“Momma, I want a new muver.”
Oh, good grief, I thought we were beyond this.
We are in the Loser Cruiser, zipping along the Pike on our way to New York, to Luke’s birthday. I am handing Ren bites of bagel and an orange juice to sip from. I have just told her she can’t have cookies.
“Baby, do you want more juice?”
“I not your baby,” she says. “I want a new muver.” She stares. I consider for a second, put the juice in the cup holder, and pick up my In Touch magazine.
###
“Momma.” Ren says. “Momma. MommamommamommamommaMAAAAAAAMA!!!”
Is Angelina Jolie really pregnant again? Ooo … story on page 12.
“Mamamamamamamamamma!!!” Ren shrieks.
“Momma?” Mare asks. “Why aren’t you answering Renny?”
“Because I am not her mother. So I don’t have to answer her any more.”
“MAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”
“Oh. Well can you turn up the volume on the movie?”
“Sure, Love.”
“MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Cute Husband: You really can be a bitch sometimes.
Me: Yeah, and you wonder where she gets it.
###
“Momma, please may I have some more juice.”
I turn to acknowledge Ren for the first time in 10 miles.
“Am I your Momma?”
She pauses, her face a battlefield of emotions. She knows I have won and it’s pissing her off.
“Momma, it was my tummy that said that. My tummy says it doesn’t want you for a Momma any more.”
I put the juice back in the cup holder, and turn back to my magazine.
“My tummy wants Miss Ellie,” she taunts. “Call Miss Ellie, tell her we coming right now and I her baby.”
Oh, how I’d love to. Unfortunately, I swore to support her sobriety.
###
“Momma, I sorry.” It’s an exhausted little whimper. Her outrage morphed to concern, and then into sobs which have just now subsided. She reaches her hand out to me.
I take her hand and squeeze.
“Never ever say that to Momma again,” I say. “It’s mean. And Momma doesn’t deserve mean.”
“I love you,” she kisses my hand. I hand her the juice and she gulps down a few long swallows, and I am glad she is my second. Because I am smart enough to know how much she needs me to push back without ever being cruel.
###
“I haffa pee.”
“That works out well, I have to barf.”
“I haffa pee SO BADLY!!”
I coach her through holding it while Cute Husband pulls the Loser Cruiser off at an urban Connecticut exit with a Bertuccis. I fly out the door and waddle to the ladies’ room.
“MOMMMA!! I WANT YOU!!” Ren shrieks. (It’s feast or famine with her.)
From the ladies’ room, I can hear her shrieking at her father in the men’s room. I am finished before they are and I wait for them on a bench outside the restrooms.
“She wouldn’t pee,” Cute Husband says, dropping her on me.
“But she said –”
“I know. I put her on the toilet and she just screamed at me and refused to go.”
She sits, blinking at me. I take her to the ladies’ room and drop her on the toilet. She pees instantly.
“I sorry, Momma,” she says. “I just really wanted you.”
I stare, speechless.
“I really sorry,” she says again, peeing happily away. We collect Cute Husband in the hallway. “I sorry, Daddy,” she says, with a smooch to his forehead.
That may be the first case of bladder-control-for-spite I’ve ever heard of.
###
“This baby sure does kick a lot,” I tell Auntie on the phone. “Today I was at Trader Joe’s and a woman said, ‘Excuse me, but I think ther’s a foot sticking out of your side!’”
“She’s going to be just like Ren.”
“Cosmically imposisble,” I answer. “God does not give us more than we can handle.”
###
“I don’t see any signs of labor,” the doctor says, peering at the dark sonogram screen. I find cervixes infinitely less interesting to look at on sonograms than babies are.
I’ve been bleeding, and I am the proud owner of the two most thorough maternal medicine doctors on the planet Earth. They didn’t waste a lot of time chatting before sending me to the super-duper sono machine to check things out. So here’s me, feet in the stirrups with my kids in the room.
I’ve banished them to play behind a curtain. They’re pretending to be the Wizard of Oz, officially making this one of the more trippy doctor’s appointments I’ve ever had.
“You must kill the witch!” Mare is intoning, while swinging her sister in a rolling office chair.
“You have a very long cervix,” the doc says. Oh. Swell. Is that good?
Apparently the cervix is good to go and now we’re going to check out the placenta. This one is done abdominally, so I get to sit up a little while the doctor finds the belly transducer.
We let Mare and Ren come out from behind the curtain.
“Cool!” Mare says. She grasps one of the stirrups and swings from it. Renny follows suit with the other one.
“What are these for?”
“My feet,” I say casually.
“Oh, put your feet in them, then,” Mare says.
“Not right now,” I say.
“Really, the doctor wants you to!”
“NOTRIGHTNOW!!” I hiss.
“Sheesh, okay, Momma,” Mare says. The doctor grins at me and piles jelly squiggles on my belly.
Ren scampers up to sit beside me on the exam table.
The girls look at the screen with wide blue eyes. And then from the darkness a face is peering back at them. I have managed to stay completely calm all afternoon, but as Ren inhales sharply next to me, I start to shake.
“Sissy,” she breathes, and waves. Just then the baby’s hand comes up.
“She’s waving back, Ren,” I say. She squeals.
“She’s beautiful,” Mare whispers. “Hi, Baby Sister!”
I force breaths through my tight chest. I’m so tired. I want to go home. I want to feel better.
Someone comes and takes the kids to raid a holiday cookie basket in the snack room. The doctor goes with them, and then comes back a few minutes later to talk to me.
“Everything’s fine,” he tells me. He is peering at a more detailed picture of a placenta then I could have imagined anyone would ever want. “I don’t know what it was, but you and baby look just fine.”
I nod, breathe.
“You have great kids,” he tells me. “So well behaved. They’ve selected cookies. They both picked the smallest ones.” Just then my girls march in chomping on gigantic frosted cookies on sticks. Mare’s is a snowman, Ren’s a snowflake. I laugh.
“You’re ready for three,” the doc says. I wonder if he has any idea how much he has just made my day. I smile and then he looks down and frowns.
“What happened to her shoes?” he points to Ren’s pink socks, now brown on the bottoms.
“Can we just pretend we don’t see that?” I asked.
“Haha Renny’s not wearing shoes and Momma didn’t figure it out until after we walked through the slushy parking lot!! AHAHAHAHA!” Mare said.
Always, always something manages to kill the mood.
###
Left on DaMomma’s voicemail:
“Hey, Liz, it’s El. Here’s what I think about Ren and my sobriety: there’s a rule in recovery that if you are in pain, you are allowed to take something for the pain because it doesn’t elevate you, it brings you back to baseline. So in my little alcoholic mind I am thinking you’d be doing me a favor letting me take her because no one could ever blame me for needing to drink again.”
###
