Hello out there. In keeping with the sentiment expressed in the previous entry about “normalizing” what mothers experience, I will be writing here regularly about the dread, fear, joy, glee, insanity…I feel about returning to work full-time, outside my home, in 12 days. I try to always mention “outside the home” because people forget that staying home and caring for your kids can be the most difficult job in the world. (Thankfully, one person who never seems to forget though is Oprah–she mentions the fact that taking care of your children is difficult all the time on her show. I know this because I’ve watched approximately 1 billion hours of Oprah over the years and many of them in the past 12 weeks. Did you know she’s on at 3 different times in the day–4 pm, 7 pm, 1:06 am after Jimmy Kimmel? Guess how I know about these different timeslots and channels…)

Right now it’s 5:20 am. I’m up because my beautiful baby boy let out a piercing scream about an hour ago and I could not fall back asleep after feeding him. Did I mention I have a new baby boy? No? Well, his name is Quinn and he is 12 weeks old. He is lovely and I adore him of course. However I’ll forget to mention him and 100 other central aspects of any story I tell because memory loss is a major issue these days. Sleep deprivation, hormones, advanced age, years of binge drinking, and who knows what else, all contribute to making my brain like a seive (spelling?). Most information goes in one ear and out the other regardless of its import. I forget the trivial like “I’ll call you for lunch” to the significant “I was supposed to be where, when? oops” unless I write it down. If I remember to. You can see it’s a bit of a bind.

All is quiet in my home at this moment. I’m enjoying a very strong cup of coffee which my brand new programmable coffee maker produced immediately upon my waking. Immense joy. Now I can alternate between my cold coffee concentrate I keep in the fridge (for immediate caffeine ingestion any time day or night) with hot coffee waiting for me at whatever time I request. Frankly I could almost be in a coffee commercial at this exact moment–my husband and children are asleep, the city lights are twinkling outside my window, it’s quiet except for the distant buzz of morning traffic on the westside highway and the breathing of my baby. All is right in the world. Except of course, one would need to keep the camera off of me–I’m wearing oversized maternity shorts, a breastmilk stained tank top, bed head hair and glasses. And an extra 30 pounds I still need to lose.

My commercial moment just ended with the reminder of what I look like these days. Not completely awful but distinctive in its totality of “mommyness”. This distinction was punctuated for me when I happened to pass Kyra Sedgewick on the street two nights ago. She is gorgeous and she is one quarter my size. And I’m talking height and width–I almost accidentally flattened her when distractred by my two warring children. Picture me with my many unwanted post-preganancy pounds, wearing Quinn in a Baby Bjorn, struggling to separate my fighting children, complete with frumpy clothes and hair. Along comes Kyra, magnificently coiffed and dressed, looking thoroughly the movie-star, seeming to pass in slow motion. That was like a Calgon commercial…take me away.

Someone is stirring so I will be getting up now. The thought of moving from this spot reminds me of another ongoing post-pregnancy theme–aches and exhaustion (are those two different themes?). My body aches when I move. Not horribly but I don’t remember being so aware of my muscles before I had no sleep and carried Quinn in a Baby Bjorn or carried him in a stroller up subway stairs….

Memory loss, excess weight, aches and exhaustion…a moment of joyful calm. That about somes up my maternity leave though the proportions of each experience changes constantly. Doesn’t this make you want to read on??

Crying baby. Gotta go. More soon… xx Diane