mommy problems — Posh Poop

Where have I been for the past 2 weeks?

In New Baby Purgatory, otherwise known as 4-Month Sleep Regression, otherwise known as the Land of the Barely Living. Our anthems? "Stayin' Alive" and "I Will Survive." Maybe a little Aretha, if I'm feeling sassy (and really, when am I not?)

What is sleep regression? It's when your adorable, chubby, sweet little bundle of eyelashes and spit bubbles basically acts like a bit of an asshole. For weeks.

He won't nap, but he'll be super pissy and cry for an hour. This doesn't mean I can sit in the glider and scroll through BuzzFeed's latest must-read list (15 Ways You Know You Went To Boarding School in England). Oh, no. It's an hour of standing up, bouncing, swaying, praying, shushing, rocking. His little baby-radar goes off as soon as I try to get comfortable (how does he KNOW when I'm sitting down?) I swear, my butt-cheeks start to quiver as they approach the couch. Feed and repeat at the next naptime. Long walks in the stroller? Nope. Wide-eyed and full of wonder, he'll happily stare at every freaking branch we pass, but God forbid he closes his eyes for longer than a blink. Actually, is he mocking me? I swear he didn't even blink. It was like his eyes just took turns blinking, so yeah, a series of winks. Lest he actually fall asleep. When he does deign to sit, it won't be in his bouncer, rocker, or any of the baby accoutrements we were suckered into buying, instead insisting on sitting upright on my lap, just so, mind you. A degree off here and there will Set. Him. Off.

So what is the big deal? Well, naptime is when I eat breakfast - shower - write - take a full breath - think. It's when I collect sanity for the next few hours. Especially for bedtime.

Bedtime. It used to be so simple. We had a whole bedtime routine. Bath, feed, sit in bouncer, swaddle, sleep. Now it's Bath, feed, moderately successful burping effort, and the second his sleepy, heavy body touches the bouncer he is up again. With a vengeance. As I helplessly watch his placid, sweet little face turn bright red with anger and his eyes glower with rage, it's kind of hard not to take this personally. When he starts to roar at me for DARING to put him down, and punishes me for the next hour by continuously crying ("See? I'm rocking you now...like a maniac...doesn't this make you happy with me?" "Bitch I'll teach you to put me down like that again...") all he needs is a tiny little PimpCup and a cane. I'm in uber-exhausted mode. We're both crying and screaming.

Right now I'd settle for the lack of R-E-S-P-E-C-T to get some S-L-E-E-E-E-P.

When he finally does suddenly fall asleep I'm such a bag of nerves that all I can do is zone out for an hour and then fall into my bed, teeth unbrushed (I know, it's so awful, don't judge), living in fear of when he will next wake. The nightmare isn't over. He'll be up multiple times, at which point I'll cycle through patting&shushing (squinting without my glasses in the dark, to ascertain whether we are about to enter the "feed me now or you'll regret it" phase), rushing to the living room with a sleep-sacked baby over my shoulder, while simultaneously popping buttons on my pajama shirt, desperate to pull out the boobs before the shit hits the fan, and then sitting in the dark for 45 minutes until he digests. Because if I put him down to sleep too soon, I'll have a crib full of congealed breastmilk to deal with. And even though I seem to bathe in it, I do not like congealed breastmilk.

I know I owe you recipes, a Favourite Thing, and a story...but have pity patience. I'm working on it!

Oh, how did we get through the sleep regression? I'll let you know when we get there. Still cursing about 16 hours a day, sleeping about 4 hours a day, and somehow eating cookies 24 hours a day.

I was in bliss - bliss being a piping hot shower. I had leisurely washed away the dried spit up, spilt breast-milk, and other bodily fluids that seemed to always find their way onto my tired, depleted body every day. I felt so clean. Yay for me! As I rinsed, I suddenly felt something foreign making its way down my body. Paralyzed with fear for a moment, I risked a glance down and jumped back in shock as far as I could (within the confines of my shower cubicle), trying to get away from the tarantula that had just snaked down my leg and lazily dropped to the floor.

Only, upon squinting at the thing, I realized it wasn't a tarantula at all. What it was, was a rather large knotted clump of what used to be my beautiful, lustrous hair.

Shit. This was more frightening than when it was a tarantula.

I quickly thought back to how many prenatal vitamins I had left in the bottle by my bedside. Had I been taking them every day? Did I skip a few? This wasn't supposed to happen for many months yet! In any case it wasn't going to happen to me because my hair was Just So Perfect.

It's not fair! Being a curly girl, my hair has been a daily struggle since I was born. My corkscrew curls as a chubby toddler made way to wiry, wavy hair that was neither here nor there (This was the 80's. Side ponytails were not a good look on me, and now you know where my dislike of scrunchies comes from), then to a greasy-rooted but fluffy-ended pyramid during puberty, and finally, FINALLY into perfection. We had a rough past but things were glorious from then on out...until I had the baby.

I try not to blame him. It's not healthy.

One has to go higher up the food chain. What false, woman-hating God is this who screws with new moms in this manner!?! Were they recovering from some Deity all-night rager, on the day they had to decide the minutiae of how our bodies worked? Were they just sitting around on their respective clouds, nursing some holy headaches and trying to get through the work day by being particularly imaginative?

God A: "You know what would be fun? Let's make their bodies too small to actually hold the baby, so that their bellies have to stretch out...like play dough."

God B: "Cool! OMG and they should totally squeeze the babies out of a tiny hole in one end! SO fun! The bleeding should only last like, 6 weeks, tops.

God A: "Yes! And afterwards, we can blur the line between their waists and hips so that their entire midsections are just amorphous blobs. (Solemnly) The only way to get their waistlines back are through sacrifice and physical exertion. It'll be a nice way to make them appreciate the bodies we bestowed upon them."

God B: "Hmm...I'm feeling artistic. I kinda just want to draw a magical dark line down their bellies. Hey, vertical stripes are slimming (giggles)!"

God A: "Do it, bro! We'll call it something exotic, like "Linea Negra" We can make sure it fades with the passage of time (waving arm through air dramatically)."

God B: "Waiiiit, you know that utterly gorgeous hair we gave them a few months ago? Let's have them shed it...

God A: "Like dogs?"

God B: "Duuude. It's like you always know what I'm thinking (shakes head in awe)!"

Back to Earth. Indeed, soon every time I ran my fingers through my disappearing locks, an alarming number of strands would pull away into my palms. One fine day my shower stall turned into a mini bath-tub and I had to call our maintenance guy up to unclog the drain. Embarrassed, I joked about how hairy my husband was, and hid in the other room until he was done. Part of me didn't want to see the horrific findings, and part of me didn't want to see the look of wonder on his face as he pulled out more than a scalp's worth of hair. I debated lecturing him on how humans shed 50-100 hairs per day, but how when a woman is pregnant, her body hangs on to every strand until a few months post-partum...but it's an exhausting explanation and I think he just wanted to leave my house of horrors. You see how I decided to hide away.

I still maintain that was all Andy's chest hair, but whatever. I guess some of it could be attributed to me. Not my chest hair. I don't have chest hair. That would be weird.

Let's talk some more about the hair on my head. I tried everything - rubbing warm coconut oil in it (that brought back memories of school friends in India, who had to oil and double-braid their hair every morning as part of the school dress-code. I used to feel sorry for them but now they have the most fabulous hair of all time!) I tried the latest and greatest elasticizing and deep conditioning at-home treatments. In the end I had to settle for chopping it all off. My stylist looked at my split-ends and rat's tail in surprise and said "What happened to you?!" before she took her shears to them and mercifully restored some dignity to my fading mane. Thank God (but not those A and B a-holes) that the Lob is in.

Hopefully the passage of time will indeed bring back my hair, my waistline, and my sanity.

Do you have an inexplicably gorgeous head of hair, even after your baby? If so, please share your secrets below! I will literally try anything. If I had a placenta handy I'd eat it, if that would help. Or rub it into my scalp. Potato, potahto.