It's Monday. You wake up refreshed and feel encouraged about the day. You get a short workout in and start the work day before the baby is up. When the baby wakes up, she's happy you play on the floor mat (although you don't do tummy time, which makes you feel guilty), then feed her.
She spits up what looks like the whole feed, but you're refreshed and the day is new so it's okay. You sing to her and clean it up and it's okay.
You get her dressed. The outfit doesn't quite fit, but it's okay. There's a tag on the inside that you think might itch her side, but we'll see.
She starts crying on your stroller walk. She never cries on walks, so that's weird. Hopefully not a bad omen about the day. You have to stop moving to soothe her several times, hoping the neighbors aren't hearing her and judging you for being a bad mother. You wish you'd brought a paci, but it never occurred to you. She never cries on walks so you've never needed one.
She falls asleep in the stroller, which is good. Jerks with loud trucks start their engines and leave for work. Lawn care workers mow grass right next to your baby's ear. Kids on summer break scream and laugh in their yards. Every noise puts you on edge. Don't people know there's a baby in a fragile slumber nearby?
Back inside, it takes forever for the baby to fall back asleep in the swing for her first real nap, and she wakes up after an hour when she usually naps 1.5–2.5 hours.
Bummed, you go get her and discover she's had a blowout through her pants and onesie. Poor baby. Is that why she woke up? Would she go back to sleep if she was comfortable again?
You change her. Lots of poop lots of places. You'll have to deal with the poopy outfit later because she's screaming. Now that she's awake, she wants to eat. It's just as well. If she'd kept to her usual schedule, you'd be trying to feed her during the meeting your supervisor rescheduled for noon.
You nurse her, then have to walk around with her for fifteen minutes while keeping her upright so she won't spit up. She hates being upright, so she cries and squirms. She spits up three times anyway. Each time, it makes a splashing sound as it hits the floor.
While doing laps around the house, you notice all the things you can't do or haven't done. The recycling is full. The calendar hasn't been turned to the new month. The Windex is still sitting by the back door because you were using it to shoot houseflies that couldn't be reached with the flyswatter last week. Your laptop battery is dying. You'll need it for the meeting with your supervisor. Must remember to untangle the cord from the pile in the corner before then. The poopy clothes and poopy changing table are on your route too. So is the bedroom mirror, where you see your bare stomach, which is bigger and squishier than it's ever been. It looks worse than it did six weeks ago. There's dust and dirt and a carpet fuzz on the living room wood floor, even though your husband vacuumed fourteen hours ago. There's the book club book you haven't started, but it doesn't matter because you realized after the fact that it was the wrong one.
All throughout these laps, the baby spits up. It's on your arm, her "clean" clothes, and the floor in many places, which you mop up with your foot and a burp cloth as you go.
Your wrists hurt from trying to hold a baby who does not want to be held upright. You reposition to try to get some relief, but she hates the new position even more so you have to go back. You sing to her, hearing your voice get a little less joyful with each round of spit up, baby scream, baby head butt.
It's been fifteen minutes. She's been upright for long enough that she shouldn't spit up, but you know this isn't true. You used to even wait thirty minutes before letting her lie down, and that didn't make a difference either.
You lay her down on the mat (on her back, so you feel guilty about tummy time again, but you have to get on this meeting and she'll cry if you put her on her stomach) with her toys and get ready to hop on the meeting. But first you remember the poopy scene and go back through, wiping and sanitizing and throwing clothes into the washing machine. While you're out of the room, the baby starts crying.
After settling her, you click "join meeting" a couple of minutes late. The video preview shows you wearing the same shirt you wore yesterday, a decidedly unstylish messy bun, and giant red zit on your chin. You consider going camera off, but you're camera off so often these days, it seems wise to show your face when you can. Something about being camera off makes you worry that people think you aren't doing your job.
The meeting is fine, but halfway through the baby starts crying so you have to turn your camera off and finish it on the floor while giving theatrical slo-mo kisses to her tummy. She beams and squeals and you feel happy again. Then she spits up, partially digested milk soaking her collar and the nape of her neck on the way to the blanket underneath her.
The meeting finishes with your supervisor trying to give you heartfelt advice about how parenting and working at the same time requires sacrifice, and that you have to come to terms with the fact that you won't be snuggling your baby at all times.
After the meeting, the baby is falling asleep on the play mat and she's been awake for about 75 minutes, so you put her in the sleep sack, turn on the sound machine, and begin rocking her. Her paci falls out and she's immediately fully awake. You try to replace the paci but she spits it out and laughs. You know she has to be tired, so you sway with her in your arms, but she just stares at you with bright eyes, which kind of melts your heart but also fills you with despair because 1) if she doesn't go to sleep she's definitely going to get overtired and that's a nightmare, 2) if you try to force her to go to sleep she'll scream and that's also a nightmare, 3) you really need to get more work done.
She suddenly gets the hiccups.
You lay her down in the bassinet, awake, and lie on the bed beside her, reaching over the side to rub her belly. Your wrist hurts and your arm starts to fall asleep. She's still wide awake. You realize that all the restoration and hope you had this morning has been completely used up. You feel tired and bruised, the human embodiment of dark under-eye circles. You feel guilty because your baby deserves a joyful mother.
You decide to try the paci one more time, even though you're wary of her forming a habit of needing it to fall asleep. She gives three suckles and is out—only to be jolted away by a hiccup. This happens over and over for ten minutes. You're honestly shocked and thankful that she hasn't lost her mind because it looks super annoying to deal with. You pray the Holy Spirit down from Heaven and into her diaphragm, and by the mercy of the Lord, it works. The hiccups leave. She falls asleep.
It takes you a full two minutes to get off the bed, because it creaks and that might wake her up. When the last centimeter of your buttcheek leaves the mattress, the bed groans and the baby's eyes pop open. You begin to curse internally, despite being only two minutes removed from one of the most fervent prayer sessions of your life. The baby goes back to sleep.
It's lunchtime. You make yourself a protein shake because your nutrition goal this week is to prioritize protein at every meal. You eat a slice of pizza cold because the beep of the microwave buttons might wake up the baby and reheating on the stove takes too long and she might wake up any second.
You watch her on the baby monitor and try to see if she's breathing.
You eat your cold pizza, watch her on the baby monitor, and try to get some work done.
The baby is up forty minutes later. You move her to the changing table, which makes her cry. She settles during the diaper change, thankfully. You move her to her play mat, which makes her cry again. Does she hate being moved? Does it make her reflux flare up? Are you not supporting her correctly? Is something wrong with her body? She's been going to the chiropractor, and they haven't said anything felt wrong.
On the mat, she alternates between fussing and cooing and crying and smiling with seemingly no rhyme or reason. If you leave the mat to try to get work done, she fusses. It is difficult to think.
You pick her up and carry her to the couch. Maybe you can do some of your reading for work if you read it aloud to her in a sing-songy voice. It is unexpectedly challenging to comprehend Crime and Punishment when read like a nursery rhyme. It does settle the baby for a few minutes, but then she starts crying again and you realize it's time for her to eat.
You feed her. You walk around with her while she fusses. She spits up.
After fifteen minutes, you put her on the mat. You aren't supposed to have babies in "containers" for too long. When you told ChatGPT that she fussed a lot, it suggested a schedule where you rotate activities for her every 3–10 minutes. ChatGPT must have forgotten that you work.
Soon, it is time for her to nap again. You decide you will try to incorporate a slightly longer wind-down time. Maybe that will help her relax and prepare for sleep. You change her diaper, lay her on your bed, and read a book to her. She looks at the pictures calmly and suckles her paci. It seems to be going well.
When you put her in the sleep sack, she wiggles her arms and legs and smiles at you. It's nice that she's happy, but she's lost her sleepiness again. You talk quietly to her and do the rocking and shushing and put her in the bassinet. It's extra hard for her to keep the paci in her mouth this time and it takes extra long for her to fall asleep. You make shushing noises until your lips and tongue are dry.
With six minutes until your next meeting starts, she falls asleep. You manage to escape without the creaky bed waking her up this time.
While you're on the meeting, she wakes up to cry three different times. You can't decide if you should ignore her or tend to her, so you do some of both. The times you ignore her, she does eventually calm down, which reassures you that she's learning to soothe herself to some degree.
The meeting ends with you having several to-dos, some of which you wrote down, some of which you really hope the project manager will remind you about.
She's awake and crying when the meeting ends. It's 2pm, and the baby's mood usually goes steadily downhill from mid-afternoon until she goes to bed, so this has likely been the "best" part of your day.
You eat what the bag says is four servings of Trader Joe's strawberry and chocolate drizzle popcorn. A piece of chocolate falls on your current favorite shirt and leaves a brown smear. You just leave it.
You think about how quickly your energy dried up. You might wake up in the morning to find it restored again, but you know it will just evaporate and turn sour before the day is done, like it always does. Somehow that feels even worse, to know that it will come back only to die again.
It's just a season, you know. One day you'll miss when she was this little, and you genuinely try to enjoy it. You watch her little face as you nurse. You willingly show her and talk to her about everything in the house over and over on your fifteen-minute-upright walks. You try to smile with your eyes when you play with her.
But some days are just hard.
~ Stephanie
