Smitten

Dear Mimi,

We just welcomed your little sister into the world. You’re amazing. She will be forever blessed because she has you for a sister. Exactly one week after we became a family of five, you turned five. FIVE. It blows me away.

Being a third-time mama in the mother/baby unit was reminiscent of being a senior in high school in that it felt like I owned the place. Unlike with your birth, no one peered down my gown assessing my ability to breastfeed. Yes, this time you’d taught me enough about baby-hood that I could relax and simply fall in love with this fearfully and wonderfully made babe. Thank you.

There’s a pinch of advice I’ll need to give you, should you ever enter this motherhood journey. Strive to be smitten, for you will find that within 24 hours of birthing your child, the world will start to pull you away from building a relationship with your little miracle. 

Here’s my case…

The morning after your sister arrived, the chaos began. Define chaos? No problem, here’s what it may look like:

A well-meaning nurse will enter your room every two hours throughout the night leading up to the chaos, to ensure you’re alive by taking your blood pressure and temperature. These are called Vitals, but a better name might be Pesters because the clicking noise, plus the tourniquet on your right upper arm will wake you up. Satisfied with you, she’ll turn to your sleeping baby and get her Pesters too.

The baby, with high chaos tolerance, will sleep through this when…

The anesthesia staff will appear to make sure you haven’t become a paraplegic from that blessed epidural.

Again, she’ll sleep through that until the respiratory therapist comes to make sure she’s breathing. Now, there’s nothing more precious than watching an infant’s chest rise and fall as they sleep, but just so they can wake her up, they’ll unwrap your well-crafted swaddle and tape her hand, then her foot. Their machine will make at least a dozen high-pitched error alarms, causing you to question your prior assessment that she was actually breathing. To reassure you, she’ll cry then fall back to sleep.

Just as you get the swaddle re-made, a stranger in a lab coat will appear to poke her heel and milk blood from it. I’d wake up and cry too.

You’ll once again re-assemble the swaddle when the auditory gal comes, and you’ll be thankful she isn’t unfolding your work of blanket-art. She’s only messing with her head. This entails putting cold gel on the baby’s precious neck and forehead and applying space-alien probes to ensure your baby’s ears are working. She will insist that the baby only hears a pleasant clicking sound. You’ll wonder what kind of clicking could possibly be pleasant.

Next, more Vitals, for both you and baby. You’re husband, asleep on a miserable make-shift bed, will shoot up from under the thin sheet like someone is stealing the baby. No honey, it’s just a pleasant clicking sound.

The phone will ring, proving that indeed the baby can hear. It’s the business office wanting your money. 

The nurse will then appear to give Pumpkin a Hepatitis B shot. At least she knows how to swaddle.

Another round of Pesters.

The business office will call back to check hearing again, and tell you the good news that they will bill you later and you can leave with your money, but not your sanity.

I kid not. All of the said events occurred before 10am the day after Lil’ Sis arrived. Welcome to our world girlfriend.

All this to say, on that morning, you will forget to enjoy your baby.  You won’t have time to place her on your chest, skin to skin, and bask in the work God created in you. The doctors, nurses, technicians, and staff all mean well, and are there to ensure your bundle is healthy. Praise God for modern medicine. But at the same time, it will pull you away from the relationship with your child. And that pull, that chaos, whether from western medicine, the phone, or Facebook, will persist for the rest of this motherhood journey.  But more on that later… For now, I’ve got to get back to my smitten time. The baby is waking and I can't wait to see those precious blue eyes.