Wow, hi everyone. Sorry it's been so long since my last post, but well, ya know, I had a baby and all. He is about a month and a half old now and he is the light of our lives. We are truly blessed.
I've had a lot of time to think lately, especially during those middle of the night feedings. In between staring at this precious little wonder who is looking up at me with sleepy eyes my mind drifts to all the things I've learned very quickly in the short time he's been in our world.
My pregnancy was wonderful, despite all my determination to constantly find something to worry about. I have an excellent doctor and she didn't take any of my concerns frivolously; I had excellent care the entire time. And looking back, I enjoyed being pregnant-- people are so nice to pregnant women! There's so much excitement and anticipation! But in all those months of counting down the weeks before his arrival, I somehow managed to forget that after the pregnancy, this tiny human would be here and my life would totally change forever.
The first lesson came the day after his birth--> breastfeeding is hard. I am so in awe of all of the mommies in the world who stick with it and are successful at it. We gave it our best shot, and I'll spare all of the details here, but when we ultimately made the family decision to switch to formula it was not easy. I grieved it. I felt like a failure. I wanted to provide my baby with the best nutrition that he could possibly receive, and it's a not an easy decision to make. You can't turn back once you decide to stop breastfeeding. Now, I am happy with my choice. Bottle feeding works for us, and I am confident that I did the right thing for baby, but I wasn't prepared for roller coaster of feelings that came with it. Lesson learned: Go with my gut, I am in charge.
When we first came home from the hospital, we had a lot of help. I am blessed to have retired parents who are ready and able to come and stay with us at a moment's notice. Having them around to take care of the house, the dogs, and cook for us those first few days was perfect. We sent them home after a week and a half, ready to solo on our new role as parents. But then, a funny thing happened. That old thing called sleep deprivation. The body can only go so long running on "new baby excitement". It didn't take long for both of us to realize- we are exhausted, and this is hard! They don't show you all the sleepless nights on those diaper commercials. Here we are, overjoyed to have our son home and healthy and safe, but all we can think about is catching "just 10 more minutes" of sleep. Both of us have worked night shift, so I guess maybe I thought I would be prepared for getting up at all hours of the night. Or maybe I just never thought past the 40 weeks of pregnancy to gear up for the challenge. Regardless, I started to obsess about sleep- baby's and ours. What time did he wake up? How long did he sleep this time? Will he sleep after he finishes this bottle? Did he just wake up or just coo? My mind and my body were beat, and I really wanted my mom to come back and help, but aren't mommies supposed to "suck it up" and do this? The little voice on my shoulder wanted me to be tough, hang in there, just keep going-- but eventually I had to get past that and realize it is ok to accept help when it's offered. My mom came back and she loved taking the early morning feeding so we could go back to bed for an hour or so. What a Godsend. It only took a couple of weeks for baby to get the hang of sleeping at night and for longer periods of time, so our exhaustion did pass. And we got better at giving each other breaks-- we sent each other off to take naps and at night only one of us at a time got up with the baby at night instead of both of us running to get the bottle or tend to the dogs while the other got the baby and changed the diaper. Lesson learned: Parenthood is hard, take all the help that is offered. And then ask for more.
On a lighter side, there are funny things nobody told me that we figured out as well. It turns out that babies like to scare their parents by crossing their eyes. Yep, just as we would coo at our little one and tell him how precious he is he would creep us out totally by intently trying to stare at his nose. We both would jump and say "ooh, quit that!" and I added it to my (very long) list of things to ask the Pediatrician about. It's normal, it goes away. Lesson learned: babies have a sense of humor.
I also learned that little boys are dangerous when their diapers are off. I always knew you had to be quick with the diaper changes so that you aren't squirted with urine in between the dirty one and the fresh one, but I had no idea how wrong the word "squirt" is in this context. It's more like "firehose". Our son can manage to soak his outfit, his body, and still arc a stream of water back over his head and onto the furniture and floor in the 0.03 seconds it takes me to switch out diapers. Lesson learned: cover it up, aim it down, hurry up-- I don't really know, still working on this one.
Oh, there's been many more adventures in our house. There was the unfortunate incident that involved sharp little baby fingernails and equally sharp baby clippers that resulted in blood, sweat and tears. Mine and his. And we have seen spit up come flying from my baby's mouth straight down into the cracks of our brand new leather furniture just past where I can reach with the rag with sharp-shooter precision. And it only took us I don't know how many nights to figure out that unless we swaddle him good and tight, he will suddenly JUMP in his sleep with arms and legs flailing and then wake up immediately. Lessons learned: follow his lead, try again, better luck next time.
But most of all, I've learned what people did tell me about but I didn't understand it until now- that there is a love for our baby that I cannot describe. It is so powerful that it makes me long for him to wake up from his naps so I can hold him again. It makes tears run down my face when he smiles at me. It makes me want to show him off to every passing body in the grocery store. He's only been here for a few short weeks, but he's made a lifetime of difference in me. What an amazing gift.
All things Olive today:
Sunshine
The Mama Duck that came back to our house again this year
Baby smell
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