The New Mommy Smell

Everyone who loves babies talks about that beautiful "new baby" smell...powdery and warm and supposedly "all natural".  Ah yes, the new baby smell gets a lot of attention. Your baby is taken out of your arms and passed around to all the grandmas and grandpas and well wishers and occasionally some hospital passerby that everyone thinks the other people know and the very first thing you hear is that tell-tale inhalation of your  tiny baby's head like it is a tube of Afrin nasal spray. I swear, you get somebody big enough and one day, a baby will disappear up his nostril just so he can keep smelling that new baby. (Try explaining that to Hospital Security.)
No one ever talks about that New Mommy Smell. Like all less-than-desirable subjects, I think people suppose that if the subject is avoided it will go away.  I'm here to tell you it won't. 
Sleep deprivation has a number of side effects...one of them is the loss of the ability to find your way to a shower after that sweet smelling bundle comes home. Maybe it's the bleary eyes that can not focus on anything that doesn't resemble a swaddled blue or pink capped Lump in the dimly lit room. ( Let's just admit, if only to ourselves, that it's a good thing cats don't wear hats.)
Those moms who have been blessed with boys know relatively early in the new adventure of parenthood what pee tastes like after a two am diaper change while trying to find the edge of the diaper tabs in the dark.  (And isn't it funny when you locate them and pull on them that they rip right off the diaper itself and you have to start the diapering process all over again?) Because of the tiredness, it doesn't dawn on you while you're rinsing with Listerine that the pee made it into your hair and onto your nursing shirt. And after fumbling with baby snaps and diaper cream we just can't make it to the dresser to pull out a clean nightshirt.  No, we just throw a towel over the wet spot on the bed and drop right in.
So, you've made it to daylight...an "appropriate" time to groom yourself when there is a knock at the door.  Enter all the baby sniffers who couldn't make it to the hospital. (And isn't that the Roto-Rooter man who's only connection to your baby is that your husband thought those tiny diapers were flushable as long as no one was looking?) Once again, the baby is passed around but you're not even thinking about getting cleaned up.  Now, you're making sure there's enough hand sanitizer to go around, that no one's been sick in the last two weeks and that no one's been on any international flights to tuberculosis-prone countries.
Once they leave, you realize you haven't eaten and this is also a new process to learn-especially if you're breastfeeding.  Learning to prepare and eat food with one hand (not always the hand you're used to) is also an adventure.  (Try spreading peanut butter on soft bread with one hand-I dare you.) No matter what you are making or eating, some of it IS going to land on your newly baptized nursing shirt.  (And your once discriminating tastes will no longer apply here...you don't mind picking the food off your shirt and popping it down the hatch.) You may be amazed to find that you have created a whole new kind of tye-dye...yellow mustard, tomato soup, egg yolk, mayonnaise...and let's not forget that the majority of your shirt will be awash in spit-up.  Spit-up on the shoulder is a sure bet that it's also in your hair somewhere.  Again, we give it no thought, so enamored are we of this new baby.
About the third day, Dad goes back to work and the visitors stop coming.  If you're lucky, a new Grandma comes over.  Again, the sniffing begins...only this time, there's a funny look on her face (and she ain't holding the baby yet).
At long last, it is another mom who recognizes the New Mommy Smell and though it may have been thirty years ago for her, she realizes no one ever mentioned  it to her either.  The only thing she recalls are the words uttered by her own mother-the words she speaks to you now without letting on that you reak: "Grandma's here, dear.  Why don't you treat yourself to a shower and a nap?"
Your hormonally, tear streaked face brightens at the mere thought of fresh hot water and a few moments to yourself knowing your baby is safe in Grandma's arms.
And thus, the New Mommy Smell is gone...for at least another two days. :)