Getting dressed

Any new mother will tell you what a challenge it is to find the time to shower.  Much less blow dry the hair, put on makeup, fix the hair, and put on the big girl clothes.  I have been living in that world.  I have always, always had myself put together.  You would never find me running out to the grocery store in a t-shirt.  My hair was done, face on, professional dress for every day at work.  I absolutely HATE t-shirts.  They're not comfortable, the neck feels like it is strangling me, and it just makes you look frumpy.  You're kidding yourself if you think you look good in a t-shirt.

During the first 3 months, when I went to the NICU, I continued to pump round the clock, getting up 3 times each night so I was never going more than 3 hours at a time and was coordinating that schedule with the boys feeds during the day.  Yet, each day, I showered, put on real clothes, dried my hair, (Thankfully my hair requires only a blow dry and no straightening), and drove to see my babies, timing my arrival for their first feeding for each day shift.  Once we were home and isolation started, things quickly deteriorated.

It really snuck up on me.  I had these tank tops that I would nurse in because I could use it to pin down their hands (hands that like to grab and poke and pull).  Then I ordered 2 more of them, because they were just "so comfortable."  Eventually, I was washing my hair every other day because it was too time consuming to try to blow dry the hair I hadn't had cut in over 1.5 years.  And then, it became showering every other day.  Then, sometimes only 3 times a week.  This week, though I have showered and laundered the clothes, I realized I wore the same navy tank top 4 days in a row.  So gross.  Even though it was washed at least once, maybe even twice, in the middle of that, the realization of what Andrew was coming home to dawned on me.  Ugg...I had become a woman who no longer felt, looked, or acted like a woman.  I was taking my new role as mommy to a totally unnecessary level.  So yesterday, I showered AND blow dried my hair (gasp!).  And then...I put on real clothes.  Like, a shirt that wasn't used to pin down my children's arms and some khaki shorts.  Big day.  Andrew commented on how nice I looked and I didn't even get to the makeup part of things.  What a complement.  So today, I put on (drum roll please...) a DRESS!  That's right, I am wearing a dress.  It's cotton and quite plain, it's actually comfortable, it has a few drool spots on it, and I am going absolutely no where.  But, I feel like a human being.  And it's wonderful.  My new mission is to get dressed in real people clothes on a regular basis.  Particularly once isolation starts back up and I'm once again confined to these few walls.  It's the little things in life that can bring some sort of healing and semblance of "normal" into the life again.