GUEST POST: Holy Mother of God! That Baby is Going Home with ME??!! by Jenny Hansen

Since Myndi is due to deliver Baby Girl Shafer TODAY, I’m holding down the fort at her place. Y’all should SEE what she keeps here behind the scenes of her blog. I could play in these tiaras for days!

In honor or Myndi’s big event, I thought it might be nice to include tips on Labor and Delivery and the products my honey and I liked during pregnancy and beyond. But there’s something else she’ll be up to in a few days that’s the bigger event for most parents.

What about that moment when you’ve delivered the child and the hospital releases you to go home? Or when you have a home birth and the last childbirth professional walks out your front door?

I remember looking at the nurses rushing around our room, trying to discharge us from the hospital and shooting my husband a look that begged him to “please get them OUT of here for a minute!”

Thankfully, he got the memo and asked for a few minutes of privacy to feed the baby. The second they left, I started crying.

Disclaimer for the new and future moms: You’re going to do that spontaneous weeping thing a lot more often than you expect.

When a new mom builds up hormones for 9 months and starts offloading them at a rapid pace (after the baby is born) emotions can get a little rocky. Especially, if you were a high-risk pregnancy (which thankfully is NOT the case with Myndi), you’ve been worrying for MONTHS.

Even if a new mom doesn’t get official post-partum depression, new parents can expect to be exhausted and, well…emotional.

Look how BIG that car seat looks!

I remember looking at my hubby over Baby Girl’s head, with big crocodile tears pouring down my face, and  saying, “We’re actually going to take her home? Now?”

Him: “Well, we’re not leaving her HERE.”

Me: “I know that!”

Him: “It’s going to be fine.”

I wanted to ask him, “How do you know?” But the hardest part of being a new parent is the realization that NO ONE really knows what they’re doing, especially you.

You can take every parenting class in the world (and you should, just to get some comfort with the basics) and your new child is still going to stump you with some issue that you’ve got no answer for. Probably in the middle of the night. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve already had a few, like our pal Myndi. You’ve never had this baby.

Photo: http://www.babydon.com

You are now in charge of keeping this little being safe and there will be a moment of terror, sometime in that baby’s first few weeks of life, when you wonder how the hell you’re going to do that.

I can give you some practical tips to help you get a little more sleep, but I cannot help you wrap your brain around that concept of 100% responsibility for the safety and well-being of your first child.

But I’ll be happy to listen while you vent. 🙂

Did any of you parents have jitters the first time you were alone with your new baby? What do you remember as your “what in the world is this child doing” moment? For any of you who are pregnant now, what are some of the things you’re worried about? We’d love to hear about it.

*Pssst…if our questions rock hard enough, maybe Myndi will show up with a baby update!*

Jenny

About Jenny Hansen

Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after her toddler Baby Girl). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing.

When she’s not at her blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at jhansenwrites or at her group blog, Writers In The Storm. Every Saturday, she writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.

ROW80 Check-In

Hi y’all!  Just a quick note/update about my ROW80 progress.  We’re getting super close to Little Miss Took’s arrival, and I think it’s time I bowed out of the ROW for a while.  I’ll probably pick back up the round after next in the autumn – or if I’m feeling it, jump in during the middle of the next round, but right now I think it’s time to let myself slide into a slower gear for the rest of the spring.

I’m so grateful for all the support and encouragement, as well as to so many of you who offered to guest-post on my blog to take some of the pressure off when Baby Girl arrives.  You all rock.  Big time.

Lots of love,

Myn

 

EXTERNAL CRAZY

Something about a woman in the later stages of pregnancy brings out the crazy in people around her.  Not just the crazy, but the stupid.  The ridiculous.  The outstandingly inappropriate.

The starting point for external crazy begins when a pregnant woman’s stride changes from the normal one-foot-in-front-of-the-other gait to the waddle-side-to-side-with-one-hand-on-the-small-of-your-back march.  Every pregnancy I’ve had has testified to this.

Cafe Press. Click here to see!

With my firstborn, a lady came up to me in a Wal-Mart, put both hands on my belly uninvited, slipped into a seance-like trance for a moment, and then told me my baby would be born without eyes.

With my second, a grandmotherly woman gently patted my belly, and then my hips and butt-cheeks, and told me I was made for breeding.

With my third, at a wedding shower, my own grandmother told me that she and I needed to stick together throughout the party because we were the fat girls in the room.  (This woman has a knack for snark…like the time she told me how pretty I looked…followed by the phrase, Isn’t it amazing what makeup can do for a person?)

So now, here I am, about a month away from the glorious act of giving birth.  I’ve got a waddle that any duck would be jealous of, a belly that puts Santa to shame, and Lord Almighty, the crazies are out to get me.

I’m a meal planner.  If I wasn’t, we literally would never, ever eat at home.  Meal planning saves my culinary hide, time and time again.  The downfall to this, however, is the massive grocery shop I do twice a month.  I spend an ungodly amount of time in the ginormous supermarket around the corner from my house, waddling from one end to the other, precariously stocking my cart like it’s a mobile, volatile game of Jenga while trying to keep my lovely three-year-old from accidentally toppling over the giant display of Velveeta.  Or freeing the tank of lobsters, who she feels would be much happier out of the water.  Or from opening every box of cookies, fruit snacks, pop-tarts, or whatever junk food happens to be within her reach.

Grocery shopping is stressful.

Yesterday was grocery shopping day.

Thankfully, we made it through the experience without incident…until we got in line to check out.

As I was putting my groceries on the conveyor belt, my lovely belly decided it was time to pull out its favorite labor-conditioning activity: Braxton-Hicks contractions.  Anybody who’s had multiple kids knows these contractions get stronger with each consecutive child.  It’s not actual labor – it’s just a pregnant woman’s body’s way of reminding her that, This thing you’re about to experience?  You know, popping a kid out of your lady-bits?  Yeah.  It’s gonna hurt like hell.  I’m sure there’s a more practical, biological reason for the fake contractions, but at that particular moment, I didn’t really care what it was.  At that point, all that mattered was that my abdomen had begun to clench down like a snapping turtle jacked up on Red-Bull and reptilian angst, and I was juggling a glass jar of milk in one hand, a carton of eggs in the other, and a bag of apples in my teeth.

I set my stuff down and drew in a deep breath, knowing the contraction would pass in just a moment.  Then I could pay for my groceries and get the heck out of Dodge.

Of course, it was at that moment that the checker (who had previously ignored my presence altogether) decided to glance at me.

Checker: (loudly, to no-one in particular) Oh my god, she’s going into labor!

Me: (still trying to breathe) No, I’m not.

Checker: Yes you are, you’re going into labor!

Me: No, I’m not.

SweetZ: Mommy? Is the baby hurting you?

Me: (patting her head while directing mean thoughts to the cashier) No, honey, I’m fine. 

At this point the pain begins to taper off, and I quickly resume putting groceries on the conveyor belt.

Checker: (distrustfully) You’re sure you’re not going into labor?

Me:  (irritated) Nope.  Not going into labor.

Checker: ‘Cause you know I’m not delivering your baby.

Me: (to self) No shit?  (to her, firmly) I’m not going into labor.

Checker: (after a brief moment of beautiful silence)  I took a human sexuality class once.

Me: (to self) Oh, lord.  (to her) Really?

Checker: (stops checking groceries) Yeah.  In college.  I hated it.

Me: (to her) Oh.  (to self) Why has she stopped ringing up my groceries?  What’s SweetZ doing?  (look around and spy SweetZ raiding the candy display)

Checker:  Yeah.  It was my first class of the day.  I hated it.  It killed sex for me.  It’s why I never had any kids.  The whole thing was disgusting.

Me: (pulling four suckers, five candy bars, and two packages of gum out of SweetZ’s hands and putting them back in the display)  That’s too bad.

Checker: (eyeing my belly distastefully) Not really. (resumes ringing up my groceries)

At this point, the guy bagging my groceries decides to chime in.

Bagger:  I took a human sexuality class in college, too.

Checker:  Really?

Bagger:  Yeah.  I loved it.

Me: (to self, digging through wallet, pretending to look for debit card) Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.

Bagger:  I took a human sexuality class in college, too.

Me: (to self) Why is he repeating that?  (looks up)

Bagger: (is staring me down)  I took a human sexuality class in college, too.

Me: (nodding slightly)  Cool.  (to self)  Why?  Why, why, why??

Bagger:  I loved it.  You want your juice in a sack?

Me: (timidly, hoping I’m not about to agree to some weird double-innuendo sexual favor; I really just want SweetZ’s apple juice in a sack) Yes, please.

Checker:  I hated it.  Disgusting.  (looks at my bag of parsley)  Is this cilantro?

Me: No.  It’s parsley.

Checker:  Parsley?  (for some reason this seems to annoy her.  She looks at my belly once more, eyeing it like it’s a homemade explosive about ready to go off)  You’re sure you’re not in labor?

Me:  (exasperated sigh) Nope.  Not in labor.

Needless to say, when the bagger asked if I needed help out, I declined.  That had to be one of THE MOST uncomfortable grocery store conversations I’ve ever had.  Ever.

Okay, so it’s time for you to dish and make me feel better.  I want to hear your awkward grocery store moments, pre-natal or not.  Bad attempts at flirting in the produce aisle?  Shelf stock-boy stalking?  Devil children roaming the store unattended?  If you have a memorable grocery store moment, this is the place to share!