers of the various trains, and you call the big one the “mama Percy” and the little on the “baby Percy.” Often when we talk about real babies, you ask or tell me whether or not the baby is crawling yet. “He doesn’t walk. I think he just crawls. Yeah. He does.”

Your hand gestures are opinionated and intentional. You point, you show us a serious two (one index finger on each hand), you put your hands up for not knowing. We recently watched old video of you babbling with crazy, meaningful gestures at around a year old; now those gestures elaborate clear-as-day words. You seem to have just about perfected your “R.” I caught you on video at the zoo a few weeks ago (our first diaper-free outing!) talking about a “funny biRd.” You slow over the R’s as though you’re making sure you’ve gotten it out and have been heard. The L’s are not so defined but are still highly intelligible.

We had a nice afternoon today after W and S left. You played well while I ate lunch, and then we worked on a puzzle before having a quiet nursing time and then moving on to make rolls for school (after I got a chicken in the oven). Even when I had you on the other side of the kitchen gate so I could deal with raw meat unfettered, you happily chatted with me. What a treat!

Two weeks ago you were so ill, you would hardly let me leave your side. We were nursing on the couch most of the day. If you weren’t asleep, I had to have you on my back in the Ergo. You had a fever for a full week, went back to diapers (new pull-ups, which you took to calling “undies”) and were so pale and quickly thin, we hardly recognized you. One night you showed enthusiasm for eating whatever random food we had but then, in the hour I was out tutoring, threw it all up, your shrunken tummy too overstuffed. Then you ate nothing for two days and when you finally told us to see how your rice tortilla was a plane a few nights later, we knew you were back.

I was kind of stressed out and busy before you got sick, so I was not fully present to your coolness for a while there. Having had to pause to deal with illness, now I’m having so much fun watching you learn about the world and get excited to show me things you’ve come up with. Normally I try to acknowledge what you’ve done without judging or heaping empty praise, in line with what I’ve read of Alfie Kohn and Unconditional Parenting. But when I videotaped you today, I was trying to capture some of your verbose essence and so kept prompting you to make you talk. I asked you questions and said, “Good!” when you shared a response. (Your father assures me this does not sound like the normal me.)

Even though I hate listening to myself, I’m glad to have captured a long convo for your part. I asked what else you ate with rolls at the Waldorf school (thinking butter), and you said, “Enzymes” (as in digestive enzymes, which we’ve been taking for the last few months). “But you forgot to bring my enzyme yes-ter-day,” you added, using the word that has come to mean “at any time in the past.” I asked you what the weather was like today and you said, “Well, it stopped raining!” To my inquiry about it being cold or warm, you replied “It was freezing!?!” and then proceeded to describe your time outside this morning running down the hill in our back yard.

I know from watching that older babble video the other day that I really will forget what life was like at this point in time. The more I write, the more I can hold onto. And I hope for you that all this time I’ve spent writing — while mostly for me to keep me sane — will possibly tell you something about yourself that you’re glad to know.

I sure do love you. Thanks for teaching me so much.
Love,
Your mama, Jess

this post originally appeared on February 19, 2009 on DC Metro Moms

When Round Two is with Baby #1

Scary worry for my son aside, on my end, this rhythm has been quite the deja-vu, especially when he had those glassy fever eyes and just stared into space like a baby with no focus. It was all about the nursing and sleeping, the nursing instead of sleeping.

But as he started to regain his toddler consciousness and remember how much control he had recently started to want to have over his life, the conversations got weird, jolting me out of baby-memory-reverie. You know all those things you kind of think to yourself your newborn is thinking — “Why won’t can’t you do it right NOW?” and “Please hold me!” — but you try to tell yourself, oh, he’s just a baby, and of course he’s going to cry? Well, this time, folks, the kid actually says those things. We’ve gone from one or two nursings a day and only a few late-morning hours of family bed back to midnight requests — but this time in grown-up words — of “Can I nurse?” and 2 a.m. whinings, “Why? Why can’t I nurse!?” There have also been multiple choruses of “MOM-mee,” said like the vaguely irritated “ehhh” of a baby. But now these are followed up by a specific request that melts your heart, like “Can you hold me?” or a non sequitur that recalls college dry-mouth days, as in “I want some of the blue juice that we got at Harris Teeter” whispered into my ear in the middle of the night.

Do I really think I could do this again, with an inarticulate newborn? I’ve written before about my fantasies of having a second child — getting to have a do-over. All this time I’ve been hoping I would get the opportunity — to have a VBAC, to put into practice the lessons I learned from raising my son, to give him the experience of having a sibling. He’s so great with his dolls, but they seem content to be worn and nursed by him, whereas I’m pretty sure a sibling would not. I’m still generally thinking in the direction of trying again before 2010, but I’m also newly confident of the fact that my body needs a break between sustaining lives. It took a lot to get my health to the point where I could even conceive and then stay healthy through and after pregnancy — not fall into depression, not experience a thyroid imbalance recurrence. A week on the couch with my son (and with the book Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Struggling with Depression) has me feeling like I need a week on a professional’s couch, not to mention a ton of yoga, several mounds of food, and a hot bath.

As far as my son wanting to nurse and be close to his mama (read: grope me all night and day), we seem to have rewound to the beginning of the tape. The cassette is just chugging in the machine, threatening to snap. I fear that we couldn’t have gotten through a week of fever and cough and a double ear infection drug-free if we weren’t nursing — not without a lot more weight loss off my small boy or other ill effects. And I’m happy to keep it up until he’s fully back on his feet, physically, emotionally, pottily, and to age three. I would just really like him to get back to not being so needy before I decide I really need to cut him off.

After my son’s first illness in a while, I’m so glad I’m still nursing and that we can still create a family bed.

Last night my son said he had a “stomachbake,” and he clearly had some gas, but he fell asleep fairly easily around 7:30. Then, when he woke at 9:00 p.m. crying, I was worried he’d caught the tummy virus my friend’s child had. He felt hot, and the temp read 100.2. This is the first fever he’s run in a very long time. I’ve never medicated for anything, including for a fever, believing that it really is the body’s way of healing itself (see NY Times article). I’ve given my son homeopathics and flower essences and will entertain herbs, but he’s never had any over-the-counter medicine.

This was also the first time he’s really been sick since he became verbal. It was a real throwback to deal with a child who was upset but unable to tell us what was wrong. If he smooshes his finger or scrapes his knee, he usually says either, “Aw, I just hurt myself,” or “I’m okay, Mom.” This time, it was just unhappy tears.

Thinking this was a tummy bug, I suggested, “Let’s give you some drops.” Since this is familiar to him, he sat and opened his mouth. I gave him Perelandra Microbial Balancing Program drops for the Digestive system and also for Immune and Lymphatic. Then I remembered he sounded a bit stuffy when I put him down for bed, so I threw Respiratory in there for good measure. I added celery and tomato and F-1 and F-2, which a practitioner had previously told me to use in case of a tummy bug or ingested mold or other icky stuff.

I tried to keep both a sympathetic tone so he knew I knew he understood he was not happy but also a lighthearted and reassuring approach, counting out one set of drops in English, one in French, another in Spanish. Although he’s been sleeping through the night for over six months, and we generally don’t nurse until after 5:00 a.m. at the earliest, I nursed him back to sleep.

Around midnight, he woke again and I had to use the bathroom. I can’t remember if we nursed again before I got up or not, but when I left he followed me, and then he saw my husband and said he wanted Daddy. So LJ went to sleep in the boy’s room for a while, and I went back to the much comfier bed down the hall.

It’s been a few weeks since we moved E’s double futon into his own room. The bed takes up half the floor, but we figured one thing at a time. I think we all sleep better without our son in his own room now that he’s two and a half, and it has made afternoon quiet (read: nap-resistance time!) calmer. However, I’m very glad that we can still share sleep when it’s clearly the thing our son needs. (Or any of us needs. One day I’d had to say goodnight to him early before going to a meeting, I woke at 4:30 and crawled into bed with him just to be close. I still love the snuggling, but I also know he’s ready for his own space.)

I have had my frustrations with nursing a grabby toddler, but I haven’t yet gotten the desire to wean the way I got the desire to move bedrooms. According to Mothering Magazine’s article “Extend Breastfeeding’s Benefits”by Kyla Steinkraus (September/October 2007 – Issue 144), breastfed toddlers do seem to be healthier physically, and emotionally. I figure that with a child with food sensitivities, the longer he can get nutrition from me, the better. And in a child with an intense and gregarious personality, the longer he can have quiet closeness with his mama, the better. Since he hadn’t been sick in so long, I took for granted the health benefits.

Now that our nursings have gotten down to just morning, before nap and night (and sometimes skipping the pre-nap if we’re out & about), I feel freer but after this illness, I also feel like my son is more vulnerable to illness with less breastmilk intake. I’m not ready to put him out into the world without that layer of protection.

He woke this morning temping in a 98.1 and was in fine spirits all day. So far he’s been sleeping soundly since a few minutes after we gave him his drops again four hours ago. If he needs to nurse tonight, I’ll turn the clock back a few months to make sure he gets well.

“Look, Mommy! Look! Jessica! Jessica!”

My son has taken to calling me by my first name if I don’t respond to my parental moniker when he’s called it out two or three times. My ears perk up and I realize I was ignoring my darling little boy for eight seconds. Yesterday I left him asleep with the windows open in the car while I sat on the front porch with my laptop on my knees. I thought I heard a “Mommy,” but wasn’t sure if it was a kid down the street. And then, from the carseat, I heard a clear “Jessica!”

On one hand, I think this is cute and actually rather clever of my little dude. He knows how to work it. But I also don’t love just how effective this is and worry that I’m giving off the appearance of only listening to my son when he speaks to me like a peer.

And yet I’m perfectly content having my son refer to my friends by their first names, unless they object. We sometimes make a half-hearted attempt at putting “Miss” in front of their names, but not religiously. Only a few of the other kids we know have attempted to call me by my name to my face. EJ refers to all my friends by name with me, but I can’t say that I’ve heard him try to get someone’s attention by calling her name the way he does with me and, in the last few days with his dad. “John! Where are you, John?”

Hearing my name coming out of my son’s mouth has made me feel like he is much older, and every time I hear it, it makes me feel somehow different about my relationship to him. It’s kind of like how he asks, “What’s Mommy have?” when simply looking at a wrinkle on my foot. I’m seeing myself as this little toddler sees me and am not sure yet exactly what that means.

See a revised version of this piece on the July 4, 2008 MotherVerse Blog.

A hickey, a buzz, chocolate and babysitting all in one night. Sounds like high school. But it was really my husband’s 37th birthday. And he wasn’t the one to give me the hickey.

Even though it was his special day, I decided to hand the toddler over to my husband so I could go for a run. I was shooting for 10 miles and am registered for a half-marathon in three weeks. My husband was supposed to be playing Ultimate Frisbee, but the sodden ground caused his tournament to be canceled. The following day was mother’s day, and, if history was any guide, I didn’t have much in the way of festivities (or a gift that wasn’t for the house, or probably even a card) to expect. I made my own priorities instead of waiting around to be disappointed. The incessant rain seemed to be taking a break Saturday afternoon, so I seized the opportunity for a run on the bike trail. Who wants to run 10 miles on the treadmill in the gym if there’s a spot of sun to chase?

When I got home, our son hadn’t yet napped, and it didn’t look like that was going to happen. I had agreed to babysit that night for a neighbor. If we were going to get out for a birthday dinner and back home by 7:30, we’d just have to keep the boy up and put him to bed earlier than his usual 8:30 (or 9:00, or 9:30). But while I lounged on the couch in a sweatshirt nursing him post-shower, pre-restaurant, my husband opened a note from the IRS that told him he’d forgotten to pay them what he owed them once he became an independent contractor. He was being issued a penalty. Livid, he went downstairs to search his records. I turned my attention to a volume of Best American Short Stories, and before I knew it, the boy’s eyes were closed.

After he’d stopped trying to feel me up, I knew he was truly asleep. But when we tried to wake him, he clamored for more, so I switched him to the other side to even myself out. He fell back asleep, but when I delatched him, he was so disoriented, he started sucking on the bottom half of my breast. He never loses his bearings; he always finds my nipple, but this time he was really out of it. I laughed and guided him back up to the source.

After we got him to wake up in a good mood, I went upstairs to change and gasped as I caught a glimpse in the mirror. The kid had given me a hickey. His mouth was stronger than I thought.

And so was the wine at the restaurant. I hadn’t had a full glass in a long time. Once home, I got ready for my babysitting gig with the biggest buzz I’ve had since I drank a whole bottle of Kombucha with dinner at Whole Foods another Saturday night.

And though I’d quit eating chocolate back in college because I thought it gave me a headache just like my mom (who also abstains), I recently started craving it and decided I wasn’t sensitive to it anymore. But I had a funny feeling that I couldn’t confess this retreat from purity to my mom. Before I headed to my babysitting gig, I ate a few bites of a Chocolove bar I’d bought myself (along with one for my husband, you know, for his birthday). I then walked myself and my laptop over to my neighbor’s house with not only a hidden hickey and a wine buzz but having indulged in a new vice. I felt pretty young and sneaky.

Within a few hours, what I felt was a little thirsty and tired, but I was still glad my husband was awake when I returned. It was nice to get some adult action on the couch for a change.

I thought it was cute when my 23-month-old son tugged on his male member and said, several times in a row, “Hi, Penis.”

I thought it was funny when he pointed to his father’s post shower noodle and labeled, like he does so many other objects, “Penis.”

I did not think it was as funny, after my shower a few hours later on the same day, when my son stuck his miniature index finger into my scruffy muff and said, “Penis.”

What’s a good feminist to do? I was never the biggest fan of the French feminists but still didn’t want to play into that Freudian trap of being defined by the lack – “No honey, I don’t have one of those things you know and love so well.” But does he really need to learn “vagina” right now?

It’s winter, and I haven’t bathed with him for months. Our body part discussion of late has been focused north of the equator. He points to my sorry chapped nipples and says, “Nurse!” and that’s plenty literal enough for me right now. What good will it do to add the word “breast” to his vocabulary just now? It’s bad enough that he starts to feel me up in public shouting “Wanna nurse you!” I don’t think anyone needs to hear an anatomy lesson on top of that, and I worry where “vagina” would come out if we introduced it in this developmental stage, which seems to be a cross between a coked up Adam in Eden pulling names out of his ass and then looking over his should to see if he’s right and poor simple Tarzan tackling pronouns.

I expect that with my son’s father and I both sporting dark brown triangles in the same spot, he is less likely to get the fact that mine doesn’t have a dangly than he would be if I were appropriately depiliated for the 21^st century. If I’d sported a Brazilian wax like I’m told Katherine Heigl does in Knocked Up (I haven’t been to a movie in two years so I can’t be sure), would the boy notice my folds and say whatever connected up in his brain what he saw? My mind scans his past culinary experiences to recall whether or not he’s ever seen a taco. He might know the color pink; I’m not sure.

Maybe I should have taught him “genitals” instead of penis. The boy clearly identifies the space between legs as penis-territory. Maybe we could have just generalized with the G-word, like saying “firefighter” instead of “fireman,” though so far that has not worked with “snowman.”

If he were a girl, I think I’d be more matter-of-fact from the get-go. I might expect that she could take in the knowledge and deal with the fact and she and her mom shared something that Daddy didn’t. But this little boy is so attached, I’m not sure he can handle the idea that he wasn’t made in my image — or that I don’t match his.

I am surprised to find that, for all my graduate work in women’s studies, it wasn’t until I became the stay-at-home mom of a boy that I seriously, practically considered the formation of gender identity. But the matter is not entirely in my hands, so to speak.

Tonight I overheard my son on the changing table as his father readied him for bed. “Penis?” the boy said in that half-question that expects a big affirmation complete with italics, “Yes that is a penis.” Knowing I was in earshot but ignorant of the bathroom vocabulary session the other day and of this blog post I drafted last night, my husband replied to our son, “Yep. Does Mommy have a penis?”

This post can also be found on my new blog, http://www.crunchychewymama.blogspot.com