Is It True Women Forget Childbirth?

I went to visit a friend the other day.  She just had a baby.  Actually, she just had her first baby.  I qualify because if you have children, you know there’s a big difference between having your first and having another.  

I walked in, washed my hands with lots of antibacterial soap, and pretended not to want to snatch the little mush ball right off his grandmother’s shoulder.  She asked, “do you want to hold him?” and I feigned shock and surprise saying, “Are you sure?”  I took him and nuzzled into the corner of the couch.  I sat down and forgot myself as I sighed saying,  “Ohhhh.. this is so nice.  He doesn’t move.  He doesn’t talk.  He asks for nothing.  I’ve forgotten how nice this is.”

He is only 3 weeks old.  He still sleeps with his body still curled in a comma position as if there are no bones in this little body.  Occasionally he’d grunt, make funny faces, and stretch out a little arm with clenched fist.  My friend would ask, almost ready for me to say something impressive, “he does that a lot, makes all those grunting noises….”  I smiled and said, “he sounds perfect to me.”  She pointed out small things like potential marks on his face, “is this normal?”  She asked me to review his scalp and make sure there was no cradle cap.  Was his face getting squished on one side? Do you think I should swaddle him?  He doesn’t seem to like it—he makes funny faces.  He sleeps all day but he’s awake screaming all night.  I wish I knew if he was gaining weight. I don’t know if  I’m breastfeeding enough.  I can order a newborn scale you know.  I looked at my friend and saw her face; desperate for answers.  Despite her charts, color coded in Microsoft Excel, this was harder than she had anticipated.

People say you forget childbirth and that’s why we have more children.  I disagree. I defy you not to  find a woman who has had a child not to go into a detailed story about her delivery.  Want to know  where her water broke? How big her cervix was when she got to the hospital?  How many stitches she got… down there.  No? Well, too bad ‘cause she’s gonna tell you.  It is the most primitive thing a woman will ever do.  No matter how it went, every woman has a story.  There has to be a story—how is a head that size going to get through, well,  what it’s got to get through.

Here’s what women forget (I don’t think men do.. not the men I know anyway); the first few months after child birth.  As I sat there thinking how nice it was to hold the newborn, I recalled coming home with my own first born.  Looking at the clock when my husband left each day and figuring out how many hours until he was home. When they cry, there’s no one to rescue you.  You’re in this on your own.  I held him nearly 20 hours a day for a few months.   I once glared at my husband while he did the kitchen dishes.  He looked up and said, “What?”  I was annoyed he couldn’t figure it out and said, “I really would love to do all that—could you just hold him for me?”  He chuckled the same way when I once said how lucky he was to sit in traffic for hours each day.  Now with three young children, it was a privilege to be alone everyday, a privilege I had not experienced for quite some time. 

I gave my friend back her sweet little boy. She asked me who I thought he looked like and I admitted I wasn’t sure.  I got in my car and thought about my three kids at home with their Dad. I can leave the house now without their screaming, “No! We want Mommy! Don’t Leave!”  I don’t have to be back in 90 minutes to nurse anyone.  I almost never have dried food on my clothes in places that everyone else can see and I cannot.  It was true—it was nice to hold a baby that did not move, talk, fight, whine, argue, resist, or challenge.  I do miss that warmth and sweetness of laying in bed with my tiny sleeping newborn.  The looks they gave me simply because I was mommy, that feeling of absolute unconditional love.  But for the first time in my parenting life I backed out of the driveway and thought, “Thank god it’s not me.”