Who am I kidding? Everyday of the week is SONday around here. Saturday was spent at our SON's all star hockey game. (They won. Yay!) Today was spent at our SON's hockey league's end-of-season roller skating party. Tomorrow night we have to go to church for a pre-communion parents meeting. And so on. Every day is SONday.
One of those things no one tells you about motherhood is that once your first child is born, you sort of cease to exist. Your birthday is no longer a big deal. You only get a couple token Christmas gifts because all the people who used to buy for you are now buying for your kid(s). Not to sound all greedy and selfish but, for me anyway, it was a noticeable shift. I went from being the only child of my parents to being the mother of their only grandchild. I suppose for mothers who were never doted on, it's less noticeable and, therefore, an easier adjustment. Don't get me wrong. If I wasn't the doted upon only child, I probably would not have gotten (and wouldn't still be getting) all the help I've gotten from my parents with my son.
When my son was born, my mom stayed with me 2 nights in the hospital compared to only 1 night that my husband stayed. My mom was still doting on me then. I'd had a c-section and could barely move and when I did move, I experienced the worst pain I'd ever had in my life. I honestly don't know how I would've gotten through those 4 days without my mom's love and help and support. She rode home from the hospital with us and stayed at our house Sunday night through Friday afternoon for several weeks so my husband could sleep through the night and go to work all day and not get run down and miserable. She got up every time the baby cried and changed his diaper while I went to the bathroom and got my self in position to breastfeed. She'd usually sit and talk with me while I fed him and then she'd take him back either to his crib, or more frequently, to the spare bedroom with her where she would hold him until he settled down. Sometimes that would mean she slept sitting in a chair holding him all night. (Well, between feedings anyway.)
I didn't officially do attachment parenting. The Baby Bjorn carrier was painful with my engorged milk jugs and I was never comfortable with the sling style baby carriers because I was afraid he'd fall out. So someone would always just hold him. Pretty much the only time he was put down was on the bed next to me which is still pretty darn close to being held. I followed a book called The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp, M.D. In it, he said that human babies really need a full year of gestation but come out after 9 months because of our big ol' brains. If the baby stayed in for another 3 months, it would never be able to fit its big ol' head with the big ol' brain out of the not so big ol' birth canal. So, sort of like kangaroos, human babies come out only partially cooked. The last 1/4 of the baking time is spent outside of the mother's body. So, for those first 3 months of life, you need to treat a baby as if it was still in the womb. Swaddle it, keep it warm, keep it close to you and your smells and sounds, keep it moving, and anything else that simulates being inside but on the outside. So that's what we did.
This is not a one person job. I believe it was in that book that I read about an African (I think) tribe in which babies are NEVER put down for the first 4 months (?) of life. If the mother can't hold the baby at any given moment, she passes it off to someone else. The baby never lacks human contact for one second during those first few months. Pretty cool, huh?
So where was I? Oh yeah. My mom became supergrandma which also made her supermom to me until we hit a point where I was mostly healed from my c-section and the baby was OK with being in a bouncer or on a blanket on the floor. She was still around a lot but she was also making up for lost "me time" of her own. There were also things going on with my dad and both of my mom's brothers that were taking (and still are taking) up a lot of her time. Eventually, when my son was 6 months old, I went back to work very part time and supergrandma became superbabysitter. (My mother-in-law chipped in one afternoon a week but that's hardly worth mentioning.) Being a superbabysitter makes one a tired mom/wife/sister/person and I think that's when I really took a backseat in my mother's life. I should note that she was 69 years old when my son was born, so maybe I should refer to her as superdupergrandmababysitter.
Ya know. I have a lot more to say but it's 1:47 am and I have to go to work in the morning. There is a point to this story... I think.. but I won't be getting to it tonight. Tune in next time for more of my whining and attempts to figure out when, exactly, I, as an individual person, disappeared.
