I am too tired to be clever, or to try to be clever, so mainly I am writing to announce the birth of our beautiful daughter so that you can all stop worrying about me. I'm sure your concern for my labor probably dampened your holidays this year more than the depressed economy. So now you can ring in the New Year assured that I survived the ordeal, as did our daughter, although we were both a bit battle-weary from the experience.
Want the whole bloody story? Well, sorry. I vowed I would not be one of those women who tortured people with gory tales of her labor unless specifically asked. I will just say this: labor kind of sucks. I told Tom that our daughter could forget having a sibling. We'll just get her a dog. I can't imagine why anybody would go through that more than once. My friend and mother of two says just wait a bit - I'll get "Momnesia" and want to do it again. I say whoever claims you "forget" the pain was probably high on cocaine and never felt any.
But enough about that. What I meant to tell you is that I have not had time to fill you in on the joyous arrival of our offspring because our household revolves around two things: the baby and sleep, in that order. Any downtime - and there really isn't any downtime, more on that later - is spent in tense anticipation of when she will make her next demand. When we hear her little "a-heh, a-heh," warning cough we react as if to a five-alarm fire.
"YOU - get the pacifier!" Tom shouts to my mother, adding hand gestures to aid in the rapid direction of household traffic. "YOU - clean diaper! I'll get the burp cloth. MOVE PEOPLE, MOVE! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!"
We all leap up and crash into each other in our haste to accomplish our assigned tasks, for we know that we have approximately 12 seconds from "a-heh, a-heh" to full-fledged, ear-piercing, gutt-wrenching, soul-crushing wails. It is our top priority to prevent full baby-cry escalation from occurring.
When we are not catering to this 8-pound person's needs which, despite being as basic as they can possibly be, somehow still manage to consume an entire day, we are trying to get some sleep. Here is a conundrum: if the baby sleeps an average of 16 hours a day, how is it I am lucky to get four? That defies all logic. And yet even the dog isn't getting enough sleep, and she is a real pro at sleeping through anything. So what am I doing during all those hours? I'm not cleaning, that's for sure. Our house looks like it's occupied by ten college freshmen boys. I'm not completing - or even starting - her birth announcements. I'm not working. I'm not shopping. I'm rarely bathing, and certainly not doing my hair. Where does the time go?
I think I can account for about ten hours spent just staring at her. She's fascinating. Just like a real person, only tiny. The rest of the time is spent doing laundry. The baby owns approximately ten outfits that fit. I own about five pairs of pajamas. That means that I am doing laundry roughly twelve times a day.
So here I sit, surrounded by filth, in pajamas stained with breast milk (pre- and post-consumed), twigs sticking out of the snarls in my hair, purple bags under my eyes, next to this clean, fed, gorgeous little baby who will one day be embarrassed to be seen with me. I can't imagine why.
