Lady from the Baby Shower

  When I was 20 years old, one of the most nauseating events I could be forced to attend was definitely the baby shower. I guess the word forced is too strong. Maybe cajoled? Persuaded? Guilt-tripped? I’m not sure but regardless I truly never wanted to attend. If you are invited to a baby shower, here is my advice: if you can make it past the voluptuous ladies who know no sense of bodily boundaries, the baby blue and pink balloons, and the time-wasting games then head directly to the mimosa bar. They always have one which makes absolutely no sense to me. What a way to torture a lady who's been pregnant for 8 months. Regardless, that’s the place to plant yourself.

Once you get there; however, you are almost guaranteed to end up in a conversation with one of the other ladies at the party. I don’t think I can present a recollection of a particular baby shower but I can summon the recurring conversations I had at each of them. This is the conversation:

“Do you want to have children?” asks a well-meaning nameless lady.

“I don’t think so at this point. Ladies always tell me their terrifying stories of childbirth at these things and it freaks me out just a little,” I explain. 

“Oh yeah, I totally understand. Women do love to talk. [Insert her story of the time when she was giving birth to her child and she pushed so hard that she pooped and they had to wipe it away before she could see it. She made sure that I knew that it wasn’t that bad. Or the time when her vagina ripped all the way to her butt hole.]” she babbles on. 

This is the part where I glaze over and remind myself that I don't in fact have to have kids. Why would you tell someone your horrifying birth story when they just told you it freaks them out? I thought to myself.

My friends and I often lamented over these stories. I was pretty convinced that children were positively the most terrifying things on the planet. 

Fast forward to this morning at the age of 35 years, 5 months, and 9 days or to be more specific 1,118,534,400 seconds old. I woke up to find my right arm all tingly from the head of a 9-month-old baby laying on top of it. You’re my kid, I thought to myself. It’s something I remind myself often.

Thankfully I was able to get mostly ready for work before he was fully awake. The kid wanted me to hold him and that’s when I smelled it. There is something really intense about the smell of baby poop. Maybe all human poop is like that but I normally don’t have to smell it because we just flush it down the toilet. Baby poop; on the other hand, is right in my face. On top of that, he’s trying to touch it! While I’m changing his diaper! 

It’s a picture almost too crazy to believe. I’m holding the kid down by putting my hand on his chest otherwise he’ll flip over. With my other hand, I pull the straps that hold the diaper in place and carefully pull it open. The shocker is how much poop this little human can have. This particular time, it goes all the way up the back of the diaper. I try not to breathe, grabbing the wipes, trying to hold him down, and also keep him from trying to grab it. It takes multi-tasking to another level. 

I somehow accomplish my goal of getting the diaper off but then I have to get another one on which sometimes proves to be just as difficult. He has the strength of a boa when he’s convinced that he should flip over at the very moment I attempt to put a new diaper on. 

That’s the moment that I look at him and realize I need something new for him to wear and it’s all the way across the room in the closet. This routine continues every couple of hours. Would you believe it, lady from the baby shower?

I have an espresso machine whose primary purpose is to make coffee, obviously. For the last 3 months, however, it has become bottle-extraordinaire. I turn it to the water setting, wait for the water to heat, and put exactly 2 ounces into a bottle. I then take the bottle into the kitchen and put 4 heaping scoops of a special and totally necessary European formula into the bottle. Then I add 2 more ounces of cold fridge water into the bottle. Then it goes directly to the baby. Perfect temperature. I do this…then I do it again…and again…again…and again. The routine continues. Would you believe it, lady from the baby shower?

Then there is bedtime. I know the kid is tired. His eyes are all red and he continually rubs them and whines but the moment we are actually in the bed, he wants to do everything but sleep. He flips from one side to the other. He grabs my nose, my hair, and my ears. He pulls until I screech out in pain and then he giggles at the sound. Finally, after 5, 10, 15, maybe 30 minutes he starts making the moaning noises that I now associate with the last stages before sleep takes him. That cuddly moment is one of my favorite routines in the day. Would you believe it, lady from the baby shower?

Tonight, I was craving cookies, like the ones that you bake in the oven and can only eat for about 15 minutes after baking and then they become too hard to eat. I made the bottle (as described above) and strapped the kid into the stroller. I retrieved his little hat and little socks and headed toward the store. It’s probably about a mile from our house. All the while, he is babbling along, enjoying the cold air and the cars whizzing by. This is the perfect way to think and process your day and your goals. Tonight, it occurred to me that this little human is mine, given to me for this moment and I finally understand it. The lady from the baby shower just wanted someone to hear her story. She wanted to be known by someone. 

So ultimately, I’m not sure that my friends would have believed that I would have a kid but tonight as I strap my kid in the stroller, change his diaper, talk to him as he pulls at my nose, give him a bath, and the million other routines, I believe the lady from the baby shower would totally understand and probably knew this was the path the moment I told her it freaked me out. I get her. I want someone to hear my story. I want to be known.