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 50th
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.
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Margot on her activity mat-6 weeks old. |