Agoraphobia is what you get after you come home with you first baby… “an extreme fear of public and/or unfamiliar places. The sufferer may become confined to her home, experiencing difficulty traveling from this “safe place.” I know mothers who did not leave their homes for 5 months. When I was pregnant I used to think that was just CRAZY. Well… call me crazy…

The last month of my pregnancy I spent in front of the TV watching TLC reality show “Bringing Home The Baby” like it was my job. I watched countless episodes showing two happy parents putting their baby in the car seat and going home with the new bundle of joy… la-di-da. And now I know why Leila will never be on this show. Where were the TLC cameras when we put Leila into her car seat and she SCREAMED like an ambulance siren all the way home? A screaming baby + hormonal new mother= Britney Spears Moment. I remember thinking OMG! I will never judge Britney again! All I wanted to do was pull my baby out of that evil contraption and hold her in my arms. She screamed, I cried and it was NOT a Kodak moment.

A few weeks later we made an attempt to go to Target. Big mistake. Leila slept all the way to the store but the minute we decided to go home she changed her mind and started crying inconsolably. I gave her the boob, I rocked her, I talked to her, I even promised her a pony if she would only stop crying. Nothing worked and, lets just say, I had another hormonal episode. Finally Dennis told me to get out of the car and take a walk. I did. I walked around the car and kept looking at Leila’s red face with huge tears pouring down - it was like watching a silent horror movie. The next time you go to Target and see a crying woman pacing around the car in the parking lot… be kind, she probably just gave birth to a baby who has unreasonable fear of CAR SEATS! 3 minutes later Leila was out like a light bulb and did not wake up all the way home. I, on the other hand, was sobbing for the rest of the day and the image of her crying in that chair is forever burned in my memory. Leila’s college fund is now officially reassigned to “mommy’s therapy”.

Thank goodness for the leftover Vicodin pills (courtesy of my emergency c-section) I dared to leave the house with Leila a few more times. It is definitely getting better and I have hope that one day I will be able to resume an almost normal social life. But the days of just grabing my purse and leaving whenever I please are definitely over.