I Never Knew

A few things I never knew about motherhood:

• I am seriously considering wearing some sort of helmet around my daughter. I have been head butted, jabbed, poked, kicked, pinched and had my hair pulled more times than I can count. My nose actually feels bruised from the number of times the babe's head has crashed into me in one jerky movement or another. She also appears to have a thing for injuring my neck area. It's OK, I only need that body part to breathe. While I'm tracking down a helmet (possibly hockey helmet with a face guard), I might as well consider full body armour. I never knew how much abuse I'd have to take as a mother.
• I question, at times, whether I am patient enough to be anyone's mother. I never knew how tough constant sleep deprivation and being selfless would be.
• Last night at 9:00pm, I sold our futon. It was blocking the window and eating way too much space in our small light deprived living room. As I spend so much time at home now, I have been on a minor mission to get rid of things and clean the place up a bit. It's slow going. I never knew how much baby stuff would take over our home or how long it would take to sell a futon on craig's list!
• My husband has been working A LOT this past week (and weekend). It has been hard being on constant child care duty with no break at the end of the day (even half an hour is nice after having a monkey crawl all over you for 12 hours). I can't say it's the same, but I am beginning to get a picture of how overwhelming it would be to be a single mother. I never knew how good it is to have my husband home for dinner, support and company.
• The babe has food allergies (cow's milk, nuts, peanuts and a rice intolerance). The tests the allergist did at 6 months could be inaccurate and they will be testing again, but after a trip to the ER in May, we've been taking it pretty slow with the solid food introduction. We've got the go ahead on apples, bananas, sweet potato, carrots, and oatmeal. She doesn't necessarily like all these options though. As we slowly increase her repertoire of non-allergenic foods, I am constantly worrying if she's eating enough. As she doesn't like soy formula (after 8 months of breastfeeding, who can blame her), I can't measure her milk intake. She can also be very difficult to feed at times. She'll shake her head, make gagging sounds, and spit food at me. I never knew how hard it would be to feed a baby!
• As I sit here on an early Sunday morning, I never knew how hard it would be to constantly have to get out of my warm yummy bed at 6:30 am.
• I also never knew how hard it would be to make time to write in my blog. Or how hard it would be to write with an 8 month old child crawling on me and demanding attention!

Injuries

I never thought I'd have so many injuries from having a baby (beyond all the birthing stuff-that's another story altogether). I am always covered in weird marks and bruises. I was at my husband's office summer party last Sunday and someone commented on the bruises on my shins. Slightly embarrassing, right? But I have a good reason. I was multi-tasking and walked into the dishwasher door which I had left open to promote the drying process. I told my husband's colleague's wife that I had walked into the dishwasher door, as if this is something that happens every day. She replied that I must be pretty tired. Ya think? She doesn't have children.

I've always had sensitive skin, so the bruising thing is no big surprise. My daughter has gotten pretty good at hitting, pinching and kicking me. Of course she doesn't mean it (so my husband keeps reminding me). I had one eye ball kicked today, and the other poked. I'm also getting pretty used to being kicked in the wind pipe. I've learnt that pinching can leave pretty funny little bruises. So can having a baby bounce on your lap when you're in your bathing suit with no protection from little toes.

In my previous life of sitting in front of a computer at the office all day, I never experienced the infamous carpal tunnel syndrome. Guess what I have now diagnosed myself with? I am carrying around an almost 15 pound baby all day. This is apparently much tougher on my wimpy wrists than typing. I now have one of those fancy $20.00 wrist brace thingies which I wear in the house. It gets taken off and put back on a million times a day because babies like to pull Velcro things and to spit food. I also need to wash my hands a lot.

My back is another story. I finally went and had my Mother's Day massage last Saturday. I paid a man in a spa almost $100 to massage my aching back for an hour. It was awesome. But the pain returned the next day (which was the office party). Not only was the pain back, but my shoulder muscle felt slightly bruised. Having only had 4 massages in my life, I'm not sure if that's normal? All I know is I'd happily accept an hour long massage on a daily basis. I really need to start doing yoga again. I'm going to break soon if something doesn't change.