Momology 101

Every newborn should come with an instruction manual.

Babies. A woman spends a full nine months growing one. Her body expands as the months go by, getting larger than she ever thought her body could get.

At first we're so excited just to be pregnant we don't even mind putting on a few pounds. In fact, we relish stepping on the doctor's scale and seeing the number go up because that means the baby is growing. Getting bigger equals getting closer to being here. When our baby bump finally emerges, the first thing we do is go put on maternity clothes. Women don't mind being larger as long as people know it's because they're pregnant. Not because they've just inhaled a dozen Krispy Kreams. There's a difference, you know.

Yes indeed. Life is good. The baby is growing, our appetite is growing, our bodies are growing.

Somewhere around the end of the seventh month, things start to get irritating. We can no longer see our feet, the maternity clothes we were so eager to get into now look like a tent, and if one more person touches our stomach without asking, they're going to end up walking funny. Our doctors tell us to get plenty of rest, and we would, if we could just get comfortable. Sleeping...you try to sleep with a watermelon attached to the front of your body and see how much rest you get.

Around the eighth month our attitude starts to look up. We're getting so close we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We get parties thrown for us. People are nicer to us. Our hubbies are extra attentive, even when we don't want them to be. We've given up on fighting the stretchmarks, realizing it's all worth it.

We start birthing classes and finally get a good look at what we're in for. No one told us our bodies were going to do that. No one mentioned we would end up with stitches in a very sensitive place. Ouch! We study every book we can get our hands on to find out about labor. We scour every possible source of information to decide on a name.

For me labor wasn't that bad. I went into the hospital fully dilated and a few hours later, we were done. I'm not going to say it was easy. Any woman who's been through labor would just laugh. Labor is called labor for a reason. It's work. Hard work. Our body does most of it on it's own, whether we want it to or not.

Our first son was this tiny, perfect being, as most babies are. He had ten perfect little fingers and ten perfect little toes. Yes, I counted them. He never cried. *sigh* He was just perfect.

The first night at home with him, he started crying as soon as it got dark. Nothing we did would sooth him. I think we both started crying with him. We hadn't even had him home for three hours and we had broken him. No one at the hospital had bothered to tell us that our perfect bundle of joy had colic. Honestly, I didn't even know what colic was.

Most women spend so much time preparing for getting the perfect little baby home, we don't think about what happens after labor. Oh sure, we know to have the room ready and to have a car seat installed.

The hospital didn't give us an instruction manual. They should have. All babies should come with one. That way when they cry for hours, we know why. Or at least what to try to help them stop. It would have been awesome if someone at the hospital would have mentioned that colicky babies might get relief in a wind-up-swing. Or that a hair dryer running will soothe them at times. Or about the dryer trick where you turn on the clothes dryer and put your baby on top of it in their car seat.

No. I bet the nurses laughed as we walked out the door with our perfect little bundle of joy, ignorant of what the night held for us.

Wouldn't life with a newborn be so much easier if it came with an instruction manual?