We disagree on how long it took for them to hand her to me.
My husband says it was only ten minutes, but as I laid on the gurney in the
recovery room, watching her in the bassinet across the room, I would have sworn
it was easily an hour. An hour, of course, was nothing compared to the three
years we had waited for this baby, but I still say that hour—or ten minutes--
felt every bit as long as those three years.
Eventually, they did hand her to me. She was no longer
purple, as she had been when she was whisked away from me in the operating
room. She was now pink, and chubby, and staring at me as if to say “I was waiting
for you, too”. We stared at each other
for a minute, as my husband stood at my side, both of us in awe that there, in
my arms, was an actual baby.
And then, for some reason I didn’t quite understand, there
seemed to be a race to get her to nurse. She was repositioned. I was
repositioned. And in my groggy, nauseous, hormonal, post C-section haze, I suddenly
realized with an overwhelming certainty that I had absolutely no idea what I
was doing.
Eventually, they moved us up to our room, where we got to
stare at each other some more. The bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, and the whitest
hair, though some mistook this for baldness. We counted her fingers and toes, as if it
would have made any difference to us if she was missing a few of one of the
other. Then, more nausea, followed by more attempts at nursing, followed again by
more nausea.
Followed by my hormonal musings that I was way out of my
league here and maybe it would have been a good idea to hire a baby nurse after
all.
My husband looked at me. “A what?”
Oh. Maybe we had never actually discussed the baby nurse
idea out loud.
The lactation consultants became my best friends. And my
worst enemies. I had no idea it was possible for so many different people to
handle my breasts in a three day time frame. They told me it would take time.
They told me she was tongue tied. That she would need surgery. That she may not
nurse. That if I gave her formula, I would ruin any chance she had of nursing,
which would apparently, in turn, ruin her life. Eventually, they told me that I
needed to pump breast milk, and then tape a syringe to my breast, and have her
drink through that. Every two hours.
Then they told me to relax.
When one of the lactation consultants showed up when I was
in the shower for the first time in three days, and told me she would wait for
me so we could practice some more, I told her I was going to be in there a
while.
And then I cried.
Soon after that, we went home without knowing how nursing
was going to go. But I knew enough to trust my instincts, and at that moment,
my instincts told me that if one more person touched my breasts, I was likely
to throw a breast pump at their head.
They say a routine is important with a new baby, and we had
one from the beginning. Some people do eat-sleep-play; others do play-eat-sleep.
Ours was pump-feed-sob, as I cried that no one told me this would be so
hard. Repeated every two hours.
And then, one day, my milk came in, and she nursed. Just
fine.
Thank you very much.
We had opted not to have anyone stay and help us. I was
feeling pretty independent. I was thinking that, after three years of waiting,
we wanted to do this thing ourselves. I was thinking that it would be good for
my husband and I to get used to parenting together.
I was absolutely, incredibly
oblivious as to what was involved with caring for an actual baby.
On our fourth night at home with this baby who seemed
determined not to sleep, I wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. This was
nothing like the diaper commercials, where everyone was always smiling, if not
downright blissful. I suddenly
realized that now would be a really
good time to have help. Unfortunately it was three AM.
But we survived. And eventually, we even realized that if we
laid her down instead of holding her
all night, she would sleep. I won’t tell you at what point we realized this,
because it would be incredibly embarrassing to admit, for example, that it
wasn’t until she was seven months old.
The point is that eventually, we slept. And we relaxed. And we
learned. As we marveled at this beautiful, amazing child who actually slept through the night. After a while,
we realized that maybe this parenting thing wasn’t so hard after all, and we
should do it again. Three years and four miscarriages later, he finally
arrived, a blue eyed boy with mischief in his eyes from the start.
This time, nursing was easy. The sleep thing was easier,
too, mainly because this time, we were under no delusions that we would
actually get any sleep. Going from one
child to two wasn’t so easy. Our daughter loved her little brother, but she
could have done without his frequent crying, and going from two parents dealing
with one child to two parents dealing with two children was an adjustment in
itself.
One morning I left the baby on a mat on the floor and got in
the shower, thinking my husband would be home for a few more minutes. I came
out to find that he, thinking that I was just upstairs getting dressed, had left
for work while I was still in the shower. The baby was laying on the mat, red
faced and screaming, while his three year old sister apparently tried to placate
him by repeatedly screaming ”Just.Stop.Crying!”, as she kneeled over him, inches from his face.
I made a mental note to write my shower times—or days-- on
the calendar for my husband’s future reference.
Once again, we did adjust. So much, in fact, that two years
later, we had a third child. I was told that my pregnancy with him would likely
result in another miscarriage, that it didn’t seem possible that this could be
a viable pregnancy.
And yet, thankfully, it was.
And now there are three. Our days are a whirlwind of school,
and play dates, and homework, and dishes, and laundry, and diapers. And, of
course, the grocery store. Where everyone knows my name. Or, at least my
moniker, which I’m pretty sure is “That lady with those screaming kids”.
That chubby pink baby has grown into a long legged seven year
old with a slight lisp thanks to two missing bottom teeth. She does her
homework without being asked, and writes poetry, and does perfect cartwheels,
and believes that she is a fairy.
She even sleeps through the night.
Her four year old brother, whose headstrong ways kept us
quite frazzled for a few years, swore that he was never going to use the potty,
or go to school, or make friends.
Now he does all three. Amazingly well, in fact.
Our two year old keeps me running, and laughing, and frustrated,
as he gets into the dog food, and the peanut butter, and the toothpaste. And
yet, I will cherish these moments. Not every one of them. But enough of them. Because I know they won’t last forever.
Most people seem to agree that motherhood is not for the
weak of heart. But we don’t talk much about who it is for. It’s apparently for those who don’t mind not showering for
days at a time, who don’t mind wearing the same sweatpants three days in a row,
and who accept that some days, adequate nutrition consists of four cups of coffee,
two glasses of wine, cold mashed potatoes eaten while standing over the kitchen
sink, and the crust from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Not necessarily in that order.
It’s for those who know that their body is no longer their
own. Who know that it’s possible for seven people to fondle your breasts in a
three day period. And not one of them is
your husband. Who know that your body will not only nourish a baby through pregnancy
and infancy, but that it will become a playground for a three year old who is
fascinated with your “jelly belly”. At
least someone likes it.
It’s for those who know that with absolutely no effort on
your part, you are forever emotionally connected to this other person. Their
tears are your tears, and their triumphs your triumphs. It’s also for those who know that a house you
spent three hours cleaning can be trashed in under three minutes. For those who
know that the dishes never end, and the laundry never ends, and the homework
never ends. But the fleeting moments of childhood? They end all too soon.
It’s for those who know that you will take your first child
to the doctor because she has a fever for two days (apparently 99.9 isn’t even
really a fever), or because she smells like syrup (they laughed at me), or because
you think she has worms (don’t ask), but
that your second child will be given Tylenol and watched for three days before
the doctor is even called, and your third will be lucky to get to his well-child
visits once a year.
It’s for those who know firsthand that motherhood, in all of
its frustrating, mind numbing, exhausting glory, is not at all like the diaper
commercials would have us believe. After all, they only show the baby after he’s been changed, with a woman
who is obviously not his mother, since she has clearly had time to shower,
brush her hair, apply make-up, and put on something besides her husband’s old
t-shirt. (Which is probably dirty anyway, since no one has had time to do
laundry in a week).
Motherhood is for those who know that some days, we still
second guess ourselves. And wonder what
we have gotten ourselves into. It’s for
those who know that we’re not perfect. And that we’re just doing the best that
we can. It’s for those who know that in a day, or a week, or a year, life can
change in ways we never imagined, and rarely does it turn out exactly as we
thought it would. It’s for those who
know that “miracle” is not the same as “perfection”. And yet, that doesn’t make it any less of a
miracle.
And it doesn’t make perfection any less of a myth.
It’s for those who now accept the peanut butter hand prints
on the walls and puddles of syrup on the kitchen floor as part of the decor, in
a house cluttered with broken crayons, and toys, and mismatched shoes. It’s for
those who would like their house a little cleaner, their kids a little better
behaved, and their bank account a little larger, but who know that none of
these things will happen anytime soon.
And that they will happen all too soon.
It’s for those who look into their children’s eyes and
wonder where the time has gone, as they realize with gratitude that most of
their parenting mistakes so far have somehow gone unnoticed, or at least
unpunished. And hopefully, undocumented.
Mostly, though, motherhood is for those who know that you
don’t always have to know what you’re doing. You just have to keep doing it. You don’t have to do it perfectly. Just the
best you know how. You don’t have to love every moment.
You just have to find the moments that you love.
And cling to them.
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