Happy Chaos Read Free Page B

third child. The first two are girls and the newborn is a boy. Well our first boy, no one EVER told us to put his ‘peepee’ down when putting on his diaper. For the first week, we could not figure out why he was wetting his crib, onesie, etc . . . What do you know, we pointed it down and no more wet crib :-) A warning label would have saved us a lot of wet bed sheets.”
    â€”Leslie
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“That I’d love her instantly and forever :-)”
    â€”Becky

    My family with Poet and me at the hospital right after she was born
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    A s I was lying with my beautiful baby girl after giving birth, I remember a nurse walking in holding these fishnet granny panties. I stared at her in horror. “For me?” I asked innocently. The woman rolled her eyes at me as she continued holding them, and with her other hand held up a gigantic white surgical glove. For those of you who have had vaginal births, you know what I am talking about. For those who haven’t, just picture the biggest fishnet panties you have ever seen and an enormous surgical glove filled with ice. That gigantic ice hand goes right onto your Va-JJ and immediately becomes your best friend. The granny panties hold that glove right in place, and as if things couldn’t get sexier, the nurse then handed me a spray can. I was totally perplexed until I learned it was to numb the vagina. Yes, to numb my vagina.
    There are so many things that no one tells you about having a baby. Oh sure, I read a few things. I talked to my friends. I did my research. But I swear to you, no one ever told me that after I had my baby I would be handed a gigantic pair of fishnet granny panties. And I’m positive no one told me that I’d be given a spray to numb my vagina. And I am absolutely, one hundred percent certain that no one told me that I would be given an enormous white rubber glove—filled with ice—that I would then stick on my vagina.
    Little did I know at that moment how essential to my life these three completely bizarre items would become: mesh panties, vagina spray, ice glove. With that tool kit in hand, the maternity nurse sent me on my way, and we were ready to leave the hospital with our new baby girl. As we signed ourselves out, the only thing the hospital wanted to know was if we had a car seat. That’s it. Have a car seat? Here’s your baby.
    Jason wrestled the car seat into submission, and when we got out on the road we had this feeling that the world as we once knew it had changed—and it had. We drove four miles per hour the whole way home, fearful that any bump or movement might upset our new baby. Had people really done this before? We felt like the first. There I sat looking at my husband and our beautiful baby, thinking about life. My Va-JJ spray was wearing off and reality was sinking in.
    When we got to our house, I fell into the warm embrace of my mother’s loving arms. I caught the scent of her pasta sauce when we walked in the door, and I knew I was home. And our girl, Poet, was home, too. It was heaven . . . and then I realized that—oh my God—we’d forgotten the placenta at the hospital. I’d been determined to bring it home and plant a tree over it—like the true earth mother I aspired to be. No placenta, no tree, so I called my good friend Hillary, who raced back to the hospital to retrieve our placenta. She ran through the halls of the hospital having no idea where one might go to pick up a placenta—preferably the one that had been attached to my baby and not to someone else’s. Finally, knowing that I had my heart set on a placenta tree, she said to a nurse, “Just give me one!” To this day I’m not sure we got the right one, but I try not to think too much about that.
    My mother’s welcome-home feast was just the beginning of the nurturing. I know that some new moms are brought flowers. Some are brought baby clothes. Me, I get food. Because my