The best time I didn't know I was having.

I think I may have mentioned how bad I am at having babies. How I lack any grace in dealing with the transition between having a child growing in my uterus and having a child in my arms.

I might have mentioned long showers, where I bathed in salty hormone filled tears and felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my entire life.

I may not have mentioned how I cried everyday at 4pm for the first 2 weeks of my daughter's life. Coincidentally, or not, this was also when Oprah aired. I'd call Pants at work, sobbing into the phone. He'd patiently say, 'Is Oprah on? Why don't you stop watching Oprah.'

But really it wasn't Oprah making me cry. Something about 4pm made me consider the looming nighttime hours, the hours of the unknown. She wasn't a bad baby, she was actually very good at being a baby. In fact, we thought quietly to ourselves (so other people wouldn't have to feel bad) that she was the best baby ever, even in spite of her frighteningly non-photogenic nature.

It wasn't her, it was me. I was just very bad at being a new mom.

I love sleep, and she didn't have the same fervor for it I did. I guess she was 'hungry' at night and sometimes she wanted to have a little 'together time' in the night and I don't really like 'together time' in the night. She'd look at me in the dimly lit bedroom and say, "You know, I feel like all I really do is sleep and I think we should start getting to know each other. Right. Now."

I wanted to get to know her, don't get me wrong, but I thought maybe we could get to know each other while we watched Oprah and I cried every afternoon.

There were other things that made it hard to be a new mom, not sleeping was just one thing.

There was also the dramatic plunge in my hormones. Given that I've never been the most well balanced person, this was very pronounced for me. The first time I felt the plunge was in the hospital the day my doctor came into my happy place, the cocoon of my private hospital room where there was no work and no cooking or cleaning and really no life outside of me, Logan, our perfect little creation and a well placed nurse to chip in when I needed it...like, all the time.

The doctor came barging in and ruined my happy place by saying, "I think you're ready to go home."

I'm not sure what made the doctor think I was "ready" to go home. Was it the inflatable doughnut I sat on? Was it the fact that I couldn't shower without back-up in case I passed out?

Probably he confused my contentedness for readiness to go home. He didn't realize I was actually just content to be laying in a bed with no expectation I would ever rise again.

There is no doubt he was totally wrong to even think I was ready to go home.

Immediately I started to feel the anxiety bubbling up, adrenaline traveling through my body out into my arms making me feel weak and scared and then traveling up into my eyes giving me tunnel vision.

I began to get dressed and ready to leave and it was entirely apparent I was not at all ready to go home.

My clothes, the fat overalls I bought at 3 months along, didn't even fit me. I cried.

Logan helpfully said, "You're just two days post partum, of course your clothes don't fit!"

I wasn't crying because my clothes didn't fit. I was crying because the whole thing didn't fit, and I had fooled everyone into thinking it was a good idea to send a helpless newborn home with me.

I've never dealt with change very well.

I regained control of myself once the anxiety passed and we dressed our baby in her 'going home outfit', which turned out to be sized perfectly for taking a fully grown two year old home from the hospital.

Maybe that's what I'd hoped for when I'd bought the outfit, that they'd help me raise my baby for the first two to three years in the hospital where a nurse was just a buzz away.

"Excuse me, when is dinner?"

"Hi, I'm about to hop in the shower, can you take the baby for me?"

"It appears my baby has a wet diaper, can you come take care of that?"

"I think my baby is ready for potty training, let me know when you've wrapped that up."

I guess my insurance wouldn't cover a two to three year hospital stay, plus Logan wasn't enjoying sleeping on a cot, so I had to go home.

As new parents, we were fond of videotaping pretty much everything involving our newborn child. In those early days she didn't do a lot of things most people would feel worthy of capturing on video, mostly she slept. But we taped things like the way she'd move her head back and forth in her sleep. We held up her tiny hands in front of the camcorder and bent her little thumb back, to show how she was born with the same hyper extending thumb her father has.

Even though I wish I thought that was a stupid thing to capture on video, it really wasn't. It was all really kind of amazing at the time, her simply being a living thing and not just an idea tucked away in my uterus was pretty amazing at the time.

I videotaped her arrival at our house, we even fell so deeply into goofy new parenthood that Logan gave her a 'tour' of her new home...on video. We walked through the house like a couple of brainless idiots and said things like, "This is the kitchen and I'll be cooking here." and "This is your room and you need to know up front, we take sleeping very seriously in this house."

The most poignant part of the tape is at the very end, once we showed her the entire house, Logan looked into the camera and said earnestly:

"Okay, now what?"

The tape goes dramatically black at that point.

If I'd kept the tape rolling to answer his question I would have had to say:

"Well, I thought I'd sit down and try to settle back into our life, where nothing's really changed, it's the same as my old life except that every single cell of my entire being has been changed by this life altering event we just went through and I'm not sure how I can even process that.

And then I was thinking I'd start crying a few times this afternoon as I felt totally out of place in my life and at around 4 o'clock once our guests have all left and it's just you, me and the promise of a night offering my raw nipple to a hungry baby every 2 hours, then I thought I'd really try to illustrate what it means to suffer through 'The Baby Blues'.

If the baby starts crying, at all, I will start saying over and over again in a very disturbing way: 'She has colic, I know it. She's going to have colic. I can't do this if she has colic. I can't be mom if she has colic. We're never going to sleep again. Ever. Oh God what have we done, how could we do this? No I'm not overreacting, I don't think you understand what is happening here. Our baby has been crying for 30 seconds and this means one thing, she has colic and we are doomed. Do not tell me to calm down, I can't calm down.'

Or, you know, something like that. Because that's pretty much what I did that first day home with my new baby.

I'm telling you all this because you need to know I am seriously deficient when it comes to transitioning from 'pregnant mom' to 'new mom'. This information will be important as we move on and it's imperative that you understand what I mean when I say, 'I really suck at parenting newborns.'

I'm not kidding, I really couldn't be worse at it if I tried.

Comments

[The Sarcastic Journalist Journalist]

Okay, I'm scared. I'm really, really scared. I think well, besides that first time they decide to put the baby to my boob, that I'm really worried about getting her home and being "now what?"

But I always wondered what I'd do THE DAY I found out I was pregnant. And I survived.

My big plans, on the way home from the hospital, include stopping off at a Mexican Restaurant (in sweats, if I must) and drinking a damn margarita.

[Wendy]

You just described exactly my own feelings when I had my daughter four years ago. Except...well...she DID have colic. So she would cry for 3 hours straight in the middle of the night, I would cry, etc. I finally stopped being stubborn, admitted I had postpartum depression, and went on meds for the next year of her life. Now, I'm expecting my 2nd child in June. I'm surprisingly optimistic this time around and more confident in my abilities. Is it a delusion? After reading your post this morning I'm wondering if my optimism is just fierce denial on my part. Tell me your second was easier. Tell me you brought your 2nd baby home and it was all easier. Pleeeeze!!!!!

[mingaling]

oprah doesn't make me cry. emergency vets? oh hell yes. my exhusband would always start our phone conversation with, "okay sweetie, turn off animal planet."

[Melissa]

SJ: You get through it, you live through your emotions and the hard times. Some of us do it with zero patience and grace, others accept it and work through it knowing it will be easier eventually. Not me.

I really prefer freaking out every other minute of my life.

Wendy: The only thing easier about number 2 was the knowledge that it would end eventually and this wouldn't always be so hard. Neither of my kids had colic, but my son had reflux. Oh, that and I am a slave to my emotions and hormones. Some people aren't. Like I said, I am exceedingly horrendous at giving birth. (Also, I stayed on zoloft for nearly 18 months after my son was born.)

Really, you're probably more graceful than me so it won't be so hard. It was really only that bad for a couple of weeks or so. Sure there were still outbursts of raw emotion here and there, but the really ugly parts were concentrated in the first weeks.

It's really not shocking only one of my close friends has a child.

[Lil' Sis]

It's also not shocking that your sister is petitioning Blue Cross to start covering voluntary hysterectomies in women as young as 26.
P.S.- The response has been pretty negative.

Miao.

[leslee]

Yes, good reminder. I was not meant to have kids. I have been dating a 50-year-old guy who's having a crisis that he always thought he'd have kids. I am 45. I know that women do go and have fertility treatments or adopt and all that, but geezus, I can't miss an hour or two of sleep any given night and I'm completely useless. They're darlings and you love them but there's a reason you have them when you're young.

BTW, I enjoy your writing - drop by here now and then to see what you have to say.

[Eve P]

a very nice post-- capturing the horror/marvel of it all very nicely. i'm sorry they took your uterus out, sewed it up, then stapled it back in. i'm glad they're bigger now--for you, for me.

Eve P.