Mommy Mayhem

Mommy Mayhem

It’s quite a difficult task to pen on paper the mayhem that comes to mind, when thinking of my rookiness at learning to be a mommy. However I will try to float them from my thoughts to the written arena.There are many firsts, I have found quite amusing.I hope you will too.

         How blissful I was when I thought of being a mother-in-waiting. I imagined my baby fitting to a tee, the epitome of the diaper commercials of newborns lying quite still, smiling and cooing, while her mother changed her plastic disposable diaper, and how simple and delightful it looked on the television screen. However, this is not my reality.It is a trick of some sort of the camera!

          My pregnancy bliss ended soon after arriving home with my bundle of joy. Reality is setting in. My infant is not smiling, nor lying quietly while I try with all my new found skills from observing the Huggie’s commercials. (I chuckle at myself for even writing those words) The baby changed me! Changed…. me into an uncoordinated octopus of sorts. An underwater invertebrate, that was minus about 6 tentacles. Newborns do not lay still. They squirm like a red wiggler worm on the end of a fishing hook, writhe like a slippery calf exiting the wrong end of a cow, kick like a killer kangaroo and cry like a banshee. With all this chaos going on its no wonder my infant began to look like a present wrapped by a five-year-old! The pretty little design was nowhere to be found. You know the one that tells you which way the diaper faces, front or back. Well the pretty design goes on the same side as your baby’s face or belly button. (Note to self) As soon as noticing this, I thought, at least her bottom will be dry. Who cares which side the baby block pattern is on? She falls fast asleep after this wrestling match and looks as peaceful as the sleeping babies on TV.          


          The next reminiscence is the “first” bath. It resembles nothing like the “Johnson’s Baby Bath ads. The one where the baby is sitting up in the baby bath tub, splashing the water, while the mommy pours water over its head, while the baby is laughing? What about newborns? Why doesn’t Johnson’s film newborns? I’m going to tell you why. It isn’t pretty. I did not have a baby bath tub. Nor did I have a sink large enough to plunge a baby into.

          I decided put her in the tub. While holding my infant, I open the linen closet door with one of my new found tentacles. Getting the towel ready and laying it on the floor along with her. Running the water and testing it to make sure it’s not too hot. Soft baby wash cloth, the baby wash as well as fresh change of clothes.. I’m ready, she is not. She is asleep on the towel. I gently pick her up cradling her head and lay her over onto my left forearm and dip her into the water. I begin to wash her feet, legs, bottom, then I hear her coughing and crying, screaming, flailing…I’m wondering what in the world? I stiffen as I think to myself, do all babies cry when you bathe them? As I look at her head, it was under the water. I was so focused on getting the bottom and back washed; her head had slipped down under the water.


          Now….they don’t tell you to be careful at bath time, as you leave the hospital. As a matter of fact no one told me anything about bathing my child. I watched television for my entire mommy training. I laugh as I think of this now. Experience is the best teacher, if you don’t traumatize your children in the meantime. I’m wondering to myself, if anyone knew this would I be labeled as a neglectful mother? No, just inexperienced and probably wind up to be a great swimmer. Or could it possibly be that since I was becoming an octopus, subconsciously I thought she was also? I think it traumatized me more than she, as here I am thirty years later writing about it!

         Let us move on to one more occurrence or non- occurrence, as a young girl learning to be a mother. I mean gee whiz, I read all the books, and I knew everything. I can’t help but keep thinking, was it confidence or arrogance or just so busy with thinking about the new responsibilities, that I over looked some really important instructions somewhere in all the books I had read on motherhood? It is certainly a wonder, first born children ever make it to pre-school.

         Back in the seventies they had formula pre packed into tall cans. Infant formula then as I remember it, some with iron, some with no iron. Some cans were yellow, some were pink. Most were pre mixed, in other words it is liquid and no added water is required. One day I was given some formula in a shorter can. It looked the same as the tall cans, only smaller. Same name, same baby, the same little rings that curved around the can, just not as many due to its size. I take a sterilized bottle and nipple and pour the dwarf sized can of milk into her bottle. I lay her in my arms and hold her firmly and touch the nipple to her mouth, she hungrily sucks it down in no time flat. That day she went through maybe two cans. Nothing out of the ordinary that night; she slept like an angel.

          However the next morning, I hear noises coming from her bed, uuuuuuuuuuhhhh,
mmmmmmmmm, she is tensing up. She does this all day. About every two hours. Around 5:00 that afternoon a friend drops by and picks her up and holds her. She proceeds to uuuuuuuhhhhh, mmmmmm and tense again. My friends say to me “this baby is constipated”! I’m thinking how on earth did this happen? I call her pediatrician and he asks if she is on iron enriched formula as she didn’t have her chart there in front of her. I said yes, she said that is the problem. Give her cherry juice and if that doesn’t work give her a teaspoon of prune juice, til she goes. If all else fails I may have to resort to “other things” I will not mention here, but absolutely drove me out of my mind thinking about. As I know what it’s like to hold 5 gallons of water in your intestines, it’s not a pleasant thought. As I walk into the kitchen and picked up one of the yellow cans and read the label. It says on the back “Dilute”. This was a concentrate formula with iron. I didn’t add the water to the mix.

         My poor child as I think back on this episode looked like Walter from Jeff Dunham’s on stage suitcase, as she tried so hard to expel the undiluted iron enriched formula. Thank God for Sunmaid Prune juice. All I could think of was the solo song by Ringo Star “ Octopus Garden” and the verse, “I’d like to be, under the sea, in an octopus’s garden in the shade.” All of a sudden, she lets out a sound, that if I didn't know better would have thought that Godzilla was close by.Rrrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuhhhhhhh. What the heck is that? Checking her diaper, slooowly, I untaped the strip on the right, then the left...when I opened the diaper, I couldn't believe it, there, right there, she pooped out an Iron Man figurine! I screamed, Oh My God!!! and it was talking! "I AM IRON MAN!!! hhhhhuuuuuhhhh................

3/9/2013 11:28:48 AM
@ Editors Picks March 13,2013 Comedy Newsletter WDC
@ Newbies Only Short Story March Contest 2nd Place
Thank You, Edgework, for your wonderful review and suggestions to make this piece 2nd place material for Newbies.