This is probably a Bad Idea

Every book, magazine, baby show, talk show, and friend I've encountered (oh, and let's not forget every person in line behind and in front of me at the store, who also felt it necessary to regale me with their sister-in-law's friend's cousin's wife's birth story "Forty-seven hours of labor and she split in half!" Thanks.) made me think the first few weeks with a newborn was about equal to signing up for a lovely hiking holiday in Bataan.

Not so, I say.

Okay, maybe I have extraordinarily easy kids. Or maybe (and far more likely) I'm fucking them up beyond belief with my parenting style, but I am not one of those sleep-deprived zombies you see wandering around the mall moaning "Caffeine... coffee... dying...". The house is not any more wrecked than usual, and with a toddler and a newborn in residence, I consider that Quite The Achievement. I get laundry done. I can take a shower (okay, this I do before bed so Husband can wrangle AMP). I even brush my teeth. Most days.

So what is this line we're forever being fed? Is it to ease the pain of perhaps not getting enough sleep, being able to scrub the kitchen floor (as if!), or being able to keep up with the copious laundry? Is it a preemptive strike?

I have a friend with a baby exactly two weeks younger than AMP. I'm so going to pick her brain. If she ever fucking calls me back.

Part of it, I'm sure, is that I have like no recovery time from labor. I mean, I feel fanTASTIC afterwards, and I have to pace myself or I would end up doing something awful to myself, physically, because of course I DO need recovery time. So let's rephrase that and say that I'm insane and would pop up out of bed and rearrange the furniture if I didn't have orders not to do so. Because that would be bad. So right off the bat I think I have a leg up on a lot of women. Then I have the World's Best Mother-In-Law. Seriously. There is no way I'd still be even relatively sane at this point if she hadn't taken the Perp just about every day for the last two weeks (hell, call it four) of my pregnancy.

I dunno. If anyone does, please let me know.