ml's & kg's

As a new Mom now prepared for the arrival of your baby, you’re more than likely a formidable force. With the Baby Room as close to exact as you wanted and could get it, the little clothes all rinsed out with baby –friendly washing powder with softener in it, and all folded into neat organized piles and arranged in drawers and on shelves, with baby toiletries neatly lined up to an order that only you will notice – you are 100% ready for Baby. Well, aside from some pre-birth jitters, which everyone assures you is natural and which you will feel no matter how many children you have or in what manner.

Lethally armed with baby bag and personal bag for the hospital, your greatest weapon is your Knowledge Bag. All neatly filed in your mind is all the information you have gleaned through watching, listening and reading up about everything there is to know about babies so that you too will know what to do with the little person about to arrive.

And he arrives, pink, healthy and with lots of voice and you’re scared shitless and wonder what the fuck you’re going to do now? You’ve fed him, burped him, changed him, and still he cries? Help!!!

Suddenly there’s information overload. There’s too many things it could be, too many things it couldn’t be, too many choices to make. Why wasn’t it simpler? Why wasn’t there just a wrong and a right? A black and a white? Where did all the grey areas come from???

He’s not taking to the milk, he is restless, trouble winding him – god I need some sleep, I’m gonna crack here – he’s got thrush in his mouth, could it be his ears? Is that raspiness from his nose or his chest? Is it hay fever or is it more serious than that? Grasping frantically at straws, we try new bottles, one after another, a mad kinda gleam in our overtired, burning eyes hoping that this will be the one – this teety bottle here will be the magic wand that will solve all these baby problems. But it’s not. So we turn to the gripe options. Gripe water, Bennett’s, Behoedmiddlel, Telament, we even make a mixture of them, but still nothing seems to work.

He’s allergic to the milk, we decide and turn our slightly crazed mind to the Formula and start…well making a new Formula – pardon the pun, it was intended. But that only makes it worse. And now we are in despair.

At our six week checkup at the Doctor we are assured his well, as long as his weight is on par and he is growing steadily, all is well. So we forge doggedly ahead, keeping an eagle eye on the weight, because as long as it’s on track, everything else we’ve been doing is fine, it’s what the Doctor said.

And so our lives and our first months with our first born are ruled in ml’s and kg’s. Millimeters and Kilograms.

Urgh!!

Someone prove me wrong, but I’m willing to bet on it, the second time round is not so bad. You’ve shortlisted what worked in the past and will discover not everything works the same for one as for another and so you’ll shorten the list even more, but you’re not as focused on the range the world offers, just the one your world narrowed down. And you experiment a little here and tweak a little there, and *Wa-la*, you have a ‘formula’ that works for you. And you enjoy your second child even more than your first born – who, by the way, continues to be the guinea pig in your world of choices, as he grows and ml’s and kg’s are no longer an issue, but perhaps rather liters and Kilometers and so forth!

And then, for those lucky enough – yes, I meant it, lucky enough, to have a third child, the world melts away. There are no ml’s, there are no kg’s – besides the absolute necessary . There’s just you and him and instead of counting the ml’s, you’re counting his smiles, and instead of checking the kg’s, your watching him grow and wishing he’d stop, because you know it’s over before it began, and chances are, it’s your last shot to enjoy these precious few weeks. You leave the worrying to the Doctors and let him be exactly what he is, a precious baby child that doesn’t always need a reason to cry, because crying is what babies do, it’s their thing. It’s not you, Mom, doing something wrong, it’s just their thing they do. And this new found relaxation carries over to the baby too, and they tell you what a wonderful young man you’ve got, how friendly and how relaxed, and you smile secretly, because you’re taking all the credit for it, because you damn well earned it.