When my daughter was born I joined a Mom and Baby group sponsored by the hospital I delivered in. It took 4 weeks to get out the door. The first week, she pooped as soon as I buckled her into the car seat and I missed the group, spending an hour cleaning the blow-out off her and the car seat, instead. The second week I missed because she had a screaming meltdown of nuclear proportions when I put her in the car seat. The third week she not only screamed, but pooped, too.
I finally made it on the fourth attempt, desperate to leave the confines of my house. She screamed the whole way there, into the building, and throughout the entire hour and a half that group meets.
I made some of the greatest connections of my life in that group. Fantastic women from all different places and backgrounds who I still depend on for a dose of sanity, fun, and support on a regular basis.
When Punkin was born I was bound and determined to go back to that group, mostly to thank the nurse who hosts it every week. Upon entering the room, I found the most familiar sights and sounds.
A woman in the corner desperately tried to nurse her hysterical son, sweat dripping from her forehead with anxiety. Another, sitting on the floor, tangled with her infant's legs as she fought to get a diaper on him before he peed on her again. A third, whose baby was about 4 months, expressed frustration over reflux and wondered if she could overdose her son on Zantac.
And then I saw her. And by that, I mean I saw me. Sitting on the floor, rocking her six week old son who was, himself, in the middle of a nuclear meltdown. She looked exhausted and worn, stressed out, starving, and in bad need of the manicures she left behind in her "old life."
"He's a screamer?" I asked gently.
"You have no idea," she said, shifting him to the other arm as he wailed.
"Get yourself to 12 weeks," I told her with a smile. "This will all end at 12 weeks."
Her eyes widened a little with hope and the floodgates opened. "I had no idea it would be this hard," she started. "I spent all day yesterday just trying to mop the kitchen floor. I couldn't do it. It takes five minutes, and I couldn't do it. And this is going to sound ridiculous, but I've been trying to get to this group for three weeks now. This is the first time I've been able to get out the door. What kind of adult can't manage to get out the door by 10:00 in the morning?"
I laughed and congratulated her, telling her it took me four weeks so she was better off than I was. Then I said the magic words that someone said to me when I was in her position.
"It's a living hell, isn't it? The first twelve weeks are a nightmare."
She stared at me for a second, then a huge smile broke out on her face. "God bless you for saying that. Why didn't anyone tell me that?"
"Nobody told me, either," I answered. The subject changed and other conversations broke out. Punkin fell asleep on the floor for a few minutes before waking up to poop (again) just as the group was ending. He screamed in the car all the way to lunch where I met a few of the mothers from that group. And the whole time I smiled, knowing that I'm half way there.
In six weeks, the "fourth trimester" will be over, and I'll have an adorable little toothless grin looking up at me and laughing, kicking his chubby little legs in the air.
The remaining question is, will I have slipped into an exhaustion-induced coma by that time or will I have mastered the life of a vampire?
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2 comments:
what would we all do without each other. I just left you a note of FB... i remember being there on our birthday and saying to Julie, "today is my birthday, last year I was in Vegas at the pool with a margarita. This year I am at mom and baby with a screaming kid who wont sleep and has horrible gas...where do you think i would rather be...this sucks." She gave me a hug:)
We need a cultural readjustment. In some places new moms stay home basically in bed for 6 weeks recovering from the birth and pregnancy while members of the community clean her house, make her family meals and visit. The idea that you need to wash your own kitchen floor and then get your baby out of the house and into a car seat poop free when he or she is under 6 weeks old is a cultural problem--we expect more than it is reasonable to deliver and then make new moms feel like failures for not being able to do it all. But I still expect you to drag your baby to the bar mitzvah tomorrow! Hugs.
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