A Week with the Little Man

I spent a week at my sisters, not only help her out but to spend time with my new nephew (happy 2 weeks old!)  I haven’t been around a newborn in a while, and anything that I had learned from previously being around them or having to watch them as a babysitter was not too far off in the distance tucked away in my mind of experience.  I had changed diapers before, fed a baby, I wasn’t completely foreign to the idea.  He’s cute, and I’m not just saying that to be polite because it’s my sister’s kid, he is cute.  You’ve been there, you’ve heard people say ‘oh he’s/she’s such a cute baby’ when indeed they are not.  But he is and his cry does not annoy me like some other babies cries you may hear in the supermarket when you know Little Johnny is not happy.  He’d be one of the many few babies I would hear cry and it wouldn’t phase me.  He has many cries, he has the ‘change my diaper’ cry which is accompanied by a scrunchy face if its #2, he has the ‘I don’t like this at all’ cry when we tried to put him in the swing with 6 different speed settings (does a baby need to go that fast?), he has the ‘I’m hungry’ cry and then there’s the ‘I’m still hungry’ mini-cry.  It was a very fun week with him, even at 2 weeks to see how alert he was and responding to Miguel the “French” Monkey who seemed to calm him during diaper changing until he figured out he should get used to diaper changes.  He even attempted a few pushups during ‘tummy time’! (Must have been all the protein my sister consumed.) 

I thought I had a lot of clothes, or at least a variety, but I now understand babies go through 2-4 changes of clothes a day, depending if the diaper wasn’t put on correctly or if he just decided to pee right through so the need to have an extensive wardrobe is a must at 2 weeks old.  I even got the distinction he didn’t enjoy wearing the froggy onesie, he seemed to cry most of the day with it on. (That’s ok, I didn’t like it either.)

While my sister was going about her daily routine (or trying to get into one) and I finished feeding him, we had a karaoke moment together.   Matthew enjoys the Disney classics so far and a few TV show theme songs, but do not sing the Brady Bunch theme song to him, he will cry immediately.  We went through Little Mermaid’s “Part of Your World”, “Under the Sea”, The Monkees theme song, Snow White’s “ Someday my prince will come” (I hummed a few bars) until he nodded off to sleep.  He sleeps so soundly, and falls asleep semi-easy (to be that young again and not have to take a sleeping pill to find zzz’s).  Now what will his first words be? or first sentence?  My sister seems to think it will be “No Chi Chi” or “Down Chi Chi”, referring to the dog, instead of Mommy and Daddy.  But who knows, if I can spend more time up there I can work on him saying “Go Big Blue” instead. J

My sister and her husband sure made a handsome little man, I told him to behave for Mommy and Daddy and I’d give him a $1 next time I saw him.  Now that I think about it starting at $1 might have been too high, by the time he’s able to talk and remember what I said he’d be negotiating for $10s and $20s.  I enjoyed my time with my little All-Star, I can’t wait for him to be more interactive!  

Pregnancy from the Mind of a Clock that Once Ticked

Most of my friends got pregnant early on in their marriages, they had one, they had another, some are still reproducing today.  After an influx of marriages and babies my clock ticked.  My ex sister-in-law had 4 in a row, and that was a nice dose of birth control for me at that time.  In a past life, the subject of raising kids was always easy to talk about with my ex-husband, planning it had to be around softball season, at least at the end of the season to start trying.  And that one time when I was surely ready to forego the pills and try, the response I received was one of hesitation (he hesitated!).  As if his mind was preoccupied with something else at the time, and then that’s when it was no longer on the table.  I wiped the thought from my mind and went on with my life. 

Now some of my friends and family are still having kids, just starting to have kids, not having kids and my sister and her husband just welcomed a baby boy, my nephew.  Out of all of my friends who have gone through this once, twice, multiple times I never knew what they told you in Lamaze class, at the OBGYN, etc.  I never took into consideration how insensitive asking a pregnant woman certain questions could be.  I became one of the fearful insensitive ones and started phrasing my questions to my sister as ‘you could add this one to your list of things you shouldn’t ask a pregnant lady…’.    Being an outsider, knowing how many strangers are in the delivery room is enough to keep my legs crossed (give or take a dozen strangers), they do come in to your prep room and meet you first, but they haven’t been with you through the 9 months and you find yourself saying ‘who are these people? They are going to see my va-jay-jay and who knows what else!’. 

My sister had a c section which is quite painful and can take weeks to heal, I’m not sure if natural birth would be any better.  Picture this as I did: You’ve just ‘scheduled’ your c section to deliver your baby similar to scheduling a ‘meeting’ at work.  You show up on time, you’ve fasted from the night before, then you are told to wait because they’ve ‘had a busy morning of deliveries’.  Oh really? What happened to scheduling this?  So you wait, having not eaten for the last 12 hours and counting, patiently for them to come in and give the green light.  Then after the baby is born, you are supposed to ‘rest’.  I had difficulty in understanding the ‘rest’ portion of it when numerous visitors lingered for hours.  Something in me snapped, the protective older sister kicked in. “It’s time for Mommy  who has just been through major surgery to rest, say hello and meet the little man and be on your way” I felt like saying.  I truly didn’t know how to react, if only to think if it was me, they’d be banned until I was home, it’s how I always pictured it.  There wouldn’t be a parade of visitors lingering for hours in a hospital room looking at me with a bad hair day, no makeup, in a hospital gown without anything to eat or drink in the last 12 plus hours.  I would have a list at the door of who’d be allowed in and they’d have to answer to “Are you on the guest list?”

I sat in the waiting room for quite some time prior to meeting my new nephew, so I had plenty to absorb.  After watching all the new mommy’s  and daddy’s leave the hospital with the look of ‘OMG what just happened’, I can only express the same for myself if that day ever came to pass.  My nephew is my little all-star, and my clock isn’t ticking again as it did once before or screaming “I want one of those!”

Holiday Relief in a Bottle

When my parents got divorced I had to choose my holidays, who gets Thanksgiving? How do I split Christmas?  That impending stressful anxiety flowed into my first marriage because now I had three families to deal with (yes ‘deal’ with and one was less understanding than the others).  We always had to make someone happy while one was unhappy.  Anyway, now that I do not have three families to choose from,  I no longer have that anxiety.  And yes, as many of you will admit, it is anxiety, and you will agree you’ve all said ‘I hate the holidays’.  What is it we all ‘hate’ about the holidays?

Coming from experience (and only those who have gone through this have a right to judge so save the psycho-babble) I traveled miles between Thanksgiving and Christmas up and down the GSP for most of my adult driving life and the day that I woke up and realized I could do what I wanted was the relief you feel after downing a whole bottle of Pepto Bismol.  Ahhh!  I went to happy hour the eve of, I slept in the day of, I didn’t have to be at someone else’s house on Christmas morning (every year) to watch their kids open gifts while mine waited till I got home (yes I still have a little baggage).   Now it’s life as a slice of my favorite chocolate cake.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the whole ‘spend time with family’ scenario because I do spend time with family, it’s just on my terms now.  So if I choose to ask the man in my life to Thanksgiving dinner, I do not want the unnecessary assumptions that I’m going to marry this one and please save the interrogations  “Is he coming for Christmas?”.  Again, stressful holiday – does not apply anymore.  As adults we should not feel pressured by our family because society makes it out to be such a life changing event if you bring someone home for a holiday dinner.  Again, there’s that unwanted stress, the whispers of rings and babies, and whispers when you’re at their house for a holiday about you, because you are not at your families’ dinner table. 

This is how I feel in a nutshell, I’m not going to schlep around the man in my life just to appease the family at the holidays.  In some ways some families forget that the other person in that relationship has a family too.  So next time you question why so and so is not at the dinner table, just remember he or she is spending precious time with their family, just like you are with yours.