on hormones and such

I sometimes forget how out of whack my hormones are until I'm faced with a perfectly dull situation that results in an uncontrollable emotional fit. For instance, I'm reading a wonderfully funny book, Waiting for Birdie by Catherine Newman, about a mother of a three-year-old who is expecting her second child (sound familiar?) Anyway, I was reading the part where she is about to deliver her new baby and is reminiscing about her first delivery:

"When Ben was born, Michael, in a clueless fit of optimism, had brought his guitar to the hospital - you know, in case we felt like singing during the birth..."

While this is surely an amusing image for most people, it completely pushed me over the edge. I started laughing out loud, something I rarely do, and morphed into an all out sobbing fit. I think the humor of that situation combined with my own musings on Nate's delivery and the impending one just made me go completely bonkers. Thad was looking at me with this concerned, baffled look, not knowing what to do with me. Poor guy, it's hard enough to know what's going on inside my head on a typical day, I must be a complete mystery right now.

One baby-related theme that keeps coming up - in this book, in conversations with friends, in those unhelpful weekly emails I get about the baby's progress - is that things with the second child are usually less stressful because the parents are more laid back.For instance, numerous people have said that the second time, they were far less concerned that their baby was breathing and wouldn't repeatedly check to make sure everything was okay while the baby was sleeping. While the idea of this next stage being easier than Nate's earliest days, I'm also a little disconcerted. I don't think I've ever felt the urge to check to make sure Nate's still alive while sleeping. The only time I can remember checking on Nate while he slept was the night after he fell on his head. Other than that I can't think of any possible reason I would want to enter his room while he's asleep, unless I wanted to wake him. All the stories about how people are more relaxed with the second kid seem to fit with how we reacted (mostly) with Nate. Does this mean that we're going to unintentionally neglect our new baby? I mean, could we be too laid back? I'm sure she'll survive, and perhaps I've blocked out the baby-induced manic behavior. All I know is that I'm not planning on double-checking on the baby's breathing status unless she has some sort of respiratory problem!