The Mommy Minutes

It took me two hours to eat two eggs and one slice of toast this morning.  This is pretty much my morning every morning, and I’m sure every mom out there has the same struggle. The second I got Charlie to relax after feeding her and took the eggs out, her little eyelids shot open and she screamed to be held.  I would totally let her scream for 5 minutes while I shoved food into my mouth, but my husband gets home from work at 8:30 and he’s trying to sleep at least three hours before she screams for something else, so I quickly scooped her up and turned off the stove. She started to drift off again, I clicked the gas on and she woke up again. I honestly think she finds pleasure in watching me starve.  I calmly told her that if mommy doesn’t eat she will stop making milk and then you won’t eat either. She looked at me with those alert blue eyes and let out a huge burp, followed by spit up. Touché, Charlie girl. Touché. 

I finally am able to finish preparing the meal without the blood curdling screams of death emitting from my child, and I sit down to eat it with her hiked up over my shoulder. She doesn’t want me to use a fork and get the food to my mouth like a normal person without squirming and screaming, of course. So this morning I ate my scrambled eggs like a dog. I just think you all need to know this. 

Before I got pregnant, I lost almost 20 pounds for my one year anniversary trip to Jamaica.  It was the best shape I had been in since the first grade. I was able to fit into size 4 white denim shorts. WHITE DENIM SHORTS.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I was feeling super hot. Then a few months after my anniversary when we decided we wanted to have a baby, Eric basically sneezed on me and I got pregnant.  Neither one of us expected it to happen as quickly as it did, and the beginning of what I like to call the deterioration of Sam’s babe body began. For 9 months I tried to eat healthy as best I could AND I even exercised almost 4 days a week every week until Charlotte arrived, but I still managed to gain almost 50 pounds.  FIFTY POUNDS. I can’t imagine what I would have looked like if I never worked out or ate like complete shit. I used to stress about it in the beginning, but by month 7, 8, and 9 I really just let nature take its course. The weight would come off eventually, right?

6 weeks postpartum and I have lost 30 of those pounds. I haven’t exercised or started Weight Watchers yet, so I can attribute that hefty loss to the baby, the placenta (which I did not eat or turn into vitamins, by the way), the ridiculous amount of fluid inside my pregnant body AND nursing. Breast feeding works WONDERS.  Charlotte can attach herself to my boobs forever if it means I will keep losing weight.  Because of nursing, my stomach went down dramatically fast, so now all I am left with is a ring of skin that I like to call my doughy kangaroo pouch.  I can actually grab it and knead it like dough. I AM SO SORRY for that visual. It’s disgusting to me, but I think Charlotte enjoys nuzzling her body into my doughy midsection. She needs to learn to enjoy something else though because I am soooo over it.  Now that 6 weeks have gone by, my milk supply is beautifully established (file that under things I’d never thought I’d say. I laughed out loud when I typed it.) and I feel almost as normal as I can on 5 hours of sleep a night, I think I’m about ready to start exercising again. And starting Weight Watchers, which I honestly think is the greatest weight loss program out there. Throw in the fact that I can no longer eat cheese and I’m ready to tackle these last 20 lbs and get back to myself.  Even though I think ALL women who give birth are amazing warriors and should embrace their bodies at every stage, no matter what size, (I mean, we did just grow a HUMAN BEING), I just think I will start to really feel like me again once I am cursing Jillian Michaels out in my living room. I feel like taking out those white denim shorts and hanging them on my fridge so I have constant motivation.  Jillian Michaels is ready and waiting for me. LET’S DO THIS!

…Too bad all I want to do is eat an entire tray of brownies and I get winded walking to my car.

Here are just a few of the things that have gone on inside my sleep deprived mind since becoming a mother:

“Do I really need to change her diaper right now?  It’s 2 AM and I don’t think she shit, but even if she does I don’t like her pajamas so I can just throw them out and not care.”

“I really hope she grows into this nose.”

“Can you please stop smacking your lips on my nipple?”

“I slept for 3 hours straight! I feel so refreshed! I am a new woman!” (I then put salt into my coffee.)

“Can you please lift your chin up a little higher so I can get the spit up out of your neck rolls?!”

“Why do you need to wake up right in time for the Real Housewives of New York City?  Please shut up and go back to sleep.”

“Please stop putting your foot right into the middle of your dirty diaper.  I am in no mood to bathe you today.  Or tomorrow for that matter.”

“She only spit up on this shirt 3 times.  Can I just let it dry and leave it alone?”

“I really don’t want to start exercising again, but I really don’t want to continue to be able to grab my stomach with both hands and shake it.”

“Don’t even look at yourself naked in the mirror.  I TOLD YOU NOT TO LOOK AT YOURSELF.”

I remember when I used to come home after a night out at 3 AM.  I can even remember some nights where I was still out at 3 AM going strong with a cocktail in my hand.  Last night at 3 AM was an entirely different story.  Last night I was sound asleep for one of my 3 hour stretches that my darling daughter allows me to have every night (thank God for small miracles, 3 hours is a blessing) when I was awoken by what sounded like a small explosion happening next to my bed.  What could be so loud that it would wake a mother during one of her precious hours of sleep?  If you guessed an explosive shit coming from a 9 pound infant, you guessed correctly.

Yes, my friends, Charlotte Shea was shitting and the sound was loud enough to wake me out of a deep sleep.  I knew when I heard it that it was going to be a bad one.  A complete strip down and redressing.  There is nothing I look forward to less than taking off my daughter’s clothes and putting new ones on at her 3 o’clock in the morning.  I took 10 seconds to mentally prepare myself, threw my hair in a bun (hair falling down in your face while dealing with a diaper explosion is NOT good, I know this from experience as well) and picked up my baby.  I felt the warmth through her clothes and my heart sank.  There would be casualties in this war.  Would the onesie be garbage and the pajamas be saved?  We would soon find out.

I placed Charlie on her changing table, who was now wide-eyed and making gurgling cooing sounds like this was the most fun she’s ever had in her whole damn life, and I began to undress her.  The pajamas would NOT be saved.  I don’t even understand how so much can come out of such a small person.  Somehow the onesie was almost perfectly fine.  I have no idea how this happened or how it was possible, but at least we only have to throw out one article of clothing.  Once I got her naked I took off her diaper, when she promptly decided to kick her feet wildly like she was practicing for swimming at the Olympics.  Her feet, of course, landed in her shit diaper.  I looked at her through exhausted, burning, blood shot eyes and I swore she was going to smile.  And then she threw up.

Nothing good happens at 3 AM.

It blows my mind that Charlotte has been here for over a month.  It was the longest but fastest month of my life, and now that the one month mark has passed it feels like every month will come just as quickly.  Time, please slow down!  While I am ready to sleep more than 3 hours at a time, I’m not ready for my baby girl to grow up yet.  Just yesterday I had to pack up some of her newborn pajamas and my heart broke a little bit.  She is now in that awkward stage where she doesn’t fit into most newborn clothes, but the 0-3 months stuff is still too big.  I’d like to know who the hell sizes baby clothes.  0-3 months, 3-6 months and 6-9 months?  Do they know babies grow EVERY MONTH?  How does something that supposedly fits at 0 months still fit at 3 months?  BECAUSE IT DOESN’T FIT.  Now that the newborn stuff is too small she’s left swimming in 0-3 onesies and she looks ridiculous.  The poor kid has an emo mohawk as a hairstyle on a daily basis and now she can’t even have clothes that fit her.  I guess it doesn’t matter though since she throws up on everything anyway.  She’s actually throwing up right now as I type this.  I’m watching it slide down her neck rolls.  She is disgusting.  I’ll be back to writing this once I clean her up for the millionth time this morning.

Back to our regularly scheduled blog.

What I’ve noticed this past month is that some days seem to drag on forever, while other days go by in a blur.  When we’re stuck in the house, like yesterday, everything seems so impossible and overwhelming.  She would barely nap yesterday and I felt like I was going to go insane.  Like actually cuckoo for cocoa puffs insane.  Today started to go that route until my mom asked me if I wanted to sleep over tonight, so now that we have plans and somewhere to go, I can handle the day much better.  I actually just got back from taking her out for a walk just to get some fresh air and some exercise.  Charlotte doesn’t want me to have any exercise and to keep the kangaroo pouch that was formerly my stomach, so she screamed and screamed for the entire 10 minutes we were outside.  She scrunched up her face and wailed until she turned magenta.  I thought she was going to actually kill herself, so I raced home.  The SECOND I opened the door to my house, literally the second, not even an exaggeration, she fell asleep.  She’s been out cold now for 20 minutes.  I swear she did it on purpose.

I can’t believe I’ve been a mother for a month.  It feels like my life before never happened and this has been my purpose all along.  I don’t pretend to love every single day and every single minute of my life now, but there is always one part of every day that I am so thankful and feel so blessed.  Actually, there are many parts of every day that I feel this way.  I feel it when I nurse her at 3 o’clock in the morning and her little hands hold onto my nightgown, I feel it when she wakes up for the day and yawns and looks so damn cute that I honestly think there has never been a more beautiful child, I feel it when my husband holds her when she cries and she stares right into his face and calms down.  These are the moments I’m going to remember, not the ones where she manages to spit up down my back so that it somehow slides literally into my pants and down my butt crack.  Although I think that’s an impressive feat, so maybe I will remember that one and tell her when she gets older.  Here’s to another month of motherhood!

For some reason when I got pregnant it never occurred to me that my baby would spit up ALL THE DAMN TIME.  I knew babies were messy, but I just didn’t think about the constant flow of regurgitated milk would project out of Charlotte’s mouth every hour on the hour.  I was so excited when I found out I was having a girl because of all the beautiful clothes she would have, and now that she is here and she has all of those beautiful clothes they have to covered up by bibs and burp cloths.  It is a nightmare.  Eric and I literally just gave her a bath a half an hour ago, and as I was drying her off and getting her dressed she decided to spit up three times in 5 minutes into her freshly washed hair and the new onesie I put on her.  This kid is this close to being dressed in nothing but hefty garbage bags for easy cleanup and less laundry for me.

Charlotte has also proven her skills in the projectile vomit department quite nicely.  There is nothing more disconcerting than seeing your baby go full blown exorcist and spewing across the room.  NOT TO MENTION she is spewing up the milk that I am working so hard to make for her!  My breast milk is liquid gold and she won’t keep it down!  The vomiting and spitting up has now led me to give up all forms of dairy because I was told it could possibly help her, except it takes an entire month for cow’s milk proteins to leave my body so we won’t see any results for another week and a half.  With the amount of dairy I’ve consumed in my life it will probably take a year and a half for the proteins to leave my body.  I’ve given up cheese for my daughter.  CHEESE.  Everyone knows how much cheese means to me.  No fresh mozz, no american, no gouda, no NOTHING.  If that isn’t unconditional love, I don’t know what is.  I dream about stuffed shells during the few precious hours of sleep I get.  Yesterday at Palm Sunday dinner I had to eat my macaroni with a plate of fresh mozzarella in front of me and the pan of lasagna on the other table.  I think I would have rather been water-boarded.  If this little one doesn’t stop the psychotic puking by her third month on this planet I’m going to go on a cheese binge of epic proportions.  I’m going to lay on a bed of mozzarella and stuff it into my mouth by the fistfuls.  The things we do for our children…

The doctor said that because Charlotte is gaining weight at a beautiful rate and has nothing else wrong with her, she is what is known as a “happy spitter” which means her spitting up is more of a laundry problem than a health problem.  THANKS DOC.  I’m obviously glad she’s healthy, so in the mean time I’ll just keep dreaming of cheese and wiping the milk off her beautiful clothes.  The joys of motherhood!

I remember towards the end of my pregnancy talking with my mom who said to me, “I can’t wait until you’re two weeks postpartum.  That’s when things will get better.”  I thought she meant physically better and I agreed with her.  I had no idea the mental hell I would endure for the first two weeks of Charlotte’s life, and I think that’s because new mothers don’t talk about how horrible the “baby blues” can really be.  I think that this post may be one of the most important ones I wanted to write, if only for the fact that I can get all of the feelings I had out in the open.

The “baby blues” affects up to 80% of mothers to varying degrees.  It is caused by the physical and emotional changes after childbirth and usually starts 2-3 days after you pop that baby out.  I find it amusing that the typical hospital stay for giving birth is 2-3 days.  It’s like the hospital knows you’re going to become a fucking mess out of nowhere the second you step foot in your house and they don’t want to deal with what’s coming.  That is exactly what happened to me.  Eric and I came home from the hospital, we put sleeping Charlotte down and I went to take a nap.  I woke up two hours later feeling like someone had taken my body and replaced me with a stranger.  My heart was racing, I was sweating but I was freezing, I was actually afraid of my baby and I thought I was going to die.  That’s when the tears started, and they didn’t stop for 9 straight days.  My hormones dropped so suddenly that even if I wanted to sleep my body wouldn’t let me, so I would lay there exhausted, checking to see if Charlie was breathing and praying she would stay asleep so I wouldn’t have to feed her.  This was all just in the first 24 hours of being home from the hospital too.  It was a nightmare that I was not expecting.

The second day my mom came to stay with us for a week.  If I didn’t have my mother that first week I am fairly certain I would have ended up in the psych ward.  My husband was supportive and wonderful with our baby, but there was no way I could explain to him the things I was feeling and I don’t think men can really understand it either.  I could barely explain it or understand it myself.  My mom had the baby blues pretty bad when she had me, so no explanation was necessary.  She knew when I just started hysterical crying for no reason that the only thing to do was hug me and say it would get better.  When the panic attacks hit me out of nowhere 30 seconds after I was happy and normal, she would say it will get better.  She promised me every day that things would get better even though I was fairly certain my life was over.  That was one of the worst parts of this whole ordeal for me, because I always assumed having a baby would be the most loving and joyful experiences of my life, but those first two weeks all I could do was hold her and ask myself “what the fuck did you do, Samantha?!  Your life was FINE BEFORE THIS!”  Then I would cry and feel guilty.  Then she would wake up to eat and I would hold my cracked, bleeding nipples and cry over that.  I was hot mess central.  One day I actually cried so hard that a pimple on my face popped all by itself!  Having a baby really is miraculous.

Once the ravaged war zone that was my nether regions began to slowly heal and my boobs stopped being engorged rocks and started to become normal milk machines, I started to feel better mentally.  I had 9 straight days of the blues, and then one day I woke up and the panic attacks and crying fits were gone.  That’s not to say I don’t still get overwhelmed with my new life.  I mean my sole purpose in life now is to keep another human being alive.  I am her only source of food at the moment, so that’s enough of a responsibility to set me into overwhelmed overdrive.  Just last night, when she refused to let me put her down or even sit down while holding her, I had that “dear Lord what did I do?” feeling again.  But now I can work through it without crumbling into a mess.  But I think it is important for women out there to know that it is TOTALLY OKAY to let the blues take over and turn you into a mess.  It’s not our fault, there is nothing we can do about it, and we are all going to be okay.  I had my mom, grandmas, and tons of other new moms to reach out to when I felt like I was going to lose my shit, and that support system meant so much to me.  Since becoming a mom it’s only reinforced the fact that women are fucking warriors.  When we come together and support one another there is really nothing we can’t do.  Now if you;ll excuse me, I have to go clean vomit off my child.