Present Tense

The gifts. Oh, the gifts. By the time we left the hospital, we had so many beautiful flowers and stuffed animals and body lotions and homemade treats and wonderful gestures of heart-felt congratulations. I kept a notebook by my bedside and wrote down who came to visit and who brought us such lovely presents.

Eve was born in the early evening. Family congregated that night and came to meet the child. Word spread of her arrival, and the visits began the next morning. By dinner time, we had seen 40 visitors. The very best of friends and family stopped in, but when you have 2 large families and 10 best friends, it doesn't take long to reach the number 40. We shut the door and said "no thanks" to any more people. It was wonderful and it was exhausting.

I waited until the baby shower was over before I started sending out thank you cards. I bought a package of 50 cards and ran out. I bought a package of 20 and ran out again. There were over 70 thank you cards sitting on my portable dishwasher ("Honey, I'm pregnant. We're buying a dishwasher") that I needed to write in, stuff into envelopes with photos, and deliver. Proof of post-partum insanity is the fact that I felt the need to deliver each card in person.

Every day I looked at those thank you cards, I felt the pressure mounting. Did the people who dropped off gifts think that we weren't thankful? Words cannot express the tension that I felt in completing this task. These 70-some envelopes had become my nemesis. I would not let them get the best of me.

It took 6 weeks to deliver them all. We drove to people's doorsteps. We tucked them into screen doors. We stopped in for visits when people were home. I felt it was the least we could do to show our appreciation for all of the generosity.

If I ever receive another card from the mother of a newborn, I will now understand the scope of this gesture and appreciate it even more. After some discussion with other new moms, I learned that I was not alone in this thank-you-card quicksand. As usual, when you share your challenges with friends, you will find that you are never alone.

The intention of gift-givers is not to stress out the new mom. This is a post I will re-read if and when I have another baby. I will try to keep things simpler. I am, and always have been, my own worst enemy.