It’s a Girl

A couple of months ago, a mom in Delphine’s playgroup remarked that the physical hardships of being a mom tended to hit in one of three ways: while getting pregnant, during pregnancy, or after pregnancy. This mom herself had had great difficulty getting pregnant. Other new moms we know have had burdensome pregnancies.

Me? It’s all post-partum, baby.

Getting pregnant was so easy, we weren’t really prepared for it. (Oops, I was supposed to be taking folic acid for months beforehand? Oh, well.) Pregnancy itself was remarkably easy — apart from the usual minor ailments (loss of appetite, leg cramps, round-ligament pain, heartburn, pregnancy rhinitis), I was quite comfortable throughout. Heck, we were snowshoeing regularly at seven months’ gestation.

And then the baby arrived, ushering in months of physical trauma. C-sections are no picnic, and neither, it turned out for us, was learning how to breastfeed. Gallstones — a little-known complication of pregnancy — took over the month of July. And that’s on top of the usual pummeling that all babies dole out to their mommies: scratching, kicking, biting, head-butting, and screaming in their ears.

Delphine, too, has had her share of hard knocks, mostly in the form of nasty, oozy, lingering colds. She caught her first rhinovirus at three months of age, and another at five months. Once the winter hit, the viral progression became nearly constant; colds three, four, and five took up November and December, and are ongoing. (Mommy and Daddy, of course, usually get these colds, too, but we recover from them faster.)

On New Year’s Day, I remarked to Caleb that I sure hoped 2010 would be better, health-wise, than 2009 had been. Ho ho ho. On January 2, my always-tetchy lower back — aggravated for months by baby-lifting — gave out completely. Turns out that instead of the usual muscle problems that cause most lower-back pain, I now have a pinched nerve, which is more serious in every way.

I now understand, for example, how your stomach can turn inside-out from pain alone. Or why soldiers dying on the battlefield in war movies are always depicted trembling and gasping and asking for water. Because you do shake, uncontrollably, and you pant, fiercely, and you get terribly thirsty.

Caleb’s mom was visiting us, and having just finished reading José Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, commented that all my yelling sounded like I was being nailed to the cross. Somehow I doubt that sciatica — or whatever it is I’ve developed — is of the same order of magnitude as crucifixion. But being told you can’t pick up your kiddo anymore? Pretty grim.