The Little Prince and Getting Lost At Home

If you told me three weeks ago that I would spend 19 days in a hospital waiting for the moment I could go home, I wouldn't believe it. If you then told me when I was finally allowed to go home that I would want to stay, I'd say you were straight up smoking crack. Yet, that is exactly what happened.

Yes, that's right, I got to go home. Since I was there until delivery, that must mean that the baby was born, right? Correct. My littlest prince was born on the fifteenth at the god awful hour of 1:17 in the morning. His brothers and sister had the consideration to be born during normal, waking hours. This kid, however, had already given me low platelets, anemia, and premature labor. So really, what was adding a birth at a time when most normal Moms get to sleep? Sure, by the time he's born and they do strange things with my placenta and monitor my vital signs and make sure my head doesn't spin around and let me go back to my room it's almost 5 am, but that's okay, right mom? Sleep is really over rated and you'll hit your second wind with the adrenaline rush and the graham crackers you're munching on because apparently giving birth is hungry work.

Since I'm not small (quite the opposite) and early, I got discharged after the normal 24-hours-after-birthing-a-baby stay. My little man, who was a mere 4 pounds, 8 ounces at birth, gets to stay at the hospital for awhile longer. This means I had some mixed emotions about being home. On one hand, I really missed my bed. A lot. I was excited that I got to sleep in my lovely bed again. On the other hand, my poor little baby is still in the hospital. Not to mention that the hormones swimming inside changed from pregnancy hormones to post partum wah wah hormones. (Although, there's really not that much of a difference when you're blubbering on your husband's shoulder about one thing or another. He has a wet shirt, a hysterical wife, and the panic of wondering if she's ever going to be able to get through a day without crying since it's been forever since he last remembers it happening.)

And here's a fun fact: You can get lost in your own house! Or maybe it's just feeling lost in your own house. I walked around in a daze the first day and a half, not quite knowing where I should be. You'd think I had been gone for six months. I was part excited, part overwhelmed. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do first: Wash a load of laundry, or lay on my bed for an hour, rejoicing in its non-pneumatic qualities. (Look! It stays still the entire time I lay on it!) All those times that I wished the laundry would just go the hell away and here I am, exuberant by the small fact that it exists and it needs me to clean it. No, it definitely doesn't take the sting out of coming home from the hospital without my baby boy, but it will absolutely mean that my family will have the cleanest clothes in the tri-county area when we visit him!

Where do Moms channel energy that cannot be focused on the intended target? Well, I don't know about other Moms, but this one turns it into elbow grease. So if you were thinking of coming for a visit, now would be a really excellent time. The house hasn't been this clean in, well, ever.  You better hurry up and see the anomaly while you can though. Once I have my little boy home, I can go back to my "If I don't see it, it's not dirty" mind set. And with 4 kids, how much time do you think I'll have to look?