Flashback

I'm attempting to start a new bedtime routine with Alex in which we take a bath together and then I nurse/rock him to sleep. (I know, I know, I'm supposed to plop him in the crib while he's still awake, but I flat out refuse to. What to Expect be damned! He'll only be able to fall asleep on my person for another few months and I'm going to enjoy it till then.) He adores the baths and it's nice to put him to bed without crusted pieces of dinner stuck in the crease of his neck for a change. I'm dubious of the evil bed-head I wake up with, though. Extremely curly sleep-dried hair is not pretty come sunrise.

Because I am queen of the multi-task, I shaved my legs last night while Alex played with his duckies. After he'd "quack, quack, quacked" enough, I turned the shower back on overhead to rinse off the icky-dirty-leg-hair bathwater we'd been sitting in. Even though it'd been on only minutes before, the shower sound freaked him out and he immediately jumped into my lap.

Which gave me the most INTENSE flashback to his birth. And not a bad one, either. I promise to at least temporarily spare you the entire evil birth story (I'm saving it for his upcoming birthday just you wait!), but this part I NEVER want to forget. You see, I'd been watching DAYS worth of "Birth Day" or "Birth Story" or whatever it is they play 19 times a day on TLC when you're at home those final days of maternity leave and you're ELEVEN days overdue and feel utterly COMPELLED to watch - even if it's a re-run. And I would hold my breath as every baby came out, which of course made me bawl my eyes out, but also UTTERLY grossed me out. I kept thinking, "Isn't that what the nurses are for? To clean that disgusting, gooey grime off the baby before the poor mother has to handle the thing?!!?!?" I mean the fresh babies are sweet, sure, but that's just nasty. Right?

Wrong! As a soggy, scared little Alex jumped into my naked lap last night, I vividly remembered that holding him for the first time was the single best moment of my entire life. Nothing about it was disgusting. I reveled in holding his slimy, gooey, little self and I remember wanting to touch every tiny inch of his newness. Slimy or not, he felt SO delicious to me.

Oh and here's a trailer for the upcoming birth story - as Alex was making his grand entrance into the world, he peed ALL OVER the doctor and most of the nurses. That's my boy!

Comments

[Jamie]

I should refrain from reading your journal to when I'm NOT at work, in a very public cube, and susceptible to crying my eyes out.

That was beautiful, and it was a moment I always wished I'd have. Instead, I ended up with a c/s, but that's for another journal.

I bawled at every episode of A Baby Story, too. Even the ones with a c/s. I can't watch it now that I've gone through it, though.

[Faith]

I watched all those baby specials in the months leading up to Sydney's birth. There was one on PBS showing the whole process from conception to toddler that was really cool. I wasn't afraid of the birth...right up until the moment it was time to push. Then I was terrified!!! But it was beautiful moment. (Painful, but beautiful.)