Baby Love

Table of Contents

 

 

Praise for
Baby Love

“A thoughtful and amusing play-by-play of pregnancy and birth, investigating the difference between the theory surrounding motherhood and the scary, messy, snuggly practice of it.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

 

“Walker . . . uses her sharp intelligence to examine the joyful, terrifying ride to parenthood and the complex roles of mother and child. As Walker, now thirty-seven, begins her pregnancy in 2004, she is torn between the desire to be a loving daughter—to a brilliant, difficult woman who has her own ambivalence about motherhood—and the desire to love unconditionally as a mom. . . . You know she’ll do just fine embracing motherhood, in all its sloppy, intimate selflessness and glory.”—
People
(3½ stars)

 

“[A] wonderfully insightful writer . . . offers an unflinching look at her doubts, her anxieties, even her pride in knowing she’s joined a special club as her pregnancy begins to show. And she offers a realistic account of labor and delivery . . . Tells a poignant love story of herself and her son.”—The Associated Press

 

“[A] powerful new memoir . . . Walker’s story is accessible and richly textured, told with humor, wit and warmth.”—
Publishers Weekly

 

“Walker, a prominent feminist and author of
Black, White, and Jewish,
deconstructs the struggle of many women who, though weaned on the idea of a woman’s right to choice, have viewed motherhood ‘with more than a little suspicion.’”—
Entertainment Weekly

 

“A poignant love story of herself and her son.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“Third-wave feminist Walker, the daughter of author Alice Walker and a bestselling scribe in her own right, continues chronicling her life with this journal of her decision to become a mother in her midthirties.”—
Library Journal

 

 

“Walker sways on a kind of scary, sublime suspension bridge, stretched between being somebody’s child and becoming somebody’s mother, and turning her fiercely compassionate intelligence to both. Thanks to her unique vision, the familiar views along the way become nothing short of astounding.”—Catherine Newman, author of
Waiting for Birdy

 

 

“[Written] with honesty, passion, intelligence, wisdom, and insight . . .
Baby Love
will resonate with any woman who has fallen in love with her baby or is wrestling with choosing motherhood.”

—Miriam Arond, Editor in Chief of
Child
magazine

 

 

“
Baby Love
is a gorgeous memoir, confessional in the most universal of ways. In richly detailed prose, Walker takes us on her journey toward motherhood, and womanhood, and, ultimately, person-hood, with unflinching honesty and raw, painfully beautiful storytelling.” —Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, author of
Make Him Look Good

Praise for
Black, White, and Jewish

“Compelling.”—
The Washington Post

 

“A complex, all-American story.”—
USA Today

 

“Walker skillfully depicts her tangled upbringing, full of disappointment and privilege.”—
Time

 

“Walker masterfully illuminates differences between black and white America. . . . A heartbreaking tale of self-creation.”—
People

 

“A cautionary tale about the power of race in shaping identity . . . A highly readable debut.”—
Entertainment Weekly

 

“A well-written refusal to ignore old wounds.”—
The Boston Globe

 

“Her outsider status equips her with a sharp eye for analysis and narrative detail. And her restrained prose is refreshing in this age of gushing confession.”—
The Washington Post Book World

 

“
Black, White, and Jewish
is a frank, detail-rich look at her upbringing.”—
Chicago Tribune

 

“Her book is an attempt to not only come to grips with her own identity, but to expose the pain and turmoil that come with shifting back and forth. . . . It is a stunningly honest account, almost painfully self-revelatory.”—
San Francisco Chronicle

 

“A poignant, spare memoir.”—
Chicago Sun-Times

 

“
Black, White, and Jewish
is Rebecca Walker’s anthem of independence, the compelling diary of a ‘Movement Baby’ who combats her own racial insecurities.”—
The Dallas Morning News

ALSO BY REBECCA WALKER

 

 

RIVERHEAD BOOKS
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility
for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2007 by Rebecca Walker

 

The passages on pages 11, 79, and 147 are quoted from the Baby Centre website
(
www.babycentre.co.uk
).

 

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form
without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in
violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
RIVERHEAD is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The RIVERHEAD logo is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

 

Walker, Rebecca, date.
Baby love : choosing motherhood after
a lifetime of ambivalence / Rebecca Walker.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-440-66283-6

1. Walker, Rebecca. 2. Pregnant women—United States—Biography. 3. Pregnancy—
Psychological aspects. 4. Motherhood—Psychological aspects. 5. Ambivalence I. Title.
RG560.W
618.2’00[B]92—dc22

 

 

Dreams are self-luminous, they shine of themselves as Gods do. Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths; by finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth world in which you live.

I’m pregnant.

I just got off the phone with the nurse from Dr. Lowen’s office. I picked up the old brown Trimline phone that’s been in this retreat cabin of my mother’s forever, and a woman’s voice asked for me and I said, This is she, and the voice said, It’s Becky from Dr. Lowen’s office. And I said, Uh-huh. Then Becky said, The result from the latest test was positive, and I said, Positive? And she said, Yes, you are no longer borderline pregnant.

No longer borderline pregnant? I thought I might fall over. I looked out the window at the leaves of the poplar trees shimmering in the breeze. My eyes settled on a vulture falling from the sky in a perfect spiral. He was flapping then gliding, flapping then gliding as he descended, and I thought to myself: I will remember this moment and that vulture for the rest of my life. I thought to myself: That vulture is a sign. A part of me is dying.

And then the nurse said, Hello? And I said, Yes, I am here. Are you sure I am pregnant? And she said, Yes. And I said, Really? You’re not going to call me back in two hours and say you made a mistake? She said, No. And I said, Well, how do you know? She sighed. It was a ridiculous question, but since she had been telling me for a week that after three blood draws they still couldn’t tell if I was really pregnant, I felt justified. So I pushed. What do you know today that you didn’t yesterday? And she said, The HCG levels are definitely going up. HCG levels? Yes, in the last twenty-four hours the pregnancy hormone count has risen from 700 to over 2, 300, and that usually means a healthy, robust beginning.

And then I had what could only be the first twinges of the maternal instinct. Healthy and robust? A huge smile spread across my face. That’s my baby! And then it was as if the synapses in my brain sending exploratory signals to my uterus finally made contact. Aye, mate, is it a go down there? Yes, yes, Captain, we’re full steam ahead!

I was convinced that getting off the phone would exponentially increase my chances of reverting to not-pregnant, but I released Becky anyway and stumbled over to the bathroom, where Glen, my life partner and father of our soon-to-be-born baby, was shaving. I looked into his eyes and tried to keep myself from screaming and jumping up and down. We did it, I said. He grinned. Well, I guess that puts the whole motility question to rest. And I said, I guess it does. Then I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on the top of my head.

I was in ecstatic bliss for about ninety seconds, and then it hit me: an avalanche of dread that took my breath away. Pregnant? A baby? What have I done? I looked at Glen. He was going through his own reality check, which brought me even closer to the brink of total hysteria. But then, before I could burst into tears and run screaming out of the room, he pulled me into his arms. You are going to be a fantastic mother, he said to me, to my fear. His love overwhelmed me, and I started to cry big, wet tears onto his favorite black shirt.

We’re going to have a baby.

FOR THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS I have told everyone—friends, family, hairdressers, editors, cabdrivers, doctors, and anyone else who would listen—that I wanted a baby.
I want to have a baby,
I would say with urgency or a wistful longing, or both. And I meant what I said, I really did, I just had no idea what I was talking about. I had almost no actual experience of babies, so the object of my wanting was abstract, the display of it ritualized.
I want to have a baby
was something I said, a statement that evoked a trajectory, a general direction for my life.

The truth is, I was wracked with ambivalence. I had the usual questions: When, with whom, and how the hell was I going to afford it? But there was something else, too, a question common—if not always conscious—to women of my generation, women raised to view motherhood with more than a little suspicion. Can I survive having a baby? Will I lose myself—my body, my mind, my
options
—and be left trapped, resentful, and irretrievably overwhelmed? If I have a baby, we wonder silently to ourselves, will I die?