As a new parent, surviving my first week with a
newborn was very much like being trapped on a deserted island with just the
essentials:
(1) A single match (that has unfortunately been thoroughly doused with water)
(2) A bag of bananas (all of which happen to be moldy)...and...
(3) A tattered map (which apparently leads to absolutely nowhere)
I thought I had had my fair share of experiences with
babies.
After all, I had worked
with newborns (quite) extensively as a medical student on my pediatrics rotation. Several of my friends already had
babies, whom I did hold (from time to time). As a babysitter, I must have changed
at least a hundred diapers. But, I
realized something quite quickly in my first few days as a mom...
... I was
absolutely clueless when it came to newborns.
The wonder and amazement of the newborn…cutting the cord...
marveling
at those tiny feet…
...holding him in your arms…
...seems to rapidly fade after that first night. If there was ever a time when a good night’s
rest was needed, it would be the evening after propelling a 7-pound, watermelon-sized human out of
your body. A sleep-deprived haze
rapidly replaces the amazement and wonder of the birth process, as you wander
aimlessly around the hospital room.
Here are the foggy recollections of my first week as a
mother:
- The newborn eating schedule seems somewhat doable in
theory: eating every 1-3 hours should leave at least a solid hour for sleep in
there. What the books don’t tell
you is that the clock begins at the START of the last feed…
... crap. So, I found myself pretty much continuously feeding my little gremlin during those first newborn days.
- The person who created the phrase
“sleeps like a baby” clearly was mistaken. Just as you begin to drift off to sleep, the little whimper
will begin again. While you are not sleeping, you are left ample time to repurpose all of those baby items you thought would be so
useful in surviving newbornhood… like turning your boppy pillow into
a make-shift inner tube
- I discovered there is nothing cuter than a swaddled baby…
or as Tony calls it, “A Baby Burrito.”
I would marvel at my little pillbug, wrapped up and seemingly swallowed in the large
bassinet beside me...
...That is, until
I realized I had been blessed with a little escape artist. No matter how tightly I tried to wrap
Leon, my little wiggle worm would always find a pocket to tunnel out of.
- Isn’t baby poop supposed to increase slowly at first… giving
new moms and dads just a few days to adjust? Apparently not.
The first diaper I ever changed for Leon ended in a huge blow-out. Daddy got the freebie with the first
meconium diaper. How could so much
poop come from such a tiny creature?
- All those breastfeeding moms in the magazines look so
natural…for me, this was not the case.
From the moment I tried to breastfeed, it felt like razorblades shooting
through my body. The lactation
consultants kept telling me, “Just relax your shoulders.” If only that was all that it
required. My couple days in the
hospital consisted mostly of me persistently trying to find comfortable and
workable solutions for my breastfeeding woes. I had once giggled at the term
“nipple butter…” What would that be used for? Reason discovered!
And, the colostrum that comes in those first few days… somehow I missed
the memo that the quantity is all of maybe 3 drops an hour those first couple days… surely not enough to pacify a starving child new to the world. Thankfully, breastfeeding did become easier over the course of the week... even if it drew more than a few tears (from both of us) in the beginning.
By the end of the week, I remember asking myself: How can
parents ever survive more than one child?
Looking back, I see now that the trials and tribulations of
the newborn fade with time.
That
wet match dries out just a bit. A perfectly ripe bananas can sometimes be found amongst the rotten ones. And, that roughly laid out map starts
to make sense.
You realize that
you can survive on that seemingly isolated island, as parents of countless
other generations have before you.
Somehow, you learn to function on fewer hours of sleep, diaper change
with one hand, feed your baby and tackle chores at the same time. And, by the end of it all, you somehow find yourself missing those days when he was so tiny. You look back on his pictures, and think of that little angel of a newborn. You
start to remember how light he was in your arms...
... the gentle softness of
that perfect newborn skin…
... and somehow begin to miss when he was just your newborn peanut.
You realize
that it was all worth it.
And, in due time, you find yourself thinking, "well, maybe another
baby wouldn’t be such a bad thing?”
...someday...
