Welcome to Parenthood: Part II

* This is Part Two of a piece written for my neighbour, who has recently had her first child. For Part One, go here: Welcome to Parenthood: Part 1*

Breast vs. Bottle

This is a doozy - deciding whether to formula-feed or breast-feed. Since I've done both, I feel compelled to offer my opinion about both methods, both of which were the best decision that I could have made for my child. The formula-fed child is gorgeous and healthy and I loved watching him grow into himself. The breast-fed child is gorgeous and healthy and I loved watching him grow into himself.

Whichever you decide, know this: She will grow and thrive and love you.

Period.

Formula Pros
1. Anyone can do it. Even your husband who may try to claim ignorance. Don't let him. He can and WILL feed the child you both created. So there.
1 b) This means you can shower. Alone. For at least 20 minutes, 25 if burping takes awhile.
2. It doesn't hurt.
3. You can eat tons of spicy food and drink a glass of wine celebrating parenthood without worrying that you're risking your child's future mathematical skills.
4. As long as you have water and a bottle, you can feed the baby pretty much anywhere.
5. Around Month Six or so, you can prop the bottle in your baby's hands and she can feed herself.
5 b) You can shower.
6. There is no awkward fumbling about with clasps on your bra or worrying about exposing yourself to passerby. Or your father.
7. It's good for your baby, providing valuable vitamins and nutrients and other such yummy goodness.

Formula Cons

1. It can be expensive. If you buy the ready-made tins, you'll pay for the privilege and the powdered stuff involves measuring and teaspoons, which is a LOT to deal with at 3 a.m.and you've been awake since yesterday.
2. It involves measuring and teaspoons and access to hot water at all times.
3. You may find that your child's sensitive digestive system does not appreciate certain formulas. Half-open and discarded tins of various formula brands will pile up alarmingly in your recycling box until you find the right one.
4. The poop of a formula-fed baby is, quite possibly, the worst smell known to man. Unless you've wandered into my house after Luke has filled his diapers, at which point, your baby's poop will smell like roses. I'm just saying.

Boob Pros

1. Breast milk is free.
2. Breast milk is always the perfect temperature and portable.
3. Although a light breeze going by hurts them, your boobs look absolutely fan-friggin'-tastic in ANY shirt    you own. Take photos because they will never be this high and smokin' hot again. Trust me.
4. It's good for your baby, providing vitamins and nutrients and other yummy goodness ending in "oxidants."
 5. If conversations bore you or you just want to drift off for 20 minutes, you can use nursing as an excuse to leave the room. Ditto for any social obligation that you resent having to fulfill: wedding, funeral, baby shower, Pampered Chef party...
6. You are, literally, growing a human being with your body. Powerful, heady stuff.


Boob Cons

1. Nursing hurts.
Holy mother of God, it hurts so much - in the beginning - that your toes curl at the mere thought of nursing and you've taken to hunching over while walking because every time your baby so much as whimpers, your milk lets down and you're simply assuming the position in advance. This too shall pass. Eventually.

2. Nipples.
Everyone will have an opinion about the state/shape/size/dimension and usefulness of your nipples. You will find yourself talking about your nipples with strangers in the ER, the Health Unit or the nursing room at Sears. Some of those strangers may even reach out as though they mean to TOUCH your nipples, especially women who've nursed so many children they consider themselves honourary lactation consultants.

Here are some examples of the sorts of things you will ponder or be asked. Or both:

Are they inverted? Why are there hairs on them?
Is the baby sucking them so that they look like a lipstick, and if so, is she creating the right shape for the nipstick, because it's supposed to matter.
Do your nipples bleed or itch and why are that woman's purple?
Is the baby getting enough nipple or not enough?
Does she prefer one to the other and in the name of all that's holy, will the ever stop feeling like they're on fire?

This too shall pass.

3. Thrush.
It's itchy and painful - like the yeast infection it actually is, just not in the spot you'd previously envisioned before reading this - and makes you crave bread and sweets and then you fart. A lot. (Which is neither here nor there, except that you may have noticed that since giving birth, farts ripple from areas of your body not previously known for flatulence. Anything you can do to alleviate that sort of weirdness is recommended.)

You can get a prescription for thrush, but it involves the coating of nipples and then rinsing before nursing, so be warned. Gentian Violet is purple and you coat it on your nipples before nursing, too, only the baby will suckle it off, which a) saves you from having to rinse your nips 5,678 times a day and b) coats her tiny, perfect mouth and rids it of any lingering yeast.


4. Mastitis.

Take the drugs.


Speaking of boobs....

S-E-X (alt. title: Are you effing kidding me?)

You're gonna have to do it again, sometime. Perhaps even sometime soon. If you have a wise and compassionate OBGYN or midwife, s/he will write a note to your husband, excusing you from sex for the next three months. It's unlikely, but s/he might, if you ply her with wine and chocolates first.

If you have any friends or relations who "did the deed"  before their six-week check up, make certain that they do NOT, under any circumstance, mention this fact in front of your husband.


If you have "that" friend or relation who insists that she made gentle love in the hospital bed mere hours after pushing a human being into the world through her vagina, stop speaking to her immediately. NEVER speak to her again. If YOU are that woman then even thought we're neighbours, you'll understand that I can no longer speak to you.

Let's say you did not receive a "get-out-of-sex" card and are dreading looking forward to a passionate reunion with your husband. Here's the truth:

It's gonna hurt. Maybe a lot. Maybe for several months afterward. BUT:

It gets better. You may find yourself buying stocks in lube and wine from the County, but it does get better.

I promise.

Now snuggle up with your daughter. Tomorrow, we'll talk about sleep and why housework is overrated.

Love,
Belly

Welcome to Parenthood: Part 1

*This is Part One of a "Welcome to Parenthood" piece I've been working on whilst waiting for my neighbour to give birth to her first child. Part Two to follow...*



My across-the-road-neighbours have just become parents. I haven't been over yet, wanting to give them the space to delight and coo over their perfect pink bundle, but I've had a present wrapped and waiting for weeks.

It's the card that's had me up nights, pacing the hallway. What to write? Something wise. Something witty. Something that says, "Hey there. Welcome to the toughest job you'll ever love," without sounding like an ad for the armed forces.

For Jessica

Love:

This is it. Her. Every triumph, every disappointment, every decision, every heartache, wrong turn, right choice, wish-upon-a-star and bitter regret has led you here to this moment, to THIS child and nothing will ever, ever be the same.

You will understand, possibly for the first time, what it is to love another person with your whole heart, without conditions. (You may now realize that you'd been previously misled, believing that your love for your  husband was unconditional. Phffttt. Whatever. The sooner such drivel gets taken out of wedding vows, the better off we'll all be. But I digress...)

Your marriage is forever changed - no longer are you a unit. You are a family. Allow your gratitude and overwhelming affection for your husband to buoy you on the days when you want to throw him out the window. Praise his efforts to dress or bathe the baby, even if he's doing it all wrong.  Tell him that men who wear babies - in their arms, on their chests, on their backs or on their hip - are sexy and that you read online that they resume marital relations sooner than the average. (This blog counts as "online" just so you know.)

A newfound appreciation for your loved ones may surprise you, but I urge you to enjoy it. There will come a moment, in the middle of it all, when it will occur to you that this is how YOUR mother felt when she held you for the first time. It will stun and awe you and you will, not for the first time but perhaps most profoundly, feel part of a powerful kind of sisterhood. Call your mother, whether she's across the country or just in the next room. Say, "Thank you for loving me this much" and watch her face soften and bloom. She knows.

Mama Lenses
Now that you are a mother, the world will shimmer with previously unseen beauty - you will smile at strangers more often and exchange a secret, knowing look with every woman with a stroller. Isn't it all so amazing? I am delighted to tell you that this feeling doesn't ever entirely go away.

Conversely, the nightly news will bring you to tears and you will feel crushing guilt that you brought a child into such a terrible, war-filled, violent, depressing world. Suddenly, every show on TV will be about a child/mention a child/have a cast of characters who were, at some point, children themselves and this will prove to be your undoing.

These feelings don't ever really go away, either, but you will gain some perspective around Year Three, when you are in Potty-Training Hell - a terrible and depressing place all of its own. See? It all balances out, in the end.

Sleep:

As you rock and snuggle her tiny, perfect form long, long into the night (or perhaps greet the day with her tucked up close, next to your heart) you will feel more like a woman than you ever have before and you will think to yourself, "I was born so that she would be, too."

You may also think things like, "If my tiny, precious angel doesn't let me sleep soon, I am going to KILL myself."

This too shall pass. Eventually, she will settle into a routine of her own choosing - you will learn to adjust your bedtime schedule accordingly. You will also learn to sleep standing up at the sink,  whilst eating yesterday's toast.

In the meantime, if you have any friends or relations who say things like, "I wish I had some advice for you. Mine slept like an angel, straight through the night, from birth," stop talking to them immediately. In the bubble that is New-Parent Land, there is no room for liars.

Welcome to Parenthood: Part II

The Reality of Being a Domestic Goddess

Daydream: My home smells of something yummy to eat at any time of day.

Reality: I have Luke, whose poopy diapers carve such a vile stench into the air, visitors have been known to retch and take their coffee in the ice-box we call "the porch."

Daydream: I am the kind of woman whose cardigan-over-a-white-t-shirt-and-jeans ensemble looks fresh and casual, but pretty. Pulled together. Polished.

Reality:  I am often too lazy to shower first thing in the morning and end up grabbing a hooded sweatshirt and jamming a baseball cap over my unwashed (but pigtailed) hair. Like Red from Fraggle Rock, only fatter.

Daydream: I am the kind of woman who, when you pop by unannounced, is sipping a chai tea at the table, listening to son read aloud, whilst sunlight streams through the (streak-free) window and classical music plays lightly in the background.


Reality: Yesterday's coffee reheated in the microwave for the second time has grown cold. While  First Son refuses to sound out the word "cat" and carefully arranges his features into blank nothingness,  I am red-faced with frustration and jabbing at the letters on the page, screeching, "You KNOW this one. Yes, you do! You do SO! Sound it out, NOW!"

The classical music station is drowned out by Second Son singing "O Canada" while he bats a tin-foil ball across the living room with his father's golf clubs - ones he has been implicitly told not to use...

Daydream: My workspace is clutter-free save the pretty fabric-covered basket meant to temporarily hold bills which are paid on time and immediately filed into their appropriate and cross-referenced folders.

Reality: At any given time, our huge desk is covered with artwork, cold coffee cups, dinky cars and for some inexplicable reason, pieces of dry dog food that the even the dog won't eat. The fabric basket IS the filing cabinet and I think I put paid bills away sometime in 2008, two houses and one city ago.

Daydream: High-backed antique settee plus chaise lounge, lovingly restored in luxury fabrics grace my front room. Soft wall-sconce lighting spills onto my gleaming hardwood floors and fresh flowers from the garden brighten every room.

Reality: Aztec-design on 25 year-old couch that is a hand-me-down from my parents. Sags. Springs are shot and I cannot for the life of me get the mustard stain off one arm. Perfect for bouncing on. The floors are indeed hardwood, but are dotted with paint from the previous owner's love affair with bright, happy (read: psychosis-inducing) colour. My  floor lamps are from Sears and tilt at alarming angles by day's end.

Garden? What garden?

Daydream: Children who cover their mouths when they cough, don't giggle when they toot, sneeze anywhere but DIRECTLY AT THE COMPUTER SCREEN while snuggling as Mama types and who pee into the toilet.

Reality: Farting is hilarious to my children. I have no idea why. Their father is the same way. I can't explain that, either. Snuggles are good - I'll take 'em when I can get 'em. Luke's pee forgets to listen and poop well...it happens, right?

And you? What's your reality?

These are the days...

Belly: Luke, where are you pants?
Luke: They got wet.
Belly: How'd they get wet?
Luke: The pee wouldn't listen.




These are the moments, my friends. The moments that make me laugh out loud and fall in love with my son all over again. Yes, indeed. These ARE the days.

A conversation with Matthew, shortly after the pee stopped listening:

Matthew: Did you know that I kissed Alison 7 times?
Me: Really? Seven times?
Matthew: Well, only two times today. She wasn't too into it today.
Me: Yeah, girls are fickle like that.
Matthew: Does fickle mean they're hard to understand?
Me: Yes. Yes it does.
 

To Whom it May Concern:

Dear Baileys,

God bless you, inventors of bliss-in-a-glass. Thank you for tiny, perfect, quiet moments at the end of those days which are neither perfect nor quiet.

Sincerely,
Belly


Dear Bell Canada,

There are only 337 days left until my contract with you expires. To say that I am delighted about this would be an understatement.  Hallefreakin'luhiah!

Sincerely,
Elizabeth


Dear Murphy's Oil,

This morning, my son coloured on my oak desk with marker. This afternoon, he coloured on the hardwood floor with a different coloured  marker. About an hour ago, he took two markers to the coffee table.

Your product not only removed every spot, my house smells amazing. God bless you.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth


Dear Crayola,

Washable? I beg to effing differ.

Signed,
E.M.


Dear Sons,

This week is NOT a no-yell one. That was LAST week. Just because last week's no-yell efforts were dismal failures, that does NOT automatically mean that the following week will be about making up.

This week is about getting through.

Despite the yelling, colouring, hitting, shoving, tattling, throwing, jumping, whining and inability to get through a bath without splashing water, I love you both with all that I am.

Remember that. Forget the rest.

Love,
Mummy


Dear God,

Thank you for today and for my sons. Without them, I might never learn the things I should: patience, consistency, letting go. Hope to pop by this Sunday.

Love,
Me

P.S. Please bless the Baileys and the Murphys. They saved my floor and my sanity.


Dear Elizabeth,

You are a work in progress. Remember that. Forget the rest.

The best is yet to come.

Love,
Bellymonster