Debra Pickett

The day started off with a 3 hour-plus flight delay and ended with the usually charming and mellow baby being so uncharacteristically fussy that her parents are contemplating taking her to the doctor.

In between, I'm getting the kind of uncensored peek into motherhood that only best friends (and sometimes sisters) give each other.

All I can really say at this point is: yikes!

I had, at various points in my single life, considered both adoption and artificial insemination as possibilities for having a child, should I have decided that I wanted one, without a partner. I was totally kidding myself about that. I am not nearly woman enough to take on parenthood by myself.

I'd been joking that this brief visit was going to be like a spa vacation for me. After all, Dana's apartment boasts two working bathrooms and a kitchen, plus no enforced wake-up schedule and time for an afternoon nap (or several).

But, having been here for less than half a day, I'm kind of picking up on the fact that whole sleep deprivation / physical pain / mysterious, unstoppable crying thing is, um, just a little more demanding than putting up with some hammering and sawing.

I know my role, as best friend, is to jump in, help out and offer as many words of encouragement as I can possibly call to mind. But I find it strangely tempting to cry out for some sort of cosmic time-out wherein I can ask the universe why this whole caring-for-a-newborn thing should be so ridiculously, mind-numbingly hard. (Shouldn't we, as a species, at least have evolved to the point where breast feeding is easy and painless?!?)

But, you know, if I can't come up with answers for the big questions, I guess I can try to make myself useful by purchasing cutesy baby stuff and distracting the child for long enough for her mother to take a shower. That's what best friends are for. Brest Friends, I have just discovered, are for something else entirely.