Mr. Fix-it

My bare-chested Atch was wading through the coiling mess of innards that used to be my electric breast pump. His sweaty grin floated up from the haze of his soldering gun. “Its a fix-it day,” he remarked.

Indeed it was.

As an attestation of our ill-prepared journey into the life of second child-dom, we unearthed the basinette, the breast pump, the baby monitor, ad nauseum ... just days before Eli arrived, only to discover that four years of storage was enough to attract some electrical “ghosts in the machines”. As a consequence, Atch spent a large chunk of his 7-day paternity leave hunched over repairing one item or another, and in general being missed by the post-partum members of his family.

Woog alternated between neediness and puffed-up possessiveness. “I have a new baby brother,” I'd hear him proudly tell the neighbors, just before coming inside and crowding in with Eli during a refill at the Mommy pump.

Thankfully, Atch was there in between repairs to distract and regale, while I floated in and out of disorientation, trying to adjust to the new member of our family.

What a waste of Atchbund time, I thought rather ungratefully. I wanted to be cuddled and waited upon. I wanted an affirmation of his undying love in the face of my newly wrung-out body. I wanted someone to pick up the mess slowly accumulating around Eli and me in our once spic-and-span bedroom. I wanted Atch to stay still for one second so I could take his picture carrying the baby. Hell, I was as needy as Woog.

I dreaded the day he went back to work, to leave me forlorn and feeling abandoned, dreading the thought of being left with two children both under the age of five.

Still, I was thankful for all the mealtimes I was able to eat downstairs with the family, the newly repaired baby monitor beside me humming with Eli's steady breathing. Still, I was glad for the luminous glow of the lamp light during night-time feedings. Still, I sighed in relief as the freshly assembled breast pump gave me respite from full to bursting milk ducts.

Grudgingly acknowledged, Mr. Fix-it saves the day.

July 2006