Triage

It's quiet.

The baby is not crying. The 2-year-old and the husband are out for the day. The grandmother has gone back to CT. The dog is sleeping and the cat is hiding. The only sounds I hear are the aquarium filter buzzing and the baby trying to make a poo. (He does this very well.)

And I exhale, and look around, assessing the damage.

I know that in 2.5 milliseconds the baby will cry because his diaper is full, or because he is still hungry, or because he's really tired and can't fall asleep, or just because. But in this moment, I am calmer than I have been in weeks.

I have a huge post brewing in my head about my first month as a mother of two young children. I owe my editor a new article for The Mommy Times, so I have been trying to craft that post with a humorous slant, but it's been very hard to do because I'm just not feeling funny these days. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I just have to look around me and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all - at the antics of my precocious toddler, at the projectile poops of the infant, at my own missteps borne of sleep deprivation, etc. But when I try to sum up my experience so far, I am faced with deep truths about myself as a mother and a control freak. Taking on another young life is no laughing matter.

And so I do what I always do when confronted with difficulty: I talk about it with everyone I know. I have talked about it with my mother, my husband, my girlfriends, my guy friends, my chiropractor, the service guy from Mitsubishi, the lady at the state disability agency, and even the dog. I am not afraid to admit that I feel like I'm sinking. As one friend whose opinion I respect very much said yesterday, "Why is it such a secret?" Really, why is it? I'm sure every parent has dark moments they don't reveal. Maybe it makes them feel better to hide it, to pretend that everything is fine, that they are basking in the lovely glow of familial bliss. For me, admitting my difficulty with this trying time only helps to lift the world off of my shoulders.

I know that I have been writing so much less during Brady's infancy than I did when Kyle was the same age. That's not for lack of material, believe me. Lack of time and motivation, yes. Obviously I have broken my New Year's Resolution to post every day, but childbirth is a "life event" that triggers some kind of exception, like on my credit card (I have the credit protector plan that kicks in during such a time, and they waive my payments and finance charges for 2 months! Neat!).

There is so much to be done. My house looks like a small tornado took a look-see around the place. My bills are not paid (see above), I have no idea what my family will eat for the next millenium, and the laundry has piled up to unprecedented levels. At best, there is a walkable path through every room, but Stewart and I still trip over toys and boxes. So far we have managed to not drop the baby.

When the baby quieted down and I noticed the relative silence in the house, my first thought was "What is the most important thing I need to do?" So I triaged my life, and my first order of business was to sit here at the computer and write about it. That says something. I need this moment of reflection. I need to update my blog. I need to not forget what I am going through right now.

I'm not even going to tackle the laundry or the dishes or the groceries just yet. I am going to hold my little baby and watch him as he sleeps, and hopefully catch some more sleep for myself. Although it's been hard for me to get through each day, I am enthralled by my beautiful son. He won't be a baby for very long.