Given that all of my readers are smarter than I am, I’m sure
that I don’t have to explain that the “Fourth Trimester” is considered the
first three months after a baby is born.
Given that all of you can also do basic math, I’m sure that
you guys are all like, “But Suzie, Marlowe is almost SIX MONTHS. That’s WAY MORE than just the fourth
trimester!” Thanks, dick. Got it. Feel free to go away and never visit this
blog again. I’m sure my sponsors,
investors and advertisers will all be sad to see you go, but I certainly will
not.
Alrighty. Now that
we’ve cleared up that I really don’t give a shit if anyone reads this blog,
lets get to discussing my really important thoughts. Shall we start with breastfeeding? Is that okay with everyone? Great.
Breastfeeding
As I have previously mentioned, I did not breast feed. And not because I had no supply, or because
my baby couldn’t latch or for some other “legitimate” reason. I did not breast feed because I didn’t want
to. A large part of this was because I
was really not interested in being the sole provider of nutrition for our
kid. “But Suzie… Breast is best….!”
Yep. Heard that a bunch. Want to know what is best for Suzie
Herold? Having Jeff Herold feed Marlowe
Herold half of the time. It’s fucking
glorious. He looks super cute stumbling
back into bed at 4am every other night.
And by every other night I mean that he fed her overnight the majority
of the time, because he is truly, truly the most decent person I know and
because I truly, truly am a selfish asshole.
Do I deserve him? Certainly not. Did I do anything to make his life easier
while Marlowe was a total fucking monster for the first 3.5 months of her
life? Certainly not. I actually repeatedly told him that I
gestated her for the first 34.5 weeks of her life so her first 34.5 weeks on
the outside were all his. And to an
extent, I let this happen. I’m so
fucking awesome.
Anyway, Marlowe is a really mellow baby. I know this because of all of the other
babies in my life that I have spent significant time with. Meaning… zero. But I do believe is she a pretty chill
kid. So, one night when it was my turn
to get no sleep, she started to freak the fuck out about who knows what. Maybe she doesn’t like the color of our
living room walls. After doing
everything I could think of (short list), I decided that obviously what she
needed was our first skin to skin experience.
So, she got naked, I got half naked, and we snuggled it out. She did calm down pretty quickly, given that
her sole focus was how to get one of my nipples into her mouth. I almost felt violated. Given that there was no milk in there for
her, the session wrapped up pretty quickly, but it did lead me to think about
what I had missed out on. And then Jeff
got up, pushed a button on our Baby Brezza and tagged me out for the rest of
the night, and I haven’t really harped on it since. And also, now that I think about it, I don't even think he even asked me what I was doing sitting in the middle of our living room in the early morning hours with my Ts hanging out. It must have been the sleep deprivation.
Sleep Deprivation
Those of you that know me well understand that if I am
tired, I am a raging fucking bitch, and that is putting it nicely. When I was a little kid my family used to
rotate who had to wake me up because it usually went something like this:
Unfortunate soul: “Suz,
wake up. Mom made French toast!” [Or
insert anything nice… “It’s time to leave for Aruba!” or “We are getting a
puppy today!” etcetera.*]
Suz: “I will
seriously fucking kill you if you don’t get out of here in the next 8 seconds.”
U.S.: “But,,, you
need to eat. It is noon and you need to
take insulin, too.”
Suz: “Did I fucking
stutter? 7, 6, 5….”
U.S.: “Fine. Don’t
eat. Don’t take insulin.”
Suz: “4,3,2…”
*On a side note, please understand that using etc. more than
once is ridiculous. It means “and so on” so writing “etc. etc.” makes you look
fucking stupid. On second thought… keep
doing it.
So anyway, I hate to leave this magical story behind but I
have a point to make, and that is that sleep deprivation is real.
Now that Marlowe is sleeping through the night, our lives
from just a few months ago seem like distant memories. But while we were in it, we were absolute
zombies. At one point neither one of us
could remember if either one of us had fed her overnight, let alone how
much. On multiple occasions we would
wake up and point at each other like, “did you?”
So we had to start washing all of her bottles before we went
to bed so that we could keep track of how often we were feeding her. I don’t even think on my wildest night of
partying did I black out whether I got out of bed for water. Jeff keeps saying that there is a reason that
we use sleep deprivation as an interrogation tactic in the military, and I
believe him.
Birth Control
I assumed after Marlowe made her grand entrance, her mere existence would be all of the birth control we needed. And, although I had a C-section, I also assumed that I was going
to treat my vagina as if I had delivered naturally… i.e. a war zone. Jeff assumed he was entering the world of
gratuitous blow jobs. Right. Either
way, it didn’t occur to me that this was going to be a talking point in our household
for awhile.
But, at nearly all of my many post-op / blood pressure
checks / after the baby OB appointments (and even one or two while Marlowe was
still living inside of me) everyone kept asking what I wanted to do for birth
control. I kept hearing things such as:
“Breastfeeding is not birth control”
“You can get pregnant before your cycle returns”
“You’d be surprised… it can happen” (False. Almost nothing surprises me.)
“You don’t want to get pregnant again for awhile… you need
to be careful”
And on. And on. And on.
So finally I said to my doctor what I say to people all the
time. I won’t tell you how to do your
job if you don’t tell me how to do mine.
(This particularly perplexes my hairdressers, and also the lady that did
the flowers for our wedding, because obviously I need to have some input, but
in reality, I just really don’t really care. Like, you're the expert. I will defer to you. Please do a nice job. Thank you and goodbye.) I assumed that my doctor would pick
the best method for me, so I just threw all of her pamphlets into the trash and ignored her.
So, she settled on the Mirena for me. On the day of the appointment, I hadn't given it much thought, other than I was told to take an Advil (which I decided to ignore). I arrived at MGH where I was promptly told to piss in a cup so that they could give me a pregnancy test. Holy fuckballs, did I have a panic attack in the 3 minutes it took to confirm that I was, thankfully, without child.
t cannot fathom having another child so quickly. Marlowe is such a home wrecker as an only child… I just kept thinking about what in the fuck would I do with two babies? Clearly pick one to love more than the other and make them both Jeff’s problem.
So, she settled on the Mirena for me. On the day of the appointment, I hadn't given it much thought, other than I was told to take an Advil (which I decided to ignore). I arrived at MGH where I was promptly told to piss in a cup so that they could give me a pregnancy test. Holy fuckballs, did I have a panic attack in the 3 minutes it took to confirm that I was, thankfully, without child.
t cannot fathom having another child so quickly. Marlowe is such a home wrecker as an only child… I just kept thinking about what in the fuck would I do with two babies? Clearly pick one to love more than the other and make them both Jeff’s problem.
So anyway, here I sit with an IUD (to be clear, not an IED, which is an entirely different device) in my whooha, free to
practice making another as we see fit.
In order to get knocked up again I’d have to sneak this piece of plastic
out of my uterus and lie to my husband about it. The foundation for creating Marlowe was not
exactly sound (“Let’s do it so people stop asking and we can just get it over
with!”) so I’m not sure I should get pregnant with another based upon this
scenario… but…
I would love to give her a sibling. I mean, think bout how much less I will have
to play with her if she has a sister or brother.
MIC DROP.
Well, not quite.
Miscellaneous Thoughts
1.
My house is full of kid accouterments and I
fucking hate it. It is all so colorful,
and loud and takes up SO MUCH SPACE.
Christmas morning I unwrapped at least 324 presents for her and while
inspecting each one thought, “how soon before I can throw this away?” She definitely got a set of finger puppets
that went directly into the garbage can.
But Kellie, thank you so much for those.
2.
I really don't like feeding her solid food. It’s gross, it’s a pain in the ass process
and given her coordination is that of a typical 5.5 month old, it’s fucking
messy. She is like dining next to a tornado. No thanks.
3.
Her doctor no longer considers her
premature. That part I love.
4.
Baby girl pajamas are the ugliest articles of
clothing of all time. Why does
everything have to be an obnoxious pink / purple / ruffley / ballerina inspired
cheap textile? And then I’m like, “Yes,
but it’s bedtime!” and immediately stop caring what she is wearing so I can
throw her in her crib and pour a glass of wine.
Here are some pictures of my little bunny. (Her nickname became Bunny really early on. I always asked her if she was a hungry bunny, or a sleepy bunny etc. It has now morphed into just calling her Buns or Bun Bun. She is going to fucking love it when I'm screaming that to her on the lacrosse field in 10 years.)
Here are some pictures of my little bunny. (Her nickname became Bunny really early on. I always asked her if she was a hungry bunny, or a sleepy bunny etc. It has now morphed into just calling her Buns or Bun Bun. She is going to fucking love it when I'm screaming that to her on the lacrosse field in 10 years.)
Bunny is a bunny for Halloween! Handmade costume by her Grams! |
Marlowe the teenager. |
Bunny sleeps through Thanksgiving dinner. |
Bunny goes to California. So far it doesn't seem like she has inherited her mama's debilitating fear of flying. |
Bun Bun's Resting Bitch Face. |
Kid likes sweet potatoes! |
Cutest picture ever. |
The picture that did not make the Christmas card. Kellie figuratively shit her pants when she saw me dress my child in a tutu. |
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