YO MAMA: So, this is parenthood

OPINION

We brought our baby boy home on my birthday. It was one of those bright and crisp spring days that make you stop and smile up at the sun. We had something extra to smile about as we stepped out of the hospital and into the fresh air.

Our little boy was perfect, if a bit extraterrestrial looking. He reminded me of a potato bug, the way he’d curl up in a tiny ball on my chest. I took to calling him Bug.

As we left the hospital, Bug wore a bright green hat with a froggy on it and a look of wide-eyed astonishment to match. Here he was, after all those months of waiting. I couldn’t wait to get to know him and introduce him to our world.

Coming home felt strange. Here was this infant in our (His) house and everything felt different. We paused in the foyer for a moment, Bug asleep in his carseat with his hands clasped diabolically, looking like a smug prince who has inherited the throne. I studied his pudgy starfish hands, his cobwebby old man hair, his right eyebrow always slightly arched, even in sleep. I couldn’t stop looking at him.

Careful not to disturb his slumber, Daddo and I began the delicate, bomb-diffusing task of unbuckling the car seat without waking him. Our fingers fumbled and bumped as we both tried to extract him from the miniscule compartment. Bug’s eyelids burst open like window blinds on a spring and I half expected lasers to shoot out of his pupils.

“Well, at least we know he has a solid startle reflex,” I said.

I lifted him out and brought him upstairs, juggling him in my arms the way you might carry an unruly watermelon (think of that scene from Dirty Dancing). Cumulatively, the time I spent pre-birth holding babies was probably three minutes or less. Once they started crying or wheezing I’d hurriedly hand them off.

We brought Bug up into the nursery, which was neatly organized with stacks of diapers, baby wipes, books with baby animals on the covers, onesies, booties, socksies, shirtsies, all the other itty-bitty ‘ies’ and a crop of knitted hats that seemed to multiply like dandelion shoots. Figuring it was time to check his diaper, I placed Bug on the change table and watched his face crack open with a scream loosely translating to “mayday, mayday, this surface is cold and icky and not at all womb-like.”

Dodging kicking feet, I cautiously opened his diaper as if it was a loaded jack-in-the-box. A smear of thick, nut-buttery poop awaited. I reached for the wet wipes and by the time I turned back, the poop had somehow migrated onto Bug’s legs, his onesie and the change table, no doubt carried by those feisty feet. The wet wipes, I discovered, were ridiculously small and instantly crumpled into useless balls, like cheap napkins at happy hour.

Bug was no longer screaming, but rather serenely gazing up at me now like a little bald monk as I wiped his bottom.

Of all the smartly zippered sleepers and onesies decorated with sailboats and giraffes, not one seemed to fit him properly. As the search dragged on, Bug grew impatient. I could see it in the aggressive darting of his eyes, the edgy twitch of his left elbow. I felt like an imbecile sweating before an eminent leader. By the time I found an article of clothing that would work, his face was the colour of a stove top burner, turned all the way up. Be patient with me, I begged, I’m still learning. 

I clutched him to me and carried him into the living room.  A heap of hospital handouts plastered the coffee table, a mosaic of info about shaken baby syndrome, postpartum depression, and a coloured diagram of normal and not normal stool colours.

Meanwhile, Daddo was waging war against an army of ants that had staged a takeover in the two days we’d been gone. I joked that the stream of black ants trickling down the wall were probably there to welcome the dark lord, our demon spawn, to the world. The brain fog of nearly 72 hours without sleep was taking me to some dark places. (Much, much later I would finally fall asleep only to dream about Bug being carried away by an army of ants.)

Bug startled me to my senses with a sharp “anh-anh-anh” sound reminiscent of an old computer connecting to dial-up Internet. I was learning that babies make all kinds of strange and horrible noises in addition to the beautiful cooing you hear on TV. They make feeble wheezing sounds and take raspy little breaths that make you think they are dying, all of which are completely panic-inducing when you are a hormonal, emotionally-wasted wreck. And then they make sounds that are so grating, so mosquito-whiningly irritating, that you despise them for a few moments until they wrap their hand around your finger and you realize everything will, eventually, be alright.

There’s this little magic trick the nurses at the hospital used to settle the baby. It’s called swaddling and I hadn’t tried it yet because I was enjoying other people doing things for me for as long as I could. I grabbed a dinosaur-printed swaddle blanket and attempted to wrap Bug up like a burrito. The tight, straight-jacket effect was supposed to evoke comforting sensations of the womb. I thought I did a pretty good job, but as I backed away, filled with the excitement of putting the baby down and getting a snack, Bug flung the blanket off in one swift motion, arms and legs splayed out, posing like a flasher. My little exhibitionist. I never would be able to keep him swaddled.

Instead, we did our clumsy nursing routine, which was very flappy and discombobulated until we got settled. Any prior vision of myself nursing my babe like a Greek goddess evaporated along with my desire for a hot bath.

Bug ate… and ate… and ate. He ate while I ate (spoon fed soup by Daddo). He ate while I watched a YouTube video on ways to lull a baby to sleep. He ate while I brushed my teeth and while I read the hospital pamphlets.

Finally, he nodded off, seemingly satisfied. I cautiously swaddled him — so far so good!— and lowered him into the bassinet. Daddo and I fell asleep exhausted, only to be woken up three minutes later by a wailing baby.

Bug quieted as my husband brought him into the bed with us. I felt a tingle of love wash over me, a mixture of affection, tenderness and total devotion. We intended to snuggle with him only as long as we could stay awake, to strictly adhere to our plan for him to sleep in his bassinet…

I woke up one hour later, curled on my side in a C-shape with Bug nestled up against me. He yawned the most breathtakingly beautiful yawn and settled in for another nursing session. It was time to eat — again.

I couldn’t believe it was only our first day together.

— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.