When I got pregnant, I had no clue what I was in for. After all, I was 43 and had been told by some of the best doctors in Manhattan that I had “bad eggs.” So when I saw the pink line on the test, I called my doctor immediately to yell at her.
“You are not going to believe this,” I said, only I used inappropriate bad words.
Almost immediately I was plied with advice books. But I couldn’t relate to anything. What To Expect should be called What To Fear and those books written by “girlfriends” made me want to upchuck. So I threw out the books and starting talking to other moms. Or rather they talked at me.
Helpful Hint No. 1: If you are pregnant and someone wants to tell you their horrendous labor story, walk away, hang up the phone, RUN. People love to tell you about their 72-hour labors and how they ended up with c-sections or two heads or extra toes. It got so bad that I stopped answering the phone and put my hands over my ears and started to sing loudly (The Sex Pistols “Problem” is especially good for this) if the conversation turned to words like nipple-confusion, sciatica, swaddling, never-leaving-the-house-again. These war stories not only scared the shit out of me but there didn’t seem to be any merit to them. “The problem is YOU, what you gonna do….”
Then I had my baby. I won’t bore you with all the details, especially the deep dark secret of epidurals. Do you know that they turn them off when it’s time to push? Oh, did I just say that? Well, THEY DO.
I just wonder, why in the hell no one really tells you the important stuff, like what those first few weeks of parenthood are really like, how hard breastfeeding is, and how downright terrifying it can be taking care of an 8 pound human being. Nobody talks about how utterly exhausted you will be -- and not tired like from a night of going out. Think 30 nights in a row of going out and not being able to sleep at all the next day. I almost thought of writing a book about the first month and giving the God’s honest truth about how incredibly grueling it really is. But then I’d talk to parents who had been through it and they’d look at me with their knowing eyes and say, “it all gets better.”
I think the most arduous thing about the first month for me was the 0-60 grind you find yourself in as soon as you get home from the hospital. Ready set go, you are a parent. All those horror stories you hear about labor is nothing compared to being alone with a newborn for the first time. Changing diapers? Not a big deal. Getting a baby to drink milk from your boobie? Very big deal.
Since I had no clue what I was doing, nor any family assistance, we did what most people in our situation do. We bought help. Enter the lactation consultant, who for $190 a pop will come to your house and jiggle your gazongas until the baby sucks correctly. The only position that worked for me was the laying down one. How was I going to do this in the real world? On the sidewalk? In Target, in aisle 9? Long story short, it didn’t work out for us. After 6 weeks we went to formula, and all I had to deal with was people staring at my once bodacious chest wondering what the hell happened.
“So you’re not breastfeeding, I gather?”
“Just my husband,” I’d retort.
Helpful Hint No. 3: Hire a baby nurse or enlist a relative or buy someone to come over and relieve you. I was determined to do everything on my own and shunned relief. Don’t be me! Accept the help. And when people ask you what they can bring over to you, forego the cute onesies and ask for food. You’re going to need it.
I may sound flippant but that first month was the most agonizing, worrying, stressful, heartbreaking, yet beautifully surreal, amazing experience that I have ever had. We made a human. Yes, your knockers will ache, your baby will cry so loud that the neighbors down the hall will come by to see if everything is ok, and you will cry and laugh at the same time while spending some days wondering if you made the biggest mistake of your life.
But then it changes. It’s like they say, it gets better. Your baby smiles at you. Then she sleeps for 5 blessed hours in a row. You go out with your baby, and feel confident in doing so. There’s no gradually getting used to having a baby for a reason. No, you have to dive in all at once. You do it because you have to, because you want to. And all that anger or fear about how excruciating those first 30 days were magically disappears. People don’t tell you how bad it is because I seriously think that they don’t remember. Months go by so fast that there is always something new to worry about. And then suddenly, you are the one who is telling new parents “it gets better.” You even become nostalgic for those first few weeks.
That’s how you get baby number 2.
