Baby Can't Dance (Or, Everything I Needed To Know About Post-Partum Mental Health I Could Have Learned From Jonathan Swift And Ally McBeal)

Ooooh. Is so big!

Svetlana gives Jasper's belly a poke. He giggles.

Is big baby. Is happy baby! He grabs her finger and yanks it into his mouth. And strong!

I shrug. I know that he's big and strong. I am, after all, the one holding him. With difficulty.

This is why you are post-traumatic stress. This is big boy who make big entrance. He come fast, he is big, it is BLAM, and you are stress.

I nod. That's one way of describing the circumstances of his birth.

And now, he is the BIG big big boy. And the strong. He is like Gooliver! This is the tired. You are tired from Big Gooliver.

I stare at her, blankly.

Gooliver? And the Poochins? I do not know this in English. The Poochins, they tie Gooliver?

Oh, I say. GULLIVER. And the Lilliputians?

Yes! This is this baby. GOOLIVER. He is big for you! So big for birth, so big for holding! So much for to make you tired, and stress.

I think about this. I wonder if the better analogy isn't that I'm Gulliver, and my children are the tyrannical Lilliputians, attempting to bend me to their tiny wills. Or that I'm Gulliver, and Jasper is a Brobdingnagian. Or that I'm a Brobdingnagian, and Jasper Gulliver. Emilia is almost certainly a Lilliputian, albeit a very, very tall one.

Whatever the case, Jonathan Swift is spinning in his grave, I'm sure, to hear his work reduced to awkward literary tropes - giants and little people, tyranny and oppression - exploited for the purpose of post-partum psychiatric therapy.

I'm missing a point here, I think.

I give my head a shake and shrug at Svetlana. I don't know, I say. He certainly exhausts me. But I don't feel oppressed by him. I'm just tired. And anxious. And tired.

You sometime want to escape?

Hell yeah. But not like 'oh god release me from these ties that bind' kind of escape. Just, you know, some kind of 'gimme a break' escape. A little bit of quiet, sometimes, maybe. A little bit of peace.

Peas. Yes. You need this. You have had some peas these weeks? She looks at her clipboard. These two weeks?

Some.

You need more peas.

Yes.

She brightens suddenly, looking at Jasper, who is squawking and hooting like an angry squirrel to get her attention. He is not Hooliver! He is cartoon baby! Very big baby, very smart, very strong, but is still baby. Is still BABY.

She looks at me expectantly. I'm not sure where she's going with this.

You see. He looks like big boy. He is strong like big boy. But he is just baby. You tell him: 'YOU ARE BABY.' And then you put him down. And you do not worry. She leans forward as if to tell me a secret. He cannot dance.

I stare at her, again, blankly.

She raises her arms, elbows bent, and does jazz hands. OOGA-CHUCKA. This he cannot do. She leans forward again. He is just little baby. He stay where you put him. Do not need to hold him always. Do not need to tie him down with arms. He is baby. Put him down.

I put him down on the floor of her office, sitting upright against my legs. He immediately grabs one of his feet and chomps down happily.

You see? Is fine. And now you have arms. Maybe not always peas, but arms.

Indeed.

What I learned, then, yesterday: sometimes, a few minutes of free arms equals a decent measure of peas/peace, and any measure of peace does a mountain of good in an anxious life.

Also, that mixing and mangling metaphors and analogies is good for the soul. And that having a Slavic pantsuit-wearing, Swift-reading, Ally-McBeal-loving throwback of a psychiatrist isn't such a bad thing as I might have thought.

OOGA-CHUCKA.

Postscript: that whole put him down and free your arms thing? Works best when he isn't shrieking in protest. That's not so peaceful. Just sayin'.

Need to work on that part.