Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

“I’ve just come to see how the nursing is going,” she said. “I’m sure you’re still nursing.”

As if that was the only option, I thought. “Yes,” I told her. “It’s going just fine.” I hesitated and then told her that I was considering giving him one bottle of formula a day-just one-so that if I had to run an errand or take Max out, I could do it without worrying about having to nurse him in public.

The woman had been horrified. “You wouldn’t want to do that,” she said. “Not yet, at least. It’s only been six weeks, isn’t that right? He’s still getting used to the breast, and if you give him the bottle, well, who knows what might happen.”

I hadn’t answered, thinking, What might happen, indeed? Maybe Max would wean himself. Maybe my milk would dry up and I could fit back into my clothes and lose the twelve pounds that still was settled around my waist and hips. I didn’t see what the big deal about formula was. After all, I had been brought up on formula. Everyone had, in the sixties. We all turned out okay.

I had offered the woman tea, hoping she wouldn’t accept, because I didn’t have any. “I have to go along;” she told me, patting my hand. “Do you have any more questions?”

“Yes,” I said without thinking. “When does my lif on±€hane go back to normal?”

And she had laughed and opened the front door. “What makes you think it ever does?” she said, and disappeared down the porch, her shantung suit whispering around her.

Today I had convinced myself otherwise. Today was the day that I started acting like a regular person. Max was only a baby, and there really wasn’t any reason that I couldn’t control the schedule. He didn’t need to eat every two hours. We would stretch that to four. He didn’t have to sleep in his crib or his playpen; he could just as easily nap in his car seat while I went grocery shopping or bought stamps at the post office. And if I got up and left the house, breathed some fresh air and gave myself a purpose, I wouldn’t find myself exhausted all the time. Today, I told myself, was the day I’d begin all over again.

I was afraid to leave Max alone for even a minute, because I’d read all about crib deaths. I had fleeting visions of Max strangling himself with the Wiggle Worm toy or choking on the corner of the red-balloon quilt. So I tucked him under my arm and carried him into his nursery. I laid him on the carpet while I packed the diaper bag with seven diapers, a bib, a rattle, and, just in case, trial sizes of Johnson’s shampoo and Ivory Snow.

“Okay,” I said, turning to Max. “What would you like to wear?”

Max looked up at me and pursed his lips as if he were considering this. It was about sixty degrees outside, and I didn’t think he needed a snowsuit, but then again, what did I know? He was already wearing an undershirt and a cotton playsuit embroidered with elephants, a gift from Leroy and Lionel. Max started to squirm on the floor, which meant he was going to cry. I scooped him into my arms and pulled from one of his near-empty dresser drawers a thin hooded sweatshirt and a bulky blue sweater. Layers, that’s what Dr. Spock said, and surely with both of these on, Max couldn’t catch a cold. I placed him on his changing table, and I had his sweatshirt half on when I realized I needed to change his diaper. I pulled him out of the sweatshirt, making him cry, and started to sing to him. Sometimes it made him quiet right down, no matter what the song. I let myself believe he just needed to hear my voice.

The sweater’s arms were too long, and this really annoyed Max, because every time he stuffed his fist into his mouth, fuzz from the wool caught on his lips. I tried to roll the sleeves back, but they got chunky and knotted. Finally, I sighed. “Let’s just go,” I told Max. “You won’t even notice after a while.”

This was the day of my six-week checkup at Dr. Thayer’s. I was looking forward to going; I’d get to see the people I had worked with for years-real adults-and I considered the visit the last one of my pregnancy. After this, I was going to be a whole new woman.

Max fell asleep on the way to Dr. Thayer’s, and when we pulled into the parking lot, I found myself holding my breath and gently disengaging my seat belt, praying he would not wake up. I even left the car door ajar, afraid that a slam would start him screaming. But Max seemed to be out for the long haul. I slung his car seat/carrier over my arm, as if he were a basket of harvested grapes, and headed up the familiar stone stairs of the OB/GYN office.

‹.“Paige!” Mary, the receptionist who had replaced me, stood up the minute I walked in the door. “Let me give you a hand.” She came up to me and lifted Max’s carrier off my arm, poking her finger into his puffy red cheek. “He’s adorable,” she said, and I smiled.

Three of the nurses, hearing my name, swelled into the waiting room. They embraced me and wrapped me in the heady smell of their perfume and the brilliance of their clean white outfits. “You look fabulous,” one said, and I wondered if she didn’t see my tangled, hanging hair; my mismatched socks; the pasty wax of my skin.

Mary was the one to shoo them back behind the swinging wooden door. “Ladies,” she said, “we’ve got an office to run here.” She carried Max to an empty chair, surrounded by several very pregnant women. “Dr. Thayer’s running late,” she said to me. “So what’s new?”

Mary ran back to the black lacquer desk to answer the phone, and I watched her go. I wanted to push her out of the way, to open the top drawer and riffle through the paper clips and the payment invoices, to hear my own steady voice say “Cambridge OB/GYN.” Before Max was even born, Nicholas and I had decided I’d stay home with him. Art school was out of the question, since we couldn’t afford both day care and tuition. And as for me. working, well, the cost of decent day care almost equaled my combined salaries at Mercy and the doctors’ office, so it just didn’t pay. You don’t want a stranger taking care of him, do you? Nicholas had said. And I suppose I had to agree. One year, Nicholas told me, smiling. Let’s give it one year, and then we’ll see. And I had beamed back at him, running my palms over my still-swollen belly. One year. How bad could one single year be?

I leaned over and unzipped Max’s sweater, opened the first few buttons of the jacket underneath. He was sweating. I would have taken them both off, but that would have awakened him for sure, and I wasn’t ready for that. One of the pregnant women caught my eye and smiled. She had healthy, thick brown hair that fell in little cascades to her shoulders. She was wearing a sleeveless linen maternity dress and espadrilles. She looked down at Max and unconsciously rubbed her hands over her belly.

When I turned to look, most of the other women in the office were watching my baby sleep. They all had the same expression on their faces-kind of dreamy, with a softness in their eyes that I never remembered seeing in mine. “How old is he?” the first woman asked.

“Six weeks,” I said, swallowing a lump in my throat. All the others turned at the sound of my voice. They were waiting for me to tell them something-anything-a story that would let them know it was worth the wait; that labor wouldn’t be so horrible; that I had never been happier in my life. “It’s not what you think,” I heard myself saying, my words pouring thick and slow. “I haven’t slept since he was born. I’m always tired. I don’t know what to do with him.”

“But he’s so precious,” another woman said.

I stared at her, her belly, her baby inside. “Consider yourself lucky,” I said.

Mary called my name minutes later. I was set up in a small white examim" ±€lf nation room with a poster of a womb on the wall. I undressed and wrapped the paper robe around myself and opened the drawer to the little oak table. Inside was the tape measure and the Doppler stethoscope. I touched them and peeked at Max, still sleeping. I could remember lying on the examination table during my checkups, listening to the baby’s amplified heartbeat and wondering what he would look like.