Sunday, November 16, 2014

Chiaroscuro

5 Weeks

Here's to future new moms. I wish you lots of luck, love, sleep, patience, good health, friendships, plentiful breast milk, uncomplicated deliveries, happy babies, generous family, and compassionate partners.

Know this:

YOU WILL SURVIVE WEEK FIVE

after...

...picking a fight with your mother.

...obsessing that you are going to be fired when you return to work.

...dealing with a new, unsuccessful afternoon of feeding you will start to worry. You will take baby's temperature, you will sing to him, dance for him, you will take your own temperature. You will Google symptoms and discover disturbing poop color meanings. You will realize it's too late to call the doctor. You will spend your precious and rare sleep time that evening wondering if it was Ebola, something you ate, accidentally rubbed on your body, washed with, or spontaneously oozed. You will spend every feeding after coaching your baby for the Milk Olympics. He will finally eat. He will EAT! All will be well! He will then spit everything up.

...finishing a half eaten apple you found in the living room, you chuckle to yourself recalling having started it the day before. Then you will remember that wasn't you.

...peeing on your own hand while attempting to balance your new born undisturbed, suckling a boob. You will have rolled out of bed at 2:30a and immediately attached him before realizing you should have gone to the bathroom first.

...figuring out how to sanitize one hand with one hand.

...picking a fight with a phone solicitor. 

...obsessing that your friends don't like you anymore.

...realizing you have not eaten a vegetable in three days.

...finally handing your baby to your partner for a few minutes so you can take care of things requiring two limbs, you will look at pictures of your baby on your phone.

...picking a fight with your hairbrush.

...shaving your own ankles for the first time in months you will cut yourself and laugh in a way that troubles you somewhere deep inside.

...cursing at the dog for misunderstanding your joke.

...beginning a sleepy sentence that enlists your partner to change a nighttime diaper, you will choke on the word "help" and repeatedly sob-slobber that word over and over again...

Here's to all mothers and their mothers. Especially single mothers. You ladies deserve a genie in a bottle for every day. And here's to remembering that it's OK to have a hard time. Enjoy the hard times. They're good too. You can't have the light without the [cue: blood-curdling, screaming infant].

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