Dahlia Lithwick, journalist and mother-to-be. - By Dahlia Lithwick

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Entry 4

Posted Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 4:01 PM ET

Dahlia Lithwick is Slate's Supreme Court and legal correspondent. She is expecting her first baby in three weeks.

More photos from Dahlia Lithwick.

And so begins the war. Just like that. Another Gen X war you'd know about only if you had a television and the time to watch it.

I head out at noon to give a speech to a poli sci class at the University of Virginia. It's a speech I give a lot: the Supreme Court and the media. This doesn't feel like a college campus on the eve of a war, though. Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's that clean-scrubbed, Abercrombie & Fitch horsy feeling that always radiates from this school. But, expecting protests and hunger strikes and shanties, I'm surprised to find it's mostly midterms and lattes. But it just confirms the sense that this war is happening in some parallel universe.

Talking with students at UVA

When I'm done, the students ask these incredibly smart questions, and I try to use this time to catch my breath, which comes mostly in wheezes since my lungs are squashed down to the size of raisins. (After class I look at the photos of myself answering questions and wonder why didn't someone ask the really pressing question: "My God, how can you be so damn HUGE and still ambulate?")

The students are too polite for that, even if they were wondering. Their questions include: "Do the justices ever call and give you feedback about your stories?" (Never, but sometimes their clerks contact me—which is probably a hanging offense at the Court.) "Do you really think there's a financial future in Web journalism?" (Yes, but then my IRA depends on it.) "Don't you think it's pointless to demystify the justices when they aren't running for re-election and can't be removed anyway?" (Don't you think that's all the more reason to know something about who these people really are and what they think and do all day?) "Do you ever worry your irreverence is going to get you kicked out of the Supreme Court press gallery?" (No, but I always know I've pissed someone off when I'm seated behind a column the next week.)

I always wonder after a speech like today's if I've managed to convey—between the one-liners—the genuine outrage I feel about the extent to which the justices have insulated themselves from public life. How frustrating it is that an entire branch of government hides behind "decorum" simply so they can go to the grocery store without being recognized. To highlight the madness, tonight there's an incredible report of Justice Scalia refusing to accept a free-speech award unless TV cameras were barred from the ceremony.

When irony goes bad ...

Holding Ruby, our loaner baby

Then, I'm off to my friend Sarah's, to practice being maternal with her infant daughter, Ruby. Ruby is Aaron's and my Starter-Baby. Sarah and Paul have—with the calm borne of being third-time parents—allowed us unfettered access to their baby. The first time Aaron ever truly got to hold and play with a newborn was about six weeks ago with Ruby, and he was so great with her, my head almost blew off. This does a lot to allay my whole head-squishing fear, which you may remember from parenting class.

One of the great things about Ruby is that you probably could squish her head and she'd just smile at you. She's such an incredibly sweet-tempered baby, who doesn't seem to mind being forwarded around a room like a funny little e-mail, and who will somehow just sit in her bouncy seat and grin at you, even though grinning is not really a 2-month old concept.

Banished from the lap of love

Aaron and I face far more serious problems on the home front, with our genuine starter-kids—Homer and Stubby. Stubby is the incredibly neurotic clingy cat who became—upon the arrival of Homer—the incredibly neurotic petulant cat. Homer is all id, and so anally fixated that he's been known around here as "Assie" almost from the get-go. The baby books suggest that the best way to adjust one's felines to a new baby is to start withholding affection a few weeks before the baby shows up. The idea is, when you bring baby home from the hospital, you're meant to lavish love all over the kitties again, so they associate the return of love with the arrival of the baby. Problem is, we're finding it impossible to withhold affection from the furry little devils. Or at least one of us is. Which is why the cats both sleep on the couch in Aaron's study these days, carefully avoiding my great, lumbering, love-withholding, lapless self.

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