Maternity Leave by the Numbers

Today marked a major maternity leave milestone. Did our darling daughter have some magical developmental breakthrough? Did she start walking or talking way ahead of schedule? No. (Though she is smiling and giggling which is pretty awesome.)

Today, friends, I watered my plants. “Watering the plants” has been on my to-do list since before Annabelle was born. Annabelle is 8 weeks old. I have not been able to get my act together and water these plants until just a few minutes ago. Now, this is not so much a victory for the plants (because, let’s be real, these plants are clearly dead at this point), but a sign that just maybe my life is regaining a bit of normalcy. Perhaps we are turning a corner and I’ll be able to do more things than just feed and change an infant.

You see, the thing I didn’t quite grasp about maternity leave, and about taking care of a tiny human in general, is that keeping said tiny human alive is incredibly time consuming. Yet, at the end of the day, you aren’t quite sure what you did. It isn’t like being at work, when you are constantly checking things off of your to-do list like some sort of corporate ninja.

This has been an adjustment for me. For the first month of Annabelle’s life I basically just fed and changed her and watched an obscene amount of TV. How much? Lets recap:

•  Seasons 2-5 of Fringe 
•  Seasons 1-4 of The Good Wife 
•  Seasons 6-7 of the West Wing 
•  More than a little Gossip Girl 

That is, by a conservative estimate, 214 episodes total. Which results in 160 HOURS of TV. All watched in one month. Before you call the mommy police on me, please know that newborns sleep like 36 hours a day. And Annabelle really preferred to do her sleeping on me. Turns out there are a limited amount of things you can accomplish with a sleeping infant on your chest. So TV watching became my pastime of choice.

Since we are already crunching numbers, let’s look at Annabelle’s life so far. Thanks to this app, we’ve been diligently tracking her every move. This tracking was necessary for the first week or two of life to make sure she was doing ok, but at this point it has just become a sick obsession. Of course, it allows me to look back at the past 8 weeks and realize how I’ve spent my time:

• 35 bottle attempts 
• 392 diaper changes 
• 7,245 minutes of nursing 

And, actually, when you add it all up like this it does seem rather impressive. So what if I didn’t sew her Halloween outfit together from scratch? Or finish decorating her nursery. Or make dinner. Or clean the apartment. Or even get really into knitting.  I kept a baby alive. And maybe, if today is any indication of things to come, moving forward I just might be able to keep a baby AND my plants alive. Fingers crossed.

When Girl Meets Dog

I'm nervous about the birth of my daughter for many reasons. I don't know how to change a diaper, feed a baby, or dress someone other than myself. (And if you've seen my Syracuse shoes, you may be questioning that last point.)

Truth be told, I've never babysat a day in my life. I tell people this and they are shocked.

"Never?"

"No. Never. I was too busy trying to drive outside fastballs to right field and hone my streaky jump shot when I was younger. Leave me alone."

(Of course, now, I wish I'd been a babysitter instead of an athlete.)

I'm also nervous that my daughter is going to cry all the time, despise baths, or hate when I hold her. Perhaps she won't eat enough. Or maybe she'll eat only very expensive steak dinners. Hell, I don't know.

What I do know, though, is that of all the things I'm nervous about, Oscar, our dog, may be No. 1 on the list.

Oscar is our pride and joy. Like most couples without children, we treat our pet like he's our son. We smile and nod knowingly when people at Fresh Pond tell us how cute he is. We talk about him when we go out to dinner. We give him treats, feed him organic food, and let him sleep on the bed. (You could also say he lets us sleep on the bed because he takes up so much damn room.)

Oscar, you can imagine, is very needy. He whines when we don't play with him, or when we're on our iPads and not giving him our undivided attention. He cries when he's even the least bit hungry or feels that maybe, just maybe, he has to pee. In short, he's a drama queen.

So what's going to happen when a princess and a drama queen butt heads?

Everyone is telling us that Oscar will be forgotten, a second-class citizen, when baby Briddon is born. But I refuse to believe that. Sure, we'll shower our daughter with attention, but we love Oscar too much to give him the cold shoulder.

So how can we ensure that this meeting -- and this new living arrangement -- is going to work out for everyone? Do I sit down and have a man-to-man chat with Oscar about how we're adding another member to our pack? Do we get him a baby doll that wets itself and cries? Do we start ignoring his pleas, cries, and moans?

We've heard the helpful trick about bringing home something with the baby smell (a blanket, a hat, etc.) from the hospital right after the birth. We're definitely doing that. But what other advice does anyone have about ensuring the peaceful coexistence of a baby and a needy pet?

Our entire pack is listening ...

Where is the Baby Going to Fit?

We live in a 768-square-foot apartment in Cambridge. And, truth be told, we like it an awful lot. It’s located in between Harvard Square and Porter Square, and, for all intents and purposes, is surrounded by everything we need. We have lots of culture, great neighbors, and convenience around every corner. You want restaurants? A stone's throw away. Grocery shopping? Just down the street. Boston? Hop on the subway and I’ll see you in 10 minutes.

Despite everything our apartment has, it’s missing one important thing: space.

Now, babies, I hear, are small, which is good. But babies, I hear, need a ton of stuff, which is bad.

Why is this hitting me all of a sudden? We're just coming back from a trip to New Hampshire where we visited our friends, Dan and Steph, and their four-month-old bundle of joy, Landon. They live in 4,000-square-foot pad with guest rooms that are the size of our apartment. Their back deck may be bigger than our street. (I exaggerate, of course, but you see where I'm going with this.)

Now, we’re not materialistic people by any stretch of the imagination, but for the past couple years, we've been able to buy ourselves nice clothes and nice things. The trouble is we’re already out of room. Both our bureaus are bursting at the seams (literally, thanks to Ikea) and our closets are stuffed like a big ol' Thanksgiving turkey. Our spare bedroom? Think more Shawshank Redemption and less Downton Abbey. 

So where will baby Briddon's stuff go?

Last weekend, we went stroller shopping, which was actually pretty fun. Then we got to the part about having to fold it up and actually keep it in our apartment.

"And this just folds neatly like that," said the incredibly helpful saleswoman at Magic Beans.

"Right," I thought, "and then how do you fold that up because that thing will dominate our linen closet."

So what's the answer? Do we have to throw away a bunch of our things? Do we have to rearrange our apartment to make way for baby? Do we have to move? We’ve decided the answer to question No. 3, for now, is no. We like the city and we plan to stay here for at least one kid and maybe two -- assuming there is a two.

But I can’t imagine what life will be like a year from now. I look around the apartment and see adult things. We have candles and DVD players and speakers and picture frames and iPads. Will those be replaced by bottles and toys and dirty diapers and onesies? The answer, I’m realizing, is yes.

This, of course, will be a huge adjustment. The more I think about it, though, the less worried I get. Stuff is overrated anyway. Just please don't make fun of me if I wear the same outfit every day after August. The rest of my clothes will be in storage.

Lying to Everyone for Three Months

I fibbed a bunch of times in December. So did Bridget. We fudged the truth even more in January and February. Basically, it was just one big, fat lie after another for three months.

"Want to go out tonight and grab a beer tonight?"

"No," we said. "We're not feeling very well."

"You going to that party?"

"Maybe," we said. "But we're pretty hung over from last night."

Lies. Lies. And more lies.

The hardest part of pregnancy so far -- and please note that this is written from the perspective of a male who hasn't undergone an enormous body alteration -- was not telling anyone we were expecting a little one. We told our families at Christmas and then took a tight-lipped oath for the next 11 weeks. The reason, of course, is that if something bad happened with the baby, we didn't want to have to tell everyone about it.

And man, was it hard to keep my mouth shut. After all, it is the biggest news of our lives.

You have, I believe, eight positive "big news" moments in your life. Think about it:

1. You get into college -- perhaps the one of your dreams. 
2. You get your first job. 
3. You get your dream job. 
4. You get married. 
5. You have your first baby.
6. You have additional babies. (I realize this can happen several times, but the first is likely to draw the biggest response from the world.) 
7. You buy your first home. 
8. You retire.

And unless strange circumstances prevent it, you can share non-baby news as soon as it happens. No one buys a home and starts telling people two months after they've moved in. No one wears an engagement ring for four or five weeks before spreading the news. (This is especially true in the Facebook era when eating brunch on Sunday is cause for tagging, photos, and three status updates.)

But baby news is under wraps until that glorious 12-week mark hits and you're a little further out of the woods. So, I'd just like to take this opportunity to say I'm sorry for lying those 40-50 times from December 16  until a few weeks ago. More specifically:

• Colleagues, I never had those dentist appointments. 
• Bridget held the same half bottle of beer for three straight hours at the company holiday party. (For the record, I drank the first half.)
• Friends who threw that lovely apartment warming party in January, Bridget was home in bed two miles away -- not visiting friends in whatever city I said. 
• Everyone who asked if we were trying to have kids yet, yes, yes we were. And it appears we were successful. 

Phew! It feels great to get this off my chest. I promise I'll never lie again. At least until we start trying for baby No. 2.