Today we will discuss markers of the postpartum time. I will tell you the things that, for me, announce its arrival, for the first baby or for the fifth, and maybe you can add others you’ve experienced or heard of.

Sometimes I feel like everything is going GREAT! I am incorporating this baby into the household SEAMLESSLY! It is NO BIG DEAL! It is like I am some kind of NATURAL! I could handle even TWO MORE babies! I have to tell the world that having a baby is not as scary as they think! EVERYONE should have babies! LOTS of babies! Babies are GREAT! I LOVE babies!

Other times I feel like this SUCKS. I can’t do this AT ALL. Furthermore, NO ONE could, because this is NOT POSSIBLE. I am twenty steps behind. Everyone is crying. Everyone needs something, and I’m the only one who can provide it. I will never catch up. I cut off one hydra head and three more grow back. I have to tell the world that having a baby is very, very hard and that they shouldn’t be alarmed if they feel like it is suckily impossible to cope with one.

Sometimes I feel soppily grateful to my husband. He is the only one who holds us together. He is the only one holding me together. I could never do this without him. He is so good. I am so lucky.

Other times I envy single mothers. I think about divorce. I wonder how I could have married someone so inconsiderate and insensitive and MEAN and YUCKY-SMELLING.

I feel waves of animal-like affection for the baby. I try to stuff him right up my nose, he smells so good. I snuffle his neck. I rub his hair on my cheek. I fiddle with his tiny toesies. I look at him and can’t believe how lucky I am to have him. So many reasons he wouldn’t be here! And yet he is! He’s my BABY! SNUFFLE SNUFFLE SNUFFLE!

I worry that I don’t love the baby yet. Other mothers describe feeling an instant connection to the baby as soon as the baby was born, but my babies always look like total strangers to me–and not very cute strangers, either. They could be ANYBODY’S baby. It feels weird to let a total stranger NURSE on me. I remember that I felt this way about each of my other babies, and that I always ended up loving them–but what if it doesn’t happen this time? What if I never love this baby? Sure, I feel like squeezing him too hard and that’s a good sign–but what if we never connect? What if I had too many children and he’s going to suffer for it?

I feel rage at everyone. The cats: they are pick-pick-PICKING at the door at 4:00 in the morning, and it is possible I could accidentally kick them so hard I injure or kill them. I have to make a conscious effort not to. I do still “help them along” with one foot, but stop abruptly because it seems like it would feel so good to actually hurt them. Rage at the kids, and at Paul: I feel like saying ugly things to them, and I do say some. As with the cats, I have to make a conscious effort to stop. It doesn’t always work. I hear myself saying the ugly things, most of them involving how much I have to do around here, and how little anyone else does, and how everyone else is driving me CRAZY. When the ragey feeling passes, I feel horrible. The ugly things I said are my fresh nighttime fret fodder. I suspect I’m damaging the children. I shouldn’t have even had children. I’m a terrible mother. Rage at the baby: how can he be crying again? I do everything for him, EVERYTHING! And he has everything he needs, EVERYTHING! I’ve fed him! changed him! snuggled him! burped him! Now why can’t he be quiet and needless for FIVE MINUTES?

I feel desperate and panicky for sleep, especially in the middle of the night. I feel as if I’m going crazy. I feel like I will throw up from lack of sleep. I feel like if I have to wake up one more time I am going to go out to the car and sleep there. I feel like killing Paul because he’s sleeping and I’m not. I think about how the nice thing about dying is you wouldn’t have this feeling of not getting enough sleep. I feel like hurting the nurse when she says sternly, “You’re getting enough sleep, right?”–as if I might be ABLE to get more sleep but am just CHOOSING not to.

I make plans to escape. I could go to a hotel, not tell anyone where I am. I could make up a dying friend I must go visit.

If I see a sad news story, especially if it has to do with children or pregnant women, I feel a weight descend on me. The world is a terrible place; we can’t live here. Bad things happen all the time; bad things will happen to us; bad things will happen to my children. Slide-show of all the bad things that could happen to my children.

If I handle a knife, I imagine it somehow flying out of my hand and hurting the baby, even if I’m nowhere near the baby. If I walk past the railing, I imagine myself somehow dropping the baby down to the first floor. If I bathe the baby, I imagine somehow accidentally letting the baby drown. If I put the baby in the car, I imagine somehow accidentally leaving him in there. It happens every time: every knife, every railing, every bath, every car trip. Every time, it makes me feel like throwing up.

I feel like I can’t stand to hear even one more stressful thing. Not ONE. If Paul tells me that he lost a contact lens, or that one of his teeth feels kind of ouchie, or that one of the kids has a funny-looking patch on his skin, I feel like I CAN’T COPE. I feel heavy and weighed-down, like I can’t move or breathe. It is too much. I can’t deal with it. I can’t turn my mind to it. He might as well not tell me, because I am already at maximum capacity for these things; I can’t think about anything more.

It feels especially awful as it gets closer to the time Paul gets home from work. All day long I might feel as if things are going well, but as it gets later I start picturing what the house would look like to someone coming home to it after a day at work. Clutter on every single horizontal surface, and creeping on up the vertical ones. Children everywhere, hyper or crabby or crying but all LOUD, with their hair uncombed and stains on their shirts and crust around their noses. Wife with matted-looking hair and shiny forehead and milk-circle-stained shirt, slumped despondently in a chair. Piles of laundry starting to smell like sour milk. Sheets unchanged since who knows when. Mess and noise and neediness EVERYWHERE, how can he STAND it? And picturing how bad it looks to him makes it look even more hopeless to me: everything needs fixing, and I can’t fix it, and maybe he doesn’t understand that this is a short-term thing, and maybe it WON’T be a short-term thing, maybe I’ll NEVER get it together.

If I felt like the crazy/sad/angry parts all the time, I’d go to my doctor and get a prescription. But mostly I feel okay, and the more food/sleep I get, the better I feel. Thus the 144 muffins. Thus the sleeping in the recliner with the baby to make the baby sleep more/longer.

I think it helps to know it’s a stage, and that it passes. It doesn’t help much during an individual bad time: if I’m feeling weighed-down and crazy, it’s not going to help to think, “Hey, this is just postpartum! I probably just feel like this because of my hormones!” But it’s there in the back of my mind, this memory of Being This Way and then, later, Not Being This Way, and I think it improves things overall. It also helps when I hear or read about other mothers experiencing similar states of mind.

I notice there are a surprising number of people who say “no one ever told me” that the postpartum time could be rough waters, so let’s make a big list, shall we? People want to be told; we will tell them. Fill up the comments section if you want, or make your own blog post about it and link to it in the comments section.

First, yay!, because Sarah’s pregnant! Go tell her eveything’s going to be fine!

Now, do you remember when I asked for recommendations for 2-in-1 shampoo conditioners? Lots of you gave suggestions, and then I bought five to try. Three were from the suggestions and two were just There and so I bought them. One I wanted to buy but didn’t was the Dove 2-in-1, because I could only find it in a huge bottle and I didn’t want a huge bottle when I was only using 2-in-1s for the last weeks of pregnancy.

I may change my mind on that huge bottle, because I’m continuing to find 2-in-1 products helpful even now that I’m not pregnant. I usually shower at night (I prefer mornings, but geez), and I don’t like to go to bed with wet hair. Recently, I’ve been washing my hair in the morning, leaning over the bathtub. If I use a 2-in-1, this is pretty quick and easy, and makes me feel all fresh and shampooey-clean in the morning, which is a pleasant change from the stale, matted feeling of hair that was slept on while wet.

Of the five I tried, there were 2 winners, 2 losers, and 1 fine. The losers were a Suave 2-in-1 and a Target brand 2-in-1, both of them Pantene copycats (words on label such as “pro-vitamin formula”). They made my hair seem darker and duller and yuckier and frizzier. When I used those two, I liked my hair less. The Suave one was the best of all five for making my hair easier to comb, but that was its only good point.

The fine one was Garnier Fructis Fortifying 2-in-1 Shampoo + Conditioner for Normal Hair. I liked it pretty well, but there were a couple of days when my hair looked like it needed to be washed even though I’d just washed it. Also, my hair was harder than usual to comb. The smell was pleasantly fruity, but I don’t usually like fruity scents.

The two winners were Pert Plus 2 in 1 Shampoo Plus Medium Conditioner for Normal Hair, and Herbal Essences Hello Hydration 2 in 1 Moisturizing Shampoo + Conditioner. The Herbal Essences gets an edge because of its cool bottle, pretty color, and yum coconut-y smell. The Pert Plus gets an edge for nostalgia (I used it in high school), and because I think it made my hair the softest and prettiest of all the kinds I tried. They both left my hair relatively easy to comb, and I didn’t think they made my hair look much worse than usual.

I am back! And–oh my god!–I am so tired. Last night I would lie down and immediately be asleep, and when I woke up for the next feeding I felt like I hadn’t even started to chip away at my sleep deficit. I mean, tired. I’m tired. I’ve been having thoughts such as, “I have to get more sleep than this. If I can’t get more sleep than this….well, I have to get more, that’s all.” The sleep deprivation is cumulative and is getting more difficult to cope with.

The trip went well, but there were some parts that were less than smooth. Edward was indeed restless at the wedding. The baby did cry some in the car. And whenever we stopped, I had to nurse the baby, so everyone else was stretching and saying how great it felt to get out of the car, and by the time I was done nursing they were impatient to get back on the road, and my butt got really really sore from sitting constantly.

Anyway. There were some stressful times, but mostly it was a great trip and I’m glad I went. I loved staying in a hotel room, using tons of air conditioning and hot water, playing with the wee little coffee pot, exploring all the free bottles of stuff, having a continental breakfast in the morning (hot cinnamon rolls! little teeny containers of honey! half-cups of yogurt in three flavors!). I love weddings, especially the part where the bride appears and everyone stands up in one swoosh and I burst into tears, but also the part where we eat cake. I love car trips and I love the stopping for a break and I love the getting back on the road. And it was fun spending time with just two of the kids, and seeing my extended family.

Here are some things I wish I’d brought more of:

• Baggies in assorted sizes. I used them for so many things: keeping Edward’s sippee cups from leaking all over the diaper bag, stashing diapers after having to change children in the pastor’s office and not wanting to leave him any little gifts in his trash can, taking along extra food from restaurants, packing up things still wet from being rinsed out, etc. I could have used a whole BOX of baggies.
• Nursing pads. I don’t know if it was the stress or what, but I kept leaking through my shirts. For the wedding, I put three pads in each side and still was in danger of an embarrassing situation. I had to stuff a cloth napkin in there at the reception.

Here are some things I was very, very glad I brought along:

• A changing pad. I used it in every gross rest stop bathroom, and also on the bed or desk in the hotel room, and also on my lap when I had to change Henry in the car twice (parked car, not moving car).
• Infant saline nose drops. I grabbed them on impulse the morning we left, and Henry got a cold on the third day and needed the drops in order to nurse.
• Infant gas drops. I think being in his car seat all day gave Henry more trouble digesting than usual.
• Quarters. I brought them along for vending machines, and didn’t need them for that–but we hadn’t thought of needing coins for city parking, and we needed a whole lot of them for that.
• A whole box of diaper wipes. I used them for diaper changes, hand washes, table wipings, after-meal face washings, crusty nose cleansings. For a longer trip, I’d bring a refill pack of wipes in my suitcase, but a box for 4 days was about right.
• Sippee cups. I brought two, and that was perfect: one to fill with milk at the continental breakfast or at other meals where milk was available, the other to keep filled with water in the diaper bag.
• Ibuprofen. Dramamine. Benadryl.
• Every single toy and DVD I bought for Edward. The six-hour drive took us more than twelve hours on the way there because of construction, traffic, and nursing stops. I don’t regret a single purchase, and in fact this one almost went in the category of things I could have brought more of.
• Extra receiving blankies. Henry spit up all over two of them.

Here’s a photo of Edward and Henry in our hotel room:

Tomorrow we leave on our trip! A day of driving to get there, two days there, a day of driving home. Perhaps it will be a lovely and relaxing time of family and love, weddings and babies, all the happy things in life including hotel rooms and restaurants! Or perhaps Henry will scream for hours on end and spit up all over his car seat, and his diaper will leak all over one outfit after another, and Edward will kick the back of the seat and not want to play with any toys and make whiny word-sounds no one can figure out, and be a holy terror at the wedding and pull the entire wedding cake down on to the floor! Either way, I have three boxes of Sugar Babies, the new Elizabeth Berg book, and several precious precious tablets of Demer0l.

I’ll be back late Sunday and will probably spend most of Monday lying in my recliner holding my head and signing documents promising myself I’ll never shut myself in a car with a toddler and a newborn again. So let’s meet back here Tuesday? Or maybe it will be Monday after all, it depends how much Misery wants your company.

Probably it’s an issue of insufficient sleep, but I can’t figure out this preschooler worksheet. If the pictured item starts with a Q, you’re supposed to draw a line to the queen; if it starts with a Z, you’re supposed to draw a line to the zebra. We got zipper, quilt, and question mark, but what is that fourth thing?

One thing that’s way, way easier for me with this fifth child is breastfeeding. For example, right now I am nursing him AND two-hand typing. Serious! I was reading a post by a first-time mom, and she said that one thing she hated about nursing was that she was totally stuck, totally bored: she couldn’t read or write or do anything because she had no free hands. This situation can improve with experience, unless of course your baby is of the sort who unlatches and screams at the sound of a page being turned, and babies of that sort do unfortunately exist, and in that case you are well and truly stuck and may want to take up meditation, or using the power of your mind to bring bad to your enemies and good to your friends, or some other activity you can do utterly silently and motionlessly. But so far I have had good luck with babies in this regard, and baby Henry is nursing obliviously even though my arm is jittering under his downy head as I type. I can also walk around, unload the dish rack, add an item to the shopping list, pack a small carry-on, etc. I PREFER to sit in a chair with my feet up, reading Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, but I can move around and do other things if I WANT to.

Actually, EVERYTHING is easier with this fifth child. My first baby was difficult. My second baby was more difficult in some ways, though easier in others, and also more enjoyable because I knew SOME things and had already made many of the Big Decisions (co-sleep or crib or bassinet or bureau drawer; cloth or disposable; etc.). The twins were kind of challenging because there were two, and I am sure glad I didn’t have them FIRST, but they weren’t as difficult as I’d been expecting. And this baby is–so far–easy.

He’s still a BABY, of course. He still wakes me just after I’ve fallen asleep. He still cries right after we sit down to watch a movie or eat dinner. He still has a huge blow-out diaper right after I’ve changed him, or right after I’ve buckled him into the car seat. But I sling him around like a new purse; I tuck him right into our household, barely rearranging the furniture to make room.

When I’m driving somewhere I’ve never been before, the drive seems really LONG. Then on the way home, when I know where I’m going or don’t have to worry about being anywhere on time, the drive seems so short. It has been the same for me with the babies. Well, except that I would have had to make the outward journey twice without coming home in between. And then now I guess I’d be saying I was on the way home with this baby–but then what were the twins? And really even the second outward journey was easier than the first…except when it was harder…so I guess that would be like driving to a familiar place but having engine trouble on the way. Also, it’s not like I don’t still go nuts all the time, so I’m not sure I want to use a “peaceful easy drive” comparison after all. And it’s coming up on 3 weeks now and I still haven’t been able to get my act together and bring the bouncy seat up from the basement, a task that would take all of five minutes, and the house is a total pit with heaps of clutter on every surface, and how does THAT enter into the driving thing? And what about when I’m standing over a sleeping baby at my bedtime, thinking, “Do I wake him and nurse him, or take a chance that he’ll wake me 5 minutes after I drift off?” Well, Henry is crying now (WHY IS HE???), and that makes it really hard to think. Someday I would like to make just ONE good Life Analogy, but it will not be today.

I am very grateful to those of you who pushed me to call the OB. I am a terrible, terrible wimp about calling the on-call doctor. I’ve done so only one time in my whole life, and it was when I thought I was in early labor with the twins—and even then, I waited until the sun came up to call. I tell you this with cringing shame. But anyway, I did call the OB on Saturday, because you guys are so bossy, and I got a very bossy antibiotic that won’t let me eat for 2 hours before or 1 hour after taking it and makes me set an alarm to take it in the middle of the night, and I am so so SO glad I got it two days earlier than I would have if I’d followed my usual wimpy ways.

Elizabeth is going to cause me to lose whatever mind I have left. After several nights of going down fine for bedtime and naps, she’s back to the crying. Last night she cried for an hour and a half after her bedtime. I finally went in and snuggled her and patted her and comforted her—and then when I put her in her crib she cried. So then I rocked her to sleep, feeling both Right and Wrong about it, and she didn’t wake up when I put her in her crib, but she DID wake up at 3:30 a.m. and didn’t go back to sleep. So! You can imagine what a happy, happy household we are this morning, with a crabby, nodding-off mother and a crabby, tired toddler. She keeps emitting these SCREAMS at NOTHING, and I am about ready to join her.

Today I really must start packing for the trip to my cousin’s wedding. We leave Thursday morning, which means I have three days for packing. I must do it! I must! I must stop blogging and go start on the packing!

I have been waiting so long to dye my hair again. I’d dyed it back to my own color shortly before getting unexpectedly pregnant, and my OB has a stroke if his patients color their hair, so even though I keep reading it’s probably safe, I don’t like to tease him and I’ve been suffering my natural color for about ten months now. That’s too long. Last night I colored it—and the color didn’t take. Did you know that hair color can expire? I did not—and if I HAD known, I would have assumed it was like those things that tell you to throw out ALL your make-up every 2/3/6 months. Not because they want more of your money, oh no! It’s purely because they are concerned about your health!

I’ve acquired many boxes of hair color on one clearance or another, and I’ve been sitting here all smug on my pile of riches—but now I find out that I am sitting on a pile of useless boxes. The active ingredients change with time, so you can get a different color than you expect, or patchy results, or no effect at all. I guess I should be grateful that I got the last option, but I was still disappointed: I was expecting to see my light-absorbing brown-blonde change to a more appealing, light-reflecting, blondier color. But no! I removed the towel for the big reveal—and there was my very own brown-blonde as usual, sucking the light and color from the room. Well, now I have to toss out a bunch of hair color, and then go buy another box.

At least my hair is all yum soft from the conditioner that comes with the hair color, so if you met me in the dark you would think I had great hair. Man, why don’t they sell that conditioner separately? It is so much better than any conditioner I’ve ever used.

Good news: I went to the dentist about that chipped tooth, and it “only” needed a replacement filling, not a crown. So it was “only” $250—but that’s a heck and a half better than it could have been.

Bad news: We thought Paul had paid vacation time saved up, since he never uses any. He took 8 days off from work when Henry was born. We just got his paycheck and there’s no vacation time on it. I thought it was a problem of Paul forgetting to tell his employer he wanted to use vacation time. Paul thinks it’s a problem of not having any vacation time, possibly because of vacation time expiring, unpaid, when it’s not used, or for some other stressful reason.

Good news: It looks like our new insurance does not have higher copays for office visits, even though they told us it would.

Bad news: They were also wrong about the monthly employee contribution being lower.

Good news: The library was having a book sale, and I got 19 new-looking children’s books for $7.

Bad news: Rob lost a library book. I’m feeling that compulsion to keep looking and looking and looking for it, even in places I have already looked for it.

Good news: Less than a week until the trip to my cousin’s wedding (I’m going with my parents, Edward, and Henry), and I’m still glad I’m going. I think it’s going to be fun. My parents and I are buying lots of treats for the car ride, and my mom and I saved up a whole bunch of celebrity magazines to read.

Bad news: I tried on the dress I was planning to wear to the wedding, and it looks terrible on me. I’d thought the high-waisted style would be kind to my postpartum figure, but actually it looks maternity. Also, I’m not sure why I ever bought such an ugly dress.

Good news: I have a skirt and shirt that I bought a long time ago because they looked cute even though they didn’t suit the occasion I was shopping for that day. I tried them on, and they’re PERFECT. Not only does the skirt hide my tum, it’s long and I won’t have to wear nylons, and also the shirt totally emphasizes my great breastfeeding rack.

Bad news: I’m pretty sure my incision is infected. It started getting bad on Friday at 5:00. I am not kidding: my body knows office hours, and is mean to me. I’ve never had an incision get infected before, so now I’m worrying about hysterectomies performed in a last-ditch effort to save my life. Also, I’m worried that this will mean something bad for the trip.

Good news: I have Demer0l.

Bad news: Henry already looks older. He’s not even 2-1/2 weeks old and he’s lost some of that itsy newborn look.

Good news: Henry nursed for a long time last night, and I was up until 11:30 nursing him—but then he slept until 7:00 this morning.

Bad news: I’m practically blowing off Father’s Day. I kept forgetting to have the kids make cards or even to have them tell me what to buy. Last night I got Paul a bag of Doritos, a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and a box of Gobstoppers. The kids didn’t even choose it, and I think of that as being the number-one most important thing for a Father’s Day present: that the children be involved in the selection.

Good news: Who the hell cares? I’m okay with this plan for this year. At least he’s getting something.

Bad news: I’m having a problem with Blogger: it’s really really slow to show what I’m typing. Paul thinks the problem might be with my computer, not with Blogger. Either way, I don’t know what’s wrong or how to fix it. Also, I’m getting a headache.

Good news: I have a big bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. (Not Paul’s.)

Shannon is suggesting we pool our recipes for chocolate-chip cookies, and I’m all for that idea: I’m going through my cookie stash even faster than I’m going through my muffin stash. Go on over and sign up so I can steal your secret family recipe.

This is my fourth time through postpartum, and Paul and I are getting better and better at handling it. What helps most of all is this kind of thing (also, observe my mad Photoshop skillz):

Paul is worth all the food scraps he crams down our non-garbage-disposal-equipped sink when he does stuff like this for me. While I’m the hospital he goes to the grocery store and buys all the foods I want after I have a baby (theme: “things they fed me in the maternity ward where I was ha-a-a-a-a-a-ppyyyyyyyy *bursting into tears*”): cranberry juice, milk, deli turkey and fancy chunky grainy breads, colored wraps and Romaine lettuce and tomatoes and chicken breast and Caesar dressing. Then, whenever he’s home, he handles my meals. The above photo is of what I found when I was exhausted and sad at the end of the day and had just peeled an endlessly-nursing baby off of me for what felt like the first time in a week. I went to my computer and there was a chicken Caesar wrap, a glass of milk, and a vase of roses. I shouldn’t even be telling you about this, because in the future when I want to complain about Paul you’ll all be like, “Yeah, whatever, you spoiled bitch.”

Food is the absolute best thing for my morale (well, good food and good narc0tics), but I’ve also found that small accomplishments are helpful. I’m not saying I wear myself out cleaning the house from tip to toe, because AS IF, and also I think it’s more helpful to let that go as much as possible. But if the kitchen counters are making me feel sad and overwhelmed and hopeless because they are covered in dried milk puddles and little blue marks from someone’s clay and speckles from boiling fudge, and I manage to wipe them down, I feel like maybe I have a grip on life after all. Also: pretty, sparkly counters.

So this is what I do. I am good at keeping a mental list, but you could do this on paper too—as long as the list itself won’t overwhelm you by its very existence. What I do is I put small items on the list in order of priority, choosing each day which one I really want to try to get to. Today it was the counters: I didn’t care if I got nothing else done all day, but I did want to get to the counters. Yesterday it was a couple of bills I wanted to pay. The two days before, it was that I wanted to get some digital photos cropped and uploaded so I could order prints for my in-laws.

If I don’t get the task done that day, it’s no big deal—I just try again the next day. But if I DO get it done, I feel pretty good. I feel like I’m managing to get things done after all, and like maybe I’m coping okay after all. Sometimes, if I got the top list item done, I might even think of tackling the SECOND list item! Superwoman!

I am most likely to be successful if I do my list item early in the day. Today I did the counters while I was still in my pajamas. I got breakfast for Rob and William, and I went into the kitchen intending to make Rob’s lunch, and instead I spritzed all the counters. I let the spritz sit while I got Edward dressed. When I came back, I went swipe-swipe-swish with a couple of paper towels and I was done. I didn’t lift up the toaster and clean under it, I just did the minimum—but it’s surprising how much of a difference it made, and I felt all perky and pleased with myself. Highly recommended, if you can keep yourself from launching one of those cleaning cycles where now you have to scrub the sink, and that reminds you to fill the soap dispenser, and that reminds you to do the one in the bathroom too, and that causes you to spritz the bathroom sink “while you’re at it,” and so on until you’ve totally overdone it and also Rob has missed the bus.