Loni, my dear friend and mentor in Montreal is due with her 3rd baby in 4 years any day now. She's actually like a ticking time bomb, but a beautiful one with gorgeous lean limbs and a basketball belly out to there.
Last night, Brad and I joined Jamie and James and Andy and Loni for a great dinner, movie (us girls watched Julie and Julia: by far the best Christmas present I received and movie I've seen in 2009) and game (the guys played some boring strategic-takes-2-hours-to-play game). Well, when Jamie (a complete nurturing natural and baby fanatic), me (trying to be a baby mama), and Loni (bursting prego and current mom of 2) get together the topic always veers in one direction: babies.
I'm pretty up on my pregnancy knowledge since we had a few near-baby-experiences in the early days of our marriage (and I say days literally, one scare was like 30 days in... Thank goodness it was just a late period!!) and since we began seriously considering starting a family this September. I've read other blogs like Vanessa's that took me through the week-by-week of her journey while pregs with both of her boys. I've watched the reality shows. I've read some articles. I've done a lot in terms of prepping myself for pregnancy.
Now, disclaimer: I have these resources (sites, friends, moms, etc) so they can be on-goingly informative when the pregnancy is over, so it won't be like I'm a total newb, but my conclusion from the conversation last night was this:
I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BABIES.
PREGNANCY? YES. HEAPS. BABIES? ZERO.
warning lights/bells/whistles ensue! Every question I posed to Loni was answered not even by her but by my baby-less dear friend Jamie. Nursing, feeding times, progression, stages of a baby's life... How does she knows all of this?? Was Jamie a co-author to the famous "What To Expect in the First year" or something?
I wanted to wring Loni and Jamie out like a wet towel and drink up all of the dripped knowledge so I wouldn't be a complete idiot when my baby was born, Lord willing, and I was left to raise it.
Not to mention Loni was spouting off claims like "you'll just know when your baby needs to be fed in the middle of the night even if they don't cry" WHAT?! I sleep like a rock, and rumor has it, you're a tired wreck when you have a baby. I'll just know? HOW?! I know NOTHING. How will I just guess when the baby is hungry? Shocked and scared I just shook my head vowing to set an alarm for every 2 hours of the day. Oh yeah that was another one. Every 2 hours they feed. I had heard 3 somewhere in a blissful lie of an article. 2 hours. AH! So much to learn, Emily, so much.
So this is my confession. I probably know more than I should about pregnancy. But I know less than the average non-mom about babies.
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Don't worry. If you're LUCKY enough to have a child that is hungry but ISN'T crying...:) Then...well, you'll just be lucky.
ReplyDeleteThe middle of the night feeds only need to happen when they're newbies.
It's a STEEP learning curve (steepest learning curve EVER), but you'll figure it out and what it looks like for YOU - because there are no other couples exactly like you and Brad there will be no one else who will parent exactly like you. So take heart in that. :)
Just remember that every baby is different and you will get to know your baby :) London never had to be fed every 2 hours, we started every 3 - 3 1/2 hours (even as a newborn and it only got longer between feeding from there). And our ped told us we only had to wake London in the night to feed until he hit his birth weight (which dips a bit after birth) which only took 4 days for us, but 2 weeks normally. I felt the same as you do, I knew nothing and had no idea what to do, but you learn quickly! and you can only do that once you meet your baby, you can only be prepared to a point before the little is born - the rest you learn together.
ReplyDeleteErin S.