Newborns

6 weeks old.

| Jade SV

I should be sleeping. I should always being sleeping, apparently, and I’m tired of this command/objective/goal hanging over me every time the boy drifts off into his gorgeous slumber. (Nothing quieter than a house in which a baby is sleeping.) It’s true that the failure to nap can leave me ragged and here I am writing about it again but I’m also just tired of the whole thing. It’s all anyone ever warned me about, and it’s the first question people ask, and aren’t there other things to talk about, be warned about, strive for?

I’ve had a low lying unease these last few days, and I think now it’s because the brand-newness is wearing off and I’m hearing the slight whir of routine. I don’t want the dazzle to go but it’s already going and I hate it. Yesterday I cared for the boy all day. I mothered. I fed and rocked and burped and walked and smiled, even, but it was more like work than like discovery and I know, I do know, this is fine and what’s going to happen some days but I’m still sad to be leaving those first early weeks. They were a shock yes, but they were also tremendously exciting. Every damn thing was a monumental achievement. Now the boy is crying more, and I do what I can, and I walk to the park, and I shift from shoulder to arm, but it’s not necessarily a thrill and sometimes (often) I’m not sure what to do and I have to remind myself of the simple fact that babies cry sometimes without us knowing why,

There’s a shift happening. We’re waiting for this growth spurt everyone talks about. B. thinks we’re on the edge of it. I don’t know. The boy eats and sleeps. And also, there’s my body.  The initial recovery is coming to a close. I’ve pretty much stopped bleeding which means that my uterus is back to it’s former size. It means I can swim again, think about running, exercise, sex.

Sex.

Also, sex.

Ok. Sex. But what do I do about my milk-filled breasts? I don’t want to wear a boring black nursing bra while doing it for the first time since, but what’s to stop this personal sprinkler system of mine from being switched on? And what if it’s not as good? What will I feel? What will he? And also, a hesitation I don’t know how to name…how to welcome anything in when the last major activity there was the boy’s head and sensations that left my brain scrambling for, and not finding, anything in the pain to grasp onto.

I’m just not always so good at transitions. I’m a little scared and a little sad. I want the technicolor. I want the way it was when B. running his hand through my hair was intense, ultimate bliss. Fulfillment in itself. Everything in every day was so much there was nothing more to want. I liked being the version of myself that didn’t ask for more from a day. I want to keep her.

39 days old.

| Jade SV

Today, B. and I solemnly pinky swore to the following items:

1.) To seriously lower our standards in regards to anything house related.

It’s pretty spotless right now, and the fridge is always stocked, and our laundry being done and, here, in week 5 (week 6?) B. is crashing. He needs to do less.

2.) To nap during the day!

It’s getting ridiculous. We’ve been told an infinite number of times to sleep when the boy is sleeping and we keep on not doing it and then we get crabby and tired and slip into circular conversations that don’t even count as arguments. In these, I talk about his “tone” and he talks about me not not hearing him. This goes on too long until we kiss, shake and make up and realize that while there is a kernel of truth to each of our points, mostly we’re just being stupid and acting just like the boy does when he’s too tired and doesn’t know what he wants and thus complains about every damn thing including his favorite things. (Which at this point I think are milk, cuddling, and wiggle time.)

3.) To build flexibility into our plans.

This is huge, and every time I do it, so liberating. What this looks like:  Friend says, “Do you want to meet up on Sunday?”, and I say, “I’d love to, but is it ok if we check in that morning and then decide?”.  And then Friend says, “Yes, totally,” and  I say, “Thank you!,” and then when Sunday comes around and I got no sleep the night before and the poor boy is stuffed up and breathing in too much air while he nurses (sounding exactly like a piglet at my breast) and then spitting up and he’s exhausted and crabby too and we just can not get out of the house and all I want to do is watch the rest of the Planet Earth “Great Plains” episode while he blows snot and drips milk all over me I can cancel on Friend without feeling horribly guilty.

4.) Be more honest with guests.

Aka, if Friend is over and the boy suddenly falls asleep and he’s really out, then we say to Friend, “Please enjoy watching our marvelous boy sleep while we go downstairs and do the same.” Ideally, then Friend and the boy bond. I can’t say. I’ve only tried this one with grandparents and god-grandparents and since they love every single second with the boy they’re not really a reliable test case.

Of course I am now breaking rule #2 because the boy is sleeping and I’m here awake and I’m so hyper and excited to be able to write and then putz that I have no interest in lying down. Also, I ate a brownie and drank an iced coffee not that long ago and am feeling like a super hero. Also, I really want to watch Insurgent with B. on the couch. And not be nursing while we eat the pizza he’s making. And send a few text messages. And make shortcake cause we have raw cream from a Jersey farm and I bought strawberries and I want to eat strawberry shortcake. For this last one though…I have a hunch that those berries will end up whole in a bowl, some cream poured over the top, a spoonful of sugar, and I’ll call it a delicious day while trying to simultaneously nurse and cuddle with B. and watch the movie that I seriously doubt we will get to the end of and actually all of that is sounding pretty dreamy. In my wildly ambitious grocery buying today I even bought a few lemons to zest. For the shortcake.

Yeah.

If I open that bag of flour, I’ll write about it and title that post “Flour Day.”

32 days old.

| Jade SV

I really don’t like it when people stand over me while I nurse. It’s the bride phenomenon all over again. Did I write about this already? At my wedding it was as if I was moving in a force field. Everyone stood a few feet back from me, staring and grinning, and I felt their love and excitement, but also wanted to remind them, “You can still talk to me.” The force field is back, and stronger. Sometimes it’s because people don’t want to come too near the open boob. This I can respect even though it’s still irritating. But I think it’s something else too.

I feel like I’m being nudged to the periphery. I know I’m still loved, but am I now also inconvenient? Perhaps it’s a speed thing. I don’t have any. We are a slow moving unit, the boy and I. We can’t keep appointments. We can’t work the crowd at the picnic. It’s creature comforts now. Eating. Sleeping. Staring at the leaves on trees. He, and thus we, don’t go anywhere if he’s tired or grumpy or upset. The feelings must be dealt with, can’t be shunted aside for the sake of a schedule. He, and thus we, don’t conform to the world at all. We move at the pace of need. It is indeed the great simplification. And yes, it’s freeing, but it can also be lonely.

At that picnic gathering I noticed the re-grouping; the mothers and children in one area and everyone else simply someplace else. This is what people talk about with this country; we segregate our mamas and children. We just don’t seem to be good at multi-generation living and I always preached about how it would be different with me when I had a kid but now I’m seeing that it’s not only up to me.

In the first two weeks everyone wanted to come and we wanted very few because in those days the color of the green leaves were electric against the blue sky and set me buzzing with joy, but also everything was charged and everything saturated and in that state of being a simple conversation could use an entire day’s worth of energy. And so we nestled into our cocoon of three and put off visits. But now I’m and craving that company and B. says just ask for it and I’m trying but am surprised by this feeling of distance.

My friend said that when I’m nursing it can be intimidating. In part because it appears so intimate. I suppose it is. (I don’t think I’ll ever forget one moonlit night in the first week when I was in the rocking chair by the window just looking at his face and weeping.) But it’s also been made mundane by the sheer number of hours, and I spend enough time doing it alone to want the company. As i’m writing this I know that I did this too, with the first round of friends to have kids. Saw them settle with their babes, and then shifted away because I didn’t know where to place myself in relation to them.

But now that it’s me I don’t want to be moated off from the world. I suppose it’s time to get a lot more vocal, and begin to send out invitations into this new land of ours.

13 days old.

| Jade SV

No time to waste. The babe is asleep on the pillow wrapped twice around me. He fell asleep on my boob and then I accidentally coughed him off of it. He likes to sleep with the source just an inch from his face. The last few days he has decided that he doesn’t want to be put down ever. Also, that he would like to be fed often. Very often. The result is that I have had him pressed into my body or close to my body for days on end on now. I am becoming ever more tightly bound to him; like my body is hardwired into his. I wake up at literally the smallest of noises from him. I know his smells. Can sniff out changes to his physical self long before I see or touch them. Yesterday while I was nursing in the park, I tried to use my teeth to pull my coat better over him and B. laughed, “That was very lioness of you.”

For most hours of the day there is this magnetic pull. To be close to him. To be the one on watch. Last night, B. was going to stay on the couch with him for the first sleep shift and I went down to the bed. At first the cool, empty sheets were a sweet, exhaled release and then, very fast, I was tense and finally had to accept that the only way for me to sleep was to take the couch. To be closer to the babe.

But then, of course, this pull is exhausting. My muscles always engaged, the drag of the tide, I am not simply me in my body. It’s hard to find full ease because I am hooked in perpetually to the babe’s needs and moods. I keep on catching myself clenching my jaw. I don’t want a day with the babe to be an endurance test, but I’m not sure how to get away from this being a measure of stamina…the countdown to the moment when all of a sudden I need a moment alone. The baby book’s advice is essentially to surrender fully to this time. That it passes. To treasure the long nursing sessions. In essence, to accept that my role is to nurture and feed and comfort this new person. The frequently repeated advice is that there is nothing I need to do right now; care for the babe and sleep when he sleeps. But what about what I want to do? I traded a precious hour of sleep last night for an hour on the couch with B. and two episodes of Louis. I think this counts as a need.

I was nursing lying down the other night, and asked B. to touch me. Not to turn me on, but to run his hands through my hair, down my back. With the first pass across my head, I shuddered with the release and tears came to my eyes.

In the park yesterday, I lay on the grass and sent B. to do a loop with the babe. The setting sun was on my face and my spine sank into the grass.

And yet, after too many minutes, I was lying with my face turned to watch for B’s return.  When he did, I heard the babe crying, and then all I wanted, needed, was for him to be unstrapped and delivered to me.

I’ve been peed on twice this morning. Worth noting that not until the second pee did I feel the need to pull off my dress.

I stand in the shower for a long time easing muscles open. And generally, it is the one place I can’t hear him when he begins to cry.

My body is not my own. Is my body not my own? And then of course, there is the simple fact of loving this being so much it leaves me completely speechless and awestruck. I cry daily.

4 days old.

| Jade SV

At four days, a few lists…

Things that don’t matter at all anymore:

-Being cool.

-The size or shape of my belly.

-The clubs, countries, venues, concerts, festivals I didn’t go to.

Things that are still complicated:

-In-laws.

Things that I now worry about a lot more:

-War.

-Baseballs falling from out of nowhere in a clear blue sky in the park on a beautiful day.

-Another human being’s breathing.

Cool new things:

-Super power heightened senses. Everything is in hyper color, and I can smell even better than my first trimester.  I sniff out changes to my baby’s body like a proper member of the animal kingdom.

-French kissing. It’s kind of like of those kisses when B. and I were fifteen, except that even then I was thinking about the next base. Now the kissing is the complete act and it is its own magic land of sensation.

-My boobs have the power to sustain life.