Motherhood changes you.

Since the birth of my daughter (four weeks ago today... wow), I've noticed the following:


I have more patience than I used to.  To anyone who has never breastfed: pinch your nipple.  Pull it about a centimeter away from your body.  Repeat for two hours.  Now picture a tiny sweet baby on your breast, make it three in the morning, you haven't slept yet, you're thirsty, you have to pee, and you smell like the bottom of a diaper pail.  Baby fusses and tries to pull off, in the process attempting to take your nipple away with her.  You cry out in pain.  Baby looks up at you, she's concentrating, she's confused, you coo at her in the high pitched Mummie voice and tell her how sweet and precious she is as you break her latch and burp her.  She fusses and you put her back to your sore and tired breast.  Night after night.

I am this fierce lioness now.  If you cut me off or drive like a hot dog, there are children in these cars and you will hear about it!  My doctor has these long fingernails, and although Audrey seems to love him for some reason, if he scratched her with those talons, I'd be up on the table scratching his eyeballs.  

I have this very accepting, Mother Theresa-esque aspect to my personality now.  I'm not sure if that's the best way to describe it but I'm always thinking of the unfortunate/mentally ill/addicted/hard-done-by person as being someone's daughter, someone's son.  Someone loves and worries about them, or I hope that someone does.  I want to give motherly hugs, some carrot sticks, a warm blanket, a shoulder to cry on, and tell them that everything will be okay.  But there is such a very fine line between the lioness and the Mother Theresa.  

At the same time, I'm overtired, overjoyed, irritable, unshowered, hungry, and still a bit sore.  I've lost 40lbs.  Breastfeeding is not as painful as it was the first week.  Thank God for small miracles.

I've heard that you forget the pain of childbirth but I'm not there yet.  I'm so glad that I wrote my story down while it was still somewhat fresh.  I probably left a few anecdotes out because I waited so long to write it.  I'm going to get Anson to tell me his version of what happened and put it up on here, because he remembers it differently.  But that's for another day....