Recently, Francesco and I took our little Leone on a maiden voyage to see his Italian family near Naples. Since we’re currently living in Salt Lake City (hail the home of the sister wives!) it was a long, long, trip with an infant. We were nervous.
Leading up to the trip I bought no less than 25,000 toys, everything from teethers to book and some terrifying octopus thing that’s supposed to be good for development. We prepped and packed, and I watched so many videos on taking babies on long trips which is where I first heard of the on-flight bassinet. We asked for it. We begged for it. At that time little Leone slept through the night and we were overjoyed that there was a possibility he’d sleep through the night on the plane. We arrived at the airport two hours early so we could ask for it again at the gate (Delta won’t technically let you reserve it, you have to get it at the gate and there are only two on board and it’s first come first serve). We got it! And wow did we regret it.
The baby bassinet is sorta like what it sounds like–a bassinet that screws into the wall of the bulkhead. Sound great. Except that when they screwed it in we noticed that it was a lot more like a tiny baby coffin than a bassinet. Imagine a baby coffin made out of the rubber bottoms of shoes that had been melted down, dyed the color of urine, and then flattened out and molded into a sleep thing for a baby. The top is also a sort of rubber with a small mesh square area for air. There are buckles on the top so it’s like your baby has just been admitted to an insane asylum in 1952 and needs to be restrained. The thing was terrifying. But F and I shrugged and were like, well, he needs to sleep and maybe this will do the trick. And maybe it would have worked if we could have got him to sleep. The trouble with it was that you had to sit in the bulkhead, which on those enormous planes meant we were next to the bathroom. One of the only potty places for like hundreds of people who are fed every ten seconds and pumped full of liquid to keep them from revolting. So we would rock him, he’d pass out, and then some middle-aged man with a bladder the size of an apricot would barge into the bathroom and slam the door. L’s eyes would fly open and we’d start again. All. Night. Long. With the exception of the three measly hours he slept on top of me. Luckily, when he was awake he just wanted to party and wasn’t hysterically sobbing like we expected.
Once we were in Italy, I noticed something magical. My in-laws picked us up from the airport and didn’t say a word to us. Literally, they didn’t even say hi. They grabbed the baby and ran off leaving F feeling a little rejected and confused. But the glory of it was this: No criticism. No nagging. No, “wow do you look like crap.” They were just totally focused on the baby. And that was nice for five minutes.
Back at my in-law’s house, they launched into a full-on frenzy about the many ways in which we were not doing a good job with our mini. First, he should be only eating meat and lots of it. Fruits and veggies? No. Give him a horse leg and just let him gnaw through to the bone like a decent parent. The wind? Still a dire threat. Bottles? He should only be eating meat. Washing your hands? Don’t be silly. Babies only ever die from the wind and a lack of raw meat. Oddly enough, though, since having L things don’t bother me the same way they used to probably because I’m the mom and the one with the goddamn power. You see, he’s mine and my priority. Say what you will about me, or to me, and I don’t care because all I do care about is that my kid is healthy and happy. Everything else seems kind of trivial. Also, piss me off, fuckers, and I’ll pack my shit and you can visit us at the beach where I’ll be making sandcastles and drinking prosecco with my babe because the first step of being a good mom? Self-fucking-care. I AM DRUNK WITH POWER. BWAHAHAHAHA.
For the first few days, we napped a lot. Little was exhausted and jet-lagged and had started to teeth which turned our calm and happy little cherub into satan’s footsoldier. F regressed into some weird man-child like he does at home, melted into the couch, and bossed his mom around like Stewie from Family Guy, “Mamma! Make a coffee!” She complained but then couldn’t WAIT to fetch things for him. I did the same thing I normally do, hung out with Little and wrote and blogged and worked on book stuff (Naked is now available!) while he napped. He sleeps the longest if I’m next to him so I cuddled up with my laptop and also enjoyed some time away from the fam because I am an ambivert and need lots of alone time. Especially if my social time involves hysterical nagging about air and meat. On the plus side, though, my in-laws were over the moon with the baby and spent most of their time playing with him and even offered to watch him so f and I could go on a date even though they called us 30 min into it freaking out because Little was awake and screaming his face off. (Little was already in bed when we left so they just had to monitor the camera which is fancy and expensive af and we totally watched the recap where he like slightly moved and they both barged into the room to check on him which woke him up). We sprinted home only to find Little as happy as can be watching his fave song (Whiskey the spider…a drunk version of Itsy Bitsy) on grandma’s smartphone.
We ate. We slept. We were told that our six month old Little should be eating cookies and cake as if by denying him diabetes we were being neglectful.
I spent my birthday surrounded by elderly Italian women in floral polyester, despite the heat, wafting in that very specific floral perfume that mature and wise Italian women seem to really enjoy. They had no idea it was my birthday, but it was the day that all of them decided to come to meet the Little. They brought gifts and passed him around like a joint. A joint that you inexplicably try to mouth kiss until the joint’s mom plucks the joint out of your hand and is like, oooh it’s time for a bottle because who mouth kisses a random joint/baby!? Then my MIL brought out a cake and everyone was confused and looking around and she was like, “oh it’s her birthday,” like she was commenting on bad weather and then they were forced to awkwardly sing happy birthday to me. 38, yall!
We ate. We slept. I was told I should really cover up my gray roots.
And right when we couldn’t take it anymore, we ran to Gaeta.
