“Even great moms lose their kids,” she said softly, and he kissed her. He knew that was the root of Zoe’s constant anxiety about Jaime, her fear that she would die. It caused her to be overzealous about everything, and had become her only role in life, to guard their child. And in spite of that, accidents happened anyway. It was inevitable, and making Zoe seem neurotic.
She nursed Jaime when they got upstairs, and Austin went back to the office. For once, Jaime didn’t throw up after Zoe nursed her. The bump was ugly and a constant reminder to Zoe of her terrible mistake, but it absorbed in a few days, and was a dim memory after that. Zoe took it as a warning to be even more careful with Jaime, and she never stepped away again while she changed her. It alerted Zoe again too to how careful she would have to be in hiring a nanny for her, so she could go back to work. If a nanny had done what she had, and Jaime had fallen off the changing table, Zoe would have fired her on the spot. She had a month to find a nanny before her maternity leave ended, and she cried every time she thought of it. She loved her job, but she loved her baby more, and couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her every day. It was going to be wrenching, and she was going to continue nursing even after she went back to work. Austin thought she should end it then, and Jaime would have gotten all the immunities she needed from her mother’s milk at four months, but Zoe disagreed. She had read that a year would be better, and Cathy Clark thought six months would be a good compromise, but Zoe was set on a year. Austin didn’t argue with her about it. Zoe was the best, most dedicated mother he had ever seen. Even if he got less attention from her than he used to, less time with her, and none alone, and their sex life had dwindled to almost none at all, Jaime was the lucky beneficiary of her mother’s passion and vigilance. Zoe’s mothering was superb.
Chapter 4
After interviewing more than twenty candidates for in-home daycare for Jaime, Zoe concluded that Jaime was still too young for her to leave her, and she extended her maternity leave by two months, which was an enormous relief to her. She missed her job now, and the challenges it provided her on a daily basis, and the children she saw there, but being with Jaime was so much more important to her that she wasn’t ready to go back. And the thought of separating from Jaime made her feel anxious. The person replacing her was delighted to stay for an extended period. The shelter was running smoothly, and Zoe called in frequently and was available for consultation on important decisions. And once she explained that due to Jaime’s apnea, she needed another two months at home with her, no one begrudged her the extra time. She’d never had another episode since the first one, but it was the perfect excuse to get two more months of caring for her daughter on a full-time basis herself, one to one, and more time to find the right nanny, which was beginning to seem like an impossible task.
In the next two months she interviewed more than thirty applicants from four agencies, and finally found a woman whom she liked, who had no objections to Zoe’s many rules and theories and said she was willing to adhere to them. She was a warm, loving woman in her fifties from Jamaica, with years of experience as a baby nurse and six grown children of her own. Her name was Jamala. She had a musical, lilting accent, talked to the baby and made her giggle, and Jaime took to her immediately, and didn’t object when Jamala picked her up and held her, which surprised Zoe. She often resisted when her grandmother tried to pick her up, and had cried when Brad and Pam came to visit. She wasn’t used to strangers. Austin’s father seldom came to visit and said he enjoyed his grandchildren better when they were old enough to talk. Beth hadn’t come from California yet. She said she had been working double shifts in the ICU and couldn’t come until the summer, but she had