A Second Time First Time Mom

Being a new mom is really hard.  You have no idea what you’re doing, there’s this tiny screaming alien you’re in charge of keeping alive, and, initially at least, you feel pretty awful. Either you can’t sit because of tearing, or you can’t move because of stitches-and you are still responsible for breast feeding and washing bottles and doing laundry and pacifying your incompetent husband, not to mention hosting the zillions of people who want to meet the new baby.  Add in sleep deprivation and lack of bathing and you’ve got a recipe for a potential new torture method for terrorists.

Being a new NICU mom is even harder.  You have to manage the newborn, plus all the machines the newborn is hooked up to and the wires that come with them, portable heart rate monitors and oxygenation monitors and an oxygen tank. Every feed, challenging on its own, also comes with multiple medicines.  Then there’s the risk factor-preemies have very low immunity, so even minor colds can prove majorly damaging. So when it came to getting out of the house, we chose not to.  It was just too difficult to schlep Lily AND all her stuff and worry about someone breathing on her.  It wasn’t like I could install a permanent sneeze guard, like at a salad bar.  We didn’t take her out, we didn’t allow people in (except for select family members), and I hated my life.

But as a second time mom, without all the preemie accoutrement, it’s a whole different ball game.  Holy crap I can do this.  It’s just a baby: a baby in her car seat, a baby in her stroller, a baby playing on her activity mat smiling up at a rattling frog. Why didn’t I know about all this? And this is where our parenting story changed.  We aren’t first time parents, but we ARE, in so many ways that it’s crazy. Such as…

Belly buttons are gross.  We never had to deal with Lily’s cord falling off because she was already 3 months old when she came home, with an umbilical hernia, so it looked like a little tail was protruding from her abdomen.  But a bloody stump that crusted over and repeatedly fell off only to scab over again? I didn’t sign up for that.  It fell off in a blanket and I thought it was a raisin, until I picked it up and started to gag.   Even Lily told me, “There’s poop in Margot’s belly.”  Yes, dear observant child, it does look like poop.

How much does she eat? We don’t have to do forced feeds? We don’t have to feed her overnight? What do you mean she eats until she finishes on her own and I don’t have to shove an entire feed down her throat?  There can still be formula left in the bottle? She doesn’t need thickened feeds or specialized bottles? None of this was familiar.  We were used to timed, forced feeds, waking up a sleeping baby to keep her on schedule, to keep her gaining weight, to make sure they didn’t want to revert back to an NG tube.  Lily’s weight gain was slow and painful.  Margot eats. And eats and eats and eats. She put herself on a feeding schedule when she was 1-day-old. She finishes bottles, burps, and goes back to sleep. The hubby and I keep saying how strange it is, the way she eats, the way she’s growing and gaining weight, and our friends and family keep reminding us that it’s actually normal. This is the way it’s supposed to be. We’re still not sure that we believe them.  She’s gained over 3 pounds since being born! One pound in Lily land was a cause for celebration. But 3 pounds! That’s gotta be a Guinness record or something (it’s not-Margot is strictly 50^th percentile).

Margot purrs and coos. She makes this funny little noise that sounds like “hi” and then she smiles, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Her hands found each other weeks ago, she batts at her toys, she tracked while still in the hospital, she realized that she has feet the other day (although, I think it was a fluke), and she rolls up onto her side in a cute little rocking motion. Completely normal baby behavior, apparently, because I had no idea!  We had physical therapy for Lily to bring her hands together, and it took her months to batt at toys.  Lily never vocalized, never made little baby cooing sounds, and language was her biggest area of delay (even though she said “mama” at 8 months, the rest of her language took much longer). There was no echolalia with Lily.

The baby can leave the house!  She’s portable-we take her anywhere and everywhere. She’s a lady who lunches. Whether it’s to the playground with her sister, to the mall with my mom, or simply to the supermarket, Margot comes with me.  And, as it turns out, I have freedom. I’m not tethered to my house, afraid that a single cough will result in a lengthy hospital stay. I don’t resent my husband for being able to leave, because I can leave, too. I can see my friends and get errands done and take day trips and be with Lily-I can be a mom like all the other moms who got to bring their babies home.

Spitting up is not a cause for alarm!  This one was a shocker for me. Our pediatrician uses the term “happy spitter” to describe a baby who spits up and it isn’t bothered by it.  Whenever Lily was spitting up, and then screaming, and then spitting up more, it meant that she needed a higher dosage of previcid-she was not a happy spitter. The acid reflux controlled her, and, therefore, us.  But Margot is a happy spitter. She is unfazed when she spits up. Hell, she barely even notices it (she also doesn’t notice when I shove my nose in her mouth to smell for potential acid).

But because we aren’t, technically, new parents, we have been able to handle baby issues a lot quicker and with less emotional meltdown than if Margot was our first.  Like when…

Margot needed to be under bilirubin lights while she was still in the hospital. The nurses were worried about me, that I would react negatively, that I wouldn’t understand.  And I explained to ever shift change, this was nothing! I was a NICU mom; I’d handled much worse than bilirubin lights.

About a week after being born, Margot developed a large, egg shape bruise on the back of her head.  Our pediatrician was mystified, so she sent us to the E.R.  It was 4 pm on a Friday and there was nowhere else to have tests done so expediently.  A first time mom would’ve panicked, but I’d been to the Valley Pediatric E.R. before, and I knew that Margot was fine.  And Margot was fine and I was calm and my husband was calm and we made it home before Lily’s bedtime.

A few days after Margot came home I noticed that she was having problems with her formula.  So I changed it. No hesitation.

With Lily I pumped for 3 months. I was scared to stop.  I belabored the decision, crying about my insufficiencies, berating myself for my lack of supply.  This time-3 weeks.  Supply never increased, I had a toddler to chase around, and I wasn’t going to beat myself up again. My body isn’t milky.  Even my gung-ho breast is best pediatrician thought I should stop.

So I’m a second time first time mom. We’re getting to experience all those great new baby moments and memories without all the new parent anxiety and I have to admit, it’s pretty damn nice.

Margot on her activity mat-6 weeks old.