our son was born just over a week ago. it’s been an unbelievable week, filled with amazing joy, new sounds, new responsibilities, little sleep, and a lot of love.
dodge and weave: ever since we found out we were having a boy, i’ve received a lot of tips on how to avoid getting peed on. pee-pee tee-pee and other such contraptions were a regular recommendation, and honestly, having never really changed diapers before, in my head i feel like i worked it up to the point of paranoia.it wasn’t a crippling fear, mind you, but i was definitely aware of the possibility and maybe overly mindful. the first few days seem like one long day, and i don’t remember if it was the first or second diaper change, but i was so engrossed in the fact that i was changing my son’s diaper that i never saw it coming. he gave me no warning; no sound, nothing visible. we’re changing the diaper, not putting anything on top of his newly-circumsised boy parts, and the next thing you know, there is a tiny stream of fluid flowing from my boy. at first, we laughed a little and just kind of dodged and weaved around it. after a second or two, he stopped, and we chuckled once more, saying “ah, of course. that’s our boy.” we started to get back to the business at hand, when the flood gates were unleashed. this time, it was no one or two second trickle. it was powerful enough to put out a medium-sized brush fire, and it wasn’t stopping. we panicked a little and dropped a wipe over it to stem the flow; a wipe with some cleaning agents on that newly circumcised, probably really sensitive area.yikes. thank goodness he’s not going to remember any of this.
sleep is not overrated: everyone says “sleep when you can”, which sounds great, in theory. in practice, however, it’s much more difficult, especially in the beginning. first of all, the timing of everything is misleading. when they say “feed every two hours”, the don’t mean feed, wait 2 hours, then feed again. the clock starts when he starts feeding. so if he starts at noon, nurses for 30 mins, then takes 15-30 minutes, he goes down for an hour and is back up feeding at two. and that’s if everything goes according to plan. if he feeds longer, or doesn’t go to sleep quickly, there is even less time. on top of that, especially in the beginning, every sound he made woke us up, so that made for even less sleep. it’s also just hard to break the routine of sleeping at night, even though we know we aren’t going to sleep the whole night through, even if just to get up to feed him. so in that moment of downtime during the afternoon, the tendency is to accomplish something, not sleep. which then means later on, when he’s fussing and won’t sleep, neither will you. by the end of the night we just want to sleep, which we finally do, but then get up 3-4 hours later to feed again. rinse, repeat. i think by the end of the week, though, we are getting better at this. i’m trying to take care of him for parts of the day when he’s fussing so kerri can sleep, but the boys lungs are strong, and though he’s generally pretty content, when he does cry, no sleep is to be had. come on, sleeping through the night!
everything happens really, really fast: it’s already been a week, and there was so much packed in to that week that even if i tried to recount it all, i know i would miss half of it. added to that the lack of concentration caused by the lack of sleep, and even more things slip through the crack. two weeks ago we were sitting on the couch watching television. now there is another life in the house. granted, we had 9 months to prep. but it’s different when it actually happens, and it seems like it happened so quickly. the thoughts of things we wanted to do before he was born are now “i wish we had done…” fortunately, there aren’t many of those. we’ve done a lot with the time we had, and we were really ready for this. but even being ready doesn’t slow things down. even with all of the tips from family and friends, there is still so much you can’t know and can’t prepare for until he actually shows up, so you’re just so frantically trying to react to and handle those thousand other things that by the time you look up, you don’t really know where the time has gone. now my two weeks off are done, and i have to go back to work next week. i feel like i should have spent more time doing one thing or another, but i don’t think any amount of time would have given me all the opportunities i wanted to capture and enjoy every moment, so i’ll be happy with the ones i did have (and can remember).
it’s all only as scary as you make it: becoming a first time parent is a scary thing. the classes we took and all of the literature we’ve read did a lot for getting us some basic preparation, but also gave us a lot to be fearful of. from all of the things that could go wrong in the womb, to the scary birth stuff, SIDS, choking, allergies, and all of the intricate details of schedules, temperature, sleep, and feeding. don’t let the baby get too hot, too cold, too hungry, too full, too tired, too stimulated, too this, too that. don’t let them cry, but don’t hold them too long so that they sleep in your arms. there is so much to do and to not do, and it seems like such a fine line between the two. it’s overwhelming at first, and i think that’s ok. it made us more sensitive to the little stuff, and aware of things we might otherwise not have been tuned to. and after a week, it’s not as scary as it was before he was here. sure, i still wake up with a lot of different sounds, but we no longer run to the crib. we kind of wait and see if the fussing becomes a crying, or if the noise was just him rolling over. it’s about turning the fear that was instilled in us to an awareness of things to look for, and then settling in to the role of parent and protector without letting the responsibility of it all, and the fear itself, overwhelm to the point where it’s not an amazing, enjoyable experience.
i’ve been working on this entry for a few days. between the lack of sleep, the lack of motivation, and all things being about him, it’s taken me this long to even get to this point, so i will probably wrap it up. but i think it’s a good lesson on how to approach it all in general. things will get done when they get done. right now, the focus needs to be and should be on him, and on getting mom enough rest, and working on getting the routine in place so that when i go back to work, it’s not going to be as traumatic as it would be otherwise. his days are nights and his nights are days, and we’ve been keeping him awake way too long. but we’re figuring it out, and just like the persistence necessary to finish this post, we’ll learn, and work on our routines, and eventually, the light at the end of the tunnel will be a happy baby, moderately rested parents, a little less fear, and more time to take in everything we can as best we can.
