Being pregnant with baby number three – my midlife “oops” – was about as much fun as a funeral, and the responses to the news of our baby’s impending arrival were often just as depressing. Instead of the gasps and hugs by teary-eyed well-wishers the other pregnancies had solicited, this pregnancy was greeted with responses such as “Oh, I’m so sorry!” or “Better you than me!” It was as if I had just informed them that I was dying and not welcoming a new chapter in the book of our family by means of extending it.
I felt about as welcomed as a leper at our friends’ homes. No one patted my swollen tummy like a Buddha, hoping luck would rub off on him or her, as they had with my other pregnancies. Instead, our friends made hex signs with crossed fingers and said weird things like, “Hmm…wonder what’s in the water? I’M not drinking it!” or “Stay away from me! Your condition might be catchy!” No one wanted to feel this baby move, since that was old hat, too. Instead, they shot me sympathetic looks while secretly hoping my bladder would withstand the internal soccer match so I wouldn’t pee all over their sofas.
Yes, being pregnant in midlife was certainly not the funfest the other pregnancies were. Instead of merrily shopping for cutesy new maternity clothes, I had to wear my own hand-me-downs—the “fat mama” wardrobe. This consisted of shirts with Peter Pan collars, which bore chocolate sundae stains from midnight refrigerator raids, and breast milk stains that had magically appeared every time I even looked at another baby. Hubs’ wardrobe decreased in numbers as I borrowed all of his extra large sweats and flannel shirts. I soon resembled a beer-bellied lumberjack with breasts.
My old maternity pants looked like a ship’s main sails. The elastic panels had over-stretched their 9-month boundary and never snapped back into place, forcing me to keep them in place with the world’s largest safety pin, which always seemed to explode in public and jab me hard enough to make me scream. I can’t tell you how many speeding tickets I avoided because of this, though. One poke from the mammoth diaper pin, and I had a police escort to the false labor ward of the nearest hospital.
Not only was I forced to give new life to “used and abused” maternity clothing, I also had no choice about using all the other old baby-related paraphernalia, either. No one throws you another shower after your first baby no matter how funky your first set of baby gear has become. How humiliating to whip out a burp rag from the diaper bag in public only to discover, to your utmost humiliation, that the first baby had actually worn this used cloth square at one time and had left the shadowy, telltale sign of a diarrhea episode on it (much like the noticeable railroad tracks that can still be found on Hubs’ freshly laundered underwear. Can’t someone invent a pre-wash for this problem and call it something like “Poop Away” or “Trax-Be-Gone”?).
Once my midlife triumph was born, you’d think the insensitive comments would have stopped. But instead, this baby always seemed to give people permission to say things they wouldn’t allow themselves to say when they viewed my first bundle of joy. “Whatcha gonna name her?” asked my neighbor, Stupid Simon. “Well, we’re waiting a few days to see whom she resembles,” I told Stupid, beaming proudly at my new daughter. “Hmm…well, if that’s the case, you better call her ‘Raisin’, ‘cause she sure looks like one!” The bump on his head from the bedpan I hurled at him wasn’t what hospitalized him. His middle-aged wife and mother of his seven children had a pretty mean left hook, too.
Settling into life with three children was quite different than life with one. But the most significant change was with me, as a thrice-blessed mommy. I couldn’t believe how much more relaxed my parenting style and I had both become! When the first baby spat her pacifier onto a dirty floor, it wasn’t given back to her until it had been de-contaminated by men of science wearing white lab coats and masks who put the soother in a specimen jar to examine for toxic waste. It was that, or I boiled the hell out of it.
However, if this baby spat out her “nummy,” I merely put it in my own mouth for a few seconds of cleansing sucking and popped it right back in her happy, babbling face. Everyone knows moms have no detectable germs in their mouths, whether she’s cleaning pacifiers or spitting on tissues to wipe sticky faces.
Diapers were another issue. My first babies wore cloth diapers because their tree-hugging mother was bound and determined not to add to the country’s landfill problem by using disposables. However, the new baby wore Pampers out of necessity. Mom was just too tired to bother defending the environment any longer.
Disposable diapers are great inventions, no doubt created by a mother. They’ve turned diaper pins into antiques, and they can hold as much water as Lake Erie. If my first baby peed so much as a spoonful, I changed her immediately. Baby No.3 learned to tread water when it was time to go number one.
There are thousands of tiny gelatinous pellets inside disposables. When these swell up with fluid, they leak out of the diaper’s seams and stick to the baby’s legs and stomach like glue. Inexperienced with these new contraptions, when I first witnessed this sight, I thought the baby had come into contact with a pregnant jellyfish who had laid her eggs all over him. Being that we live in a landlocked community one thousand miles from the nearest saltwater sea, my pediatrician still busts a gut telling that story to new parents in his practice.
Fear of death is what turns most new parents into overprotective, irrational zealots. The first child is so fragile (in your mind), you dare not take him or her outside when temperatures are above 70 or below 69 degrees for fear that the baby might die of either heat exhaustion or hypothermia. If the baby sneezes, it’s not a cold…it’s pneumonia. If the baby coughs, it’s the bubonic plague. Vomited formula is not just baby spit-up, it’s cholera. Pediatricians’ offices are full of new parents who pace nervously back and forth holding babies who just need vaporizers but are sure their children need to be quarantined in a hospital decontamination zone.
After the first baby, all subsequent babies rarely see the inside of their own homes, are allowed to sweat out most body fluid in the summer, and get bundled up and thrown outside for “fresh air” in the winter so moms can get a break. A sleeve wipes their runny noses, and a cough is probably just a nasally wedged Cheerio. Baby spit-up, although messy, is rarely fatal—to the baby, that is; however, many parents have been known to expire from their first experience with this toxic material. By the time the second baby enters the family picture, the family dog easily cleans up baby barf.
No matter how you look at it, subsequent babies end up no worse for wear than the first. In fact, the first baby should be commended for blazing the parental trail and allowing himself/herself to be used as the learning curve upon which parents cut their teeth. Experience could be a beautiful thing, especially when it comes to honing your parenting skills. Now, if only doctors or scientists could come up with a way to keep middle aged parents awake long enough enjoy it all.