Where I'm at

My first two weeks as a new mother have passed in a blur. As if learning how to be a mother and taking care of a newborn infant aren’t enough, out of necessity I hit the ground running immediately after my duckling was born. I gave birth on Tuesday morning, got out of the hospital on Thursday afternoon, and went to a job interview Friday morning. The interview was in a city two hours away from me, my suit was twenty sizes too small, and my milk came in halfway through the interview. For those of you who don’t know, when your milk comes in for the first time after giving birth your boobs expand from a D cup to a Z cup in approximately two minutes, accompanied by hideous pain, fever, and the feeling that you’re hosting an alien creature that’s going to pop its head out your nipples at any minute.

While pretty much any job interview under those circumstances would suck, this interview was hideous in its own unique way. I spent three excruciating hours getting grilled by several different panels of attorneys, answering questions like, “What is your position on the death penalty?” and, “How do you feel about the Fourth Amendment?” At that point I wasn’t even sure what the Fourth Amendment was, and I was beginning to think the electric chair would be preferable to the agony I was currently undergoing. Making matters worse, no one thought I might want a few minutes in between interviews to use the bathroom or grab a bite to eat, so I spent the entire miserable time feeling like my tender bladder was going to explode and covertly eating some old cough drops I found stuck to the bottom of my purse in an attempt to stave off glucose shock.

With only two days to recover from the interview, I had a Thai midterm on Monday morning and, just for the hell of it, attended all of my classes on Monday afternoon. This added up to twelve hours on campus, six of which I spent in a hot, smelly bathroom becoming intimately acquainted with a trumpet-shaped instrument of torture called a breast pump and frantically calling my mother every five minutes to make sure the baby had enough food. I then graded six journal articles, leaped a tall building in a single bound, and sang “I am woman, hear me roar” several times under my breath.

With only about four hours of sleep per night and running my ass off during the day, you’d think I would be a basket case, but I seem to have developed a serious case of post-partum euphoria. I walk the floors at 4:00 in the morning with my baby in my arms and I know my hair is unwashed and my nightgown is ratty but somehow I feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. I look at her tiny little arms and am so moved by her vulnerability that I burst into tears. Likewise, any song on the radio makes me think of her and I find myself bawling with joy at such tear-jerkers as Beyonce and Bob Marley. In fact, I’m getting a little choked up now. Let me change the subject.

If you’re one of the nine hundred people who sent me a really nice e-mail in response to my birth announcement, please forgive me for not responding. As you can imagine, I’m up to my eyeballs with work. (Then how does she find time to update her blog, you ask. Oh, I am so busted.)

Also, several people left comments admiring my swaddling skills after I posted that last picture of my angry little banana. Sadly, I can’t take credit - as it turns out, babies come pre-swaddled these days. There are blankets that have a little pouch where you put the baby, and attached to the pouch are wrap-around blanket-wings with velcro that tie baby up tight. This is the best invention ever and I have to thank PT-LawMom for introducing me to them. (Also, swaddlers help prevent SIDS by keeping blankets away from baby’s face, so if you're a new mother, run out and get yourself a bunch of them.)