A day in the life

No pics this time, just stories. Some people wonder what I fill my days with now that I’m no longer working in an office. After 2 months on my new ‘job’ as stay-at-home mom, I can tell you that working in an office is definitely easier!! It has a starting point, at 8 am, and an ending point, usually around 5 pm. There is an expected decorum amongst coworkers and colleagues, and the workday routine is pretty reliable. Not so with my new job. Every day is a moving target. Right when I think I have something figured out, it changes. Allow me to introduce you to  ‘a day in the life of’. This is a chronicle of the events of last Tuesday, which pretty much adequately sums up how my days are spent now.

The day begins at 4:30 am. Baby girl (who is normally a very sound sleeper that doesn’t rouse till about 7:30) has managed to both pull a Houdini maneuver/ escape the mummy-like swaddle AND kicked on the music button on her papasan chair. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” scared her awake and the screaming commenced. I myself am startled right awake by the screaming on the baby monitor. Ever seen someone sleepwalk? It’s a reflex now. Soon as a single peep emanates from the monitor, my feet have hit the floor before my eyes have even opened, so full-fledged screaming means that I’m out the door and in the hallway before my mind catches up to my body.

Feeding time is always a challenge. It usually goes something like this: Eat. Spit up. Cry. Eat. Spit up. Cry. Rinse and repeat. After the majority of her bottle has been consumed and immediately projectile-vomited back up, we move to the changing table and commence with the first of 987,7635 wardrobe changes of the day. We sit back on the couch to finish the last little bit of the bottle. Then the warning signs of an epic blowout commence: the red scrunchy face. The intermittent grunts. The whif of godawful stench that can only be compared to rotten spinach  simmered with 5-day-street-baked roadkill. Fighting the wave of nausea and irresistible urge to puke, I bring her back to the changing table for a new diaper. Code brown. It’s a stage 4 nuclear meltdown in the pants. We’re talking halfway up her back,  coating her belly button, 10-wipe-job epic blowout. She gets a new diaper and another wardrobe change. We return yet again to the couch to finish the bottle. Success. She finishes it all. And it comes right back up again. Proceed to third wardrobe change of the day.

When it appears that she has finally finished regurgitating her entire meal, we run to the bathroom in an attempt to get myself both showered AND dressed, no small feat. You see, she will only tolerate sitting in her bouncer chair if the vibration feature is activated. And the makers of the Carter’s Snug-a-bunny bouncer chair, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the chair should have a 5 minute automatic shutoff feature to the vibration. This means I have exactly 5 minutes to complete my shower, and not a second more. In my frantic showering frenzy I realize I can’t remember if I’ve washed my hair. Yes, this event would’ve transpired less than 60 seconds ago. And yes, I can’t recall if this event actually transpired at all. Turns out preggo brain is a permanent condition. Heeding the advice of Pantene, I lather rinse and repeat. Screaming commences as soon as the chair vibration shuts off. I leap out of the shower, realizing I also forgot to shave my legs and/or did not have time to complete this task. Jeans it is today. But in my flabby post-partum state I only have one pair of jeans that fit me, and they are adorned with a nice patch of spit up on one leg. I throw on a long shirt and vow not to raise my arms in public, thus preventing an exposure of the offending spit up stain. Put my hair in a ponytail, slap on some moisturizer, and the extent of my beauty routine is complete. Grab baby girl and head to the nursery to get her dressed and ready for the day. We find a precious little purple romper amongst her expansive clothing collection and search for the coordinating socks. Alas the purple socks cannot be located. We check the clean clothes in the laundry basket waiting to be put away but they are not to be found. Lest I be judged by the other perfectly-coordinated moms in the pediatrician’s waiting room, we switch outfits yet again so she can have matching footwear. All the jostling only encourages further spitting up, so we slap on a bib to cover it up and head to the car. Found the purple socks. Or rather, one purple sock. This is unfortunate, as it is likely the other purple sock is MIA…a victim of her constant kicking and sock-flinging.

Driving to the doctor’s office is a task that requires careful preparation and strategic planning. You see, baby girl prefers to be in a state of constant motion. She fusses and cries whenever we suffer this misfortune of encountering a stop sign or red light. It’s not easy to get from point A to point B in the nation’s fourth-largest city without coming to a complete stop at some point during the journey, but I do my best to accommodate her and take the interstate. There’s a wreck. Fussing starts. 5 minutes later crying ensues, then elevates to ear-shattering screaming as the minutes tick by and we move exactly one-tenth of a mile in 30 minutes. Trapped in the front seat and unable to do anything to distract her, I turn Jimmy Buffet up real loud and dream of pina coladas and pristine beaches and a time when I had the freedom to enjoy both. She finally wears herself out crying and falls asleep 8 minutes before we get to the doctor’s.

At the doctor’s office she is of course a perfect angel. She smiles, coos, and otherwise puts on an amazing display of false advertising. I can almost see the doctor processing my horror stories of the screaming infant versus the sweet angel she sees now, and chalking it up as an overreactive hyper-emotional first time mother who doesn’t know how to deal with a crying baby. She says baby girl is gaining weight, and is doing ‘just fine’ and her reflux and crying is something she’ll ‘outgrow.’ I want to punch her in the face. I make a mental note to find a new pediatrician asap.

We stop by the grocery on the way home. I use the term ‘stop by’ loosely, since any errand with the baby in tow is a minimum 45-minute endeavor. Get the carseat out. Get the diaper bag out. Haul the obnoxiously-heavy carseat with baby inside to the front of the store and plop all items into the grocery cart. However, due to the ridiculously-bulky nature of the carseat, it will only fit INSIDE the grocery cart, instead of perfectly perched on top of it as other moms seem to have somehow pulled off. This presents a problem in the actual selection and transportation of the grocery items. They can only be stored on the bottom of the cart, where some ingenious grocery cart engineer decided there should be a substantial degree of slope, thus allowing any grocery items placed there to slide right off. Our grocery purchases for the week are limited to diet 7up, milk, pork chops, bananas, toilet paper, and whatever generic brand of dog food is located on the bottom shelf because I can’t reach the good stuff on the top shelf. Hope the pug doesn’t mind a change in diet. We leave the store and I make a mental note to google banana pork chop recipes.

At home it’s finally naptime and I’m looking forward to trying to remember what all I needed to accomplish while she’s sleeping. We swaddle. We bounce. We rock. We walk. After a full 20 minutes of varying degrees of motion she is finally asleep, and I place her in her papasan chair. Close the nursery door, go downstairs, and turn on the baby monitor. She’s awake before I hit the power button on the laptop. Not tired or wanting a nap, thanks to all the sleeping she did in the car.  Realizing that napping efforts are completely futile, we set up the stroller and leash up the pug to go for a walk and waste some time before Daddy finally comes home. At the neighborhood park the pug spots a squirrel with a death wish, darting out less than a foot away in front of him. The pug lunges, my hand holding his leash lunges with him, and the stroller being directed by that hand also lunges. The stroller goes off the side of the pavement and topples over, sending baby girl in her carseat flying out. Luckily the pain-in-the-ass bulky carseat actually did its job and she is protected from the fall, but I’m a frantic mess trying to simultaneously chase the dog/soothe the baby/straighten the stroller. Meanwhile a childless couple playing fetch with their springer spaniel is giving me the stink eye, clearly assessing me as an unfit mother endangering her child with a perilous walk. I want to yell out ‘I USED TO BE YOU!! My biggest dilemma in life was what brand of organic, whole-grain, cage-free-poultry dog food to buy!!” Instead I collect myself and my belongings with what small amount of dignity remains, and the three of us hastily depart from the park, away from their smirking. We continue walking around the neighborhood for an additional 45 minutes, till nice little pools of sweat are collecting in my post-partum belly rolls. Baby girl falls asleep.  Back at home I leave her in the carseat in the hopes of actually finally getting a few things done.

I call the insurance department at the hospital. For shits and giggles they decided to mail out an extremely cryptic and deathly-urgent sounding letter, something about ‘needing additional insurance information’ and ‘overdue unpaid account balance.’ Halfway through my navigation of the automated phone system, baby girl wakes up. She is no longer in motion, and is not pleased about it. I break out the Baby Bjorn while pressing 0 for operator and slap her inside. I am connected to the wrong department. Further crying. I press 0 for operator again and patiently explain my dilemma and how I am trying to reach the insurance coordinator, not the admittance department.  Crying elevates to shrieking, and I realize I have inserted baby girl in such a way that her leg is folded up halfway up her back.  I attempt to reposition her while pressing 3 for more options. The insurance coordinator is unsure what the cryptic content of the letter means, and transfers me to her supervisor. Baby girl is crying again, probably because her face is smushed against my chest in a manner that prevents her from breathing.  I turn her head to the side, stick in a binky, and explain the situation for the fourth time to the supervisor. Crying resumes after the binky falls out and I resort to wedging it in her mouth with a cloth diaper to prevent slippage. After a painstakingly-repetitious conversation with the insurance coordinator, it is determined that the letter was erroneous and the claim has been paid in full by insurance. No further action is needed.  Baby girl is asleep again.

My back is killing me and I would love nothing more than to fling the Baby Bjorn off the balcony, but I leave it on in order to prevent waking the child as I prepare dinner. However, I discover that I have extremely limited mobility in the kitchen while wearing the blasted contraption. Most useful appliances and utensils are out of reach, or would require contortionist moves that would likely injure myself and/or the child. So it’s peanut butter and jelly for dinner. But no jelly. It kept falling off the bottom of the grocery cart and was thus eliminated from our purchases.

The husband finally comes home from work and asks what’s for dinner. Lean Cusine. He moans and I want to punch him. We take turns eating and soothing the child, who is usually inconsolable in the evenings due to an entire day of throwing up everything she eats. We put her in the bouncer. She cries. We try the swing. She cries. We set up the play gym. She cries. As a last resort we draw up a bath, which is one of the 3 guaranteed maneuvers that will calm her. The husband tends to her in the bath while I finish putting away the groceries (which are still in the car) and feed the pug. He sniffs his food and walks away. It’s not the gourmet, organic, nutritionally-balanced dog food he’s accustomed to. I give him a milk bone and hope he doesn’t puke in the middle of the night, which he has been known to do when he doesn’t eat dinner.

At long last it’s bedtime. Unlike the rest of the day, she’s certain to be a perfect angel right before she drifts off to sleep at night.  I finally have 2 hands free and can attempt to accomplish the growing to-do list, which includes paying bills, doing the puke-and-poop laundry, filing insurance paperwork, or fixing the bouncer. Instead I google banana pork chop recipes (alas there are none) and ‘how to remove spit up from car seat’ (baking soda, club soda, and detergent). Then I pass out on the couch while watching DVR’d shows. I wake halfway through Modern Family and crawl into bed, trying to get some sleep before starting again tomorrow.