Motherhood
Are You My Mother?
Having a baby without money for childcare meant losing touch with my professional self
I learned I was pregnant with my daughter twice. The first time was a few days after my first book came out. I went out onto our stoop with a cigarette and a glass of white wine and looked up at the full autumn moon. But if it’s full, I thought after a minute, I should have already…
I prefer this story, the one about the moon. Because the second time I learned I was pregnant with her — after I went back in to my husband, and he told me that my period was only 24 hours late, and I waited a day or two and eventually bought the actual pregnancy test from the drugstore, as you do — I stood in our living room, looking at a pee-splattered hunk of plastic, and yelled, “Ohhhhh, shit.”
I was thinking, I guess, of the wine and cigarettes, which were now over. I was also thinking of the book and whether there would be other books; I was thinking of who would watch the baby while I was writing and whether I could pay them. I was pretty sure I could not. My husband held my hand and gave me a pep talk. We had once lived in New York, he reminded me, on a combined income of $30,000 a year. He now had a comfortable middle-class job, even if most of the money did go to student loan payments. I…
