Anne TootillTo Be or Not to Be a Mother -Part Two
October 27th 2006 15:19
So many hours so all alone. My husband left for work at 7 A.M. and didn’t come home until 8:30 P.M. I was the first of my friends to have a baby. My parents and in-laws worked. One of my sisters worked full-time the other part-time. I tried walking around my neighborhood pushing Josh in a stroller but it was deserted. Suddenly I felt like I had been caste out to sea and ended up on some remote island.
It was just me and Josh. It was just me feeding Josh. He still ate all the time. Forget about an eating schedule the doctor said. His poorly developed suck reflex allowed him to take in only small amounts at a time so he had to eat more often to get what he needed. But he was thriving according to the doc. Growing in leaps and bounds so what was a mother to do.
If only he would sleep more. We were still only getting a few, maybe four hours of sleep a night. And that crying. Like nails on a blackboard. I swear if he wasn’t mine I would have left him behind weeks ago. Crying all the time. Why couldn’t he just shut up? But he couldn’t. He was only a baby. I knew that.
There had to be something that would help. And then one day my mother told me something that I swear must have been sent by an angel. She told me that she’d read, heard, been told, whatever the source who cares, bottom line she said she bought a baby swing for Josh and she’d be bringing it over in half an hour.
She arrived 30 minutes on the dot with a large box and told me it needed assembly. Then she and my father left me and my crying son and I opened the box to find ten million teeny tiny pieces and a set of instructions that may have been written in English but it looked more like Japanese to this technologically challenged.
It was just me and Josh. It was just me feeding Josh. He still ate all the time. Forget about an eating schedule the doctor said. His poorly developed suck reflex allowed him to take in only small amounts at a time so he had to eat more often to get what he needed. But he was thriving according to the doc. Growing in leaps and bounds so what was a mother to do.
If only he would sleep more. We were still only getting a few, maybe four hours of sleep a night. And that crying. Like nails on a blackboard. I swear if he wasn’t mine I would have left him behind weeks ago. Crying all the time. Why couldn’t he just shut up? But he couldn’t. He was only a baby. I knew that.
There had to be something that would help. And then one day my mother told me something that I swear must have been sent by an angel. She told me that she’d read, heard, been told, whatever the source who cares, bottom line she said she bought a baby swing for Josh and she’d be bringing it over in half an hour.
She arrived 30 minutes on the dot with a large box and told me it needed assembly. Then she and my father left me and my crying son and I opened the box to find ten million teeny tiny pieces and a set of instructions that may have been written in English but it looked more like Japanese to this technologically challenged.
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