As I write this, I’m sweating and pausing every 10 seconds to rock my child back to sleep in his stroller. This is a hostage situation where I am the victim. I’ve been taken and I have very little time to write this letter to you about what life with a newborn has been like these past 8 weeks.
So here it goes:
It’s been 8 weeks on the other side. All you moms who were reading my blog post while pregnant thinking, gurrrl, you don’t even know what’s comin’. Well of course I don’t! I’m just over here flyin’ blind! But now I’m wise AF about what the first 8 weeks means. I KNOW what it means in the darkest parts of my soul. I assumed that by 8 weeks I’d have some perspective and even some sweet nostalgia re newborn life. But after 8 weeks of hardcore mom-ing both perspective and wisdom elude me. I’m left wondering how women do this more than once? Will this feel like this forever? Will my body resemble extra soft tofu forever? I always thought women were the stronger sex but now I know it to be true. Women run this world and the smartest men know this. If there’s one thing I vow to teach my son, it’s to respect and love women.
The first couple weeks home from the hospital, our very civil world got flipped upside down by a 7 lb baby. Gone were the lazy Saturday mornings of lounging with Frankie while making french toast. Gone were the mornings having the free will to decide if we should brunch with friends or go see a movie instead? The second night home from the hospital, I remember turning to Larry as the sun was rising, hooked up to my pump, topless, postpartum belly hanging over my pajama pants sobbing and saying, “Larry, what have we done?!? We had a good life, right?” It’s not that I really wanted a take back but being fresh off an emergency C section feeling like a filleted fish and suffering from a chicken pox like postpartum rash I actually did want a take back or at least a pause from the physical pain of healing and the relentless torture of sleep deprivation. Thankfully, this was my lowest point.
As my body started to heal, my mental toughness returned and so did my sense of humor. When Larry leaves for work in the morning, I have a pep talk with my child, “Listen, you’re a baby and I’m a grown a$$ woman. You’re not gonna beat me today.” Half the time we have harmonious co-existence of a day where we’re flowing (albeit sleepily flowing) through life. The other half, I am completely owned, swimming up river, trying not to drown. I try and hone in on my survivor mentality. I tell myself I’m going through 3 months of military ops training consisting of severe sleep deprivation and a depletion of physical resources that does not let up. I tell myself it’s a marathon not a sprint. I like endurance sports… I can do this.
For those of you who think maternity leave is vacation, let me enlighten you: I left a paid job that had structure, set hours, lunch breaks, adult interaction and ended at 5 pm each day. I have a new boss now. He’s tiny, tyrannical, shits his pants a moment’s notice and will scream relentlessly (baby raptor style) if not being rocked and left to sleep in my arms. He doesn’t believe in lunch breaks or bathroom breaks for his workers or sleeping in his own bed. When he gets tricked into sleeping in his own bed I try to sleep too, but by the time I fall into a deep sleep I’m jolted awake to hop to my role as wet nurse slave. Every now and again he smiles and I think he’s smiling at me. I think, here is my rainbow of hope in a cloudy day! A HOPE FOR A BETTER TOMORROW! As it turns out he is smiling at his own fart or poop explosion in satisfaction. The pediatrician says this is all so normal and healthy, and I’m grateful for normal and healthy, I really am… I also want to punch my pediatrician in the face.
Dinner time means I wear him in a front pack to cook and to sit down and eat. I’m the lady sitting down doing weird front/back and side to side rocking like a mentally ill patient trying to self soothe. I don’t taste my food these days. Food is fuel to refill my milk supply for it to get sucked dry again. I often stuff my face so fast with dinner that I get a lot of it on my baby’s head. You should see his head on taco night!
Bed time means another short nap. At bed time I jump into bed hoping sleep will come quickly to me because in 2 hours we go again: Play, Eat, Nap. Bed time is stressful because now I have a noisy time bomb of a roommate. I’m expected to fall asleep as quickly as possible next to a farting, grunting, sucking, Papa Smurf on a timer. Our baby “sleeps” in a Pack N Play which we drag out into the living room during the day and back into our bedroom at night. At “bed time” Larry moves the Pack n Play back into our bedroom and I cry out, Nooooo!!!! I want a new roommate! As I lay down and thank God for getting us through another day, I give my baby the side eye and say, Goodnight Joffrey Baratheon.
There are so many things I love about my baby. As I get stronger and more confident as a mom, I no longer want take backs, but I also don’t understand how I can be a mom to more than one child at a time? It’s that chapter I haven’t reached and won’t truly understand until I’m lucky enough to get there. For now, finding ways to make fun of my child with my husband over a beer are the best moments in the day. I’m not sure what we’ll do when he starts understanding he’s been the butt of our jokes this entire time. Thankfully, we don’t’ have to worry about that yet. These 8 weeks have been a crash course in love, communication, and patience. In my moments of wanting to Andy Dufrane my way out of this self-created prison, I get to step away for an hour without my baby and find myself missing him and wondering how many poop diapers he’s exploded in my absence. Is he thinking about me too?