“You Look Good…for having two kids”
For being a mom. For having kids.
Here’s the thing. I don’t want to look good for having a baby, or having had two kids. I don’t want to be gleefully described as a yummy mummy, MILF, or hot mama.
I just want to look good. Period.
After a "healing period" of 6 weeks, I finally ventured out to my old stomping ground...only to find that world kept turning even though my life had turned upside down!
The text read: “Let’s do dinner Saturday night?”
Never has a simpler suggestion filled me with such dread.
Why? Because of the immaculately-planned moving parts involved in such a loaded question.
Always someone of the, shall we say, fashionably-late variety, my time management skills have improved exponentially after having a baby because I have to time everything in reverse.
We walked at snail’s pace past the nursing station on our way to the exit. Why were they letting us just walk out? On our own! With a new baby! Didn’t the nurses want to come home too?! How could we be trusted?!
Let me tell you about the TORTURE that is post-nasal drip. That annoying feeling you get while sleeping when you're in the thick of a cold is magnified x100,000 in babies. Naptime is all too brief, and the poor, exhausted baby can't sleep more than an hour at a time at night. But wait! There's more! Order now and you also get to physically suck the snot out of your screaming infant, as he uses every iota of his considerable strength to propel away from you...
What a difference a day makes…the day before I gave birth I was well dressed, made-up and accessorized. The day after I gave birth (and everyday since then) life has been one moving target; my hair is washed on average once a week, my teeth are brushed on average once a day (Yes, “Ewww” I know. But it’s twice if I can manage to not just fall into bed in between night feedings), and the highlight of my day is getting 20 minutes of beautiful alone time for a scalding hot shower, before applying a generous layer of Lansinoh to my chew-toy boobs...
I thought I understood where my baby would fit in; with all the others gathered there among the top tiers of my heart. I didn’t know he would be its nucleus.
I write this under the cover of my duvet.
I’m tired, but I’m wired. I can’t sleep because I’m so nervous that I’ll have to wake up again as soon as I hit my deepest slumber. This is torturous.
Have I mentioned how our home is a mess?
It’s been taken over by colorful, BULKY, immovable pieces of furniture that clash with our décor. The constantly running washer and dryer provide non-stop background music in our apartment, and I can’t think for a minute.
Yesterday, I told of how we moved the baby into our bedroom. This comes with a new set of master suite rules:
1.) If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown...let it mellow
You heard me right.
My environmental science professor at school insisted we practice sustainable human waste disposal, best remembered by her mantra "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down."
If it's brown and the flush is going to disturb the baby's ridiculously short sleep cycle, let that thing disintegrate. You are in trouble if you flush it down. Just think of the good you're doing for the New York City Waste Management system.
There I was, furiously wiping down groceries so that the bags of frozen vegetables wouldn’t infect us, and there was my 6’ 4” husband - comically stripping off every single item of his clothing outside our apartment door after walking the dog. The laundry, as you can imagine, was insurmountable. The rest of the residents on our floor had fled to the Hamptons or Palm Beach by then, but it was all perfectly normal behavior for the time.