Remember That?

While worrying about Tucker’s dental health, speech delay, sleep schedule and general well being, it occurs to me how focused I get on a particular worry.  Like, borderline obsessive.  I have to remind myself how quickly each moment passes.  I can remember being utterly freaked out when my milk hadn’t yet come in, crazily documenting hours of baby sleep, wondering whether to use the “cry it out” technique and countless other Very Important Things.

As a reminder to myself that things end up working out and even fade to a somewhat blurry memory, I’ve made a mini timeline of some brand-new-baby freak-outs that are (obviously) no longer an issue.

We’ll start here.  July 3:  “OMG can you believe we’re going to have a baby tomorrow?”

July 4, early evening:  “What do you mean you accidentally tapped my spinal column?  Go get your supervisor to do it.  WTF!!”

July 4 later evening:  “Ok Robert, you win.  I’m never doing this again.  This will be our only. Baby.  Ever.”

July 4, what feels like an eternity later:  Balling my eyes out, thinking that wasn’t really so bad, “Hi, Tucker.”  “Wow.  Look at his tiny face!  He’s so perfect!  I made the best baby ever!”  (this one was obviously a good freak-out.  beautiful, in fact.)

July 5, sometime in the morning:  Lactation consultant comes in and shows me what to do.  It’s surprisingly more complicated than I figured it’d be.

July 5, evening:  “I think he’s starving.  He keeps crying, and I don’t think I have any milk.”

July 6, sometime between 1 am and real morning:  Trying to pump.  Nothing happens except a pinprick size of clear stuff that we try and syringe into Tucker’s mouth.  Still crying.  Nurse takes him for one hour, and I sleep.  I’m convinced that he’s starving.

July 6, afternoon:  “You’re letting us take this baby home?  Really?  Huh.”

That evening:  No milk.  Calling the doctor.  Supposed to keep trying.  Ask “How will I know if my milk’s in?”  Get reply “Ah…you’ll know.”

July 7:  “Robert, the baby is starving.  He looks skinnier.  Let’s go buy some formula, just in case.”  $125 and five types of formula later, we went to the doctor.  Heard “Keep trying, your milk will come.”

Holy crap I’ll know when my milk’s in.  “Look at my boobs!!”  Robert “Um, I don’t think that’s gonna work.  They’re too big for his mouth.”  Me “Argh!  He doesn’t put the whole thing in there!  Just go downstairs or something.” (but really, each one was porn-star big. each bigger than his whole tiny head. seriously.)

After a while, and some pump assistance:  “Success!”  He’s not going to starve after all.

July 12:  “Robert, you don’t wash your ass with the loofah, do you?” Him “No.”  Me “Well, I’m getting a new one anyway.  I can’t risk exposing the baby’s only food source to your ass juice.  Same goes for ball hair.”

August:  “I think he was supposed to smile by now.  Do you think something’s wrong?”  Robert “He has smiled, and nothing’s wrong.  Quit freaking out.”  Me “How do you know nothing’s wrong? You don’t know! And maybe that wasn’t a real smile, maybe that was a poop face.” (it was totally a smile)

October:  “Tucker’s three months old.  I think we’re supposed to let him sleep in his own room at night now.”  This turned out to be anticlimactic.  I was expecting Tucker to notice.  He didn’t.  I slept on the floor of his room for two nights anyway.

See?  Those are only snippets from the first three months of Tucker’s life.  I totally wigged, over and over again. Deep breaths, moms.  (Fill in the blank again) too shall pass.  And, actually, much too quickly.  Along with that amazing new baby smell.  Ahhh, remember that?  Sigh…