1. When expecting, you can smoke and tan and dye your hair, but don’t you go reaching up on the clothesline: believe you me, Barbara lost Charlie the minute she reached up on the clothesline—the cord wrapped around his neck and killed him. And don’t you dare straddle a bike or run or do anything too physical. If you need to stretch your fat legs, walk around the block. You’ll want to hide your belly while you’re out there too, so do like Grandma did and have somebody make you some pretty tops, loose now. I had one in every color—aqua, pink, and yella.
2. Ain’t nothing to tending a baby once he’s here. I had seven, I know. No sense in going out and getting baby magazines and all that expensive shit swinging and rocking and propping your baby up. You won’t use it two seconds, and besides, it won’t be no good to you in six months. Shoot fire, we used to use a dresser drawer as a crib. Use common sense—now, if you’re hot, they’re hot. If you’re cold, they’re cold. All you need for his little rashy ass is a sprinkle a cornstarch and about an inch of water to wash it in the sink.
3. Women been having babies for a hundred and one years, and you don’t need no fancy doctor telling you what to do. Well, look at you: you had diarrhea and looked just like a monkey in a cage in that hospital. See, people will just let you do anything to your babies when the doctor say so . . . and there you sat, Koey, your heart was broke, just a crying your eyes out. And I was a real bitch then, I had all a that money and I just threw it around . . . and I said, Lisa, here. You take the baby and wrap her up in my coat (they had you naked as a jay bird), and I went down to the gift shop and got you a gown and a pair of booties and a big pink nursing blanket. And the doctor said, You can’t take that baby out of here, and I said, Just watch me.
4. Now, listen to your grandma: when you come home from that hospital, you keep off your feet six weeks. Don’t get up to do nothing but bathe and sleep and eat, and get you a little bassinet in the bedroom to keep that baby right beside you. You’ll need to heal that flitter, so don’t you move. When the baby sleeps, you sleep. Don’t think his nap’s the time to clean the house and run around. You start sweeping the floor and going to the store before your time, and mark my words, you’ll liable to bleed to death.
5. Breastfeeding will ruin your tiddies, so steer clear of all them hippies that tell you what to do. Now, you don’t want him to get the thrush, so make sure to clean the milk out of his mouth when his formula is done. Take some distilled water with a teaspoon of white Karo syrup and let him swallow that down. But don’t use the same nipples that you use for your milk; that water bottle needs a smaller hole, less you want him to choke to death. If he gets the colic, next time put a little paregoric in his milk. That should do the trick.
6. You don’t want an ugly baby now, so sleep him on his stomach; it keeps the head from getting flat in back. Because if that happens, you’ll end up spending all your time rubbing circles on his head, trying to work it back into shape. If you don’t believe me, take your cousin Jeremy: I done come twelve hundred miles just anticipating to see him, and Lord, if that wasn’t the ugliest youngin I ever did see. And I said it was a wonder Toni had him covered up. . . . She said he was covered cause he was sleeping. Sleeping’s ass. All I knowd was that his head was that long, and when I watched him he fell off the couch. And I said, Toni, Toni come in here, I think your baby’s dead. . . . Well, I never was one for babysitting. And Lord. The way Toni used to rub his head to work it back into shape.
7. Get yourself some help, cause you got laundry ahead. You’ll want to change that baby’s sheets every single day, and wursh his clothes separate from yours—you don’t want your nasty bloomers and your husband’s socks bumping up against the baby’s things. Use Dreft detergent. Now, you can dry the baby’s things in the dryer, but everything will need to be seasoned, specially when the baby’s new. Put out everything flat on the bed, set it out at least for twenty-four hours, till all the moisture is out.
8. Sterilize everything that goes in that baby’s mouth. Boil the bottles and the nipples and the rattlers, and if a pacifier falls on the floor, don’t let me catch you clean it off with your mouth. I mean it; I’ll whup your ass. Less you want that baby sick as a dog, you throw it on the stove and boil it again.
9. After six weeks, you and the baby emerge. You might give the little fucker rice cereal then—mix one teaspoon of formula, one teaspoon of cereal. See, you want a sturdy baby, so best to get him on food soon as you can; milk babies get fat but don’t have no tone. And when he’s ready for more, don’t waste your money on those little jars of baby food. Mash up potatoes and mash up macaroni—most any food that don’t have color is fine—and when a few teeth come in, cut up a White Castle too.
10. If he gets the croup, use whiskey, honey, and lemon to break up that phlegm. Now, he’ll cough and puke it up, but that’s what he’s supposed to do. If he starts fussing when he’s teething, give him a wet rag from the freezer and a baby aspirin too.
Your husband won’t help you none, and that’s fine. He has his work to do. You got to give a man space. Let him mow the grass and plant the tomatoes and smoke his pipe all day long on the back porch. He’ll be thinking on his day off, and you just need to keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t mind him at all.