I step into the room and take a look at baby Mark, all ready for bedtime.
“Why did you pick that pyjama?” I ask Feng.
“Too small?”
“Not yet, but remember the last time he wore it? He didn’t want to go to sleep,” I explain while undressing Mark. “That pyjama is bad luck.”
Case closed. I’m changing Mark. Feng shrugs but doesn’t object. Hell, we are both exhausted and we don’t want to risk jinxing it.
Yes, I am aware of the fact that changing Mark’s pyjamas won’t guarantee that he will fall asleep faster. I know that he probably doesn’t give a damn about the clothes he is wearing, and that it has no influence on his sleep whatsoever. That I’m becoming a superstitious fool.
With a baby comes a sense of loss of control over your life. And these silly superstitions or routines we follow allow us to gain a sense of control back.
That’s my best explanation for our quirks.
It all starts when you become pregnant. A wonderful thing is happening: you are baking a mini-baby. But at the same time, you are somewhat losing control over your body. You are sharing it with said mini-baby, which is a strange experience. You also start developing symptoms you never had before, such as morning sickness, sudden and unexplainable food aversions and cravings, extreme tiredness, mood swings… Being pregnant is a tough job and can be difficult physically and mentally. I compared it to going through puberty all over again!
But after the baby is born, you do get your body back… right? Ah ah, not so fast! If you are breastfeeding, you will be lending a boob or two for a little while. It also takes time for your period to come back, for your baby belly to disappear, for the uterus to shrink back to its normal size, and for any dull birth pain to ease. Don’t expect all that to happen overnight and all at once—every woman and every body is different. I had it easy at the postpartum stage and my body recovered very fast but postpartum issues can be understated.
Meanwhile, you are dealing with a mini-earthquake at home, code name “baby”. You waited for nine months to meet him (and sometimes much longer if conceiving took a while) but no matter how prepared you think you are… you won’t be ready for what’s ahead. All babies are different and with babies, every day is different too. You can’t plan, can’t anticipate—you have to go with the flow.
Easier said than done.
During the first few weeks, establishing a routine is mission impossible. The baby will eat whenever he feels like it and sleep whenever he wants to. On the plus side, there is never a dull moment and you are kept on your toes. On the downside, you are tired, you’d love to be able to find time to eat or sleep without being interrupted for feeding and you can’t wait to get out of the house to see if the world is still spinning.
At first, some days are perfect and some days are awful. And good luck trying to figure out what triggers these hellish days: the baby can be hungrier than usual because of a growth spurt, moody because of the weather (Mark went crazy during Hurricane Sandy!) or because he is overtired, because the parents are stressed out, because the snow is white and the sky is blue—who knows.
Once you eliminated the obvious reasons (hunger, tiredness, sickness) you are left alone trying to figure out why the baby won’t calm down.
And yes, at this stage you may change his pyjama claiming it’s “bad luck” in a pointless attempt to regain some kind of control of an out-of-control situation.
With babies, what works one day doesn’t work anymore the next. Things are constantly changing, and evolving, and you have to adapt.
It’s tough. I’m far from being a control freak and Feng and I aren’t routine people. Yet I often wished we had it all figured out with Mark. But there is no magic formula for babies—just a good dose of common sense, consistency and patience.
Embrace chaos, and enjoy the moments.
And change that pyjama. Who knows, maybe it is bad luck.
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Wow, ten weeks already? It is so fast, isn’t it? Reading your posts about pregnancy and childbirth always makes me smile, as well as appreciate the fact that my parents have decided to have a kid and well, I appeared. It puts parental sacrifice into words, really. I’d love to see Mark reading this series of posts when he is older sometime.
Been three months now actually! Yep, it goes by fast. I hope Mark will get to read all these articles when he is older, and we will all laugh about it 🙂
I’m thinking that you should put all your articles, from the pregnancy to baby Mark growing up and publish it. I’m not that much into those kind of stories, usually, but narrated by you, I love it so much! 🙂
I was just thinking the same thing as Jeruen, Mark will love to read that when he’s older… or he’ll hate you for telling the world about his PJ and poop! 😀
Thank you! Well, if a kind book publisher comes around and offers a great deal… (*crossing fingers*) 🙂