For the first time in years, I feel engaged in my own life.

I guess you could say I’m not the most chill mom. I spend a lot of time worrying about things like “Does my son feel at home in the city of his birth.”

How would I know that I was a good mom if the book didn’t tell me? Just trust myself? No. I needed hard evidence.

Matching clothes was something I swore I’d never do with a baby but then again there are lots of things I swore I’d never do.

Over the next week, I went through withdrawals worse than when I gave up caffeine."

Now here I am staring at my screen and every story I can think of centers around Arlo. It’s as if he’s cast some kind of spell on me – like a wizard. Or maybe Voldemort. So, as an experiment, I’m going to try and get through this column without making it all about the baby. 

I tend to be too hard on myself and slack is something I only cut other people. Which is why it’s been a little tough around here these days. I’m a new mom and failing is part of my every day life now.

I love my son. Desperate amounts. But since he was born it feels like I’m slowly unraveling.

Suddenly he was here. He was healthy and screaming. He was weighed and measured. He was put on my chest. He was a person in this world.

I stumbled backward like I’d just walked into a murder scene as Jason turned around, grinning. “What do you think? It looks good, huh?”

When we first met, we didn’t give each other a passing glance. He was not what I was looking for, and I was definitely not what he was looking for. 

The week before, I took out every book on our floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and dusted it. Last month, I emptied out my office and donated half of everything to Goodwill.

I believe this is what people call “nesting.”

As I floundered in the middle, a seventy-year-old woman wearing ankle weights glided by and gave me a supportive, “You can do it!” 

After all the shots and medications and surgeries, the doctor was finally going to take one of our embryos out of its petri dish and put it in me.

I’ve always resisted acupuncture. Every time I thought about it I could hear my grandfather’s voice asking why I would pay someone to stick me with a bunch of needles when he could just gather up some nails and do that for free.

If you ever want a good laugh, pull up a real estate website, type in Los Angeles and see what you can get for $150,000 (nothing). Or $400,000 (a tiny house in a neighborhood that has a not-so-tiny crime rate.)

But what does it mean to be a fraud? Is it that you aren’t touched by a muse every second of the day? Is it that you’re not wearing a cozy sweater at sunset, congratulating yourself over how brilliant you are?

These days, I can get Korean food delivered to my door, download any movie I want, and ask Alexa if I’m wondering what time it is in Bangkok.

Our tree was delivered by two men – one in a red tracksuit wearing gold-rimmed sunglasses and another who insisted we call him “Gregnog.”

The morning passed in a blur of ice packs, anesthesia, and, to quote Jason, “A needle where a needle should never go.”