It’s a Girl

When you are pregnant with your first child, people ask lots of questions about morning sickness and birth plans, and make cracks about how you’ll never sleep again once the baby arrives.

You might conclude that pregnancy is arduous, labor and delivery are hell, and babies are cute but you won’t notice because you’ll be far too sleep-deprived.

Well, yes and no. Pregnancy for me had its minor discomforts, but that was all they were. Labor and delivery didn’t exactly happen, given Delphine’s super-breechitude and our scheduled C-section.

And the sleep thing? Well, as a friend commented over a year ago, about her then six-month-old son, “If you had told me last year that I wouldn’t get more than six or seven hours of sleep a night for months and months, I would’ve thought I couldn’t handle it. But you know what? You get used to it.”

At our house, the every-two-hours nursing routine of the first few months quickly slid into a once-a-night snack, and eventually into a nothing-a-night routine. Yes, it’s true: Delphine goes to bed around 7 or 8, and then sleeps until 7 or 8 the next morning. Twelve hours with nary a peep.

So we’ve taken care of pregnancy, labor, and sleep. Here are the other major things nobody thinks to tell you about before the baby shows up.

1) Breastfeeding can be not only difficult but agonizing. One new mom I know, who delivered her baby the old-fashioned way, told me recently that the pain of learning to breastfeed vastly exceeded that of labor and delivery. Ugh.

And guess what? Once your kiddo pops out a few teeth, breastfeeding becomes unfun all over again. Here again the books will fail you; their advice about biting is always to firmly tell your child “No!” and then somehow, magically, your genius offspring will realize that your yelling is connected to her biting (and the occasional stretching of the nipple like chewing gum) and will politely stop doing it. Ha.

2) Your kid will physically beat you up from day one — flailing, kicking, scratching, biting, head-butting. Even when you know your tot isn’t malevolently trying to inflict suffering, it still hurts. And for us, um, older parents, trying to play with a baby down on the floor or pick up 25 pounds of chubby tot ain’t exactly easy on the creaky joints.

3) Your kid will psychologically beat you up from day one — usually when she’s sobbing her little heart out. You can’t make your kid happy all the time, of course. Sometimes this is annoying and frustrating (and makes you feel guilty for being such an unfeeling parent), while at other times it simply breaks your own heart. Delphine crying for an hour because she has a nasty head cold and can’t keep down baby Tylenol? Mommy and daddy are miserable, too.

As Sandra Tsing Loh writes in Mother on Fire, “Motherhood itself is Promethean — well, let’s call her ‘Mrs. Prometheus.’ Which is to say, yes, you bring fire to humanity, but you also end up being chained to a rock and having your liver pecked out over and over again, every day, with ever-fresh, dive-bombing black crows of Worry.”

4) Your day will shift from adult-sized chunks of time to baby-sized nuggets of time. Think 10 minutes instead of half an hour or an hour. Dangle a toy in front of baby, hop up to change laundry, read baby a book, put water on for tea, change baby’s diaper, realize baby needs a bath, run water for bath, put baby in bath, forget that water for tea is on stove until water boils, drag dripping baby from bathtub to kitchen to turn off kettle . . . and so it goes, in little bits of activity until, goodness, it’s midnight! Fine for baby, not so fine for adults who need, say, at least 20 uninterrupted minutes to take a shower or make dinner.

The worst part of the day? The sloooow hours between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., when everybody is tired, hungry, and grouchy, but stuff still has to get done: dinner, dishes, bathing, bedtime. Not for nothing did my mom dub this period “the gangrene hour.”

5) New babies have an unerring ability to get hungry, tired, or cross right when the parents are trying to eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Said parents are then stuck doing one of the following: shoveling food into their faces while the baby screams, eating cold food later, or doing a little of both. A leisured, civilized meal in peace and quiet? Hire a babysitter, or eat when the kiddo is sacked out for the night.

Fortunately, as Delphine is now old enough to sit in a high chair and eat three meals of solid food a day, accompanied by noisy plastic toys, these days we plop her in her high chair to join us. And guess what? She’s at the big table, with the big folks, and is instantly happy.

6) OK, this is an extra one, but fellow new mom Kathleen has written about the depressing insta-aging that she experienced after her son was born last year. Gray hair I knew about, sure. But I might not have known about the hair-falling-out-at-four-months-postpartum thing if my hairdresser hadn’t warned me about it beforehand.

Yes, it’s true: Your old life is over. And yes, the new one is tough. But you know what? That old life quickly seems like it belonged to someone else entirely. Not you, parent. You’ve got a new life of your own now.

We have a number of friends who are jumping into the new-parent pool this year. And so lately I’ve been giving them a bit of unsolicited advice: When that baby arrives, don’t forget to take care of yourself, too.

Not that we expect all these new mommies to suffer the slings and arrows of way too many unforeseen postpartum complications, like me. A C-section, breastfeeding difficulties, a gallbladder gone haywire, raging gum disease, and a blown-out lower back? Few new moms get to enjoy all these treats in their first year post-partum, as I have. Lucky, lucky me!

But — and this is a big but — most if not all of the women we know who’ve become moms in the past few years have struggled with physical challenges postpartum. And we’re not just talking sleep deprivation.

We know, for example, at least one other mom who developed the identical gallbladder condition. We know another new mom with the exact same back snafu. Pretty much every new mother complains at some point about achy joints; one mom we know even had to wear braces on her forearms because of the carpal tunnel she developed while lifting her baby boy, and another threw out her shoulder while trying to pretzel her child out of a carrier and into a car seat.

My physical therapist (yes, I have one now) has two small tots of her own, and she reminded me that the hormone high-wire act of pregnancy lingers through breastfeeding. In other words, many of the problems that can develop during pregnancy (you know, things like gum disease, back pain, and gallbladder woes) are caused by hormonal highs, and since breastfeeding keeps those hormones going, your risk of developing those probs doesn’t go away when the baby is born.

Which is probably why I had an easy pregnancy and a rough time afterward.

Very few books or other resources, however, address this issue of mommy care postpartum. Oh, sure, all the new-baby books say things like, “Make sure you get enough sleep!” and “Eat right!” and “Stay fit by going for brisk walks with the baby in the stroller!” But none of them really tell you that, when that baby rolls in the door, all your attention is going to be focused on the kiddo, not on you.

The major maternal complication that has entered our collective consciousness is, of course, postpartum depression. A gazillion books list the warning signs of mental woes, including actress Brooke Shields’ memoir. But physical woes? Well, I’ve found exactly one book that really focuses on the body as well as the mind: the comprehensively titled The Everything Health Guide to Postpartum Care. (It’s also the only book I’ve come across that mentions gallbladder grief as a complication of being gravid.)

So, ladies, I’ll say it again: When that baby arrives, you will hug it and kiss it and call it George — but you’d better not forget to love yourself, too.

We’ve noticed that the off-the-cuff comments we get about Delphine from people who don’t know us well tend to fall into one of two categories: absolute ignorance, or thoughtless rudeness.

Absolute Ignorance, for example, includes the following:

1) We go to a restaurant with our tiny newborn wrapped in a Baby Björn. The waiter notices the baby, looks befuddled for a moment, and then asks, “Dinner for two, plus high chair?” What’s obvious to us (the baby is so small she can’t even lift up her head, much less sit in a high chair) is clearly less so to the (presumably childless) waiter.

2) Our (definitely childless) naturopath tells us that her treatments are so easy, “you can do them while breastfeeding.” Oh, sure. If I prop a magazine up just right, I might be able to read while nursing, but usually holding everything in place just so the baby can eat takes all my limbs and attention. Forget about wrapping myself in a soothing towel with aromatic unguents on it — that’s simply way too much trouble.

3) When I’m having trouble booking an appointment with babysitter coverage, the receptionist at the hair salon suggests that I “just bring the little one along.” For an appointment that takes at least an hour? What’s the kiddo going to do all that time — scream while strapped into her stroller?

Thoughtless Rudeness usually takes the form of commentary by strangers directly to the uncomprehending baby. All of it falls under the category of Things You Would Never Say To An Adult:

1) “Hey there, plump cheeks. You haven’t missed too many meals, have you?”

2) “Oh, you’re making such a funny face. Are you filling your pants?”

3) “C’mon, kiddo, gimme a smile. What’s wrong? Don’t you like me?”

There’s also a third category of commentary, generally occurring between us and acquaintances, that might best be described as The Guilt Trip:

1) “Your child seems like she’s having trouble tracking things visually. Have you had her checked out?”

2) “I know you’ve had a lot of post-partum health problems, but me personally, I wouldn’t take pain-relievers and still breastfeed my child.”

3) “Oh, are you planning to breastfeed for a full 12 months?”

4) “We never gave our baby food from a jar.”

5) “Isn’t she crawling yet?”

Most of this, of course, we just laugh off. But sometimes we find ourselves just livid with rage — and then wonder why we take it all so much to heart.