Exactly 3 years and 7 months ago, our lives changed forever when my husband and I became the bewildered parents of our daughter Jane. In spite of the fact that I was well-educated about where babies came from, it still came as a shock to me when I discovered I was pregnant and I have to admit...I didn't handle it very well. I called my husband (who was drunk at a baseball game at the time) bawling. He was pumped! I was frozen. My life changed quickly, as my summer vacation took a serious change in direction. Gone was the dream of peacefully sipping drinks poolside. I couldn't even bear the thought of donning a bathing suit. No, I was going to need the next 8 weeks to come to grips with the fact that I was going to be a mother.
Don't get me wrong, I'd always wanted to be a mom, and having a baby was definitely the plan...'down the road' and 'in the future', but the future was now and it was time to pull it together. So, we did pull it together and low and behold nine months later out metaphorically 'popped' Jane. Once again...I was frozen and this time, so was my husband! We spent the first few weeks of the poor child's life sitting in our living room waiting for the negligent parents of this darling little baby to come and pick her up. Of course, that didn't happen because as it turned out we were the parents of this darling little baby and so, once again we had to pull it together. I'll talk later about those first few months, and how in retrospect the stress of the life-change and motherhood meant I didn't allow myself to enjoy Jane as much as I should have...ahhhh, there's the first mention of guilt...I'll come back to that later.
So, just under three years later we are Masters of Parenting and decide we'll give it another go. This time, I handled the news with some excitement and looked forward with some sense of eagerness about what was coming our way. I was ready. I was prepared. I had clearly contracted the common condition of Motherhood Amnesia where I forgot that with a lovely baby comes a not-so-lovely load of emotions and stresses to take on. Nora has arrived and is now six months old and so, I feel like I'm emerging from the fog of mothering a newborn...slowly, but surely. The 'what the...???' no longer relates to the madness of parenting, but to the complete craziness of parenting TWO. What the...have I gotten myself into?
