New-Mom Amnesia

What’s that? Did somebody say something? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you. There’s a baby screaming in my ear. I also can’t smell anything, since I have a sinus infection and no use of my nostrils. At this point, I’m lucky I can still see through my puffy, half-shut eyes. Who needs all 5 senses, anyway?

As if that’s not enough, here’s another thing to make a new mom crazy: conflicting advice. I ran into my neighbor at the park yesterday, and she mentioned she had a 6-week-old niece. So we started comparing notes, and here’s what I found out:

• While my pediatrician insists the optimal indoor temperature for a newborn is between 70 and 72 degrees, her sister’s doctor claims that babies need to be kept in a cool room.
  

• While my baby wakes up every couple of hours demanding to be fed and won’t sleep longer than 2 hours at a time, her niece sleeps so long she has to be woken up to eat.
  

• While her niece rarely cries, my baby cries intermittently around the clock for no apparent reason. Is he cold? Hot? Hungry? Gassy? Damned if I know.
  

Besides the general cluelessness that goes along with having a new baby, here are some other Things I’d Forgotten:

• That newborns nurse 8-10 times a day, 2-4 hours apart, and that each feeding can take an entire hour by the time you do both boobs, burp and change the baby. So THAT’S what I do all day, in case you’re wondering.
  
  
• The wide variety of bodily fluids that are part of a new mom’s day.
  
  
• The laundry; my WORD, the laundry!
  
  
• The random, inconsolable fits of crying, usually around dinnertime. (By the baby.)
  
  
• The random, inconsolable fits of crying, at any time of day. (By me.) Those hormones are a bitch, I tell ya.
  
  
• That satiny, silky newborn skin. (That is, until the baby acne erupts.)
  
  
• That fuzzy, wuzzy newborn head. (Cradle cap notwithstanding.)
  
  
• How heavy that infant car seat is, no matter how small the infant you’re carrying in it is.

And yet, since this is my second child, there are also a whole new set of issues. Here’s What’s Different This Time Around:

• I don’t bolt out of bed at every noise the baby makes during the night. Just every third noise.
  
  
• Forget sleeping when the baby sleeps when there’s a 2-year-old around.
  
  
• I don’t change the baby’s diaper and outfit the minute they get dirty. What’s the rush?
  
  
• I can let the baby cry for a minute or two without feeling like my heart is being torn out with rusty grill tongs.
  
  
• I have no choice but to let the baby cry sometimes; say, when my older son yells, “Mom! I need help on the potty!” or “Is that smoke?”
  
  
• Whereas last time I had taken several hundred pictures of the baby by this point, I have gone entire days without photographing my second child.
  

Hey, do you hear that? It’s the sound of … silence. Either that or I’ve gone deaf.

LINK O’ THE WEEK: Constant product recalls. Add that to the list of what makes a new mom crazy. The latest is drop-side cribs. Read this, too.