Dan's Papers - May 15, 2009

This was told to me by a neighbor when my partner and I were about to have our son. I was already good at worrying. About if I would go mad if we moved out of the city. About the ozone layer. Preservatives in food (A friend in the funeral parlor business told me he uses much less embalming fluid than those embalmers of generations past - we were already so well preserved!)

But my neighbor was right. Those worries were nothing compared to what was to come when Hudson was born.

We read all the manuals. In fact, ironically, in the six months before he was born I was the editorial director of a humongous website for Enfamil Formula that involved writing weekly emails to women prior to and post birth of their babies. It was my job to know what to do.

Preparing the home for baby's arrival was a mammoth undertaking. We learned that we didn't need to do much at the beginning - after all, he wouldn't be mobile for a while. But we did prepare the apartment for his arrival. When he was born, my partner and I had a golden retriever and a cat. In addition, during her last month of pregnancy, our condo board opted to have the building re-pointed. The noise was incredible. (We thought, since he'd been listening to it in utero for a month already, he would probably be able to sleep through anything. That ended up to be true - a godsend since the re-pointing went on for another month.) The dust horrific. Even using the air conditioner (it was May) brought dust into the apartment, but it was certainly better than leaving the windows open.

So the day before we went to the hospital, I rolled up the rugs and covered the furniture (including his John Lennon "Imagine" bassinet) with plastic drop cloths. If I could have, I'd have had the entire apartment hermetically sealed. The day we were to bring Hudson home (I had stayed overnight at the hospital with my partner), I went home first to vacuum the place, unroll the rugs and cover the furniture. Everything was pristine. Not a dust mite or dog hair in sight.

That was just the beginning of our attempts at baby proofing - some were logical, others ludicrous. It seemed that as soon as we figured out how to deal with one challenge that presented itself, we would be on to another.

The most difficult hurdle was our house in East Hampton, which has an open floor plan. There was no gate to keep him corralled. We even went on the R.C. Steele website (for dogs) to see if there was some sort of thing to keep him confined. Really - all we wanted to do was watch a damn TV program now and then without worrying that he'd crawl off into the kitchen and set it on fire.

Being a researcher first and decision maker later, I had many options to consider. I measured constantly. Checked user comments compulsively.

In the meantime, my partner and I made a barricade out of every piece of furniture we could find. Ottomans shoved up against sofas next to a coffee table on its side next to chairs.

And then he started to stand and walk.

Ahh. Well, as they say, there's nothing like supervision. Basically, we chased him around for three years. And resigned ourselves to being very tired.

Now he's six. Finishing kindergarten. Meeting new people. Under the care, six hours a day, of others. And now I realize that finding the perfect baby gate was the easy part.