“Mommy’s Best Friend”

As I folded laundry tonight, I stumbled across an adorable onesie with “Mommy’s Best Friend” embroidered on the front. And I laughed to myself. See, I’m pretty sure the Baby Union has a contract with clothier Carter’s to print stuff like that. That, and “Mommy Loves Me” and “Daddy’s Little Hero” and “Love My Grandma”. 

Because when your kitchen floor is covered an inch deep with 100 or so plastic sandwich baggies or your bathroom floor is one undulating sea of toilet paper, it’s smart to have the perpetrator of such crimes in something which disarms you with cuteness. Like I said, the Baby Union is definitely in on it.

Look, I know I’m one of the lucky ones. My Mother-In-Law retired not long before I got pregnant, and circumstances arranged themselves so she lives with us. And my sweet son’s default setting is happy; that is, when he is not teething or suffering from a horrible virus, or both – as was the case for the long, long, LONG, Easter weekend. 

 

But “Best Friend”? Really? I think, Baby Union, you have overstepped your powers. My husband is my best friend. Thank goodness, because it would be awfully hard for someone who didn’t love me as much as he does to adapt to our insane schedule under this new regime.

“Mommy’s Little Dictator”; “Mommy’s Reason for Waking Every Hour”; “Source of Big Boobness”; “Reason for Childproofing” – any of those would be apt… especially since my amazing little man took his first tentative steps before 8 months. 

This mortherhood gig is no joke. I have learned that I have an exhaustion point past which I can no longer make grilled cheese. (I didn’t flip it over because the cheese inside hadn’t melted enough yet.) 

My house seems custom-made for killing the tiny 20-lb. explorer I birthed a little over 10 months ago.

And if the house doesn’t do it, wee boy’s ‘drunken sailor just arrived at port’ method of traversing the hard Spanish tile seems at the very least likely to cause me some sort of respiratory distress. I spend so much time holding my breath as he narrowly avoids ricocheting off one cabinet or another that I’m often lightheaded!

My Mom’s birthday is today. And starting a little less than 40 years ago, she undertook this journey of motherhood, first with me; then my two siblings. She managed to survive my tomboyish self, my intrepid brother and my cat-collecting rebellious sister; while allowing us the freedom to get muddy; bring home wounded animals (none of which we managed to keep alive past a day or two – our cats were hell on birds); and play in the snows of Idaho until our snowsuits were saturated – then later the rich red clay of Georgia which ruined most everything it touched. She did it all without a Mother-in-Law living at her home while my Dad worked at a job which took him out of the house over ten hours a day.

I bow to you, Mom, and I thank you for the amazing lessons you gave me growing up. I only hope I can pass them along to my son. 

Happy Birthday!

Love,

Cassie

Tears of Joy

Late last night, far into the wee hours of the morning, my sweet boy decided he was not happy with the new sleep-sack thingy his Mommy had decided to put him in. Foolish parent that I am, I had already forgotten how little he likes change in his bedtime routine/regime/surroundings. So Daddy and I carried the little man into his room to put him into an outfit he was comfortable with.

In an effort to keep him in his sweetly zonky state, Daddy put the Dixie Chicks “Lullaby” on. If you’ve never heard it, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFOac8zybPE As the song played, we switched him into his usual nighttime long sleeved onesie.

Softly I carried him back out to the sofa where his Daddy and I curled up around him, and I fed him his late night snack. The song wrapped us up in an astonishing cocoon of love and tears welled up in my eyes. I looked over at Hubby, and his eyes were bright with tears too. Together we sat, embracing our son, with love filling the entire room we were in and tears streaming down our cheeks.

The stillness after the song ended contained such hope for our future, such strength of love and commitment to the little boy we have been blessed with, such joy for the simplicity of the moment, that it is with me even as I write this.

Nothing prepares you for parenthood – not for the sleep deprivation or the radical change of life being about someone other than you all the time or moments like these – lightning-bolt-out-of-the-blue, magnificent instants which take hold in your soul like the greatest of the mighty redwood trees in the old growth forests. I will never be the Cassiepants I was before I gave birth to my son.

And no number of Thanksgivings will ever express the gratitude I have for that truth.

I Resent My Four Month Old

I’m pretty sure I’m an awful mother. Let me clarify. I am pretty sure that the way I have been feeling for the past few days makes me bad person in general. Because it isn’t fair for me to take umbrage at someone who has only been on the planet for 19 weeks for some of the stuff below.

I resent my son because:

• I now think of 3 hours as a lot of sleep.
• My boobs have now become some otherworldly food source with minds of their own, interrupting my slumber even when the boy isn’t hungry.
• I now have coherent conversations about spitup, pee and poo.
• I haven’t seen the early side of 12 noon without being exhausted in weeks.
• I have dreams where something awful has happened to my boy, my husband or both and then I’m a wreck and can’t get that sleep I mentioned above.
• My hair is starting to thin (a common side effect of the return to normal hormone levels for those of you who don’t know.)
• Speaking of my hair, every time I make the mistake of leaving it down, I learn that it’s the perfect handle for him to yank if he’s losing his balance in my arms.
• I think of my black yoga pants as my ‘daytime’ outfit and my grey ones as my ‘nighttime’ outfit. Every day.
• He has trained me to sing ‘Old McDonald’ every time he pushes a button on his activity center.
• I can’t imagine life without his smile.
• I will do insanely silly, ridiculous, repetitive and exhausting things just to hear the laugh he is learning how to make.
• His just-waking up, sleepy face is the most magical thing I’ve ever seen.

Looking at the list, which I have read and re-read a couple of times, maybe I’m not such a wretched mom.  Maybe, and this isn’t a terrible stretch, maybe I’m just going through the stage in my sweet boy’s life where he has a lot of mental growth and physical growth and growth in general happening, and so he isn’t really sleeping either. He’s found his toes now. On both feet. And he can shove both thumbs into his mouth while he sucks on his pacifier. That has to be a sign of some kind of super-intelligence, right? And he is starting to register faces and light up when I walk into the room.

When the powers that be give you pregnancy and baby ‘stages’ books, they don’t do a very good job of saying, “Hey! Yeah, you, in the nicely pressed outfit with the slim hips and the nicely curled hair with full makeup, earrings and a necklace on! Your life is Never going to be the same. And the first year, you are going to spend a lot of it as a blithering idiot while you try to figure out life with a tiny tyrant who will start off weighing less than 15 pounds.” I don’t know that I would have listened. I’ve heard parents blather on about how life-altering parenthood is. But they mean life-altering.

People should be warned.

Bimples and Preparation H

This is a gripe blog. It is not a blog for the faint of heart (nor my mother, who will most likely be horrified that I would even consider talking about this in a place where perfect strangers can read about my tuckus. Incidentally, I looked up ‘tuckus’ and the correct Yiddish spelling is tuches but since I do not speak Yiddish, I’m going with my cruddy American misspelling. Yup. Today’s blog is that kind of blog.)

I have already talked about some of the amazing things I’ve experienced as a Mom and also some of the trials and tribulations. But I have to address a posterior issue that is mentioned only as a part of the lump-sum of side effects and postpartum problems. Usually, they say gas-constipation-hemorrhoids like you might bump into one of those things in the aisle of the grocery store but can totally avoid taking them home with you. In talking with my OB at my six-week checkup, I asked him about my hemorrhoids (the result of trying to push a sideways baby out of my body for 3 1/2 hours)  – which only recently consented to shrink back to my zip code. He smiled sadly at me and said, ‘They’re yours for life. Part of the delivery process.’

Wait, what? I don’t recall that being in any of the literature. By the by, ladies, be prepared to eat fibrous foods for the rest of your days because your newest worst enemy is your butt. Every time you stress out or sit too long or take too long to poo, you’ll be reminded of the 37 hours you spent trying to push a tricycle out a stovepipe. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think I would have believed it, convinced as I was of the glamour and glory of the joyous science experiment happening in my body that is now my sweet son. I don’t think it would have stopped me.

But maybe Preparation H could jump on the advertising bandwagon here and give every new mom a month supply of the really good cream. They could say, ‘We’re here to comfort you for the rest of your life. Because nothing eases the swelling like a little Preparation H… and a bag of frozen peas.’ There is nothing sexy about needing to sit on icepacks for 6-8 weeks to allow the swelling of a lady-rectum to subside.

And the other issue? Hubby sweetly helped me coin the term ‘bimple’ for my hideous butt pimples. This one may be limited to a smaller proportion of new mommies and I am ‘lucky.’ Maybe it was because my water broke in the hospital so I sat in rich amniotic fluid on my tushie for 8 hours as I got to the pushing stage. Or maybe the backne which plagued my pregnancy really didn’t want to leave me and migrated as far south as it could go without venturing into leg territory. Whatever the reason, my posterior is now the approximate texture of the face of ever stereotypical nerdy geek in high school. Full on breakout city. Bimples from cheek to shining cheek with no relief in sight. I am actually using one of those fancy acne creams on my BUTT.

I have few vanities about my appearance. I dye my hair so the ash-blonde and grey streaks stay rich auburn. I wear a ton of sunscreen so my face doesn’t wear all 39 of its years. But to have BIMPLES after my face and back have cleared up post-pregnancy is just aggravating. And the hidden horror of the hemorrhoid-hereafter… well, just consider this entire post a long, forlorn sigh.

I love my son. He’s amazing. But sometimes my postpartum body has issues which make me want to whine and talk to Oprah.

Sleeping Symphony

Last night, at the ungodly hour of 4 am, I climbed back into bed next to my darling husband, who had sweetly taken the early late-night shift (midnight to 3) so I could catch an early-ish snooze.

The characters in the master bedroom were myself, dear hubby, my sweet son, and Bailey, our black piggy. As I curled up under the covers, I tried to turn off my brain. It’s never an easy task. Exhaustion has not gotten me to the point where I simply pass out.

There in the darkness, I became aware of what can only be described as the Sesame Street effect, for those of you who watched like me back in the late 70s and early 80s. Bailey would snore, a deep long ‘Wahn’ kind of sound; then Hubby would inhale with a percussive ‘whoosh’; then Baby would, I kid you not, breathe out with the infant equivalent of ‘woop woop woop.’

It was a deafening cacophony. I was living with the Muppets from that long ago bit where some character was trying to sleep and those Sounds we’re destroying his peace!

So I did what any sane Mommy would do. I woke up the pig and made her turn over so she stopped snoring. And then I went to sleep.

Three Months in the Blink of an Eye

Wow, today is three months. Three months since we held our breath waiting for you to inhale your first one. Three months of sleepless nights and trying to figure out which cry means ‘feed me’; which cry means ‘change me’; and which cry means ‘I don’t know what the hell is wrong, but good luck getting me to stop screaming.’

Three months. It’s how long I used to wait for my health care benefits to kick in at a new job. Then, the time dragged like my right heel which really need a podiatrist to examine it.

But this time it has flown by like the summer vacation which was never long enough when I was a little kid.

In this tiny span of time, you have learned to focus your eyes; lost most of your fluffy newborn hair, except for that monk fringe on the back; figured out how to hold up your head; learned to react to our voices; discovered your smile; found your hands (and spent HOURS stuffing them into your mouth); drooled (and drooled and drooled and filled up a kiddie pool with more of your drool); discovered your feet – which are FASCINATING, apparently; and started to sleep in blocks of four or more hours at night.

Except for last night, when you mocked us by waking up less than an hour after you first fell asleep. Fortunately, you really were sleep – being 3 months old is very hard work – so you went back to sleep two hours later. And so did we all.

Happiest of monthdays, sweet son!

Communicating with a New Parent

Your friends, the ones who always managed to pull crazy all-night video game campaigns and spontaneous weekends to exotic locations, have gone and had a BABY. What do you do?

Here are a few tips from a haggard new mom:

1) We want to see you. We do. We want to show off our bouncing bundle of joy, provided his most recent explosive diaper has not rendered us clothesless until the hazmat team cleanses our home. But if you think calling or texting once is going to facilitate a meeting, you have never spent three days trying to figure out whether your son thinks day is night or vice versa.

2) So call us.

3) But also email us, and suggest a date.

4) Offer up a specific night and a specific activity. We have no functioning adult brain cells left. We can sing the hell out of our ABCs, and we know which expression on our son’s face means ‘binky please’ and which one means ‘If you don’t feed me I will be postal in the next 3 minutes.’ Planning an evening out with another couple is overwhelming.

5) Or text us – and don’t be surprised if the return text is as much as a day later. The phone might have been sitting on the changing table – dropped there during the aforementioned pre-postal moment when getting a boob or a bottle into our little man’s mouth is our only priority.

6) When we do get together, we’ll do our best not to talk only about baby things. But you can help with little tidbits of real world news. As long as it’s not stuff about the Kardashians. Because we still don’t care about them.

7) And if we have to cancel? Know that it doesn’t mean we weren’t really excited to see you. We were. And we will be again. Once the projectile vomit smell has vanished from the back seat of our car. I hear it only takes a week or two if you have a really good cleaning service.

An Open Letter to New Dads

Dear New Dad,

Holy shit, this parenthood thing is mind-blowing, huh?

Right about now – day 4 of my sleeping on the couch with our son because he can’t be bothered to sleep in any of the three other options we have for him – you must be wondering what the hell we’ve gotten ourselves into.

You survived my pregnancy surprisingly well, in spite of my mood swings, weight gain, desperate requests for foot rubs and the massive fortress of pillows I built on my side of the bed which had to make you feel like you were sleeping at the base of Fort Knox.

Then you managed to support me during labor – and stayed upbeat and cheery despite seeing things come out of my body which, in your own words, resembled a Lovecraftian horror show. (Note to anyone reading this…do NOT order Pad Thai while you are helping your wife through labor. Just don’t do it…)

And now we have a bouncing bundle of joy at home. But he’s a bouncing, pooping, peeing, crying bundle of joy. He’s a bouncing, pooping, peeing, crying bundle of joy who has a really twisted sense of what the word ‘sleep’ means.

Today you must be feeling like all the other men who told you fatherhood was ‘great,’ ‘awesome’ and ‘life-altering’ were trying to con you into joining their club with offices situated firmly in the eighth circle of hell.

Here’s the thing. I am just as confused, befuddled, and astonished as you are. AND I have a tiny little monster feeding off my breasts – a part of my body which was previously used only to entertain you and hold up my nicest gowns. He’s insatiable, unreasonable, and unrelenting. Something about needing to eat to survive.

We have to bond in this confusion together, recognize that we are going to be sleep-deprived until we convince him night is night and day is day. Rumor has it that’s when he’s 18 years old, but I’m hoping for closer to 9 months. Which at the rate we’re going will feel like 18 years from now.

I still love you, I’m pretty sure you still love me, and when our son smiles, both of us forget the lack of sleep, the eradication of our social life, and the projectile poopocalypse that hit at 3 am when I was only in my sports bra and shorts.

Hang in there – even if it’s just us clinging to each other – and let’s see if his first word is “Dada”. I’m rooting for you.

Love,
The New Mom

Motherhood: 8 Basic Rules for Life with a Newborn

1) You will be sleep-deprived.
2) You will discover that poop (as in how many times the baby has) is a riveting conversation topic.
3) You will forget how to hold a conversation that doesn’t include the word baby.
4) You will sleep when the baby sleeps, wake every time the baby stirs in his sleep, and then wonder why you’re still exhausted when you’ve slept almost the entire day away.
5) You will lose track of days, weeks, months. Hell, you’ll be lucky if you notice you’re wearing the same blouse on day 5.
6) You will look back one month or two months down the road and marvel that your tiny infant has already become such a little human being.
7) You will develop a sense of wonder, an awe at the newness of the world, and the ability to instantly cry on cue at the most mundane things. (See #1)
8) Nothing you ever read; no class you ever take; no advice you ever get from anyone else will ever prepare you for holding your own son or daughter in your arms for the first time.

Birth: A Story Not for the Faint of Heart: Part 2

Waiting for Hubby to return to the hospital and the anesthesiologist to come in and get me set up for the epidural was agonizing. Poor Ma would bear down on my back with as much weight as she could while I rested my face on the bed during the contractions. The anesthesiologist came in and Ma! told me he was super young and super cute. Such a hilarious thing to say to someone who was fighting through mind-exploding pain in an unflattering hospital gown no longer covering any assets… Modesty went out the window with the pain. I was resting my face against my hands on the upper part of the gurney with my bare back and everything else open to the world. Honestly, and those of you who know me will understand how insane this is, Chris Hemsworth could have walked through my room in his Thor gear and I would have told him to get the f- out…

Hubby arrived and helped me through a few more contractions while I had to answer a bunch of pre-epidural questions. You’ve never suffered through an interrogation until you’ve tried to answer questions about your medical history mid-contraction. I couldn’t tell you, even right after it happened, what the hell he asked me. We already knew that Hubby and Ma! had to leave for the epidural insertion. I felt so completely alone in that moment – even as nice as all the staff were. The worst moment of that was having to hold completely still when Kevin (that adorable anesthesiologist) actually inserted the needle into my spine. Particularly because partway through the ‘holding still’ part, another contraction hit. But he was a genius. The relief was practically instantaneous, and I had full mobility below my waist – unusual as I understand it.

Sleep…after 21 hours of intermittent resting, I was able to actually sleep from 4 – 7 pm. And when the midwife came to do another exam, my body was ready. All we had to do was push the boy out! She wanted me to labor down – wait until I felt like I HAD to push – so that the delivery part of the process would be straightforward.

9 pm came, and just as she had predicted, all of a sudden I really HAD to push. It wasn’t optional. It was a primitive, primeval urge like no other. And here’s where things get fuzzy for me. Apparently, my lovely midwife said she was turning off my epidural so the pain would help me focus and push better. I THOUGHT she meant that she was going to turn off my ability to augment my epidural – that neat little button which would have given me extra relief, and which I hadn’t required up to that point.

Pushing ended up being a full-family experience. Ma was braced on one of my legs, Travis on the other, and the nurse was counting down for me. For over two hours, my son hovered at 1/2″ from crowning. I would push as hard as I could, he would get to the edge. I would stop pushing, and his head would retreat. I tried all sorts of positions, and the pain began to intensify. Apparently, somewhere around the 2 1/2 hour mark, I decided I’d had enough. I don’t recall this, but I have been told I declared that I was done and attempted to leave the gurney. Oh, and I should tell you that I did not pull the standard accusatory stuff with Travis. Instead, I kept apologizing that it was taking so long. When I found out that the midwife had actually turned off my epidural, I was SO angry. I don’t recall a time in my life filled with such despair. I knew I couldn’t do the delivery without the pain meds. It was far too excruciating. With much cajoling, we convinced her to turn it back on. (Probably around the time I tried to leave the gurney and said I was dying and refused to push again without the meds.)

I pushed for almost another hour, by which time the midwife had gone to get the OB on call. I was told I would have two chances to push with a vacuum assist from the doctor. After that, my only option was C-section because the baby had been in the birth canal for too long. What was kind of amazing was how many people were all of a sudden in the room cheering me on. I had the OB, his nurse, my nurses and midwife, and the neonatal team. It was a total of 10 people not including me. All wanting nothing but the best for me and the little man I was trying to bring into the world.

The first attempt came – and I pushed with all my might. I felt the beginning of the burning sensation that every birthing book says is crowning. And then it was gone. And the doctor looked frustrated and Travis looked frustrated and I felt frustrated. At around that moment, I became aware of the doctor asking the nurse closest to my head to ‘count it down for me.’ He also said, “I’m going to do an episiotomy.” Some part of my brain knew the number my nurse was passing on to the doctor was my son’s heartbeat. And it was slowing down. The doctor told me to push with all my might, even though a new contraction hadn’t started yet. And I reached into the depths of my soul and pushed with every iota of strength – every moment of joy and love and hope and fear and sadness and anger all rolled into one – that I had left. And the whole room was cheering me on. And I felt the burn, and then he was out.

The tiny, papery white form of my son was whisked, still held upside down by his feet by my doctor, over to the waiting pediatric team. All I could feel was the release of having successfully delivered my son vaginally, as I had hoped. But there was no cry. And there was no cry. And the team at the incubator was serious and speaking in hushed tones. And there was no cry. And then the most beautiful, magical, piercing wail came up from that tiny blanket covered mat under the heat lamps. We have a son.