Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman & Jerry Scott
13 days old
I think mothers forget how much work it is to have a newborn in the house. Hubby thinks in our situation our parents had their parents look after us so they didn’t have to deal with everything we are dealing with.
Collectively, our parents have asked us for everything except respect the fact we are limited in our time and scope outside of our newborn child. Everything from, what color is her eyes? “For the last time, they really don’t know until they are 6 months old.” to we want photos to how do I work my cell phone have been asked of us.
They get upset if I can’t have long chats or refuse to pick up the phone. They wonder why we turn the ringer off our phone. They comment why we ask them not to ring the front door bell. “You’re not teaching her to get used to the everyday noises.” “Mom, I don’t need to set off the chain reaction of doorbell, two barking dogs and a screaming child during this early stage. I just need her to sleep.”
In a strange way I feel like I need to appease them which led to a horrific night the other night. My husband has reminded me that I no longer can appease my parents and must focus on our family and the needs of our family.
Thankfully one of our moms is out of state. Yes, she harasses us with numerous phone calls and comments on how we are raising our child (This ticks me off more than anything. but at least she’s not giving me the guilt trip my mom is giving me. “Don’t deny me time with my granddaughter.”
All I need is time myself. All we need is time to learn about each other. I don’t need you hovering over us telling me what I’m doing wrong. I don’t need you flailing your arms over my daughter scaring her and I very well don’t need you guys to come over, hold her, comment that she has stinky farts and then not check or change her diaper. For goodness sake, you had her in your arms for 30 minutes and you didn’t think to check or change her diaper? How is that supposed to make me feel? You can’t have the good times with the kid and think I’ll take care of the other parts.
You want to help? Why don’t you offer to do my laundry. You know how much laundry a newborn has. Or maybe you can offer to learn how we’re raising our kid. Yes, that’s right, we don’t use a bottle. We’re trying hard to stick with the breast so when hubby feeds her, he uses the SNS feeding tube. Yes, this is more work but we’re really trying to commit to this.
On a side note, I’m still only producing a little under 2 ounces each pump. I’m a little bummed about this. I’m taking fenugreek and milk thistle and Carol at church gave me tips like drink plenty of water and eat high protein/carb meals and cut out dairy. The pediatrician said that I should be producing a minimum of 2 ounces during each pump and it should steadily increase. What I would do to be one of the ladies who told me they were geysers.
My baby now goes beyond 2 ounces during certain feedings. Even with the SNS and breast, she needs more. Today, I was able to give her 6 feedings with expressed breast milk (EBM) and 3 feedings with formula. At least the ratio is still high on the BM front but if I could produce more, I could store it and not have to worry about missing a pump or two or three. I had to give her formula three times today because she was so hungry and didn’t want to be anywhere but my arms, I couldn’t pump.
Going back to my rant. I know our parents don’t mean to be a pain in the tush but they are right now. They are just as needy as our kid but it’s worse, they are adults. They should know better. “Honey, they had their moms live with them and take care of us for them. They don’t know how hard this is nor do they have the capacity to do this. They want the fun stuff and forgot the hard parts.”
I’m just sick of the comments. Why do we do it this way? Why don’t we do it the easy way? Why do we wake her up every 4 hours if she doesn’t wake up for a feeding? Why do we make it such a quiet environment? Why do we restrict visits to day light hours? Why can’t more than 2 people visit? Why can’t they show off their grandchild to acquaintances by inviting them to our house? Yes, one of our moms thought it would be appropriate to have acquaintances self invite themselves to our home to see our less than 2 week old child.
We said to them awhile back numerous times, “We want to have the opportunity you guys had. You raised us the way you wanted to raise us. Let us raise our child the way we want to raise our child. Didn’t it upset you when your parents gave you a hard time?”
I suppose that goes out the window as soon as they become grandmoms. I gave both moms a book during Christmas about being a Nuevo-grandmom. I swear they didn’t read it. I know my mom didn’t read it. Rookiemoms suggests another book as well, The Granny Diaries. Man, I’d love to buy this for them and give it to them. Excerpts from Amazon express exactly what I feel should be conveyed at this juncture. At first I felt weird about giving this to them without them feeling insulted but now I seriously don’t care.
I feel as if they don’t realize our feelings and are so focused on their own that they’ve lost perspective.
Sure, I may have also lost my perspective but I’m entitled to. I’m a new mom. My old life and schedule has completely been thrown out the window. My life now revolves around this tiny human being that needs me for the basics, food, waste & soothing. I’m emotionally drained. I feel like I’m not providing right with the food issues and my husband is on the cusp of going back to work full time and I’ll be on my own with this child and heat wave that has locked us in our home.
Milestones:
First over 7 hours completely alone with BG
We were doing well until the afternoon when sleeping after a feeding became an issue. All in all it was a good test for next week as hubby returns to a full time work schedule.
