note to pregnant people

If you are pregnant and thinking of having a preemie because, you know, they are smaller, and it won't hurt as much, plus, someone else takes care of your baby and you can still work for the first couple months, I would advise against it.

I would venture to say that it is practically impossible to have a baby in the hospital, pump breast milk, work full time, and keep it all together. Unless you are rich and can hire someone to clean the house and cook for you. But if you are rich, you don't have to work, and you could even hire a wet nurse, but if you didn't have to do all the house stuff plus you didn't have to worry about money, then I guess you could just sit at the hospital all day and bond with your baby and your breastpump.

Normal people don't have that luxury. We have to work because we have to have money, and we have to work because we have to have health insurance, especially with a baby in the hospital who will cost upwards of half a million dollars by the time he comes home (he's much less expensive now).

When you try to do too much, say, when you seem to think that you can handle anything and you are some sort of super hero, then things will slip through the cracks, and nothing that you do will be up to your standards. Then you will feel like a failure and like you have pretty much let everyone down, and that's no good. Notice how I have used the future tense and second person singular to make it sound like I am not talking about myself?

It's too much. It was too much for me. I could not keep up with new stuff at my job, and I could not keep track of the things I had been planning on tackling over the summer, while I was pregnant. My mind was still scattered from being pregnant, and it was further dissipated to the winds when I was split between many different tasks. I tried to hold it together and present myself to my colleagues as OK, maybe a little tired and slightly overwhelmed, but still OK. It's easier to believe it's true when you are acting like it's true.

Now that I am home with the baby, I am the exact opposite of most new moms: I find that I have time, and I am totally relieved. I am not going to the hospital, and I am not pumping six times a day. It's bliss. I can think about tasks in an organized manner, and I can get things done when he's quiet or when Pete has him.

Like now.