Adventures in Motherhood: A Little Bit of Disarray

Because I shared the good, bad, and ugly of my pregnancy, I think it's only fair to share the same aspects of new motherhood. I've had this story just waiting to be posted for several weeks now, but I think I had to let the trauma of it all wear off before I could write about it. I'm kidding.......but only sort of.

When Leah was about a week old or so, I had to take her to the pediatrician for a weight check. She was gaining weight very, very slowly, and they were somewhat concerned, so we had already been in a couple of times to have them plop her on the scale and see how things were moving along. (The situation has since been resolved. Not a problem.)

In any case, I wasn't yet cleared by my doctor to drive or carry much, so I recruited my (very willing) mom to go with us and help with the trek to the doctor. On the way home, we stopped at Sonic for a mid-afternoon snack. It started out smoothly enough - Mom and I were in the front of my car enjoying our tater tots and onion rings, and Leah was sleeping in her seat in the back. Before long, though, Leah woke up and wanted her snack, too.

I moved to the back seat to feed her. This, in and of itself, was a first, since it was broad daylight, a public place, my car, and, well, nursing. You've gotta do what you've gotta do, though, so we did. When I pulled her out of her seat to feed her, though, I made the first of many unpleasant discoveries: she was soaked through with baby pee. Soaked through. Her little jammies were saturated and cold, which was undoubtedly part of her sudden tantrum. In my new-momness, I (wrongly) figured that her hunger was more urgent than the condition of her clothing, and set out to fix that. I fed her as best as I could in such small quarters, with her fussing the whole time, and then began to try to change her.

As I laid her on my lap to assume the changing position, she spit up. And kept spitting up. "Hurray," I thought. "We're off to a great start."

I made quick work of removing her sleeper. Well, it was as quick as it could be, considering the newness of all of this for both of us, her growing rage at my incorrect prioritizing, and again, the compact quarters in which we found ourselves. Once I got the sleeper and diaper off, another unpleasant discovery was made as she quickly let me know that despite the overabundance of, um, stuff in her diaper, she was not finished.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Let's just say that we had a complete inventory of bodily fluids before it was over. (Well....there was no blood. That's something.)

Add to this my hysterical laughter and (un)gratitude that my daughter chose those conditions for my first-ever diaper change away from home, and the image of my mother leaning over the front seat taking pictures....and yeah. You have a blog post.

Since then, I've learned a lot and have been through other misadventures of new motherhood, but this - being the first really big one and being caught on camera - had to be shared. There will be lots of others, I'm sure. Stay tuned.