Saturday, October 6, 2012

The Hangover

Last weekend I did something stupid. From the title of this post, I'm betting you can guess what it was.

We had our mommy/daddy friends over for dinner on Friday night. I made buffalo joes. We had a wonderful evening of talking and laughing - and trying to wrangle four babies. At about 8pm we were trying to get all four babies to go to sleep so that we could hang out for a while longer. Needless to say it was not going well (I believe one of our friends used the term "baby apocalypse" to describe the situation). We finally got one baby to sleep in the rock 'n play downstairs while the other three caused chaos in the guest room and nursery upstairs. 

Maybe it was because he missed his bath (part of his bedtime routine) or maybe it was because of all of the excitement in the house, but OZL was being extremely fussy. So were babies #3 and #4. But as I rocked OZL in the nursery and tried to get him to calm down, I realized it was finally quiet in the guest room. When I poked my head through the door a few minutes later I figured out why - both babies were happily nursing while their mamas breathed a sigh of relief. And it was then that I got hit by a wave of sadness I never expected.

Suddenly I absolutely could not handle the crying baby in my arms. How was I supposed to calm him and reassure him if I couldn't nurse him? What kind of mother was I? For a moment I felt lost and didn't know what to do. Then I took a deep breath and did something responsible: I went downstairs, told APL I needed a break, and asked him to be in charge of OZL for the rest of the evening (which he happily did). Of course, I then did something quite irresponsible: drank as much as I wanted since no one but me is dependent on my body anymore.

On the plus side, I ended up being able to relax, move past my sadness, and actually have a really amazing evening with my friends. I honestly can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. But on the downside, since I haven't done any major drinking for about a year, I pretty much destroyed our Saturday with my horrible hangover.

I have to admit that it's quite an adjustment to have my body back to myself again. It's been a very long time since my body has been completely my own - with my choices affecting no one but me. It was almost exactly a year ago that I found out that I was pregnant, but it was ten months before that that I first stopped taking my meds to prepare my body for pregnancy. So I essentially started turning my body over for OZL's use in December 2010. Which means that it has been nearly 2 years since my body has really, truly been my own.

Considering all that, I guess it's not surprising that I've been dealing with some body-image issues. But that will have to be a post for another time, because I can hear you-know-who waking up from his nap!

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