Today I Left the House

Diary of a First-Time Mom

Sarah M. White

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9798385200115
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Motherhood will be a cinch!Organized idealist Sarah prepares to give birth for the first time just like she managed her teaching career--with optimism and color-coded charts. After all, how hard can it be? When breastfeeding doesn't work like a charm and medical issues keep cropping up, Sarah must reconcile her rosy expectations of motherhood with reality. There's joy and wonder, but also spit-up and stitches. Not to mention she's totally incompetent at diapering. As she navigates one crisis after another during her baby's first year, she gradually regains her confidence and grows to accept motherhood as it is instead of how she thinks it should be. Honest, raw, and witty, this memoir-in-verse is the perfect companion for a new mom.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• I met my husband Caleb
• I first wanted a baby
• In my first adult life
• Since Caleb and I like
• At my baby shower
• I decided to take a break
• “Hey, Caleb, wake up.”
• While Caleb drove
• We checked into the birth suites
• After they decided
• While we waited in early labor
• I brought charts and markers
• I chose nitrous oxide
• “I need a break,”
• I waited for the wave,
• The resident sat calmly
• The nurse at our birth class had said,
• The nurses put eye salve on her eyes,
• We were in shock
• My mother arrived.
• Caleb slept beside me.
• Feeding my baby
• Every nurse tried
• We left the hospital
• The first time pumping
• You’re so cute.
• We took baby to the doctor
• One night when she woke
• When unwrapped from her swaddle
• Today I left the house.
• My list of fears was lengthy:
• Around the fifth day
• At baby’s bilirubin check-up,
• “Come on. Please latch.
• On a drizzly day we took baby
• On the evening of my birthday
• In the ER waiting room
• The nurse led us to a room
• Around eleven p.m., the ER doctor
• Later, the ER doctor returned:
• I woke up on the fourth floor.
• Whenever the shift changed
• I pumped on the edge
• Since I couldn’t sit or stand
• Our friends stopped by
• “You have mastitis,”
• “My baby still isn’t latching,” I told the consultant.
• The final hurdle was
• All I want to do
• I was home,
• The headache faded.
• Newborns open social doors;
• My mom’s parents
• The first time she latched
• The A/C broke the next day.
• Dream scene one:
• Before I had the baby
• I completed all my follow-ups at once:
• My grandma called again,
• It’s a six-hundred-
• On road trip day one,
• The night before the service
• Babies
• Teach us to number our days
• A white canopy blocked the Memphis heat.
• I never heard
• Caleb went to Dubai for work
• In week seven
• At my appointment with the general surgeon,
• At the two-month baby check-up,
• Tired is when
• Every Sunday night, I envied Caleb.
• At the follow-up breast ultrasound,
• When anyone asks me,
• I was breastfeeding on the couch
• I finished feeding the baby
• It’s been twelve weeks
• Dear Mrs. White,
• “I tried to push it off
• I knew the biopsy wouldn’t be
• The next morning was the first
• After we got home from group
• Clinical staff called
• The next day at the surgeon’s office
• In the middle of the night
• When I saw the surgeon again,
• At fifteen weeks
• One night looking through photos,
• At an evening service
• I carted baby across town
• Today mothers at church
• She is one.
• Ten days later,