Dogs

Aaron and I were dog parents before becoming kid parents. In fact, we met walking our dogs on Capitol Hill. As a result, we have every confidence that we know our dogs and that we can handle being parents of all three of our babies with no problems whatsoever. We may be deluding ourselves.

Today is the first day I'm home alone with all three. My friend -- and our dog walker -- Bryce has repeatedly offered to keep the dogs for a couple of weeks while we get settled into this kid parenting thing, and she smiles wonderingly (and knowingly) every time I decline. My reasoning is that I want my family to be together as much as possible during this time. Plus, how hard can it be to take care of all three?

I'm finding out.

At this point, the dogs have interacted with Emelia enough that they seem comfortable, and I've had no reason to be concerned about them, so far. Nora has been curious and clingy, but not in a worrisome way. Junebug sniffs around, but mostly she seems indifferent. Emelia, though too young at three weeks to really process her relationship with the dogs, doesn't seem to mind their attentions. They are all behaving exactly as I'd envisioned. What I hadn't really given much thought to in my vision, though, was me.

Having given birth a mere three weeks ago, I'm not entirely at 100 percent. Add to that the lack of sleep that comes with being a new parent AND a cold, and let's just say I'm a tad less than fresh. I'm still a week away from being allowed to lift more than ten pounds (according to my hospital discharge orders), which means I can't lift our 23 pound stroller. Whenever I go for a walk, I have to put Emelia in a sling and carry her. No problem. Until you add dogs to the equation. The walking part was easy. The dogs pulled this way and that a little, but I could handle it. The part I couldn't handle, though, was scooping poop.

Living in a city comes with a variety of social responsibilities, which includes cleaning up after your dogs. You do it and you get used to it. It's really a very small price to pay for the loving companionship of a dog, and you get really good at doing it without any mess or fuss. It becomes second nature. But strap a baby to your chest and add weak stomach muscles (you try stretching your stomach muscles around a bowling ball for a few months!) and overextended leg muscles (apparently, to birth a baby, you have to put your knees behind your head during contractions in order to get any leverage at all -- after three hours in this position, leg muscles tend to get a little sore), and the process isn't as easy. Suffice it to say, I re-injured my right leg on our walk this morning.

This provokes a dilemma. If I can't pick up after the dogs, I'm pretty useless on a walk. Either I live with the injury and run the risk of doing further damage or I call Bryce and take her up on her offer to take the dogs. It seems stupid and pig-headed to do the former, but doing the latter would be to admit that I can't handle all of my parenting responsibilities (yet). This seems like a no-brainer, but I haven't yet made up my mind what to do. I'm hoping that a brilliant third option will occur to me . . . .