Crib Chronicles: Adventures of a New Mom
Bonnie Stewart
I don’t leave my house much these days. If I do, it’s quite a production.
I haven’t lost use of my limbs or become an agoraphobe; I’m a new mom. And getting my baby boy and me out of the house to enjoy the gentle breezes takes the tactical skills of a four-star general.
Used to be, I’d stumble out of bed, brush my teeth, shower and clothe myself, maybe down some breakfast, and be out the door. For fancy occasions, like work, I’d even coif my hair. I could go from sleep to ready for the day in forty minutes flat.
Then I gave birth to Oscar.
He’s a blooming baby, a pudgy three-month-old. To the uninitiated, he’s an unassuming little bundle—no one would suspect him of being able to stop time. But he’s a master; twelve pounds of pure will secretly trained on stalling schedules and teaching his mother that his pace is the only pace.
It’s not that his vanity is slowing us down—he doesn’t particularly care what he wears. Whether in a stylish ducky suit or a diaper, he’s an equal opportunity leaker. Dining is equally simple; he greets all offers of sustenance with gusto. Logically, since my breasts come with us everywhere we go, we should be able to travel light and move with speed. But babies are the sworn enemies of logic, I suspect. And of efficiency.
Morning breaks early in our house these days. Peeping sounds from the crib announce that The Boy is awake and preparing himself for a meal. Right this minute. If his whimpers fail to rouse the adults of the house, particularly the lactating meal-ticket, they rapidly escalate to screeches, and then to full-blown, Janis Joplin howls. The Boy has good lungs.
I move as quickly as I can. The screaming hurts my hormones. But hopping out of bed to feed a hungry mini-tyrant is not an instantaneous process – a mama must have her ducks in row. When the first peep registers, I stumble to my feet, blind and stunned by whatever slumber the night has afforded. I head to the bathroom first, as fast as Mother Nature will allow, then into the nursery, groping for my glasses, singing tunelessly, and shedding my t-shirt as I go, trying to find my water bottle. Hydration is important to good milk supply, after all.
I had imagined, in those heady days of pregnancy and mama-to-be anticipation, sweet morning coos and greetings between my offspring and me. Such moments may come, but they are not of the now. I arrive at Oscar’s side, only to find him screaming
in indignation. His breakfast has taken at least three minutes to arrive.
Once his meal begins, however, the world stops cold. His nursing is a gulping, smacking, lingering affair, and one that takes both my hands. Oscar is a slow feeder, a gourmand of the baby set, and our tableau of eater and eaten lasts an hour or more. I sit pinned under the small, deliberate consumption machine that is my son, in front of whatever my two-channel TV happens to be airing at sixish in the morning, and he nurses. And nurses. I try to stay awake, mentally composing litanies of things I’ll need to do whenever he ceases dining. But my weary brain drifts, and sometimes we accidentally break for naps, sliding skin to skin in a sweaty, milky tangle. Oscar tolerates a few minutes of interruption in his meal, so long as I do not fall on him when I drop out of consciousness, but voices his displeasure if I nod off for too extensive a period. I acquiesce. I live but to serve.
When he is eventually appeased, sated, and burped, our stasis abruptly ends and part two of the daily dance begins—the manic part. I lurch into motion and flap about with baby dangling from my hip, a comic figure of raging purpose. Sponge bath, diaper change (usually followed by a second diaper change after Oscar pees all over me and his change table) then a jaunty sprint through the house to gather laundry and stray dishes and load them in their respective cleaning machines. The Boy is in the habit of screaming through much of this process, particularly the part euphemistically referred to as his nap, so I’ve gotten skilled at sorting socks with one hand in the crib, shhhhing and patting and singing Brahms’s lullaby as I go. If we’re planning an adventure into the great outdoors, I rummage through the diaper bag: Wipes? Check. Wallet? Check. Bum cream? Check. Disposables? Check. Nothing makes one hang one’s head in I’m-a-bad-mother shame more than finding oneself in a public washroom with one’s naked and poopy offspring, a discarded dirty diaper, and a diaper bag mysteriously devoid of replacements. I have learned to overstock. By the time I get the cat fed, check the mail, and put clean clothes on my boy, he’s ready to dine again. And so the juggernaut of domesticity slows once more while I sit and snuggle my greedy son and dream of all the exciting things I will do during the next interval of feeding-free time. Like shower.
This cockeyed rhythm of hurry up and wait is not entirely what I was expecting from motherhood. I didn’t realize that the job of caring for a colicky preemie would take more organization than any professional gig I’ve ever had. Or that other parents weren’t kidding when they made cracks about luxuriating in four whole hours of sleep. And I really wouldn’t have believed that it was well-nigh impossible to get myself and an infant fed, watered, cleaned, and dressed before nine in the morning. Thanks be to the Canadian government for maternity leave; if I had to show up to an outside job these mornings, I’d be fired inside a week.
Lucky for moi Oscar can’t fire me while I learn the ropes of this crazy and erratic new life. And luckily, in the midst of all the sitting, scurrying, and screaming (mine as well as his) there are moments when Oscar looks up at me and beams with his whole baby face. Then, time stops again. We are the only two people in the universe, and I am fiercely glad, and proud; full of wonder at this new little life waking up to the world. For those moments, I can happily forego going out into said world for awhile. Maybe tomorrow. Today, I have a boy to see to.
Bonnie frequently updates her blog "Crib Chronicles" and invites readers of Edwards to share in more of her adventures in mommyhood.
