Made a decision. Oh thanks, it's sunny sune on I haddasion nat Hey
everybody, it's me Stephanie Wilder Tailor. You're getting an extra show in your
feed. Here's what it is. This is chapter one from my book Drunkish.
I love you, guys. I'm trying to promote my book, but
also I thought it would be fun to just have it be like a separate
show. It's the full chapter one. It's thirty minutes of me reading you
a story. I hope you guys enjoy it. Thank you for listening.
Love you. Chapter one Motherhood the beginning of the end two thousand and four
BC, before conception. My first thought when the plus sign appeared on the
EPT was, oh shit. You would have thought I was a fifteen year
old sophomore in high school looking down the barrel at teen mom life, and
not a thirty six going on thirty seven year old adult woman. Truthfully,
I was a massive mix of emotions giddy, happy, terrified, and secretly
relieved. Although we'd never one hundred percent committed to trying to have a baby
and were just going to see if it happened naturally by pulling the goalie,
I was worried it might take a herculean effort to get pregnant at my advanced
maternal age. I didn't know if I'd be up for fertility drugs, specialty
doctors, and everything the process might entail. So yeah, I was relieved,
but a little shock that it happened so fast. A big part of
my reluctance to go all in on trying to conceive was that I never quite
felt like a grown up myself. I'd been in the habit of drinking most
nights. In the one bedroom Santa Monica apartment I shared with my then boyfriend
very recently turned husband John, we lived like twenty some things, even though
we were both in our late thirties, drinking cabernet and eating takeout at eleven
PM in front of the Sopranos or The Daily Show. It wasn't unusual for
us to run out of wine and go grab another bottle from the grocery store,
whose parking lot was conveniently connected to our back alley. We stayed up
every night until one or two AM, yet somehow we could easily wake up
for our TV jobs the next morning if we drank enough coffee. On weekends,
we went to parties or out to dinner with our friends who also had
no kids. My husband was usually the designated driver, because even when I
offered to stay sober, despite my best intentions, I'd be luggaged by the
end of the night. I did worry about my drinking. Sometimes I got
brutal hangovers that didn't seem quite normal. I often blacked out and couldn't remember
anything that happened the night before. In high school, I got into two
car accidents where I'd been drinking, although I never got in trouble, and
it's quite possible I hadn't even been drunk. In my estimation, I hadn't
suffered any real consequences of my drinking besides occasionally embarrassing myself. One night,
I got so drunk that when we got home, I fell asleep mid blow
job. John made a joke the next day that I'd taken a cock nap.
I was mortified, but had to admit it was sort of funny.
Luckily, Santa Monica is densely populated with restaurants and bars. We could easily
reach on foot as long as I didn't wear heels. Our favorite dive bar,
Shayja, was the place my husband first said I Love you, and
where we often ended the night with a final beer or three. We saw
movies, we went to concerts, and we ate at Noah's Bagels for breakfast.
Every weekend, we could walk to our favorite sushi restaurant, where we
would start out with a large house saki and a large supporo. We began
a tradition where we would always pour each other's sake into our little glazed cups,
because it shows honor and reverence to the other person, and also it's
fun. If one of us forgot, the other would just wait cup empty
until the other one noticed, and then we'd have at least three more rounds,
mostly instigated by me. Let's go for one more large saki, I'd
say, already fairly drunk, and John would oblige. One time, we
got drunk enough to try blowfish, a Japanese delicacy they call fugu, which
is poisonous and can kill you if it's not prepared properly. We fed each
other the mildly flavored fish on its little bed of sweet rice, and then
stared each other down while we waited to see if we'd live or die.
Life was good. I wasn't sure if I wanted kids, but because I
was edging into my mid thirties, I felt obligated to give it major consideration.
It seemed like the next logical step in life, and although John would
have been fine waiting another ten years, I knew I didn't have that kind
of leeway. I knew for sure I wanted to get married. I'd pushed
for it for years, bringing it up constantly. John was very slow moving
and methodical when it came to making decisions, which only sped me up.
Marriage was the real goal. A proposal would mean I was chosen, wanted,
But most importantly and selfishly, i'd feel secure, a feeling I'd wanted
since childhood. I'd know someone loved me. Most of all, I knew
I loved John. He was a great guy, easy going and funny and
the smartest person I'd ever met. But it was also easy to love him
because I wasn't one hundred percent convinced he loved me quite as much as I
loved him. I had this nagging feeling that John would definitely survive if I
broke up with him, and that made me want to punch him, but
also made the relationship less threatening. His security and self sufficiency made him desirable
even at my own expense. Babies, on the other hand, are needy.
In my estimation, you have to be pretty selfless to be a parent.
I didn't always view myself as a natural nurturer. I wasn't the friend
who thought to set up the meal train when your life went sideways. I
was the someone who's better at this stuff, will set it up and then
they'll let me know how to help friend. But I grew up being told
I was selfish and self centered, so I couldn't be sure if that was
actually who I was, or if that was just how I believed I was.
Maybe I could step up once I was engaged. The question of whether
I should try for a baby loomed even larger now that I was thirty six.
My eggs were almost eligible for an AARP card, and I needed to
decide on a plan of action. I brought it up with my therapist Linda
during a session. She sat in her comfy chair and I sat across from
her on a love seat adorned with two cross stitch decorative pillows, one of
which said hope and the other healing. I picked up the healing pillow and
clutched it on my lap. How do I know if I'm ready to have
a baby. I mean, I'm just not sure. Maybe something's wrong with
me. I feel like I should want it more. I trusted Linda,
which was unusual for me, because I have a bad history with therapists.
The way some women always end up dating douchebags, I always end up with
bad therapists. One tried to set me up with a married doctor at the
hospital where she worked. One canceled a session because she got a potato chip
in her eye, yet still build me, and one yelled at me because
I wasn't getting in touch with my anger. But Linda was different. She
was kind and empathetic, but also no nonsense when necessary. She once shocked
me by referring to my biological father as a motherfucker because she knew swearing was
my love language. She had short, no fuss, gray hair, but
counterbalanced it with expansive, multicolored Maxi skirts. The resulting look was theater major
who went back to school to learn to treat PTSD. The only thing that
set my teeth on edge was that there was a framed poster on the wall
of her waiting room listing the twelve steps of alcoholics anonymous. The rest of
this space was calming, with neutral colored walls, a painting of a windswept
sand dune, and a few hanging philodendrons. But that poster was like a
tiny bloodstain on an otherwise press steam white sheet. I often felt as if
the poster was taunting me, daring me to look at my drinking, but
I had no intention of doing that. I had bigger fish to fry.
I looked at Linda, ready for her trademark therapeutic advice. When it comes
to having a baby, most people don't decide, they just do. It
was all she had for me. You'll be okay either way. Eventually,
two months later I was married, newly pregnant, and moving to the suburbs.
I had worried that it would be difficult to abandon our lifestyle at the
drop of a hat. In particular, I worried about quitting drinking while I
was pregnant, not because I had a problem, but because it was such
a big part of my life. These days, the common wisdom is that
no amount of alcohol is safe during pregnancy, at least according to some little
known authorities like oh, the CDC and the American College of Obstetrics. But
at that time people were a little looser, and my ob said I could
have one or two drinks a week, which was good news to me and
for anyone who's scandalized by that. Let's keep in mind that it wasn't until
nineteen eighty one that women were advised drinking while pregnant might not be a great
idea, and only thirty or forty years before that, Winston ran ads telling
women to smoke cigarettes because it would keep their baby slim and make for an
easier delivery. I imagine a happy obstetrician in the hospital, ciggy dangling from
their mouth, letting out of victorious yes as they catch a tiny baby that
just slid out of its mother's birth canal with barely a push because she smoked
two packs a day. Ironically, the first nine weeks of pregnancy felt exactly
like an extended hangover, minus the alcohol, and I felt too sick to
want to drink anyway. I couldn't do much more than lie on the couch,
getting up every so often to dry heave or eat a saltine. But
once I no longer felt incapacitated by nausea. Twenty four to seven, the
sun rose high into the sky, and my anxiety faded out, as if
someone had hit the dimmer switch. A slight edge of irritability that I'd always
figured was just part of my DNA was suddenly gone. No drinking, no
problem. I didn't know why I had ever felt like drinking every weeknight was
something I needed to do, and I didn't feel deprived. After all,
I could still have two drinks a week. I found that I was terrific
at self control. Of course, I got a little obsessed with those two
drinks and plotted when I would have them both on a Friday night, spread
evenly throughout the week, maybe one on a Tuesday and one on a Saturday.
I had nervous thoughts, like what if I blow my alcohol lot on
Monday and lock myself out of a single glass of wine for the upcoming weekend.
But I never went above those two glasses. I was a moderation rock
star. I didn't think too far into the future about the actual having a
baby part. It still felt so far away. Two thousand and four ad
after delivery, when I got home from the hospital, I realized the elevated
hormone levels that buoyed me through pregnancy had made an irish exit, slipping out
with my placenta. The baby swung in like a seven pound, two ounce
wrecking ball, leveling any semblance of the life I'd built for myself. Sleep
deprivation hit me hard. My daughter was up all night and slept all day
like she lived in some Vegas casino. I'd barely slept in the hospital,
and now I wasn't sleeping at home either, because the baby wouldn't so much
as cat nap unless she was in our bed. I'd had no idea how
much I took sleep for granted until it was no longer an option. Breastfeeding
was incredibly difficult due to a breast reduction surgery twenty years prior. At the
time, I had given zero fox that detaching my nipples and then sewing them
back on could negatively affect my ability to breastfeed. I just didn't want to
look like Dolly Parton. But now that I was stuck with malfunctioning boobs unable
to produce more than a niqual cups worth of milk, I felt like a
failure. I wanted parenting to be good. I loved this tiny creature and
felt a primal need to protect her, but my experience was clouded by crushing
anxiety. Was she hungry, tired, cold, hot, bored, scared,
sad? Was I holding her correctly, feeding her correctly, burping her
correctly? If I had any maternal instinct, it was hidden behind a veil
of fear. I started buying up books on Amazon, Healthy Sleep, habits,
happy Child, the Happiest baby on the block, What to expect the
first year. I know what you're thinking, Why didn't I get these books
before I had a baby? Because I didn't have a baby. Then I
was pregnant, I bought pregnancy books. Duh. My husband took the first
couple of weeks off his sixty hour a week job after the baby came home,
and he really tried to help. One evening, he sent me to
bed and slept on the couch all night with our daughter on his chest.
It was the best six hours of my life up to that point. Once
I was fully formula feeding, he also took on many of the late night
feedings, fueling himself on coffee and Rockstar energy drinks. But as much as
he pitched in. It didn't stop my anxiety, which was getting worse during
those sleepless nights. I worried it might never get better. What if I'd
made a monumental mistake that I couldn't take back, and then I'd feel guilty
for even having that awful thought. Would I be forced to pretend I was
happy and fine with my choices for the foreseeable future. Very quickly, John's
time off timed out and he was able to escape watching me cry and complain.
He went back to his TV production office, and he often didn't get
home until after nine PM or nine thirty, sometimes even ten. Although he
complained about the long hours and said he wanted to get home earlier, I
found that hard to believe. I imagined long lingorious lunches, an endless supply
of Starbucks lattes at his disposal, frequent chats with his fun coworkers, probably
cute female co who weren't sporting cellulate on their arms from recently giving birth.
When he walked in the door, exhausted from helping with the late night feedings
and then working a twelve hour day, I didn't feel bad for him.
I felt jealous and slightly resentful. One thing I found to take the edge
off was a glass of wine. It was something to look forward to,
something for me, a treat to celebrate white knuckling it through another day of
infant care, and since I was no longer pregnant, I could drink again.
It was a beautiful reunion. Wine was like an ex boyfriend I'd been
on break from when I was pregnant, and now that we were back together,
I couldn't understand how I'd lived without him. I'd always liked wine,
but now I really liked wine. It was reliable, accessible, and socially
acceptable. One glass definitely helped, but I found that two or even three
worked better. When I would ask John to stop by the store on his
way home from work every night to grab a bottle, it raised no alarm
bells. It's not as if I was checking if he could score a Gramma
coke. It was normal. All of us moms were doing it well.
Almost the first time I realized not every mom drank like me. I was
having lunch at a Mexican restaurant near my house with my new mom friend Lara,
and our six month old babies. Lara and I had met at a
Mommy and Me class held at a temple in my neighborhood. I wasn't religious
so much as desperate to make some friends with babies. I liked Lara.
We had bonded over our mutual irritation at having to sing all the verses of
wheels on the bus. We agreed everything after the wipers on the bus go
swish, swish, swish was excessive. By the time you get to the
babies on the bus, go wow wow, wha, it's just diminishing returns.
She was someone I felt I could hang with. She seemed like she
got me, like we had an understanding, which was that even though we
just had babies, we wanted to still be ourselves. It was a relief
to have connected with someone because I was definitely struggling. As soon as we
were seated at our patio table with our babies situated in two high chairs,
Laura pulled out a disposable sesame street place mat, laid it on her daughter's
high chair tray, then broke out hand sanitizer for both us and the babies.
Here, put out your hand. She said, this was pre COVID,
so it felt a little extra. She squirted a gel into all of
our hands and then sat back satisfied. This poor woman clearly dealt with her
own brand of anxiety. But I knew what would help. Let's get a
margarita, I said, like it was a done deal, Like, of
course, we're getting a margarita, because we're out of the house, in
a Mexican restaurant and already with our babies momming. Plus what else did we
have to do? It wasn't like either of us had pressing plans. Where
were we going besides home to do more of the same. A frozen margarita
sounded so damn good. I could taste it already, the icy, sweet
tart flavor with just the perfect kick to let me know there was a good
amount of alcohol, and I'd soon feel the familiar softening, the quiet confidence
that would set in. Whispering to me in a soft margueritea voice. You
got this, mama. See it's not all so hard. There are moments
of bliss like this. You're doing great. Your baby is in a possibly
clean diaper, happily eating shredded cheese. There's nothing to worry about. Motherhood
is not so bad, right, But Laura interrupted my drink soothing monologue.
Oh no, not for me. I'm such a lightweight. Since the baby,
I wouldn't be able to drive home. What the fuck? What was
wrong with her? Was she on antibiotics? Not even just one? I
really can't even half a drink would make me feel drunk these days. But
you go ahead, go ahead. I wasn't going to just go ahead drink
alone. That seemed really lushy. I tried to hide that it mattered so
much. Inwardly, I cursed the fact that I have one of those faces
where you can always read my expression. It had always been a problem with
teachers and bosses and at poker games. The last thing I wanted to seam
was desperate for a drink, because I definitely wasn't. I just thought it
would be fun to let loose a little. I wanted to feel like a
grown woman out for lunch with a girlfriend, and not a mom with a
capital M who'd spent the better part of an hour packing a diaper bag with
a fucking duck on it, pre mixing bottles, preemptively changing a diaper,
applying oragel, making sure I had my Highlands teething tablets, which I compulsively
fed my baby like she was a teenage boy popping tic TACs on a first
date. This was all so much harder and way more responsibility than I thought
it would be. And sitting at that table with the stupid sesame street place
mats, seeing orange cheese strewn all over the floor, despite the fact that
we'd been seated less than ten minutes, felt downright depressing. Fuck it,
I deserved it. I ordered the drink, and I drank it alone.
I found being a stay at home mom incredibly isolating. I'd worked since I
was sixteen and had gotten my first job at burger king. Over the next
twenty years, I waited tables, sold off as supplies over the phone,
clerked at a life insurance company, did stand up comedy while waiting table some
more, drove a limo, and eventually found my place working in television.
I felt the most like myself when I was at work. It gave me
identity, a sense of community, and a lot of snacks. I'd always
imagine myself squeezing out the kid and being back at work after six weeks.
But even though John was progressive in every other way, he thought that someone
should be at home with the baby at least for the first year. That
person was going to have to be me, since John had an ongoing job
and I was working on a pilot that would be over before my due date.
It had made sense in the abstract while I was still pregnant, and
I'd agreed it was probably for the best. It wasn't as if I relished
the idea of leaving a six week old with a stranger. I imagined coming
home from a day at work and finding the babies that are breastfeeding my baby,
all while Rebecca de Mornay in the hand that rocks the cradle. But
now that it was a reality, I felt like staying home was a mistake.
I wasn't about this life. I needed community, I needed purpose,
I needed a break from the monotony. But the problem was, since I
didn't technically have a job, I'd have to try to get one, and
any TV jobs I put myself out for would entail a ten to twelve hour
day, possibly more if there were a commute plus. In my experience,
TV jobs were no place for new moms at that time in the culture,
moms in a writer's room were more rare than natural boobs. I remember working
on Family Feud and my coworkers making fun of a new mom who had worked
there for a brief time. Apparently most of her submissions were things like name
a gift you'd bring to a baby shower, or name or reason an infant
might be crying at the time. I laughed along with the guys. New
moms are ridiculous one track minds. Of course, now I think that woman
was a genius. I mean, who's watching Family Feud moms. One night,
when the baby was only a few months old, feeling desperate for connection
to other moms, starved for a creative outlet, and brave from two or
three glasses of chardonnay, I started a blog on a whim. I called
it baby on Board. I used it to get my edgy yet comedic thoughts
on parenting out of my head and into the world. Luckily, it struck
a chord with other moms, other new moms who were also a few glasses
in, sitting in front of their computers, reading blogs and trying to figure
out just what the fuck had happened to their lives. These other moms and
I would read each other's posts and leave comments, and slowly we formed a
little community. I could share things on my blog I didn't feel comfortable saying
to people in real life. My blog led to a book deal, and
a year or so later, I published Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay.
The book did pretty well, and after numerous appearances on the Today Show,
I was known for being ruthlessly honest about everything from breastfeeding to not falling in
love with my baby be at first sight. And I was also known for
talking about drinking a lot. But when I was writing the book, even
though I was relieved to have a little gig, I had no idea if
anything would come of it. Plus it wasn't a lot of money, and
I wasn't in an office with coworkers, so I still felt disconnected. I
made it my business to find some like minded friends. I met Susan at
my Jim, one of the few organized activities I did with my daughter.
I just wasn't one of those go getter moms who went from toddler tap dance
to swim lessons to te ball. I was more like browse the dollar tree,
hit the park for an hour and call it a full day. Susan
was cool. She had a son about the same age as my toddler daughter,
and her husband was a lawyer who worked an insane amount of hours like
mine, so she was alone most of the day and into the evening and
therefore pretty bored like me. I'd invite myself over a few afternoons a week
and make myself at home on a swivel stool at her kitchen counter. We'd
boil the kids in pasta, serve it up to them with butter and shaky
cheese, along with a juice box, and crack open a bottle of Chardonnay
for ourselves. I was so grateful for the company and somewhere to go.
Laura and I still hung out, but she was way more of a plan
maker, wanting to book activities a week in advance, and I was more
of a planned canceler who liked to decide if I felt like doing something at
the last minute. Susan was as laid back as I was high strung,
and although she didn't seem to need wine the way I did, she didn't
call attention to it either. Since she lived less than a mile from my
house, it never seemed risky to have a drink. Sometimes I would have
two and need to wait to drive my daughter home because I felt buzzed.
Sometimes I drove home anyway. Having a glass of wine at Susan's made me
feel more relaxed, more patient. It made things seem almost fun, and
I thought it gave me the ability to be more in the moment, less
focused on my worry that this might be how I would feel for the rest
of my life. What was I supposed to do not drink? That seemed
an unreasonable expectation of myself. After all, I was providing my daughter with
an enriching afternoon. Sometimes we'd fill an inflatable baby pool, slather our kids
with broad spectrum SPF fifty sunscreen, and let them splash and play for hours
while standing over them watching them like hawks. Didn't we deserve a little fun
as well. The thing was that having wine in the late afternoon was nice,
but I also needed wine to get through the evening. So I would
get home from Susan's, do bathtime, read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and
wait for John to get home from work so I could open a new bottle
with him as if it was the first of the evening. Hi, honey,
let me open some wine. Of course, since many nights John didn't
come home from work until nine or ten o'clock, I had to open a
bottle of wine before that if I wanted to float through the late afternoon straight
through to everyone's bedtime. I hated the feeling of my buzz wearing off,
but for me, staying buzzed without getting slow was a tough balancing act.
Knowing when I've had enough was never my strong suit. The Halloween, just
before my daughter turned to Susan, who was a regular at craft stores and
Shishi baby shops, brought over a little puffy bumblebee costume, the kind perfect
for photo ops, so we could go trick or treating together. It was
going to be me, John, Susan, her husband Billy, and Susan's
mom. Since we were entertaining, I decided festive Halloween cocktails were in order.
On the internet, I found a recipe for something called a tutsie roll
using kolua and orange juice Halloween colors. It sounded good. Unfortunately, the
other folks in our tricker treating troop thought the combination sounded disgusting and stuck to
beer or water, which really seemed lame. But whatever, more for me,
I scooped some ice from the freezer tray and poured myself a big glass
of kolua, adding a splash of oj Damn, it really tasted just like
a tutsie roll. I discovered a new drink. Maybe I'd put together some
kind of holiday drink recipe coffee table book. These people were really missing out.
By the time we hit the streets, I was feeling amazing. Afterward,
I saw the pictures of us walking down the sidewalk, my little girl
and Susan's little dude their plastic orange pumpkin buckets in hand to collect their candy
earnings. But I couldn't remember any of it, well, not more than
a few flashes. I remembered bonding with Susan's mom, who was only about
ten years older than me, actually slightly closer in age to me than Susan.
But the next day I was told exactly how much we'd bonded. In
my drunken state, I'd made her my bestie, monopolizing her attention, exchanging
stories and contact info, claiming that we were definitely going to stay in touch,
even though no one else seemed too bothered by my behavior. I was
mortified, not only had I embarrassed myself once again. I'd missed Halloween.
I'd missed the experience with my baby, miss seeing her walking up to the
neighbor's front doors, missed hearing them say are you a little bee? How
cute? I'd been there, I'd walked her up to those front doors,
I'd held her a little hand. But I'd robbed myself of the experience.
Those memories would forever be missing through my hangover, I lashed out at myself,
What's wrong with me? Is this the kind of mother I want to
be? I decided to quit drinking completely. I was done. This was
the wake up call I needed, and I did stop. I even went
to a few recovery meetings, but I quickly decided that I had overshot the
mark. My issue wasn't so bad that it required a program, books and
meetings and discussing my issues with other people. It was all too much.
No, I could do this on my own. Six weeks later, still
alcohol free, I found out I was pregnant with twins. The ultrasound tech
was all smiles, two babies, but it didn't seem like good news to
me. John had been on board to try for another baby. But I
had vacillated between feeling overwhelmed with just the one and occasionally feeling perhaps I could
handle one more So, during one fuck it, let's go moment, we
tried, but twins felt like suddenly being signed up for a marathon when I
just wrapped my head around jogging. Two new babies meant we'd need to either
move or add space to our house, which we couldn't afford. Twins meant
twice the diapers, twice the stress, and half the sleep of one baby.
Although I had been put on Zoloft for a postpartum anxiety, it had
shot through the roof. John, on the other hand, was decidedly more
chill about it. He had been enjoying being a dad. He read bedtime
stories, carried our baby in a backpack until she was heavy enough to threaten
spine damage, and was always up for a trip to Disneyland. You know,
dad shit. He looked at having twins as something that would be difficult
for the first few years but pay off in the long run when we're old.
Maybe I was shortsighted, although I prefer to think of it as realistic,
but I wasn't at all sure I'd survived those first few years, and
I was resentful that John wasn't as worried. Two days after the startling news,
I felt like I was going crazy. An insane amount of hormones were
flooding my system, the bad hormones, the ones that left me paranoid and
anxious, wanting to crawl out of my skin. I needed something to counter
that lethal cocktail of estrogen and progesterone that was killing my optimism. I decided
I needed one drink. I took stock of the dusty bottles of booze in
our liquor cabinet. I didn't even like the taste of Grandmarnier, but it
was the lesser evil among the jugs of hard liquor left in the house,
which included extra driver, mouth, triple sec and cooking sherry. What kind
of sad alcoholic drinks? Cooking sherry? So I grabbed a glass of OJ,
added in a healthy shot of Grandmarnier, slugged it down, and waited
to feel like having twins could be a workable situation. But nothing happened.
All I felt was guilty. I was more determined not to drink at all.
Luckily, like with my previous pregnancy, the good hormones kicked in and
made it easy to be sober. The pregnancy went smoothly until my twentieth week,
when I was alerted that one of the twins was quite a bit smaller
than the other. I was told to lie on one side to increase blood
flow to the smaller twin for three to four hours a day. I tried
my best, but I also had a two year old, a book deadline,
and construction going on in order to make our house accommodate more kids.
I had frequent visits with a doctor who specialized in high risk pregnancies, and
was finally put on hospital bed rest at thirty weeks so that my little twins'
blood flow could be monitored. Twenty four to seven. Hanging out in the
high risk ward of the hospital wasn't half bad. I was still under the
hormonal delusion that my little twin could pop out full sized, surprising us all
if I just ate enough hospital pudding. But three weeks later, I delivered
prematurely at thirty three weeks. The bigger baby was a month extras four pounds,
but the little one was only two pounds, the size of a men's
loafer both twins were promptly placed in the neonatal intensive care unit. The next
month was a blur of stressful daily NICKI visits with the babies while our older
daughter attended preschool a few days a week. Once my sea section was healed
enough that I could drive myself back and forth to the hospital, John returned
to work, hoping to save his time off for when the babies came home.
I made many of those visits alone, pushing past the heavy, double
nicky doors, scrubbing my hands in the hospital sink until they were raw and
irritated, and taking turns holding my bigger baby and staring at my tinier girl
in her isolette. I still hadn't had a drop of alcohol. After two
weeks, the bigger twin came home, and after a month, the smaller
twin was sent home to us at only three pounds, having not yet perfected
her suck swallow technique, which, as it would turn out, is a
fairly important life skill. Once both babes were home and the sleep deprivation was
kicking my ass, it suddenly occurred to me that, besides that teeny tiny
Grandmagnier slip up, I hadn't had any alcohol in almost nine months. It
meant that I didn't really have an alcohol problem. I mean, if I
were an alcoholic, there is no way I could have gone that long without
drinking and not missed it at all. This was a huge relief because I
now had newborn premi, twins, and a three year old. If there
was ever a time I needed to drink, it was right now. Although
breastfeeding hadn't worked out with my older daughter and wasn't working for my twins,
I invested in a hospital grade pump in an attempt to eke out even an
ounce of breast milk. I'd have done anything to help them grow. The
first thing I drank once I started again was beer, because I read that
dark beer stimulates the hormone prolactin, which can increase your milk supply. This
was probably bullshit, but at the time it seemed like as good an excuse
as any. You'll be shocked to find out beer didn't turn me into a
miracle milk machine. But even if it had, my little twin wasn't eating.
By the time she was four months old, she only weighed eight pounds
as much as a normal newborn. Feeding her was a struggle and doctors couldn't
figure out why it was. Around this time we realized she had other challenges
as well, and we were assigned a number of therapists to intervene, an
occupational therapist, physical therapist, a child development specialist, and a nutritionist.
Meanwhile, I didn't even have a hairstylist. Besides all that was going on
with her, my book was due and I had two other kids. Yeah,
I had a lot on my plate. Thank god I wasn't an alcoholic