taken on her 2 weeks birthday, this is pretty much what veronica considers the height of entertainment:
“moving my arm..and the other arm…and feet! and legs! aaaahhhh… wait…do I see something?”
She doesn’t really interact with toys yet…but maybe I should get her a rattle…That might go over big
It was a pretty good night, and it was made so much more so by my realization that with the addition of a pillow, the big chair i’ve been nursing V on is possible to *also* fall asleep on.
Yay! I feel like I’m double dipping from the sleep jar.
two weeks of new life in my family
Veronica has learned most significantly to go from zero to purple faced shriek in no time flat..is this colic? or infant personality?
I bought 2 nights of almost enough sleep by supplementing with formula (takes longer to digest, therefore she sleeps longer) . But the system broke down last night and we celebrated her birth with an all-nighter.
She hasn’t learned to focus her eyes, so ‘playing’ with her isn’t poosible. Daddy does enjoy her kung-fu grip, but that’s as far as it goes.
I did learn that i have to beat the crap out of her to get her to burp…poor thing! But i guess burping is necessary.
Round about five AM when I was *still* up with V and serving as pacifier replacer every 30 seconds, I grabbed pencil and notebook to regroup.
You can’t know what to expect till you get to the top of the hill. I can see the other side now, and the other side says “Nights do not belong to the sleeping anymore..” I can’t control if she will sleep, but I can use the resources to share this burden. She needs me so much, I have to make sure I stay well as part of her upkeep, leave aside my own.
So…Bottles are going to play a large part in our lives now. I woke up Chris a few hours later and said “You will be feeding your daughter today.”
The pilliow muffled his answer, but we came up with a plan, and he’s off getting a breast pump
and more pacifiers
So I looked down at this child who lefty my womb 14 days ago, but who really hasn’t left my stomach since I’ve been holding her so incessantly, and said “Kid, we are your parents and we can take whatever you throw at us. As long as we stick together.”
Chris held Veronica yesterday for me, so I could take a shower. He was in bed, and holding little V while he watched Bloomberg news channel as he does every morning when he wakes up. I came back in a towel to hear him say to her: “Look at you making frowny faces. You are so serious! ‘We shall fight them on the beaches; we shall fight them in the crib…'”
Then he saw me. “What? all babies look like Winston Churchill”
We’ve been practicing referring to each other as mommy and daddy. It’s weird, but we’re getting used to it. It’s only been a week and..some days. My days are counted out in 3 hour sections; that’s how often I have to feed my child day or night. So, calendar days seem impossible to get my head around.
Everyone says that being a parent is amazing. Of course, saying something like that never prepared a person for it. Yes, it’s a lot of work. And yes, she is precious and adorable. And none of those sentences deserve to be written because they don’t get close to containing the meaning–the reality of it.
This weekend over-stressed me and therefore Veronica. My body is on some strange auto-pilot (lactatation being the most obvious symptom) and Veronica is just so new to the world that it doesn’t take much to throw either or both of us off. So, since Saturday night she has been experiencing intestinal distress.
Poor thing! I could hear her tummy gurgling, and I could definitely hear her screams. She could not calm down, she would not go to sleep. So the first night you think it’s just that one time. But it went on and I was ragged.
The responsibility of it hits me. I have to help her. She needs me. I have to be aware of all her needs even before she is. So her screams and lack of sleep for both of us took it’s toll.
In the end, I finally decided that I needed to do SOMETHING. Poking around on the internet I got an idea of what was wrong and hit upon a solution. I tried it and GLORY BE, she slept very well last night.
So did I. I hope it keeps up.
So, in dealing with the night feedings of this new life…
It occurs to me that everyone has to go through this and pretty much everyone does.
HOW?
I think maybe i got a piece of the puzzle. I realized that I leap out of bed at the slightest little sound she makes at any point in the night and run to go take care of her.
But i think what happens is parents toughen up. That instead of sleep being this precarious thing that shatters with a breath, I could learn to relax an STAY IN BED until she really needs me. If i could do that, maybe it would be a workable situation…
I found the card reader…Here’s a quick series of photos of us.
In the hospital; she looks alert, and I look like..well..how I felt:
We eventually got to go home, on the condition that we keep her on this lighted pad all the time:
That cord was three feet long! I could barely FEED her on the thing, let alone carry her around the house.
But it left, and she got to be more comfortable:
See that quilt she’s on? my friend Veronica made it for her! Baby Veronica spendsd lots of time on it being tired and sleepy:
Not that she sleeps all the time. If I balance her carefully on my crossed knee, she is very interested in watching me as I check emails or create a blog post:
She was born with alert eyes.
so my child had me up a lot last night, but in the end as an act of mercy (from who, I can’t say, but I’m grateful) let me sleep a full two and a half hours.
I threw my back out. Too much hunching, perhaps. Or maybe it was inevitable that something go amiss after all the massive effort the delivery entailed. But what the means is most of the day before and all yesterday I could barely walk and standing was iffy.
That means I haven’t had a shower in forever. I am so filthy. If I were a blanket I would not let myself NEAR my child until I’d been laundered. What with diaper changing encounters, milk and formula dripping and spurting in all directions, spit up and the other post-delivery oozings, etc I am not fit to exist outside a trash can.
But Chris put some ice on my back yesterday, and I think I can stand long enoiugh to shower at last. Veronica is lying on my knee as i write this one handed. Once she decides to sleep again I’m popping the bath&Bodu works and rejoining the human race.
I can’t seem to find the card reader for still photos, but I promised to show what she looks like. Here is our child in an action sequence:
As I suspected would be the case, our loving family dog is very very concerned with the care and well-being of the new person in the house. She wags constantly when Veronica is visible, and will bark alarm when the child is really crying.
I’m pretty sure she doubts my competence as a parent. But here’s a glimpse:
So yesterday was the first full day home with our Daughter. It was so exciting to be home again!
She seemed to like her crib, which was good, because the alien space blanket only had a a 3-ft umbilical cord. We had to move the armchair closer to the crib just so I could move her out to feed her (Every three Hours! Or Two! or One! doctors keep telling me I’m not feeding her enough, because if I was she wouldn’t be jaundiced!)
Anyway, she was great and stayed there all day pretty much sleeping. Chris and I ran around realizing all the things that so OBVIOUSLY had to be changed now that she was here.
I meant to take a nap, but I didn’t.
So, veteran parents…you see this one coming don’t you? A classic rookie mistake.
“She seemed tired, so I just let her sleep..” all day which means that all night she is not interested in sleeping.
We had a rough night. No sleeping for anyone.
But the good news is, at our doctor visit today they said she is not jaundiced anymore and the blanket is exorcised at last.
Last night was rough, but we vowed to do better today. I have to keep the child awake for some periods during the day, or it wil just happen again. The above shots are from the ‘stay awake’ efforts this afternoon
Just got home from the hospital last night, totally exhausted and overwhelmed.
BUT! Vernonica was born 8 lbs 10 oz. They induced labor at ~7pm on 1/20 and she entered the world ~29 hours later at 2:14 am. She’s 20 inches long, with the most alert eyes. She looks a lot like her daddy.
She’s beautiful.
I’m still laid pretty low from the labor, no real complications, but even a good delivery is an atomic bomb to a woman’s body.
Veronica is healthy, but we have to keep her on a science fiction glowing space mat because she’s got elevated Bilirubin (modern slang for jaundice). It makes it harder to cuddle with her.
Pictures to come, I promise. But be patient: our hands are very full right now.