My Baby in Boston

I love my husband.  I really do.  We have this way of being with each other where we go back and forth on a subject, usually something one of us does, and how idiotic, inappropriate or genius (not) it was.  This time, it was Joe’s turn to be the genius.

It is one thing to be driving to a white Christmas in Vermont.  It is a whole ‘nother story when I am the one doing the driving with a three month old baby in the back seat sitting next to a perfectly capable husband.

Now, to put in perspective there are a couple of important details here I must let you know.   We are from Miami, so we don’t have snow.  Although I lived in the northeast for about 8 years, I did not drive a car.  And, most importantly, I was not a typical first time mom.  I took neuroticism to whole new level. 

During my pregnancy I did not have coffee, I did not have soda, I ate organic, I slept on my left side, I did prenatal yoga, and spent a fortune on both supplies and books about the supplies I just bought.  And then some more books.  I feel like I got a PhD in my 40 (well, 38) weeks of pregnancy and eventually went into early childhood education because of it.  So once my son Diego was born, my neuroticism became exponentially worse as it was combined with even more hormones and the fact that I was now RESPONSIBLE for someone.  Diego was flesh and blood … not some theoretical child I was reading about.

I realized there was no way of getting out of going to Vermont for Christmas when Diego was 3 months old so I took every precaution I could think of.  We flew to Boston instead of our usual New Jersey so the drive would be shorter.  We got in while it was light, I purchased every winter clothing item that was available and carried most of them by hand (just in case the suitcases and the baby were separated and I did not have enough warm clothes for him).  We checked and double-checked that the car rental company had car seats, which car seats, did they install it, where the installers trained or certified, did they have backward facing seats not just convertible ones.  Newborns need to be facing backwards.  I drove myself and pretty much everyone around me insane.

The plan was that my dear husband Joe would go out of the terminal in Boston, rent the car and drive back to get Diego and I so that Diego would not spend anytime in the cold.  Not only was he a newborn, he was from Miami and MY son. (Note the caps and italics to denote the extra emphasis here).

Not only that but I had seen, and I am not sure why, one episode of “I Should Not Be Alive”.   In this one of course, a family sets out to a Christmas gathering, takes a side road, a blizzard comes (did they not get the warning?), gets stuck in the snow, and no one can find them.  And, get this, the mom’s breast milk FROZE and the baby starved to death.  Awful.  Mom and dad eventually made it out alive.  This was NOT a good idea to see before our trip to Vermont. And it amped my determination that this scenario was not going to happen to my little family.

Prepared?  Definitely.  At least I was.  My dear husband …. well … not so much.

We arrive in daylight.  We get the bags from which we were not separated.  Joe leaves to get the car and I dutifully breastfeed.  And I wait. And wait.  And wait some more.  Joe was supposed to call me when he was coming back so I wait.  It gets cold every time the sliding door opens, so I put a jacket on the baby.  I move seats away from the door.  That gets too hot so I take off the jacket.  I had a lot of time to wait.  And I figure something is wrong but dismiss it.  It begins to get a little darker.  Joe does not answer the phone and so I breastfeed.  Again.

He finally appears, walking.  Not a good sign.  He preempts his next sentence with something like “remember, these things could happen to you too”.  Short story … he forgot his drivers license expired in October, and if you were paying attention we are in Christmas and it December.  He couldn’t rent a car.  Which meant I had to rent the car which meant I had to drive, in the snow, with Diego in the back and that was the equivalent of asking me to enter into a dark cave and touch a bears nose.  I could have killed him.  The mama bear in me shouts out but the clever me stays quiet.  Because a) this is a very “milkable” moment as in, you did THAT so now you need to do THIS without complaining and b) I had to keep my final goal in mind: to get baby safely to Vermont for Christmas. Right now in my neurotic mind, things weren’t looking too good.

We leave the terminal and take the bus to the car rental place.  GASP.  Diego’s face will feel a breath of freezing Boston air AND he will ride in a bus without a car seat (DOUBLE GASP).  Try to imagine how hard I was holding the poor child.  Now exaggerate it a little more and you are close to what I was doing.  Poor kids’ eyes could’ve popped out of their sockets from all that squeezing.  Alas, we arrive at the rental agency and it is still light outside but getting darker.  It gets dark early in winter.  That alone made the urgency of renting a car and getting out of there a priority. 

I, contrary to Joe, do have a valid drivers license … lucky me … and they rent us a car.  While we wait for the paperwork, changing of the reservation, putting in my information, etc… it got hot in there so I took off the 10+ layers the baby had on.  And I breastfeed.  When we receive the car, I bundle him up again with 10+ layers to get to the car only to find that it had indeed a car seat but it was facing forward and my baby was NOT going to be facing forward.  Back to the agency, back to unbundling, and back to waiting another while until someone comes to reinstall it (because, at this point, the only one that installed a baby seat worthy of my child’s tushy was the local fireman as I didn’t trust anyone else to do it).  I check and double-check the installation.  It looks dubious.  Anything concerning my son at this point is dubious.  I am neurotic remember?  But I took a deep breath and prayed that God would spear him some awful fate if I crashed the car, and spared me the associated guilt.

And just in case, because it was a three hour drive or so, I breastfeed so we wouldn’t have to stop on the side of the road and a mass murderer would attack us and hurt my precious child.  We place baby in the now backward facing seat, I tell Joe to sit next to him in the back (because somehow that would provide an extra layer of protection for Diego), and as soon as we are about to pull out we hear a massive explosion coming out of our child.

This was not an ordinary poop.  I fed him so much that his poop was everywhere.  One of those poops (and if you are a parent you know what I am talking about) that reach from the neck to the toes and all you can do is undress baby completely. GASP.  The cold!  My child was going to be exposed as I cleaned the seemingly thousands of folds on his legs to make sure no rash would ensue.

When that ordeal is done it is night.  And dark.  We had arrived in Boston at least 4 hours prior and still had not managed to get out of the parking lot.  I would be driving, Diego probably had caught pneumonia, and my husband was smart enough to dutifully respond “yes dear” because in my mind this was all HIS fault!  Well, actually, in my mind and in reality … this was all his fault.

As soon as we are driving out of the parking lot, after checking and double-checking seatbelts, bottles, seat adjustments, mirrors everything …. before we are out of the gate of the rental car agency … I kid you not (no pun intended) … the check engine light goes on in the car.  We need to get another one, we need to take all the bags out, reinstall the rear facing car seat, and change the paperwork.

I look to the back, I see Joe with his hand on Diego and tell him the good news.  And I laugh, because I realize I could not make this story up even if I wanted to.  Because family history is made of stories like these; and I can see myself as a grandma telling my grandchild “did I ever tell you the story when your grandfather forgot his license was expired?”  I laugh because I love Joe.  Because stuff like this happens and we can both take it in stride. And for the next 4 hours, as I drive like an old lady from Boston to Brattleboro, there is a familiar banter between us.  He teases me because I am indeed driving below the speed limit, I tease him because if he were “all that” he would be the one driving.