Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, the Bad, and the Scary (6 page)

T
he first weekend that we got back from our honeymoon, Jeff and I ran out as fast as we could and bought a puppy. I remember driving out to the breeder’s house several hours away and observing the precious little litter all playing together happily in the backyard, cute as could possibly be. After we picked out our tiny orange fur ball, the breeder sat down with us and drilled us on every detail of our lives: What was our house like? How many floors did it have? How flexible was our schedule? Did we travel on weekends? Had we explored puppy training? Did we have other dogs? Children? A housebreaking plan? Good Lord, this is intense, we communicated through eye rolls and side glances. But we diligently answered all of her questions and more. At the end of the interrogation, we were rewarded with an adorable eight-week-old golden retriever, who we immediately named Penelope. The woman handed us the papers, along with a list of puppy resources and veterinarians. Off we went, our new little family, confident that we had everything we needed to raise a happy and healthy dog.

Leaving the hospital with Lily was an entirely different experience. I was shocked that the nurses didn’t ask us a single time whether we knew how to feed her or change her or soothe her in the middle of the night. They didn’t want to inspect our home to see whether it was baby-ready or do a thorough background check on either one of us. They didn’t ask for college transcripts or even whether we were CPR certified—we could have been serial killers and they wouldn’t have known or cared. At the end of my two-day stay, they simply plopped me in a wheelchair and pushed me out the front door. Jeff and I looked at each other incredulously—
that
was it? Why was bringing home a puppy a thousand times more complicated? Where was my take-home
fact sheet to refer to in the wee hours of the night when we had no idea what the hell to do? Where was my money-back guarantee? I’d never felt so unprepared for anything in my life.

It must have been obvious to the world that I had no clue what I was doing, because suddenly, everyone and their freaking mothers was an expert on child rearing. The neighbor who dropped by with an aluminum tray of overcooked lasagna had all the answers regarding sleep scheduling and took two full hours to explain them to me. The one with the chicken pot pie informed me that pacifiers had permanently botched her now teenage daughter’s teeth. Baked ziti with a side of meatballs explained to me that the less I bathed my baby, the more beautiful her skin would be. My mother-in-law claimed that she knew the best way to soothe a crying infant. Cousins and aunts and uncles and mere acquaintances piped in with their experiences and knowledge concerning spitting up, burping, bathing, and umbilical cords. Even the UPS guy volunteered his views on circumcision. (For the record, he was vehemently opposed. I didn’t ask him to elaborate.)

One thing that I decided, on my own and through no consensus from the peanut gallery, was that I would breast-feed my child. Not only was it best for the baby, but also it would help me take the baby weight off, and I needed all the help I could get in that department. Plus, practically speaking, formula was expensive—why spend thirty bucks on a jar of something my body could make on its own? For me, it was a no-brainer. I knew nothing else, but I was
definitely
going to breast-feed. My distant cousin would be
so
pleased.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. In retrospect, it
did
seem a little suspicious that I was able to wear the same exact bras all
through my pregnancy. Every single part of me grew right down to my feet, but my boobs remained the same dismal cup size. This is bullshit, I remember thinking: the one part of pregnancy that was worth getting excited about, and I got completely gypped. At least when my milk came in, I’d have real cleavage for the first time in my life. I’d wear low-cut tops and get out of speeding tickets and trouble of all kinds. The prospect got me through the misery of pregnancy. It was also never gonna happen.

Minutes after birth, Lily latched on like a champ—she was a natural; I was told by the experienced nurses that we’d have no feeding issues at all. But no matter how hard she sucked, she couldn’t seem to get satiated. They assured me that once we got the positioning down, feeding would be a breeze. So I cradled her in my arms and nursed her. I cross-cradled her. I nursed her sitting up and I nursed her lying down. I even nursed her like a football, despite never having actually held a football in my life. Nothing seemed to work and she became one pissed-off little girl.

To test exactly how much milk I was producing, the home lactation consultant set me up with a double pump, Old Bessie style. I sat on my bed, bottle hooked up to each breast, and cried after an hour when I had less than a few drops in each bottle. Clearly, this wasn’t working and all the fenugreek in the world wasn’t going to make a difference. Feeling like a complete failure, I started her on formula, sobbing the whole time.

It turned out (much to the dismay of my diehard breast-feeding friends) that formula wasn’t really evil. Actually, it proved rather miraculous. Once Lily was actually getting nourishment during feeding time, the hysterics (from both of us) subsided. With a full tummy, she became a much more pleasant baby. She
began gaining weight, rather than losing it, and the pediatrician gave her a big stamp of approval. It may not have been what I’d planned, but it definitely wasn’t the worst thing in the world. And, I tried to convince myself and the people gasping when I pulled out the Similac, it certainly didn’t make me a bad mother.

Plus, bottle feeding wasn’t
entirely
awful. I
did
get to eat and drink whatever I wanted without worrying about the repercussions on my baby’s tummy. And it left Jeff or my mother or my best friend just as capable of feeding Lily as I was, a fact that made me sad as well as a little bit relieved. Best of all, now that I wasn’t feeding and pumping 24/7, I could get out of the house. And Mama
really
needed to get out.

That first trip out of the house, I think I wore pajamas. Even if they weren’t
actually
pajamas, I’m certain I slept in them the night before (and, perhaps, the night before that as well). Motherhood gave me the excuse not to give a shit about how I looked, and I took full advantage of that fact. I assumed the public would forgive my confusion over how to use an ATM machine or properly park my car in between two white lines. I
was
a new mother; I had the best excuse out there.

First-time mothers are the easiest people in the world to identify. I never noticed this fact before I was a mother, but after experiencing what they’re going through, I find that the breed is just impossible to ignore. And it seems like they’re everywhere. Try it: The next time you are at the grocery store or a coffee shop or the bank, take a good look around—I
know
you can spot her. The first-time mother will be in a complete daze, totally oblivious to the spit-up adorning her left shoulder and the stench of exhaustion emanating from her hair. She will have circles under her eyes and be swaying back and forth, even if there is no baby
in her arms at the time, soothing herself just as much as her absent infant. She will be drained, mentally and physically, and could cry on command, if you asked her to.

New mothers with older children as well aren’t nearly as easy to spot. They aren’t as overwhelmed and exhausted as they were the first time around and they aren’t stressing over sleep patterns and exactly how much milk their babies are consuming. They have gained the knowledge that only experienced mothers have: the knowledge to
appreciate
their newborns, before they aren’t newborns anymore.

But, even more than the ability to relish those fleeting moments, they’ve gained the wisdom that as trying and monotonous as the constant feeding and burping and changing may be, it’s nothing compared to what’s coming in the not-so-distant future. It’s the dirty little secret of new motherhood that nobody tells you: Newborns are a breeze. Just wait until you have a three-year-old and you’ll kill for those early days.

Unless, of course, you have a truly colicky baby. In that case, best of luck. You’re pretty much screwed.

D
espite all the things I loathed about pregnancy, there was one thing about it that I savored. One thing that made all of the misery and swelling and aches and pains worthwhile. One thing that could, perhaps, convince me to suffer through the whole thing all over again for a fourth and final time (well,
one thing
other
than the resulting baby, of course). I’m talking about the food. The glorious, glorious food.

Eating all day long was the only thing that quelled my nausea and it just felt so damn good. Pregnancy marked the first time in my life when I wasn’t consciously sucking in my gut and it was absolutely liberating. Now, I know, I know it’s not medically
necessary
to eat for two, since the baby is the size of a sea monkey for the first trimester, but I did anyway. Actually, I ate for five. I easily could have fed a small village with what I consumed during my pregnancy. Probably for an entire year.

I can’t say that I had any particular cravings, because I simply craved
everything
. Bacon and eggs and tuna fish sandwiches topped with potato chips and pizza with extra cheese and meatball subs and chocolate milk shakes. And that was just for breakfast. I visited the food court at the mall and ate my way around the world in a day. The next day, I did it all over again. Personally, I think the whole craving thing is a crock, anyway. I think women always crave particular foods, knocked up or not, and pregnancy just gives us the excuse to indulge rather than deny ourselves.
Finally
. Admittedly, it’s not the healthiest way of getting through nine months, but for me, it was the silver lining to an otherwise miserable experience. The Hershey’s Kiss–filled silver lining.

With all the vomiting I did, you’d think that I would have gained a modest twenty pounds or so, right? I mean, I was basically an unintentional bulimic. Unfortunately, that was not the case and I gained a whopping sixty-five pounds. Once, while I was shopping for baby clothes around my seventh month, the Korean woman at the dry cleaner fought with me over my due date. “No way you have two more months,” she informed me,
waving her pointy finger in my face. “You ready to pop now!” A salesperson at a clothing store actually had the audacity to ask me whether I was carrying an elephant. (I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t.)

When Lily was born, I naively packed my semiskinny jeans for the return from the hospital, thinking that once the baby was out, my stomach would shrink right back up. Between the seven-plus pounds she weighed and all of the shit that poured out of me, surely I’d lose at least thirty pounds, right? The other thirty-five would melt off quickly and I’d be back to my prebaby self in no time. Ha.

Sadly, baby weight is just like any other weight, and it’s a bitch to lose.

I’ve seen countless celebrities boasting about how once they delivered the baby, their weight simply melted off like butter. Their bellies are flat again and their thighs, tight and cottage cheese free. The only remnants of a baby are the porn-star boobs pouring out of their red-carpet dresses. Worst of all, they claim that they’re so busy running around that they just forget to eat and poof! Baby weight gone and they’ve never looked better.