4 AM feedings are bad enough without gazing at your newborn and feeling scared shitless of a Trump presidency

This week, as I was experimentally stuffing myself into my pre-pregnancy skinny jeans, the thought that ran through my mind was “I wonder if I’ll fit into these by November 8.” That is because there are two main things that I think about these days: One is my baby and how he’s sleeping and eating, and the other is the election.

Anxiety must trickle down into breastmilk, right? I’m passing it on to my son, presumably, by reading election Twitter while I nurse him, so it’s a good thing he’s getting mostly formula (from a bottle held in one hand as I scroll an iPhone screen with the other). Ugh, actually, how much do you want to bet that optimal breastfeeding is affected by simultaneous screen usage: Surely someone’s found a way to make moms feel guilty about it by now? Dr. Sears advocates nursing only in a deprivation tank with no Wi-Fi, correct?

But there I sit in the rocking chair at 4:40 AM watching the political journalists I follow on Twitter lose their shit over whatever bad thing happened since I went to bed, or I read the Ivanka Trump Cosmo interview on childcare where she claims Hillary Clinton has never thought about this stuff, and I start to seethe. I look down at Hugh’s male-pattern-baldness head and I feel a surge of FUCK I don’t want you to even have to be a *white male baby* under a Trump presidency and I’m even more scared for everybody else who’s not as lucky as you.

Part of me keeps telling myself, “Just enjoy your baby while you can. He’s not going to be little forever.” But that’s the whole thing about parenting, right, that no matter how much you want to try to enjoy it in the moment (something that is actually often impossible anyway), there’s all this shit hovering around that you have to worry about, and, especially in the newborn days, a variety of anxiety hurdles that you have to wait to jump over before you can let your guard down a little. First vaccines at two months. Risk of SIDS goes down at six months.

With vaccines and SIDS, though, at least you as the parent have some control; you’re not that reliant on the actions of other people, as long as you live in a community that vaccinates. You get the damn vaccines and you put the baby to sleep in his back in a bare crib. Furthermore, you have statistics at hand that won’t change in your baby’s lifetime, much less by the day.

But as the time ticks down toward November 8, it feels as if there’s nothing to do but wait, anxiously. Give money, I guess. Go register voters in Pennsylvania (probably not happening for me this time around). But really, wait. Reading FiveThirtyEight in the wee hours is not a preventative measure.

I want it to be here faster so this is all over and I want it to be here slower because I don’t want my maternity leave to be over.

Sometimes I’m so totally worked up by the time I go back to bed that I can’t sleep. So I try to remind myself that there’s a woman out there who’s feeding her baby and looking at her phone and having a little 4 AM panic attack over the fact that Hillary Clinton might be our next president. Sometimes it calms me down a little bit, reminding myself over and over that there are people who love their children just as much as I do and who truly believe that Trump will be the best thing for them and who live in fear of a Clinton presidency. (Shout-out to my middle-school best friend who just posted a picture of her daughter riding a kiddie car with a Trump bumper sticker on it.) If I set myself and my children and our world completely apart from 50 percent or 44 percent or whatever it is now of our country, it’s too terrifying; I have to know that we at least have the love of our kids in common. That if we were drinking wine in my living room we could at least bond over bitching about toddlers.

But I realize the privilege that comes with being a white woman thinking about this possible commonality. Scraping for anything reassuring about a Trump presidency can still be a thought exercise for me in a way it is never can be for the groups that Trump and his supporters are attacking. The black mom, the Muslim mom, the undocumented immigrant mom. They, too, love their children as much as I do.

I do enjoy my baby and I do know he’s not going to be little forever and that is why I monitor the election from my phone in the middle of the night. I do it like I’m keeping watch.

Donate to Hillary Clinton’s campaign here.