Someone once said, “People who sleep like a baby probably don’t have one.”
Most parents, after having a newborn, never know what day it is and surely don’t know what time it is, due to the craziness of night feedings. It’s hard to remember any dates or appointments when you bring home a new baby. Sadly, sleep has become a distant memory. I personally have to rely on my calendar alerts programmed in my phone in my day to day. It’s pretty simple, if I don’t put it in my phone, I will not remember. I also have to set more than one alert to make sure I know what’s going on.
However, there is one date, one appointment, you can be sure I will remember no matter how tired I am — it’s the six-week postpartum [checkup]. Oh yes… all of us mothers know that appointment oh so well.
“You can return to having sex now.”
“I can what? Wait, didn’t I just have a baby five minutes ago? Do you know I sleep at most three hours a night and you want me to do what? You do realize a watermelon came out of there and I still look four months pregnant, right? What about my aching back? Doctor, you know my boobs have been hijacked by the little fellow in the car seat and the minute I hit the bed I completely succumb to passing out?”
I am no stranger to the six-week postpartum permission slip to tell my husband he got the green light! Been there, done that, four times already — and every time you can bet he is smiling from ear to ear, Joker-style.
Besides getting the “all clear here” after getting poked and probed, you get the mood questionnaire. Good news for me: no depression, just complete exhaustion, which is seriously no joke. My doctor actually felt bad for me that my little bundle of colic was getting up every hour starting at 1 a.m. ’til the sun came up. The doctor felt so bad she was shaking her head and also yawning like what I had was contagious.
