I had a doctor’s appointment the other day - my six week post-partum followup visit with Dr. K. The moment Matthew and I walked into the office, of course, Matthew woke up and was hungry. Within five minutes, as I was getting ushered into an examination room so I could sit down and nurse him, he was bawling at the top of his wee lungs. Yes, they work.

Dr. K asked me again what it was like being a mom, and I talked to him about how it was tiring, how it doesn’t feel real yet, that all we seem to do is feed, diaper, and coax to sleep, but that he smiled last weekend, and that was a lot of fun.

I keep turning that question over and over in my head and I think I finally have an answer.

Being a mom is the hardest damn job I can think of. All of the pregnancy websites talk about the fatigue and the cuteness and the postpartum depression signs to watch out for, but they don’t talk about what happens when all of the visitors go home and you are suddenly solely responsible for a being who doesn’t consciously know what he wants, much less asks coherently for it.

They don’t talk about the guesswork that goes into soothing an inconsolable child, about how the baby can have a clean diaper, full belly, not too hot, not too cold, and be crying at the top of his lungs. They don’t talk about the sometimes insatiable hunger - not just for breastmilk but for closeness, for your heartbeat.

Days can go by where you don’t shower, leave the house, or put a shirt on. Your emotions flip on a dime - one minute everything is fine, and the next you find yourself hugging your child close to you and crying, overwhelmed by everything - by the love you feel, by the frustration you feel, by everything. And then you go to Google and type in post-partum depression and look at lists of symptoms and try to determine whether or not you have the baby blues, PPD or psychosis. And all of the above? Considered absolutely normal.

Breastfeeding might come easy for you, and you might enjoy it, but it’s still hard. If you choose to breastfeed, by nature you take on more of the responsibilities. If it’s still a bit awkward to do on the fly, you have to find a place that’s not fucking disgusting to nurse (I am not sitting on a toilet to nurse my child). You have to explain to a clueless teenager at Target why your son who is breastfed is at home, and I am there at Target, and before I go home, I have to pump a little because my breasts might explode. My breasts don’t belong to me anymore. They are not a sign of sexuality for me, and I doubt they ever will be again. Our bathroom trashcan is littered with heavy, wet breastpads from milk leaking. I dread showering because of the work it takes to get back into a nursing bra.

They don’t tell you how hard it might be for you to ask for help. How hard it is for new parents to negotiate the early days of parenthood without throwing their spouse out of a window. How you feel jealous of your husband for being a heavier sleeper than you, and despite the spouse shooing you into the room to take naps, your pride precludes you from resting comfortably.

They don’t tell you that you’ll miss going back to work. They will tell you that you’ll feel goddamned guilty for wanting to go back to work, wanting to regain some facet of your former, pre-parental life, the life you had before you stopped sleeping. They don’t tell you how much you’ll agonize over how you’ll make it up to the coworkers who adopted some of your workload in your absence, while you were up soothing and consoling a baby who has just shit his pants for the fourth diaper in ten minutes (totally true; ask Josh).

None of the websites or books tell you how you’ll ever possibly manage to go back to work after your maternity leave (not all of which will be paid), be a mother, a wife, an employee, a daughter, a friend, and a woman. How you’ll ever possibly manage to get up at 6:30, probably earlier because of the baby, leave by 7:30, probably later because of the baby, work a full day and leave somewhere between 5pm and 6pm, probably later because of the workload, arrive back home between 7 and 7:30, have dinner, clean up, work out, nurse the child, give the child a bath, and be asleep by 10pm so you can catch up on the sleep you know you’ll lose at 2 and 5am.

I find myself in utter awe of the baby suckling my breast. How he’s grown in the last six weeks, how there are new folds in his skin when I’m not paying attention, how his smile lights up his entire face. On the flip side of that, I find myself more afraid than I ever have been before in my life - before the baby was born, I like to think I had a healthy dose of paranoia and skepticism - now, the desire to protect Matthew from all things potentially deadly is stronger than I ever anticipated. I used to cross the street when the sign was flashing Don’t Walk. Now, I stop and wait patiently for the walk signal to light up before I even step off of the curb. My heart aches when I read newspaper articles about people who do really terrible things to their children, and I tear up. When Matthew was in the hospital for phototherapy treatment, a volunteer from Project Linus came and gave us a blanket for Matthew, and as soon as she left, I cried, because did they know something we didn’t know about how sick Matthew was?

What the websites and books will tell you is how to be the perfect parent, and they all contradict each other, and they all judge harshly. You should or shouldn’t co-sleep. You should or shouldn’t cloth diaper. You should or shouldn’t babywear. You should or shouldn’t pick your baby up when you hear him cry because that is or isn’t spoiling him. You should or shouldn’t circumcise your son. You should or shouldn’t vaccinate your child. The moment you become a parent, you might as well tape a sign to your back that says, “KICK ME HARD.” Because people have, can, and will judge you every which way until Sunday.

Hell, it starts with pregnancy. You should or shouldn’t use a midwife or obstetrician. The medical establishment is or isn’t full of shit. You should or shouldn’t have an ultrasound, because it may or may not kill your fetus. You should or shouldn’t undergo XYZ test, because it will or will not fuck with your head. You should or shouldn’t have a natural childbirth - the list goes on.

So what is it like to be a mom? It’s pretty damned hard. It’s pretty damned confusing. It’s pretty damned judgmental and it’s sometimes very damned infuriating.

But it’s also very, very rewarding. I wouldn’t give up this gig for the world.

We got Matthew a mobile that plays “Rockabye Baby”, and tonight as I was straightening up the bedroom, I put him in the pack ‘n play and turned it on. He loved it!

Alas, it did not last long:

But I caught a picture of it too:

Matthew is five weeks old. Can you believe it? I can’t. I feel like I just gave birth to him not too long ago. Well, I suppose it wasn’t really that long ago, was it?

Mama and Matthew hanging out after dinner.

Did someone spike my milk?

Yikes!!

Mama, why do you keep pointing that thing at me?

Oh, what’s over there?

The muscle man pose

I bought a pack of gDiapers yesterday in preparation for our trip to Connecticut at the end of the month. We cloth diaper right now, and while it is lovely, the idea of toting around cloth diapers (clean OR dirty) over a few day trip is a little off-putting. At any rate, I picked up a starter pack and now Matthew’s as snug as a bug in a pair of gDiapers and I’m finding myself oddly excited about when I can next change his diaper so I can see how absorbent his new digs are.

I’m kicking myself a little, though, for picking up a small starter kit. The small sizes go from 6-13lbs, and I figured Matthew would be just skating by at the 11 pound mark, since he’s kind of scrawny. I should have probably gone for the mediums. Ah, well. It fits, but I had to wiggle it a little. We’ll see how they hold up the day before we leave for Connecticut, at which point if they still fit and fit well, I’ll head back up to Whole Foods and pick up a refill pack. If they don’t fit, I’ll probably pick up a pack of Seventh Generation diapers, which are pretty baby-butt and earth-butt friendly. At any rate, if it doesn’t fit well and we like the whole gDiaper thing, we’ll probably pick up a medium/large (that goes from 13-26lbs) kit and refill for our next few trips later on this year.

Side note: I cannot imagine having a baby that big.

In doing some research behind the gDiaper thing, I found the blog of one of the two owners, here. I like the personal touch behind a corporate front.

Have you used gDiapers? What do you do when you travel if you use cloth and are loath to use store-brand disposables?

***

This entry makes me seem a lot more granola-y than I think I really am. All I need now is to switch to cloth menstrual pads or a Keeper and I think I’ll be all set.

(For the record, no on both accounts.)

Dear Matthew,

One month ago today you were born. To say that your entrance into this world has changed our lives would be a vast understatement. Physically, your Mama and Baba have not slept a full night’s sleep in quite awhile (me long before your were born, because when you were still in my belly, I got up a LOT to go to the bathroom and sometimes to just sit and think about you and everything else going on). We are growing as your parents, and trying to figure out your likes and dislikes. It is hard to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak anything but babytalk!

What you like:
- Your Baba. You love spending time with your Baba, and sometimes only Baba’s rocking and holding will settle you down from a mad fury. You seem to like it when he plays Elevator with you (when he holds you in his hands and rocks you up and down and up and down), and when he props you up on his legs. You open your eyes up really wide and stare into his face. When Baba holds you, the position you like best is propped up onto his shoulder, where you can nestle your head into the crook of his neck.

- The Boob. You have really, uh, latched onto the breastfeeding thing. The first thing you did was latch on, textbook style, and we’ve been going strong for an entire month! It’s working too - you are growing strong and fast. Sometimes when you get into a Mood, you squirm, grunt, and play “hide and go seek” with my nipple until you get it just right. Sometimes you take little catnaps at my breast until you decide you want to finish. You’re nursing about every 2-3 hours (this afternoon you went three hours twice between feedings!) and are pretty consistent about that during the night, too - we can reasonably anticipate two feedings a night - one at around 1 or 2 am, and then another around 5 or 6am.

- The Night. You are still a night owl, and one of these days we’re going to try to swing you around! Your Baba is also a night owl, so sometimes, we will nurse together, you will be WIDE AWAKE and ready to go out dancing, at which point your Baba will take you to the living room so I can catch some sleep.

What you don’t like:
- Diaper changes. You flail about as soon as we take your diaper cover off, not to mention your diaper. Your arms shoot out and you frown deep furrows into your brow when we begin the process of cleaning up whatever damage you’ve done down south.

- Baths. Same here. Something about being naked offends your delicate sensibility, so we try to make bath time as quick and painless as possible. That doesn’t stop you from being pissed off as hell at the universe!

- Being Angry. You hate being angry and you work yourself up into a rage so mighty your face turns purple, you hack yourself into Old Man Coughs, and you stop breathing (this freaks me out). You’ve also started to cry real tears, which just breaks my heart. Stop that! At the same token, we can’t help but laugh at your rage. Forgive us for laughing, okay?

***

Our days are sort of routinized now, as routinized as they can be considering your newness. We get up pretty early in the morning, as once the sun comes up you’re a bit more alert. We nurse, I get breakfast #1 (oatmeal, usually). Sometimes you nod off to sleep while we nurse, sometimes it’s afterward as we sit together on the sofa and you fall asleep on my shoulder. Once you’re napping, I try to tidy up or nap myself (usually the latter), and then try hard to wake up and take Ava out before Baba starts work. Baba works from home, so you get a lot of smooches and hugs from him during the day. I sometimes eat breakfast #2 (a pb&sfj sandwich) and nurse you again. The afternoon brings naptime and playtime and then Baba makes dinner before we have bathtime (every other day) and then transition into night. All of this is going to change when I go back to work, but I am not going to worry about that now!

Some notable notes for you -

7/31/06 - your umbilical cord stump fell off. That gross little wedge of dried blood and flesh was the last little bit of me that you had on your body and I was excited and woeful to see it depart.

8/14/06 - today - I think, I think, you deliberately smiled at me twice tonight while we were snuggled together after nursing. I THINK.

Nicknames: Mama’s Eggroll; Baby Guy; Matkins; Fusspot; HRH (His Royal Highness).

Today’s stats from the pediatrician visit (she said you were doing great, although you couldn’t stand her and her cold hands and her poking and prodding - and if you didn’t like her today, you are surely going to detest her next visit, when you get your first round of vaccinations!):

Weight: 11 pounds, 1.4 ounces (!). This places you in the 59th percentile for weight.
Length: 22 1/4 inches (up 2 1/4 inches from birth!). This places you in the 38th percentile for height.
Head circumference: 15.55 inches (up .55 inches from birth). This places you in the 54th percentile for head circumference.

You are doing splendidly. We’re still trying to figure out how to be your parents, so I hope you’ll cut us some slack as we mess things up occasionally (like yesterday when you headbutted Baba in the teeth? Oh, both of you were whimpering then!).

Love,
Mama

Tomorrow, Matthew will be four weeks old. At once it seems like we brought him home yesterday, and it seems like we’ve lived our entire lives with Matthew by our sides.

A couple of weeks ago when my mom was still here (we have had a stream of visitors that just ended this past Monday), she and I took Matthew with us to my OB’s office - I’d had flu-like symptoms and the chills, plus an engorged and sore breast, and my OB thought it might be mastitis, so he asked me to come on up. It wasn’t mastitis - I caught the symptoms and held them at bay just in the nick of time, and it turns out one of my ducts was a little on the cloggy side. As he and the staff oohed and aahed over Matthew, Dr. K asked me, “So, what’s it like being a mom?”

I laughed and said, “Tired!” Flippant, and true, to be sure, but man, a loaded question if there ever was one. I’ve thought about it ever since and I’m not sure I know what being a mom is like yet. I’m only four weeks in.

What I do know is that when Matthew is alert and quiet, we’ll have moments together where we just stare at each other - his deep grey blue eyes lock onto mine. I’ll talk quietly to him or read him a book (this is what I read him yesterday). I kiss him - I can’t resist his cheeks - they demand to be kissed! We nap together - sometimes we lay together in bed, either he nurses from me or I tuck him into the crook of my arm. More often than not, that’s how we’ll sleep a portion of our sleep at night - him tucked between Josh and me. I never thought I’d do the co-sleeping thing, and believe me, once he gets more settled into a routine, he will be spending more time on his own (at the foot of our bed is his basinette/crib/thing, so he’s not far away by any means), but for now, I’m enjoying it. I usually toss and turn at night but I’m perfectly content now to lay on my right side, protecting him from the edge of the bed.

Matthew cried today when his diaper was wet - we’d gotten back from a trip to Borders and Josh changed a very wet and poopy diaper - but by then Matthew had reached his limit and was pissed off. He cried and wailed and shouted until he was clean again - but he’d started his wailing on the sidewalk outside our building, so he’d had a good amount of time to work up to a huge rant. By the time we got back to the apartment, tears were forming at his eyes. Josh hurriedly changed his diaper, and all was well in his world again. He cried real tears, and that brought tears to my eyes. I know it was bound to happen - tears are an inevitable part of babies’ lives, but in a way, I feel like we caused those tears to spring and knowing that, that I can love and cause tears in the eyes of my baby, and that it’s inevitable, makes me sad. All I want to do is protect him from evils of this world, whether it’s Ava slobber or the monster underneath the bed, and I know I won’t be able to. That inability to do so will be my undoing. I want to do right by this child. I want him to know he is loved and he is free to love. I know I’m going to let him down sometimes.

I’m sorry, Matthew, for those times I let you down. I don’t mean to, and I’ll always, always try to do better.

So, Dr. K, what’s being a mom like? Right now, it’s still tiring (I’m making sure to nap when I can), but it’s also amazing (check those eyes out), heartbreaking, tearjerking, and I can’t wait to see what else this new job entails. All in all, though? Not a bad gig by any means.

Matthew hates getting his diaper changed. Hates bathtime too. I think we’ve got a prude on our hands.

I have never seen a woman breastfeeding until I brought Matthew to my breast in the minutes after he was born. I am not slighting my family in any way - we just, for a variety of reasons, were formula-fed. We obviously thrived, and with only minor twitches, are perfectly normal. So when Josh and I talked about how we wanted to feed the baby, I hadn’t made up my mind, but breastfeeding wasn’t out of the picture (nor was it entirely IN the picture). I knew that breastfeeding was a natural function, and a very healthy and inexpensive one, but just how everything was going to fit together was still hazy in my brain. For him, all babies in his family were breastfed and it was the norm that he assumed would occur when the concept of Matthew came along.

Josh and I attended a breastfeeding basics class, and that made me feel a little less intimidated, for sure, and learning more about the support the hospital provides made me feel good as well. I don’t think, though, that any class or any talk beforehand can really prepare you for what it is like to nurse a child from the moment they are born.

Matthew nursed like it was his job from the moment he exited the womb. He latched on perfectly and we have been going strong ever since, despite two small blips - the first being that we made the decision (and I say that very purposefully) to give him 30cc of formula on his first night because his blood sugar was low. The second blip was that he took a few bottles (of a couple of ounces each) of expressed breastmilk I pumped for him when he was hospitalized for jaundice (asked to by the doctor to measure his input). I was afraid that he would have nipple confusion, but the boy is smart - he knows that he can get the goods from my boobs when he needs them.

Since then, my nipples have never been so sore - it’s not that his latch is bad, it’s that my nipples are weak and need to toughen up to their new task. Josh can only share peripherally (for now) in Matthew’s feeding, and so I’m up more constantly throughout the night (twice, really, so not a big deal) to feed Matthew. These are the hard parts of nursing. Growth spurts have been frustrating too - tonight, he fed at 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, for anywhere between 15 minutes to 45 minutes each time, with no sign of letting up. I joked to a friend earlier that he must have an empty leg, because goodness, where else is he putting it?

The other hard part of nursing is partly mental. I am now responsible for the sustenance of another human being, completely. What comes out of me and goes into him is providing him with nourishment to grow. We are attached to each other in ways I knew but didn’t fully embrace until he and I started our relationship on the outside together - yesterday, Josh and his sister went out to Andersonville to shop around, and I declined, because I didn’t feel like walking the distance, but I also didn’t want to compromise our nursing time together.

It is hard nursing in public, especially when you’re as new to the concept of breastfeeding as I am. I am not flashing my breasts around, and for someone who’s as nervous and anxious as I am, I’ve nursed more in public than I anticipated I would - including a busy bar (that was attached to a tapas restaurant), a few other quiet restaurants, and at Target. It’s hard nursing in public when your baby is having as hard a time concentrating as you are. But I’ve done it.

What I love about nursing is the look in Matthew’s eyes when he’s suckling at my breast. His eyes start out wide open, darting this way and that. Occasionally, our eyes will meet and we’ll stare at each other, and I’ll talk to him. Sometimes he stares at my arm. Slowly, his eyes start to droop as he starts to really concentrate on his task at hand. As he’s aged (he’s 3 whole weeks old now!) I’ve had to do less to stimulate him mid-feed - when we started out, he’d fall asleep so quickly that I had to ruffle his hair to wake him up. Now, occasionally I’ll tickle his toes to see if he’s still interested in nursing. I put some pillows up in bed and prop him up either on another pillow or on my thighs, and he settles in. His hands flail about and the cutest thing he does is he’ll grab my middle and index fingers on one hand and hold them very tight. Other times he’ll ball his wee hands up into tiny fists and toss them around - sometimes striking a breast, and more amusingly, sometimes striking his face, which startles him (and amuses me immensely).

When he’s finished nursing and in what I call a milk coma haze, I’ll press my nipple against his lip to see if he’s still interested, and if he’s not, he’ll purse his lips tightly together as if to say, “No thanks, I’m full!” Lately, he’s started to smile - I know it’s not a real smile yet, but it’s still pretty darn cute when he does it.

I also love that he’s thriving. He’s gained weight and kicked the jaundice, solely because of our nursing relationship together. I look at how much he’s grown since I had him a mere three weeks ago and know that every fat roll I see is because of my milk and that is an oddly proud feeling. His little belly distended and full of my milk is enough to make me sit a little taller.

I know I’m pretty lucky here, with nursing as easy as it has been for us, even through the challenging times as well. Will things always go this smoothly? Of course not. I do plan to enjoy it as long as it lasts and as long as he thrives on it. In a way, I’m thriving too.

We’re eighteen days into this parenting gig and there are two notes to, uh, note.

First - yesterday (7/31/06) Matthew’s umbilical cord stump fell off! This was a little bittersweet for me - it was sort of gross, especially toward the end of its reign on Matthew’s body. Josh had primary cleaning responsibility on that one - I just couldn’t deal. But it’s the last remnant of me on Matthew’s body - the cord is cut and that stump falling off is the last little proof that he once came from me.

Josh laughed at me when I said this. “He’s got half your DNA!”

Man, it’s so not the same. So, right now, the little bit left to his stump is sitting on Josh’s dresser. I am equally torn between throwing it away and keeping it to embarass him when he’s 18. I haven’t decided yet.

Second - today (8/1), we gave Matthew his first bathtub bath! Before I regale you with this tale, let me say first that occasionally Matthew gets Very Offended by the world (or by Josh or me changing his diaper) that he cries and shouts himself into a Frenzy, and by Frenzy, I mean “I am going to Scream until SOMEONE in CHARGE listens to my DEMANDS! And then I’m going to forget to breathe momentarily until I turn PURPLE! And then I will remember to BREATHE and then SCREAM AGAIN!” Josh and I are sort of amused by this - he is definitely showing signs of being a drama queen.

At any rate, imagine the Frenzy in the tub, and you’ve got Matthew. He was NOT happy about being bathed! We made it quick and snappy, though, and now his hair smells nice and he’s all lotioned up (his pediatrician gave us some Aveeno samples to try with him to help with his dry skin) and hair spiked out all over the place. So cute.

Anyway, things are going well ’round these parts. We’re all pretty tired, but at least I am trying to do what I can to nap, and Josh has been great. Josh’s sister is in town visiting and she helped with a load of laundry yesterday, for which I was very grateful. In a couple of minutes I’m going to check on HRH (His Royal Highness) and see how he’s doing - it’s almost time for a feeding.

More later, I’m sure.