Note from author: Nobody told me what motherhood after 40 would really be like - or motherhood in general. Here were a few of my early discoveries after my daughter was born in June 2006.
New motherhood makes you do the strangest things. Like...
1. Sitting on the crapper with a baby strapped to your body in a sling. Hey, you've got to poop, too.
2. Smelling your baby's butt (okay, to check the diaper, but still - when did you ever smell a baby's butt when you were single or without a baby of your own?)
3. Rubbing breast milk on everything - on your nipples, on baby's baby acne, on anything that looks like a sore or open wound or abrasion or skin irritation - because you read somewhere that breast milk can heal everything.
4. Sitting in the living room with flanges and bottles held to your breasts. I even have my own "nursing station" with a rocker glider, small table with assorted accoutrements, water bottle and magazine rack. Next step: Cutting slits in an old sports bra and putting the flanges through it for a makeshift version of a pumping bra to go hands free.
5. Leaving the house without taking a shower. Wearing the clothes you slept in last night. Covered with baby spit up, formula and spilled breast milk. With unkempt, dirty hair. Stinking to high heaven. And realizing that this is motherhood. This, my dear friends, is MOTHERHOOD.
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