I once heard that we forget just how painful giving birth is almost immediately after the fact. It may be true otherwise who in their right minds would want to go through it twice? I know we aren’t completely amnesiac, since we do have a vague memory of what it was like… after all there are many accounts, but I’m beginning to think that the extent of the real pain we forget. Same thing goes for sleepless nights and other pregnancy issues.
It’s not that I forgot how itchy I got in the third trimester of my first pregnancy, but for some reason I did think I could face it again. Hence the 2nd child. Same thing goes for the sleepless nights after Miss. N was born. I know there were (and still are) many many with N… but now that I’m going through it all over again feeling absolutely EXHAUSTED… I find myself thinking I don’t remember it being this torturous… I’ve had a sore throat for maybe 3 weeks now. I’m taking loads of vitamins but my body is too tired to deal with my throat.
Another example: Maybe it’s just our baby, but I’ve never changed so many diapers in my life before.. Is it another boy thing on top of the sprinkler? The other day I went to give him a bath. Thank God, I decided to ask my sister to help even though I can manage just fine on my own. I prepared his bath filled it up with the perfect temperature water put him in and two seconds later: pooof the little guy goes and does a big yellow poo in the water! Ah crap! (literally, right?) So while my sister holds him in his pooey water to keep him warm I get Miss. N’s bathtub (yes we have several baby tubs… something I thought was unnecessary till now) out and fill it up. As soon as the little guy goes in that one and I start trying to get all the poo off him… Poof, he lets out another one! Oh man!! Seriously?! So fine… I go get the tub, fill it up and we dip him in very quickly now… (getting smarter finally!)… Take him out again, wrap him in his towel… and just as I start drying the little fellow off, he goes and does ANOTHER one!! I swear, I’m telling the truth here… we somehow manage to clean him up while he’s screaming non stop of course… put a diaper under his bottom and just as I’m about to close it…. Yes, you guessed it! Another poo poo!! It sometimes takes me 3 diapers to change him because the first he poos in and then the second again while I’m changing him!
When we were pregnant with N, a very dear friend of mine who is very… how should I put it… eco-friendly? You know, vegetarian, hardly uses plastic stuff, etc etc… Well, she gave me one of those beautiful cloth diapers. They’re really cute… At some point during pregnancy I was actually considering doing the whole cloth diaper thing. (nuts right?) Well, seriously, can you imagine if I were doing it now? I mean, every time I change one diaper I’d have 4 to wash?!! That’s not possible! The main reason I was considering it wasn’t so much to be “green” (sorry guys, but it’s true) but rather because I thought maybe it’s cheaper… but I’d have to have a couple hundred of the cloth thingys so… maybe not so cheap! Plus, I’ve read the amount of water spent cleaning them is not at all eco-friendly, so there’s no real gain. In any case, if today with the disposable diapers I do several loads of laundry a day… imagine what it would be with the cloth ones? I’d be working harder than a laundromat! I don’t have any help here that can do that stuff for me… It’s just me running around like a headless chicken here at home most days when I attempt a clean tidy house and total chaos when I don’t. So, no green friendly diapers for me, sorry! But anyone who does use then has all my admiration and support. Really!
