The excerpt below is from The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.
by Vicki Glembocki
Book Description from Amazon.com: In the spirit of Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, a reality check for new moms. I want to walk out of Target and leave Blair there, wailing.... Nice people work at Target. Surely someone would take her home and care for her and buy her pretty things. So begins Vicki Glembocki's brutally honest yet hilarious memoir of her agonizing transition into motherhood. Why agonizing? Because no one told her how tough it would be. Finally, Glembocki lays out the truth about those first months with baby: the certainty that you're doing everything wrong; the desire to kill your husband, your mother, your dog; the struggle to balance who you were with whom you've become--a mother. Unlike any other book on motherhood, Glembocki breaks the New Mother Code of Silence, proving that "maternal bliss" is not innate, but learned. Funny and wise, she connects with new moms on a shockingly intimate level, letting them know that they are not alone.
Excerpt From The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.
by Vicki Glembocki
Two weeks later, I push the stroller down a street I've never been on before. This is the first walk the baby and I are taking together. There is probably a line in the baby book my mother gave me, the one that's still in its plastic box in one of the many piles on our dining room table, where I'm supposed to document this moment-First Walk In Stroller. Taking this walk is supposed to be relaxing. The Girlfriend's Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood said so-"Get out and get fresh air…it does wonders for your spirit." My spirit is supposed to be inhaling the warm, late-March air, feeling invigorated while I maternally point out the many things the baby is seeing for the first time. The buds on the maple trees. The trail from an airplane. The tabby cat sunning itself on the back stoop of the white house we just passed. But I am not. Because the baby is crying.
I push faster.
She keeps crying.
I hum The Alphabet Song.
She keeps crying.
I shift the angle of the canopy, in case the sun's shining in her eyes.
She keeps crying.
I reach down the back of her neck, under the cotton blanket she's swaddled in, under her lavender one-piece body suit with the yellow butterfly on it so I can finger the tag, in case there's a plastic, price-tag holder sticking out of it. Or an open safety pin. Or a pickax. There's nothing.
She keeps crying.
No matter what I do, she keeps crying.
What I should do is turn the stroller around. I should not be in public. I should go home. But I can't go home. Because, a block away, there is a Laundromat, and in that Laundromat are the quilt from our bed and the afghan from our couch, tumbling in an industrial dryer, a task that was on my "List of Things To Do Before The Baby Comes" because the quilt and afghan-too large for our washer and dryer-had fused with zillions of sharp, blonde, burrowing dog hairs, discarded by Levi, our 80-pound Lab, hairs that I was certain would break free, lodge in the baby's throat, and choke her. I need to finish this job. I have two hours between each nursing so there's time to finish this job. I feel along the sides of the baby's swaddle to make sure her fingers aren't bent the wrong way. I tuck the blanket under her feet, in case her feet are cold.
She keeps crying.
What am I doing wrong?
I pull out my cell phone and dial Thad's office line.
"I can't do this," I say, before he even says "hello."
"What happened?" he asks. I hear the wheels on his office chair roll across the floor and his door close. I tell him about the afghan and the Laundromat and the crying. About how I can't stop the crying.
"Is she hungry?"
"No."
"Is she wet?"
"No."
"Maybe you just tried to do too much, sweetie. Maybe you should just go home," he says in his new mellow tone, the one he's been using in the middle of the night for the past two weeks, every time I nudge him awake and declare that I'm certain the baby is dead.
"She's not dead," he always says, calm and patient, just like he was when I woke him up with the same worry roughly 13 seconds before.
"How do you know that?" I always ask.
"I know."
"How do you know?" And Thad flips the covers onto me, staggers over to the Pack 'n Play at the foot of our bed, and leans over so his cheek is next to Blair's tiny mouth, waiting until he feels a few bursts of warm air.
"She's not dead," he whispers, climbing back into bed. I always lie there for a few seconds. Then I get up and check myself, resting my hand lightly on Blair's chest, swaddled so tight I wonder if the receiving blanket is the only thing holding her fragile body together, until I feel it rise, up and down, up and down.
Now, though, in the light of day, his soothing "everything's okay" tenor makes me clamp my teeth together, as if he didn't just suggest I go home, but instead told me to do the very opposite, to suck it up, to finish the damn bedspreads and then make a meatloaf.
You can purchase The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally. at Amazon.com!
