15 weeks: oil spill

I find the magazines in the lactation room interesting. One in particular is called Working Mother. In between advice about scoring promotions at work, there seems to always be at least one article about why mothers should not feel guilty about working. To my knowledge there is no magazine called Working Father. And if there were, I doubt any of the articles would be about guilt.

Aren’t we peculiar?

When I was pregnant, I was frequently asked, “Are you going back to work?” I hated being asked this question. Hated it. On one hand, I think it’s tremendous that I have the option. My grandfather, Pappaw, rigidly believed that a woman’s place was in the home. Mammaw was a school teacher and married Pappaw late in her life by the standards of that time. When they married, Mammaw quit her career and never went back, per Pappaw’s wishes. I don’t mean to make Pappaw sound like a tyrant. “Hard ass,” is probably more appropriate. And Mammaw could have said Screw you and kept teaching. But she wanted to married. For Mammaw, and many women in her time, being a “working mother,” was not an option.

My other grandparents were poor. Grandma and Grandpa H were farmers. When money finally got too tight, they sold the farm and moved to town. Grandpa repaired machines in a bread factory; Grandma worked as a seamstress at a department store. Not going back to work was not an option for Grandma H: They needed the money.

I love that I have choices; but I am also keenly aware of how choice precedes judgment. I don’t know that Mammaw or Grandma H were judged for their work/stay-at-home-ness, because they didn’t really have a choice. And no one ever asked my husband, “Are you going back to work?” when I was pregnant. Although there are plenty of stay-at-home dads, it isn’t common (not around these parts, anyway), so it doesn’t usually appear in a list of options. No choice? No guilt. No problem. No Working Father magazine.

But every time someone asked me, “Are you going back to work?” I wondered how they felt about my answer. Why else would they have asked? For that matter, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about my answer, either. Yes. We have financial goals. We’d like a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood. My salary can expedite this process. And truthfully, as much as I miss my baby, there is a certain satisfaction I get from work. I analyze things that need analyzing at work. I solve problems at work. I get praise at work. Sure, I can analyze things at home; and I can solve problems. I can analyze the shiz out of our tiny, old-house closet situation. I can solve our tiny, old-house closet situation. And maybe even someone will come along and say, “Holy shiz, P. Look at what you have done with these tiny, old-house closets!” But it’s not quite the same.

(For the record, you should see what I recently accomplished in our freezer.)

But I miss my baby. And life is more difficult. I have analyzed this, also. Solution pending.

I can tell you that the way I spend my time is much different. I don’t really watch TV anymore. I don’t hang out on facebook. I don’t read People.com. The time I get with Fisher… is spent with Fisher. Fisher doesn’t give a crap about watching Parks and Recreation (which is unfortunate, because that is the best show ever).

I also eat less in the evenings (usually). All the time I spend bouncing around with baby, plus my highly structured day (which entails walks to the lactation room in another building) = my Big Girl Pants are getting a little too big. This pleases me. I know I am supposed to say that the only reason I work out is to feel good, be healthy, and have more energy. Those are all very important. But I would also like to wear smaller pants without muffin tops and back rolls.

Finally, my hair is falling out. I was told I would get wonderful pregnancy hair. I never really noticed much of a difference, other than I could go an extra day without washing it without looking like a sea gull in an oil spill. And I was told this wonderful pregnancy hair would then start falling out after having my baby. Three months later, it is coming out in ropes in the shower. Fisher constantly has a few strands braided around his fingers. And now that my old hair is coming back, I realize, damn, I did have great pregnancy hair.

[Fisher is waking. I do not have time to edit. Please don't judge.]

 

14 weeks: tunnels and bridges

A lot to say, and yet I don’t really feel like saying any of it. I went to work–full time (except for a partial day worked from home on Friday). The lactation room organizer lady got me three reserved spots in a neighboring building’s lactation room. It’s a bit of a hike, but it doesn’t smell like explosive diarrhea, and I don’t have to pad the seat with paper towels before I sit down. In fact, it has a couch, a sink, a mirror (so I don’t return to my desk with my shirt tucked into my bra) and a whole bunch of magazines, ranging in dates from 2003 to 2010.

So three times a day, I haul my junk across the way and settle in with my whirring pump and a magazine. Including travel and clean up, the whole process takes me 40 minutes. That’s a 40 minute break 3 times a day. 2 hours. If I didn’t accomplish so much so regularly outside of those 40 minute sessions, I might feel a little guilty (I don’t take a lunch break, anymore, however.). I store my son’s delicious and nutritious meals in a little black canvas bag in the community refrigerator under threat of the “refrigerator nazi.”

The refrigerator nazi is someone who initiated a kitchenette cleaning schedule and protocol that includes emptying the refrigerator and freezer of their contents at exactly 2:00 every Friday. If it isn’t out of the fridge by 2:00 on Friday, you will find it either congealing on the counter or souring in the trashcan. What’s that you say? You work until 5:00? Whatever. Government is no place for common sense. Get it out by 2:00. This is why my black canvas bag full of my son’s delicious and nutritious meals bears a yellow sign that reads “PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THIS OUT ON THE COUNTER!” The bag is discreetly official looking. Maybe they’ll think it’s an organ, like I travel with one kidney in a bag.

It’s been a rough week. There have been tears. Lots of cracks in the concrete. Because of our schedules, I take Fisher to my parents in the morning before work, and I pick him up after work. I also returned to my 5 a.m. gym time (which I like). Between gym, dropping off, pumping 3 times, picking up, feeding self and others… I feel like I need a city planning degree, like the space of 24 hours requires intricate systems of tunnels and bridges. I lay out 3 sets of clothes before I go to bed each night: gym clothes, work clothes, Fisher’s clothes.

And all of this has really highlighted what I am now accepting as inherent gender differences. It would be stupid to say that nothing has changed for Chris. Of course his life has changed. He feels more pressure now than ever to “provide.” But in terms of how the day ticks forward, what he *does* really hasn’t changed much. He still gets up at the same time, goes to work at the same time, goes about his day the same, leaves work and comes home. He goes to band practice at the same time, and gigs on the weekends. And with all the same equipment. Tuesday morning I watched him leave for work carrying: 1) a planner; and 2) his car keys. Thirty minutes later I left with: Fisher’s diaper bag, my breast pump bag, my work notebook & planner, my purse, my lunch (because I no longer take an actual lunch break between 2 hours of pumping, and also because…hello, I gained 50 freaking pounds to have this baby), a mug of coffee, and a 13-pound baby in a 30-pound car seat (Disclaimer: I do not know how much the car seat actually weighs. It feels like it weighs 100 pounds, so I rounded down.). I was running late. I was tired. I was sad. I came unglued. I drove to my parents bawling and cursing my husband’s name. Cursing all that is unfair between men and women and what is expected of us. Cursing that I had to leave my baby all day. I miss him so much.

This is where I say how glad I am that Fisher is staying with my parents right now. I’m not sure how some random lady at daycare would have received my hysterical mess.

So I left my beautiful darling baby boy whom I love more than air in the care of my parents, and I drove to work, still spilling my contents. And I cried off and on at work for a large part of the day. Pitifully analyzing data through an opaque shower curtain of tears.

And then that night, I laid out my day and my insanity to Chris who seemed genuinely surprised, poor fellow. And this is where our genders differ: He didn’t know. He needed telling. A checklist of sorts. What’s that you say? How many bags do you need? What do you need in the bags? What time would you like to transport the bags? Roger that. Ever since then, he helps pack the night before. He even loads all the crap in my car in the mornings before he leaves for work. When I get home in the evenings, he comes out and greets me in the driveway, and helps unload the car. He can’t really fix how much I miss our baby during the day, but co-orchestrating the details helps immeasurably.

I never gave much credit to “gender differences.” I’ve always felt I had a lot of traditionally “masculine” traits — I am not a multi-tasker at all whatsoever. I get irritable when my focus is broken. I like straightforward communication without a lot of hemming and hawing and qualifying. And I’m uncomfortable with too much emotion. Either having a baby made me more feminine or it just highlighted feminine qualities that were already there — being tuned into other people’s needs, care-taking, domesticity. How can you not be a care-taker when the biology of you is geared toward it 24/7? My body makes Fisher’s food, for pete’s sake. He’s a little over 3 months old now, and he’s chubby. He has dimples in his knees and a double chin. When I look at him, it amazes me that he has gotten so big just drinking the milk my body makes. That’s insane. And my body makes more or less milk based on his cues. Also insane. You know what other insane thing I learned from a magazine in the lactation room? That when I kiss Fisher, I pick up pathogens on his skin, and my body creates antibodies for them and then transmits them back to him via my milk. What a wild design!

I’m getting lost in my own thoughts here. What was I saying? I don’t know. Something about shaking my fist at the male-ness of my husband but then realizing it wasn’t really his fault. He just needed to be told. So the female-ness of me piped down for a minute to become a little more male to tell him what the female-ness of me needed him to do…as a male. And he did it, because he’s cool and male-ish. And the world is full of butterflies now who are both male and female and if they choose to (because one should never pressure butterflies) will make pretty little butterfly babies (also known as “caterpillars”).

Jesus Mary and Joseph.

13 weeks: breaking reverie

I’ve not been sleeping well. I can’t stop doing math. I return to work, full-time, Monday, and I can’t stop calculating hours and miles, arranging the geometry of how the days will line up (or not line up). Drop Fisher off at 8 a.m. Pick him up at 5:30 p.m. Arrive home at 6 p.m. Make dinner. Pick up a little. Tend to pets. Tend to self. In bed by 9 or 9:30. How many hours is that? How many bottles? How many diapers? That’s 3 bottles. I’ll need to pump at work 3 times. More importantly: 9.5 hours away from him. 3-4 with him, but 1-2 doing something else. What is this? I get 1-2 hours with my baby every day? How many smiles is that? Does anyone ever curl up in their death bed and think, “Dammit, I wish I’d spent less time with my kids.” It makes my heart hurt. And my head.

The last 2 weeks, I have worked only 2 half-days a week. This was very doable for both my heart and my head. And I only had to pump once.

This is where I prepare nutritious meals for my son while at work:

The building has a “lactation room,” but the schedule is full. I have now prepared bottles for my son while perched carefully on paper towel lined toilets next to women having explosive diarrhea and very smelly craps (which mixes very inappropriately with much-too-strong-perfumes). Wrong. Once back to work full-time, I will do this 3 times a day, and I do not like it. Although breast pumping is not named specifically, I would guess it is frowned upon according to our office’s widely distributed “Cubicle Etiquette” guidelines.

I am buzzing with anxiety.

My dreams have ramped up considerably. Two nights ago, I dreamed that my life became absolutely chaotic. I was leaping out of bed to run errands (in the mountains, no less) at 2:00 in the morning. I had carried too many bags, and they bulged. I’d drop one, spill contents, try to pick up, spill other contents, try to pick those up, spill others… I tried to get a haircut in the middle of my spilled bags, and mean girls from high school heckled me. In the same dream, I started to scramble for refuge as the world was coming to an end.

Fisher has been sleeping in his bassinet at my bedside. The last few nights, I wake up to feed him and then pull him in bed with me. If I can’t be with him during the day, can I at least sleep with his sweet face next to mine at night? (Breaking reverie: Fisher farts in his sleep. This kid farts more than anyone I know.)

I’m worried about not making gym time and my body swelling out of its waistbands and then falling to pieces. Once back to work, I can only go at 5 a.m. *Could* I go in the evenings? Yes. But if I go in the evenings, take that 2 hours of time with my Baby and whittle it down to 30 minutes. Won’t do. At least if I go at 5 a.m. he’ll just be sleeping (and farting).

In other news, my aunt died last week. It’s one of those things where we say, “Oh, it was such a struggle. Such a fight, this cancer was. The toll it took. Her release was a blessing.” But I’m not sure anyone says the toll was a blessing. Maybe everything is just what it is, bare bones, and you plug into it what you choose — blessings, curses, etc. My mother would tell me it is the same with going back to work full time.  Make of it what you choose. “Be a Good finder,” she would say. Bloom where you grow.

Okay. But I miss my baby already.

11.5 weeks: wolf singer

I am listening to Fisher squall to his daddy in the other room. I am learning to be hands-off. All of my control issues multiplied by 1,000 the day Fisher was born. I go back to work tomorrow and must accept that while I am on the other side of town, someone will be holding my child and soothing my child and talking to my child differently than I would. And that’s okay, I guess. Someday he will move into the world and learn that it is not populated by clones of his mother.

I hope he can hold his head up by then. I worry that I’m not giving him enough “tummy time.” The kid hates tummy time. And you know what? Me, too. Whoever came up with the 15 minutes/day tummy time rule must have hated babies. He tolerates it for about 60 seconds and then complains passionately. When I roll him over, he is slobber-faced and pissed. And I ask: What would happen if I didn’t make him do tummy time? Would he never learn how to hold his head up? Would he be 16 and droopy necked?

Last night Fisher started cooing. He was sitting in his bouncy seat in the middle of the ottoman at my parents’ house, surrounded by my parents, one of my sisters, her husband, a niece, and chris and i. Cooooo. He pursed his lips and craned his neck, Ahhhoooooo, like howling. The boy is a singer. Or a wolf. Maybe he is both.

Fisher barfed at the gym last Friday. Technically, he was in the gym nursery. Either way, barfing is relatively expected. The nursery attendant came and found me to let me know that he seriously projectile blew chunks (I’m paraphrasing.). When I got to the nursery, they were trying to clean it up–an impressively wide arc of white splotches on the carpet. I felt bad but also wish I’d seen it. I also felt a little confused. Was I supposed to offer to clean it up? What is the etiquette in such cases? He was fine, by the way. Just got a little worked up, I guess.

Fisher is still squalling. I believe I have fulfilled my hands-off exercise.

11 weeks: elbow in the rib

My aunt is dying. She’s too young to die, and my cousins are too young to lose their parents (They already lost their father several years ago.); but here we are, nonetheless. I don’t know what age dying or losing your parents becomes appropriate, so maybe it’s a silly thing to say. I didn’t think my aunt would ever meet my son, but she did. For better or worse, this soft-spoken, southern belle beauty queen has kept a herculean grip on life. For the last couple of months she has been given weeks, days, hours… in and out of consciousness, in and out of horrible pain. Her body is frighteningly frail and we can’t imagine how she is still here, but she is.

Tonight, the social worker at hospice said they’ve observed that mothers tend to hang on longer than other patients–they wait until they feel sure their kids are going to be okay. I understand that now. I am treating myself more carefully these days, worried that if something happened to me, no one would be able to care for Fisher the way I could. I have started stocking the freezer with my breast milk. It’s for my return to work, but it’s also nice to know that if something happened to me he could still have my milk for a while.

I know this is morose.

My aunt–the suffering is the hardest to observe. I come from a religious family, and it’s been asked more than once, Why the suffering? Where is the mercy? I don’t know the answer. I don’t buy the “punishment for the sins of Adam and Eve” business. I don’t believe in a brutal, dictatorial God. It just doesn’t line up for me intellectually or emotionally. But I also think it’s interesting that birth and death (at least this kind of lingering death) are both painful and violent. Labor for me was primal. Endlessly civilized, I have never been more in tune with my animal self–growling, gnashing teeth, panting, howling–than I was while giving birth. Not to mention the trauma on the baby to jet out of the womb, head first.

It’s like the world exists in 3 tiers: pre-life, life, after-life. A certain amount of force is required to bust through the membranes that separate each tier–layers must be shed. Spirit has to squeeze itself into a physical form at birth and then shed that physical form at death. In between is the chore of keeping physical and spiritual balanced. I don’t know why God didn’t make the process easier. Maybe if it were easier it wouldn’t feel as important and we would treat everything indelicately, learning nothing and trampling through the world as ignorant spirits run amok.

Not good.

And so that is what I have been thinking about. I take my new baby new life to hospice to watch my aunt wrestle her mortality. I often feel like I’m presented with something I’m supposed to pay attention to–like I get a cosmic elbow in the rib. This is one of those times. It seems like I’m supposed to be doing something with this odd spot, an important message to deliver. I just don’t know what it is.

In the meantime, Fisher has started guitar lessons:

2 months: sad sack

Fisher received his vaccines today. I had planned on doing an alternate schedule, leaving out hepatitis B and polio. I read Dr. Sears Vaccine Book, consulted websites that looked authoritative, and channeled into the deep and fluid undercurrents of my genius subconscious. I made notes about the adjusted plan — not wanting to bypass vaccines all together; but not wanting to just swallow the whole package blind, either. And then today, sitting in the pediatrician’s office, I bowed. I really like our pediatrician, and I trust her very much. She wasn’t pushy and was willing to do anything we wanted. But when faced with making real decisions with real consequences, I doubted the validity of my plan. What, I read a book and think I’m an expert?

So. There is that.

Fisher got 3 shots, and he made sounds I’d never heard. I cried, too–partly because of those awful, pained, angry sounds, and partly because I worried about making the wrong decisions for my little fish. The thought of all those chemicals sloshing through his pristine body… ugh. I’ve visited my aunt in hospice almost every day for the past 3 weeks, but today we cannot go, because he was injected with LIVE ROTAVIRUS. A LIVE VIRUS! How could this possibly be a good idea? May I declare a do-over?

He is now sleeping soundly, still in his car seat (although I have unharnessed him since this photo was taken). Look at how sad his little mouth looks.

Post-Vaccine: The only thing missing is his middle finger.

Two days ago, Chris gave Fisher his first bottle. I cried then, too. It was the first time in 2 months that I hadn’t fed him. Technically, I suppose I did actually feed him. It was my milk. But it wasn’t our special nursing time. Chris loved it, and I think felt a little closer to Fisher and more involved. For that, I am glad. But selfishly, small, otherwise lovely steps forward remind me that time is getting away from me. Poop.

Kaya insists on being involved with all of Fisher's care taking.

I’m going to go eat cookies in my sad sack.

8 Weeks: The Fish Hulk

I’ve started at least 3 blog posts since the last one. Each time I get distracted–either by Fisher or my own disinterest in writing (which is not to be misinterpreted as a disinterest in my son. In fact, I find him fascinating.).

[Goal to use a dash and parentheses in one sentence, complete.]

In the last 4 weeks, The Fish has GROWN. He has hulked out of all of his “newborn” clothes and almost all of his 0-3 month clothes. His belly and face are round, and he has doubled his birth weight. He smiles (which makes me cry a little), and he interacts (which makes him endlessly entertaining). He studies faces like they hold secret codes to world domination (I suppose they do, in a way.). He’s become a “social nurser,” all but winking at me when he latches on. And he can go anywhere from 3-6 hours between overnight feedings. His 2-month checkup is Wednesday, and I’m pretty sure our pediatrician is going to conclude the exam by declaring Fisher the most amazing child to ever live.

 

Oh, and Christmas happened. Fisher was less interested in Christmas and more interested in entertaining his fans. He has a lot of fans. When I look back at my 5 nieces and 1 nephew, I think, “How did they ever survive without the constant adoration of a large and doting flock?” Sure, they had admirers. But Fisher was born into a big, grown, extended family, absolutely starving for a baby. When we gather at my parents’ house, he enjoys a never-ending parade of face-makers and chatter-boxing. (Then we come home to our quiet house, and he looks at us as if to say, “You guys are so lame.”

Fisher got some really sweet books that make me cry (Lots of things make me cry: his smiles, his face, his feet, the sounds of his breathing when he’s asleep, his head on my shoulder…)–books about being loved and bringing light and spirit. And my mom knitted him a really cute hoodie. (Another benefit of waiting until I was 37 to have a baby… my mom is retired.)

Also: I ate too many cookies and wondered if Fisher was getting a sugar rush from my breast milk.

Speaking of breast milk. In preparation for the going-back-to-work process, which begins with a gradual upstart in 3 weeks (or is it 2?), I started pumping yesterday. There are a lot of things about this that I don’t like:

1. I don’t like the thought of not being with him all day. Add that to the list of things that make me cry.

2. I don’t like the thought of surrendering my reign over the food monopoly. As difficult as breastfeeding was for the first several weeks (It hurt, and it made me tired, because he ate every 2 hours around the clock.), it’s a special time that only I can share with him. Plus, what if food is my only really selling point? What if once he can get that from any random jacko (who happens to have a bottle of my breast milk) he realizes his mom isn’t all that great? What if he even starts preferring the bottles and the random jackos?

3. Pumping hurts.

I had imagined pumping would be easier than nursing, that it would be more comfortable, and the process would be faster. Not so. Yesterday, I snapped together all the parts to a very shnazzy pump I inherited from my friend, Cassie. I geared up and hit go. Nothing much was happening. The pump was pumping, but I wasn’t feeling much, and nothing was coming out. So I turned up the level. Still nothing. So I turned up the level again. Repeat… until I was at the maximum Level 10 suckage and still nothing. Still hooked up, I examined the working pump and noticed just a very slight deviation in how one piece had snapped together. CLICK. I snapped it into place, and…………. HOLY MOTHER OF HELL’S BELLS. The full force of Level 10 suckage nearly ripped my boob clean off my chest. It was ugly, and the experience has left me wondering:

UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS WOULD ANY WOMAN EVER NEED F’ING LEVEL 10?

At any rate, after 30 minutes, I had expressed a whopping 3-4 ounces of milk, which I then labeled and put in the refrigerator between my coffee creamer and Chris’s weird not-butter butter (If it’s not butter, what is it?). This morning, I hitched both boobs to the pump wagon and sat very still for 20 minutes at a closer-to-comfortable Level 3. The benefit of double pumping is reduced time, and increased entertainment. Have you ever been to a turtle race? My right boob won.

In other news, I have given up on gdiapers. I love them in concept. Also, they are very cute. However, Fisher is a frequent pooper, and frankly, changing the inserts (and the liners, because 9 times out of 10, the liner gets mucked up) was inconvenient. Not to mention, my boy’s round belly never looked very comfortable cinched by the industrial strength elastic of the gpant waist.

To make myself feel better, I tried Natural Baby Care diapers, which are biodegradable. But they’re like diapering with construction paper; and although they don’t seem to leak any more frequently than any other diaper, when they leaked, they REALLY leaked.

I have settled on Earth’s Best diapers. I’m not sure Mama Earth would agree they are the best, and to her I bow humbly and apologize.

4 Weeks: Pee on me thrice…

I’ve not been writing. Not a lick. I thought maternity leave would entail wide swaths of “down time.” I even wondered if a fire would light and I would finish a complete rewrite in 3 months.

Funny.

Not only does everything take at least an hour longer to do (I’ve learned I can accomplish no more than 2 outings a day. Going to the gym and the grocery store eats up at least 6 hours after factoring in feeding, prepping, and transit.)

Although Fisher has gained good, healthy weight, and I no longer have to make him eat every 2 hours…he still eats every 2 hours, for the most part. His belly is equipped with a timer, and it goes off in perfect 2 hour increments (regardless of whether the last feeding took 20 minutes or 45 minutes). Unfortunately, he is not so regimented with his sleep. Sometimes he’s into it (sleep); sometimes he’s not. Sometimes he sleeps during the day. Sometimes he sleeps during the night. Sometimes he sleeps during both. Sometimes he sleeps during neither. I’ve tried to identify some kind of pattern:

–If I keep him more awake during the day, will he sleep better at night? Not really.

–If he sleeps more during the day, will he sleep better at night? No.

–If we put him in his sleep sack earlier, will he sleep better at night? Nope.

–If I sing to him, play the guitar to him, read to him, circle his legs like bicycle pedals, blow into his right ear, walk around, rock back and forth, stand still, hop up and down, eat cheese, don’t eat cheese, whisper, cry, turn off all the lights, turn on all the lights, plead emotionally, feign nonchalance…. will he sleep better at night? The answer is no.

I know that I can handle pretty much anything–crying, fussing, marathon nursing sessions–in the daylight. But once the sun goes down, I lose my marbles. Circadian rhythms are diligent little habit creatures. I just want to sleep, dear beautiful child.

At some point today, I will read anything I can find about helping babies sleep. I don’t believe in “crying it out,” not at this age, anyway. I will also read anything I can find about helping babies sleep in their own sleep space. Fisher will spend an hour, tops, sleeping separately in his bassinet. Otherwise, the best sleep we get out of him is when he is curled up on one of our chests. (And anyone who lectures me on how unsafe that is will get my middle finger–I might even stick it in your eye.) I don’t expect him to still be sleeping on our chests when he is 16. If he is, we will have far greater problems than sleep deprivation.

So… sleep deprivation and a relentless feeding schedule have rendered me kind of wordless. Although, that’s only part of it. I also just don’t care about writing. I’m bonkers for my son, and despite how hard it sometimes feels, I’ve never loved doing anything more than I love hanging out with my squalling baby boy who peed on me 3 times in one diaper change yesterday. (Pee on me once, shame on you. Pee on me twice, shame on me. Pee on me thrice…) I had a recent thought… what if I abandoned writing all together? What if I put all my manuscripts in a box, taped it up, and left it in the basement? It’s not that I spend a lot of time working on things now; but I spend a lot of brain space thinking about things and aspiring. Ambition is mentally exhausting. Who would I be if I let it all go? I may have never published a word of anything, but the expectation/fantasy of it has always been self-defining. I really think my very psyche would change if I were to shut that door.

Not a depressing thought. Kind of liberating, really. I might have a lot more time and energy to enjoy the here and now. I am sorely lacking in here and now-ness.

It’s not hard to step out of self when your entire existence has suddenly amounted to solely what you can provide for another. I am:

milk,

solace, and

clean buns.

Most people say that Fisher looks completely like Chris. So even when I look into his face, I don’t necessarily see myself. He doesn’t even have my name. None of this bothers me nearly as much as I thought it would. (Except I do wish I could see myself more in him. It seems like after all the work I put into bringing him into the world, I should be able to see miniature versions of my own features, at the very least.) If nothing else, I think I understand my own mother a bit better.

I don’t know where I’m going with this train of thought. I’m tired. Fisher needs to eat again. And I need to gaze in wonder at his sweet face. Dogs and babies have the purest expressions in existence, I am convinced.

I’ll end by announcing we survived Thanksgiving and lots of relatives and lots of hands-on-my-baby. Chris and I have become unapologetic hand-washing nazis. In fact, Chris has decided he is also going to start telling people to wash their faces, too.

2 Weeks: It’s a slow-go, but it’s a go.

Fisher turned 2 weeks old yesterday. We celebrated with breast milk shots and diapers filled with weirdly orange poo. This morning we are continuing the celebration with Fisher’s first exposure to Ingrid Michaelson. Chris has already exposed him to Sebastian Bach and old Skid Row videos, so I’m hoping it’s not too late for reeducation.

I hope I’m not jinxing anything by saying this, but it seems Fisher has finally acclimated to day vs. night. In fact, he can sleep up to 3 hours at a time between overnight feedings. He doesn’t always; but he can. Last night, he actually slept for 4 hours. I feel guilty about this, because it was an accident. I fed him at 3 a.m., and he wouldn’t settle down afterward. I refused to believe he was still hungry, and my brain was splitting, so at 3:30 I prodded Chris awake with this simple plea: “Help me,” at which point he took Fisher downstairs for taming (probably more Skid Row videos). Next thing, I woke up to see 7:22 on the clock.

It was a very confusing moment. He’s never slept that long. I’ve never gone that long without feeding him. Naturally, I assumed something horrible had happened, so I flung back the covers and ran downstairs to check that both my husband and my baby were still breathing. They were. Peacefully. But I still felt/feel guilty.

Thursday Fisher had his 2 week wellness exam. He has surpassed his birth weight and now measures in at a whopping 6 lbs 1.5 oz; and his jaundice is gone, so we didn’t have to do anymore heel poking, which makes me happy. While we were waiting for our appointment, parents came in with their wheelchair-bound toddler, her head held stabilized by a brace. She had no speech. They were clearly regulars, because everyone greeted them with familiarity. I thought about how much Fisher’s heel pokes hurt my heart and decided I had absolutely no concept of just how much a heart can hurt. I smiled at the parents and hoped it wasn’t too trite a gesture.

We’re continuing to get to know this little person who wiggles and crosses his eyes involuntarily. For instance, we know that he hates baths. He also does not like to sleep alone, which is why the bassinet sitting beside our bed has become kind of a joke–a place to hang the burb rag and put my nursing pads at 2 a.m. We suspect he will spend a lifetime with crazy hair. So far he seems to share a lot of facial characteristics with Chris. But I’m afraid he may have inherited my hair. Sorry, kid. He likes it when we sing to him. And so far, I think he likes Ingrid Michaelson. He also seems to listen to Skid Row and That Metal Show attentively, so he has diverse musical tastes already.

We know that if we don’t cover his bits when we change his diaper he has an 85% chance of peeing on his own face.

Also, he loves his fingers. He spends a lot of time wiggling them, waving them through the air like he is conducting symphonies, and then, when he’s tired of that, he just sucks on them or sticks them in his eyes. Please note, Fisher does not like to wear hats indoors. He will gladly wear them when we are out and about, but please use manners and take the hat off once inside.

In other news, I returned to the gym for the first time yesterday. It was good, but it was hard. Everything was hard, especially ab crunches. All of my sets were abbreviated and lightened, and I was hyper-aware of how the dough in my mid-section jiggled when I walked hills on the treadmill. I gained 50 pounds in my pregnancy. 20 pounds of that came off automatically in the first week. This leaves me with 30 pounds that apparently, I will have to actually DO something intentional to lose.

I’m feeling better–closer to normal. I still get “lost” in the day, never exactly sure what I’m supposed to be doing or when. Breastfeeding hurts on the left side and does not feel as peaceful as I expected it would. I didn’t anticipate how trapped I would feel by it, periodically. I can’t move around while he’s latched on. So I just sit. And my entire schedule revolves around when my boobs need to be available. I haven’t dared to feed in public yet. Maybe once I do that, I feel a little more free to roam. But we’ve successfully maneuvered a few solo outings, and that’s empowering. It’s a slow-go, but it’s a go.

Time to feed the fish again.

10 Days: We are astronauts.

Chris went back to work this morning. Since Friday, November 4, we’ve been burrowed into a safe, warm, sleepless hole, cooing over our new family configuration. The real world will not wait.

I’ve barely watched the news. It makes me too anxious. How can I protect my child in the world I see on the news? How many times has Penn State come on the TV while I’m nursing my newborn son? It’s too much.

Plus, the world is germy. It’s riddled with toxins and infection. The day after we left the hospital, we had to take Fisher to the doctor to have his weight and jaundice checked. We walked into the office and found it crowded with sneezing, sniveling, sputtering little kids running around with dirty, unwashed hands, eyeballing our baby. Their parents coughed and smelled like smoke. I leaned into Chris and whispered, “If anybody tries to touch our baby, I’ll go ape shit.” We left the waiting room and navigated our way to the exam through hallways harboring land mines of sickness. We left with PTSD.

I’ve been dreading Chris’s return to work almost as much as I dread my own return to work. (Who will protect my child while I’m gone?) This is such a weird space. I know part of it is just the ripple of sleep deprivation–that makes me feel anxious and scattered. But aside from that, there is no “normal.” There is no routine. There are expectations, but I haven’t figured out what they are, yet, other than the obvious. Time lacks logical increments, just rolling between feedings. Even the breastfeeding log marks a day as midnight to midnight. So it all feels like floating. We are astronauts.