A Baby

“And then, Melanie s*#t all over herself”. This is what my lovely husband told a group of childless people at DINNER shortly after the birth of our first child. He was of course giving a blow by blow description of the childbirth marathon I had endured to bring our beautiful daughter into the world. He tends to exaggerate, as I do not remember it being quite like that. He also swears up and down that I told his mother to, “shut the fiddlesticks up” during the birth of our second child, but I disagree.

There are many wonderful things about having a baby. There are also many not so wonderful things about having a baby. A baby brings you and your spouse together. A baby also makes you want to choke your spouse in the middle of the night. My favorite part of having a baby is when my husband brings me our baby to hold for the first time and gives me a kiss on the forehead. The worst part? I hate to admit that I have had the fleeting thought that if I wasn’t breastfeeding, 40 pounds overweight, broke, and exhausted I’d leave his non-baby feeding ass. Please tell me I am not alone in having that thought for a split second.

Those thoughts come from lack of sleep. There is a reason zombies are mean. They are very, very tired. What can make matters worse is if you are exhausted while still pregnant. A friend once said, “Living with a pregnant woman is like living with a Rottweiler. You never know when she’s gonna turn.” It does not help when the sales lady at the store tells you they don’t carry that size bra and you need to order one from Sears. Since nothing fits and you want to incinerate your maternity clothes, you end up walking around the house looking like you belong in a National Geographic magazine. I have stood in my birthday suit in front of an open freezer complaining it is hot…in December.

You see both of my daughters were born in December. People ask me how I had two children with the same due date of December 19th. My husband is a CPA. The deadline for corporate tax returns is March 15th. You do the math.

About four weeks into our first child’s life, we realized she would sleep if she were gently rocked…nonstop. We discovered this after holding her, putting her in the bouncy seat, putting her in the seat that vibrated, and putting her in every other present we received at our baby shower. We would have put her in a carnival ride if it put her to sleep. At first we laid her in the cradle at the foot of our bed. My husband tied a rope to his big toe so he could rock her and lay down at the same time. We received a baby swing as a present so we cranked it up and watched her fall instantly asleep. The problem was when we tried to get her out or crank the swing again. We would bump her head or wake her up from the noise and she would start screaming again.

We were so broke. We were “coast the last half mile to work to save gas” broke. I have never loved my husband more than when he wrote a hot assed check to Wal Mart at two in the morning for an open top battery operated baby swing. I rocked and fed her for an hour while he put it together. It was the best five hours sleep of our lives.

As always, thank you for reading my post, and I hope you feel a little better about yourself.