Blocks to Receiving or Why I Included my Ex’s Mom on my Meal Train
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It was March, we were having the baby shower early because… twins. 35 weeks, 35 weeks. That number was like a metronome to me. The average gestational age for twins is 35 weeks. Just had to make it past that - it felt like the minimum passing grade (there is no such thing but when you’re in it, it totally feels like there is).
My nightmare was the NICU. I knew so many NICU parents. Almost every twin parent is a NICU parent. It seemed counterintuitive; the continual stress of traipsing to extra high risk appointments might just flip my blood pressure into a genuinely high risk zone. Still, I boarded the L train at Graham Avenue (sometimes Bedford) and then changed to the 6 up to the Madison Avenue MFM clinic far too often for my liking. Occasionally I had to bring our daughter, in which case I would walk over a mile to the ferry, and then another mile once we reached Manhattan. I did that twice before my hip flexors, from the weight of twins and stroller pushing, yelled ‘ABSOLUTELY NOT’.
35 weeks, 35 weeks, 35 weeks. It was so drilled into my brain that when I reached it I thought “Now what?” Now that I had passed, I also wasn’t allowed to get too high a grade. “We are going to want to deliver you by 38 weeks tops.” “First of all,” I replied, “and pardon me as I have not attended medical school, but you will in fact not be delivering ME. My scientific understanding is that I am already delivered, given the fact that I am an adult woman who herself is now pregnant. Second of all, I will be doing the delivering - not you. And these babies will come when we collaboratively decide based on concrete science, relevant to my specific scenario, not randomized studies with largely irrelevant comparative data, and my opinion on my own body and babies. And then, and only then, will I permission you to attend and support the birth of my children” - something like that at least.
It was clear to me that twin pregnancy and birth felt, to my medical team, like such a highly entropic event that control and order must be proportionally stacked to match the madness that was my abundant body. No one, not one time, ever reflected back to me the possibility that a spontaneous twin pregnancy, diamniotic and dizygotic, with concordant sized babies who were clearly thriving in utero might, in fact, indicate that my body was innately coordinating far more internal order than an MFM office who routinely made me wait 90 minutes in a waiting room with Fox News blaring. Yes, I made a complaint about the TV; they changed it to a cooking network *sigh.
I did agree with one thing. There were so many unknowns. Mostly about the after. Fears, like the NICU, would flood my brain at 3am, and 4am, and 5am. My eldest was *almost fully potty trained, not yet in play school, and about as energetically resourced as a coyote on amphetamines. We also had no laundry facility in our apartment. Which was in Brooklyn. On a busy street. With a bus stop at our doorway. If I had a dollar for every nightmare about our toddler somehow wandering downstairs, out the door and onto a New York City bus while I was none the wiser, upstairs nursing TWINS - well, I wouldn’t have been so worried about the fact I was about to be financially responsible for 3 children.
How could I get some control? Where could I find small pieces of it? I found it in the little things. Neatly folded drawers (often demolished by a toddler shortly after), prompt replies to work emails (maybe the only time in my life?), and a sudden obsession with protein. I’d eat two chicken breasts for breakfast. I found small shakes online that were 25g of protein which I’d wash my chicken down with. Ew. I tracked my intake on an app meant for bodybuilders. For the first time in my socialized female life, I couldn’t wait to step on the scale at the office. I couldn’t predict the specifics of how our life would flip inside out, the only certainty was that it would. I started to play a zero sum game like, maybe if I hyper prep over here in the food department then I can fall apart in the financial department? Maybe if I have multiple diaper changing stations scattered throughout the apartment, my mental health can find a pail to neatly fall into?
So. We made a meal train. Would it solve everything? Nope. But could I keep eating food? Yes, yes I could. My postpartum doula was also my business partner and we were doulas together. She wasn’t going to let me go hungry, or lose my mind, at least she would do everything in her power to set me up.
“Who do you want on here?” she asked. We went through the guests of my baby shower, and the close friends I had made after almost 5 years of living in the neighborhood. I resisted so many, “Well, they were invited to the shower but they aren’t coming so maybe not them.” Erica replied, “Maybe all the more reason to ask them?” She had some kind of smart ass answer for everything. She would say a name, I would say why they shouldn’t be on the list and then she would ask a genuine question like “What are you worried might happen if they are on here? That they will show up? We can make this whole damn thing about gift cards and take out! We will write in the email ‘Please contact Sal separately to arrange a visit’ and make it clear that a casserole doesn’t equal baby holding if you don’t want that.”
I was very afraid of visitors, even though I knew I needed support. I knew I’d be tender, emotionally wobby and not have the bandwidth for small talk or big talk. My husband’s family is enormous (I have 2 cousins, he has 28) and I would be learning to breastfeed twins. There is literally no subtle way to nurse multiple people at the same time. Trust me:
#titsoutinbrooklyn
I had no idea if I would be in the 72% of twin parents in NYC who birth via cesarean and healing from that, or crying all day from the floods of hormones and exhaustion. I wasn’t trying to be an asshole. I just remembered during family visits in my first weeks postpartum with my eldest, needing to disappear into the bathroom to cry quietly while my in-laws held my daughter. I loved my in-laws, and felt much more comfortable with them now, but every visit from an in-law was a reminder of the thousands of miles between me and my own family, and the many family members and friends who would have visited, had I birthed on home soil.
We decided that the meal train was the perfect way to call in those community members far away. Maybe I would feel some connection to my Nanna, or family friend that was more family than friend, if they clicked a button and we both knew that day my dinner was from them, full of love… even if it was takeout. I am tearing up writing this because the desire to feel held by my people was so strong. Some of my husband’s people had become my people, and I had found some of my own people, but birthing away from the land and the community that felt like mine was acutely painful for me. My meal train became an antidote to all the missing, a way to feel the presence of people that felt like home.
“How many people ‘liked’ your Facebook post announcing your twin pregnancy?” Erica asked. “I’m not sure, but a lot… definitely over a hundred? Maybe 150 or so?” I replied. “So why don’t you invite all of them to sign up for your meal train? If they want to partake in your news and family moments, if they take the time to like something, comment and uplift you online then… isn’t that them tethering to you in some way? Asking to be part of your life?” We pulled up the post and looked through the likes. Then we had a long layered laugh about who the most intensely ‘inappropriate’ invites would be. Our top 3 were:
That shitty accountant you’d never use again (although they DO owe you so…maybe?)
The manager of that British cafe you briefly worked at when you were 19 (the only job you’d ever been fired from, for “theft” aka repeatedly eating warm Maple croissants… usually after fake dropping it on the floor)
Your ex-boyfriend’s mom
Something about vulnerable asks to people I’d had no formal repair with made us guffaw. When I am pregnant, Erica calls me Laura PLUS because I am so much MORE of everything, especially humor. I should get pregnant again just to do one perfect stand up set. With twins it was PLUS PLUS. Week 15 into the twins pregnancy I was still commuting to Times Square to an acting class and one evening after class, a few friends and I (who didn’t have kids) went to a diner. I don’t remember much, aside from the fact that I nearly got kicked out for hyperventilating, crying, and laughing so hard at a joke I told myself. My almost-famous childless actor friends weren’t impressed.
After sufficient pelvic floor testing hilarity, Erica asked, “But okay, it's funny but also… isn’t your ex boyfriend's mom one of your pivotal mothering mentors? I’ve heard at least 12 stories about this woman.” Immediately that gurgly feeling entered my belly, vulnerability mixed with a foreboding “She’s totally right.” This woman entered my life when I had a dire lack of feminine influence. She wasn’t just one thing to me, the social discomfort/acceptability politics wasn’t spacious enough to hold this kind of radical nuance.
“Maybe I should include her?” I floated, wondering if we’d laugh again. But instead of laughing we added her to the list, and a warm feeling flooded my body. This innocuous inclusion invited love and support. I had created a pathway between myself and someone I cared about, in case they still cared about me. I was reflecting through my vulnerability that we can continue to be in community with people, in healing ways, even if things didn’t always work out ‘perfectly’, even if feelings got hurt or confused. I was learning that it was okay if she didn’t see the email or send a meal, that it was more about what this meant as a step in my maturation and willingness to create sustainability for my integration postpartum. I felt soft and strong out there on that limb.
The twins' arrival was a lot of things. It was medicalized. It was triumphant. It was sort of scheduled, and then totally not. It was… after 38 weeks. My team was amazing. And for fuck’s sake I WAS AMAZING. We got home to food in our fridge. We integrated slowly and were met with continual abundance in the form of snack drop offs, gift cards from afar, baked eggplant and sauce, and this time when I felt like crying I didn’t hide in the bathroom.