by Julie Prince
I got the first inkling at one AM while sitting in bed watching The Man Who Would Be King. My water broke; we jumped into a taxi and went straight to the hospital as you do with your first, even after the doctor tells you not to rush.
I have yet to see the rest of the movie.
The pains increased, I dilated, but the baby in my belly who had not moved one inch for fourteen solid hours and shown no sign of readiness, only decided to come on out—and pretty much all at once, as if it had pressed the Lobby button in an elevator—right after my second dose of Demerol (sweet, sweet, Demerol).
You don’t give Demerol to a laboring mom-to-be who’s about to deliver, because the doctor needs that mom to be on task and ready to follow orders (“Push, push, push! Now stop. Take a breath. OK, push again. Push, push, push!”) and Moms on Demerol tend to be incoherent and belligerent which is the state I was in at the moment of this sudden occurence.
Down and out and welcome to the world.
Peter told me later that I cursed out the nurse and ranted about baking bread. What? I wouldn’t curse out anybody, especially a nurse. And I’ve never baked bread in my life, unless you count those Pop-n-Fresh crescent rolls.
I came around from my drug-addled state just in time to hear the new Daddy announce, “It’s a girl! No, wait! It’s a boy! No wait…it’s a….” Peter had apparently forgotten which gender carries the penis. “It’s a girl,” said the doctor when I lifted my head and looked around for tie-breaking vote.
A little girl. Everett was here.
Yes, Everett, that’s right. Named for her great great grandmother.
She wasn’t much of a breast feeder. And I didn’t have much guidance in the hospital, other than a nurse on the maternity ward throwing something at me. What’s this? A medieval torture device? Yipes, it’s a breast pump. No thanks. But we tried, Everett and I. We spent many sleepless nights those first few weeks as we both tried to get the hang of it. Peter’s well-meaning cousin, a La Leche disciple, called practically every day to give me pep talks. As she cheered me on, I sat shirtless on the sofa, my little girl in my arms, and tried to imagine how mother mammals for millions of years had sustained their offspring on their own milk.
If they’d all been like me, humans would be extinct.
But I couldn’t. Everett wasn’t a particularly hungry baby, and she’d cry and cry as I tried to get her to latch on. Though I kept at it longer than I thought I could, I was never the patient sort. And it began to look like my baby daughter was an apple who hadn’t fallen far from the tree. And we were both struggling with the sleep deprivation. My temper grew short with Peter as he slept the nights away for work while she and I struggled at 3 AM, 4 AM, 5 AM…. It took my father, of all people, to tell me that I wasn’t a failure if we couldn’t get this breast feeding thing down. “Give that baby a bottle, get some sleep and get over it!”
Best advice I ever had.
And life was good. We had a beautiful, stop-‘em-in-the-streets baby daughter. The pediatrician would check for the milestones at our visits.
“Does she follow you with her eyes?”
“Yes.” Check.
“Does she reach out for a toy?”
“Yes.” Check.
“Does she wave ‘bye bye?’”
Hmmm. “No, she doesn’t, but she waves ‘hello.’ Does that count?”
“It sure does.” Check. “Does she notice herself in a mirror?”
“Are you kidding me??”
Check.
Then she started to talk. Girls, especially smart little girls like Everett, seem to spew out full sentences mere nano-seconds after their first “Da Da.” I taped picture postcards from the art museum all over the wall above the changing table. I’d point to the pictures and Everett would shout out: “Shoe! Boy! Sun! Dog! George Washington!”
That’s right. Everett could babble out an incredible approximation of “George Washington” when I’d point to the tiny picture of Gilbert Stuart’s famous portrait. She was quite the happy hit at family gatherings. Within a few months she’d take great pleasure, when we would pass it by on the West Side Highway, in pointing out “George Washington’s Bridge.”
She watched the shows kids do, Sesame Street and the like. Barney the Dinosaur was all the rage back in that day, though ask anyone who was the parent of a small child in the early nineties about Barney, and all you’ll get is a dirty look. Everett loved Barney on TV, though when “Barney” (albeit a skinnier, fuzzier, slightly different-shade-of-purple than Barney Barney) approached us in a Paramus shopping center, she shrieked so loud, it alerted mall security.
She liked grown-up shows, too. She enjoyed reruns of The Avengers, inexplicably. She’d sit on the living room carpet on her big diapered ass and watch Diana Rigg sashay around and kick butt. The first inkling of a nascent fashionista, admiring the zippered leather cat suit and teased hair? She loved The Price is Right, with all the dinging and beeping and flashing lights. Every day, after the first four contestants had “come on down,” she’d clap her hands and cheer as the music came up and the show began.
“Barker! Barker!”
You could have a relatively in-depth conversation with Everett by the time she was three. In fact, not only would she hold up her end of the exchange, she would try to hold up yours, as well. “Can I have a piece of candy, Mommy? Now you say ‘yes.’ What’s your favorite color, Mommy? Now you say, ‘yellow.’”
“OK, Everett,” I’d tell her. “Here’s how it works. When you have a conversation with someone, you get to say what you want to say…but…you don’t get to tell other people what they get to say.” She’d think about this, her little brows knitted in deep thought. She went along with it after a fashion, though I’m not sure she’s ever been totally convinced.
I don’t get to control everything? Hmmm…
Potty training.
Speaking of which.
Everett took to the process fairly easily. She got used to piddling in the little plastic training potty when she needed to. She had good control (what a shocker) and fairly few “accidents.” She’d use only the training potty at first; my removing the seat to place it on the grown up toilet to accommodate her little bottom was not an option. She would not go for it. We had to take that plastic potty wherever we went. To Grandma and Grandpa’s. To the park. To the movies. It took Everett weeks and weeks to come around to the fact that if we placed the seat on a big porcelain toilet, she would not fall through it to the depths below. But she finally did.
…Come around to the fact, that is. Not fall through to the depths.
Problem Number One (so to speak) solved.
But Problem Number Two (so to speak) still loomed large. She refused. To do Number Two, that is. In the potty, that is. Little, big, plastic, porcelain, kiddie, grown-up—it didn’t matter. Only the diaper.
Oh, she could control it, make no mistake. She could tell me when she had to go. When she did, I’d put a diaper on her, she’d take care of business, I’d take it off, throw it away, and that would be that. But it grew tricky as we entered nursery school. You can’t be in nursery school if you aren’t potty trained. It’s nursery school, not day care. Diapers don’t enter into it. You show them a diaper, they show you the door.
Everett and I worked out a system. She wanted to go to nursery school as badly as I wanted a couple of hours’ break three days a week. I’d put on her diaper and she’d have her little movement in the morning before school and then I’d take it off and she’d have no trouble getting through her half-day session and then home. It worked well.
But she couldn’t use that diaper forever, for Pete’s Sake. What would we do when she got to high school??
So we worked on it, every day. She sat there and I kneeled next to her. We’d reached the point where she could sit on the big potty in the little seat without the histrionics about falling in. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do “it.” And she was adamant. There was nothing ever namby-pamby about Everett, and this was no exception. I could have left it alone, could have let it happen in its own time, but I knew if I did that, I might blink and have a thirteen year-old in a diaper. “By George, it’s time for Everett to shit or get off the pot,” I said to Peter one night as I rubbed Ben-Gay into my knees.
And I did a bad thing.
I did a thing all the child care books told you not to do. Children, according to the books, are supposed to do things for the joy of doing them right. Doing something right is its own reward, they all say. Well, not one of these authors had ever met Everett, and with Everett, I had to up the stakes. I had to offer…GASP!
…a tangible reward.
Dunh dunh dunnnnhh!
Enter: Doo Doo Barbie.
“Doo Doo Barbie?” Peter questioned. Peter always questions. “Do you think this is a good idea? Shouldn’t Everett just learn to do it on her own? Isn’t that they way it’s supposed to work? Don’t you think you should work with her a little more, first? Don’t you think if we give her a reward for this, she’ll expect an award for everythi…”
“Peter! Stop! How much time to you spend with Everett, in that bathroom every day, on your knees on that cold tile floor, trying to get her to take a shit??”
“……”
Exactly.
So Doo Doo Barbie entered the family. She stood, “Mint in Box” on top of the bathroom medicine cabinet. Not only did Everett get to see her, but everyone, young and old alike who happened to take a stop in our headquarters did, as well. Everett knew why Doo Doo Barbie was there, that Doo Doo Barbie was nothing more than a reward for doing said task. There was no pussy-footing around, no negotiation. Then, as now, she liked her information straight and unadulterated.
“That’s Doo Doo Barbie, right Mommy?” she would ask, looking up as she sat on the potty, or even as she just passed by the bathroom.
“That’s right, Everett,” I would respond, day after day.
“And I can have Doo Doo Barbie when I do my doo doos in the potty, right, Mommy?”
“That’s right, Everett.”
And it went exactly like that for a couple of weeks. Everett would ask; I would answer. No drama.
But no doo doos, either.
She would try a little bit each time. I would wait a little longer each time, before giving in. Then I would put a diaper on her and let her take care of things in there. Everett would know when it was her time, and I didn’t press matters any more than that. Doo Doo Barbie would be incentive enough.
I mean, please…to the heavens. Please let Doo Doo Barbie be enough.
I’ve got no other tricks in my bag.
We took up are usual positions in the bathroom one evening, right before Everett’s bedtime. Me, on my pre-arthritic knees, Everett with her little panties around her ankles, and Doo Doo Barbie gazing down benevolently upon the both of us from the window of her cellophane box.
And Everett started to go for it. I hadn’t done anything different, nor had Doo Doo Barbie as far as I could tell, but something apparently clicked.
This was it.
She grunted. Groaned a little girl groan. She whimpered. She stopped, but only for a second. She started again. I sat calmly, offering only a smile and a direct gaze into those hazel eyes of hers. I had spent so many days, just like that, sitting quietly, offering not much more encouragement than the encouragement I had purchased at Toys-R-Us, the encouragement that still sat atop the medicine cabinet. It was still Everett’s hurdle to clear. It was still her goal to achieve. Silence, Mom.
But she wanted to so badly—badly enough this time to accomplish it, so it seemed. She was coming so close but still stopping just short. She was trying as hard as I was trying to stay quiet. I just looked at her. And she looked back at me. Those eyes were pleading. She wanted me to…
“C’mon Everett,” I whispered, ever so hesitantly. “You can do it.”
“Whaaa…I…I…naaa…whaaaaa”
You’re almost there, yes you can.”
“Noo…nooooo”
“C’mon Honey. C’mon. Don’t stop now.”
She grunted. She stopped, started, stopped, started. “Nooooo…” But we were still staring straight into each other’s eyes.
“Everett!! Don’t you want that Barbie??” I shouted, and we both, I think, jumped. But it was now or never. It was now or a thirteen year old in a diaper.
“Yeesss! But…but…nooooo! I caaan’t!”
“Yes you can! Yes you can, dammit! Enough is enough! Let’s GO!” This was going to be it. This was our moment.
“C’mon, c’mon, C’MON, Everett! Let’s do it! DO IT!!”
“WHHHAAAAHHH!” .
Knock knock knock. “Hello?? Is everything OK? I’m not sure you should…”
Peter.
“GET OUT! Go awayyyy!”
Did that come from Everett or from me?
She stopped wailing. She just looked at me. She looked terrified. But she wanted more.
“Do it. Do it. Yes you can! Yes you can! COME ON!
“Nooooo…”
“YES!”
And with a wail and a gasp…
…she did it.
A doo doo.
Thank the Lord, Good God almighty, Hallelujah. A doo doo.
We shared a moment of exhausted silence. Then she smiled at me. I smiled at her. No cheering or high-fiving. I just gave her a hug and I helped her off the potty. She pulled up her panties and I reached up to the top of the medicine cabinet. I placed Doo Doo Barbie into her little hands. “Do you want me to open it for you, Everett?” I asked.
“That’s OK, Mommy, thank you.” Everett took the box with Doo Doo Barbie and went into her room.
I went into the living room. “It went OK?” asked Peter, back in front of the Yankees.
“It went OK,” I replied.
I sat down and we watched the game. And Everett opened the box herself in her room.
Undoubtedly taking her time.