What to do today

In the summer -  when W was immobile and the air was warm, the ground was dry and the yard was not covered with leaves and acorns and other delicious baby treats - we would spend hours sat out on the grass. We'd read books, stare up at the trees and covertly check facebook on the phone while the other one was busy experimenting with how grass felt if he put his face into it. These days an excursion into the yard will result in muddy knees, partially digested leaf matter and an attempt to spear himself with a shovel.

Inside isn't much better. Kitchen drawers are made for trapping baby fingers; the cat intentionally leaves the door open through to his food and litter, and the robot vacuum cleaner I got for my birthday - while entertaining - is presumably not designed to play tag with a 10 month old. Everything else is just plain boring. Especially once the junk mail and potential electrocution sites have been moved out of reach. 

So we go out. Often at the expense of naps. But the boy needs to move and I need to not lose my mind. We go on play dates and he helpfully points out all the baby proofing they still need to do. We go grocery shopping, or to the local community farm. We go to the indoor play area where he manages to find the one piece of chalk small enough to fit in his mouth and big enough to stop my heart for a few seconds. 

Some days I run out of ideas or energy, or both. While he'd be quite happy visiting the rabbits and chickens at the local farm for the third time this week, I am less inclined. I relayed this to Jeremy - that sometimes I just don't know what to do with him. 

"Why don't you go hiking?" was his response. 

To some people, hiking means a leisurely walk in the woods. Something that requires sensible shoes perhaps, but sneakers would do the job. Something local and relatively short. 

Jeremy is not some people. 

To Jeremy, hiking means New Hampshire and the White Mountains. It means maps and emergency water. It means breathtaking views after breathstealing elevation gain. 

The White Mountains are 3 hours away. Our son weighs over 23 pounds. I am me and Jeremy has known me, as I am, for over 12 years.

I stared at him, somewhat (100%) incredulously. 

"Why not?" He said. "I totally would."

He would as well.

Lullaby

I love you, bub. You know that I think. But it's really very important that you fall asleep right now and stay asleep. At least for long enough for me to sit down with wine and read a bit.

Long enough for some of the ache from today to seep out of me and into the sofa. For me to start to feel a little more like me than I do right now - to remember that I am a person who likes art and music and poetry and who can talk reasonably intelligently about current events. Just sleep long enough for me to clean the kitchen floor ready for you to lick it tomorrow. Licking floors seems to be your new thing.

And if you could give me enough time to talk to your father about something other than you, that'd be great. We love talking about you but we need to make sure we remember the roots of us as well. You came from those roots.

My love, just sleep long enough for me to find my place within today - to understand that the day was not defined by your refusing to nap or your newfound ability to Houdini away from any and all attempts to change you. There were smiles and giggles today. You saw your first rabbit and there were moments where I could see you learning something for the very first time.

Just sleep a little longer, sweet boy. But if you wake and you need me, I'll be there.

My current refrain

Here are the sentences most often repeated at the moment. Aside from, y'know, I love you / you're beautiful / sweet boy blah blah blah...

• Where is your other sock?

• Don't eat that

• What are you eating?

• Don't bite me

• Ow!

• That's my phone

• Give me back my phone

• How are you not tired?

• That's cat food. Not baby food. 

• He will bite you

Survival of the whiniest

Another theory (I have many): whining is a key survival skill that has evolved over the eons and is now embedded into the genetic makeup of all children as a means to get what they want. It cannot be ignored or tuned out - it's the parenting equivalent of a mosquito in the ear and must be stopped by any means necessary.

Children know this.

They're programmed to know this.

So they keep going until finally. FINALLY. We cannot take it any longer and give in. Obviously this is the wrong thing to do. Obviously this teaches them that whining works. But the thing is, it does work. It's supposed to work. If the neanderthals had only held their ground and not given in then maybe this superskill wouldn't have developed to such great whiny heights. But they didn't. They gave in. And now we're doomed.

The eons are against us.

 

Origin story

W is starting to understand us and it feels miraculous. We say Uh-oh, he says uh-oh. We say clap, he claps. We say 'say Dada', he claps.

It's intermittent.

Yet aside from echoing 'uh-oh' to us (and we don't say it at appropriate uh-oh times, so we're not helping him much) , he's not talking yet. The sounds are all there, he just needs to attach them to objects. To people. To me.

But I've noticed that the sound he makes when he's upset, or tired, or angry is 'mamamamama'. And while I don't think he's asking for me, I do wonder if I will attach myself to the word rather than him attaching it to me - if by responding to his mamamama, the sound will eventually become a call. If maybe this is where the word found its root - from a pissed off baby and a responsive mama.

One of those days

Yesterday was one of those days. One of the days where I'm not sure if he's making me grouchy or I'm making him grouchy but we're both very definitely grouchy. One of the days where I spend far too much time on my phone; where I want to be writing or drawing or even running (and I never want to be running) - anything other than repeating the same tired songs in an attempt to keep him happy, to stop the whine.

We went to Walmart to look for baby gates, so that I can turn my back for five seconds without him setting off to eat cat food. There weren't any gates and a man in Walmart told me these were the best days of my life and I thought 'oh dear'. Then we went to PetSmart to look at the animals (so far he prefers PetSmart to any zoo or nature reserve I've taken him to) only all the animals had died or been sold, bar a lethargic mouse and a few sad budgies. Then I went into Old Navy where everything looked like everything I've ever owned, stretched. overwashed and thrown away. Followed by Nordstrom rack where everything was cashmere and really didn't deserve to be covered in baby snot. And then back home for another scrappy nap and the long long wait for Jeremy to get home.

Amid all of this grey boring day, there was a moment where I'd paused for a second to cry and wallow in just how tired, bored and covered in baby snot I was, and W turned around to look at me. I made myself smile at him and the grin I got in return - so perfect and toothless and adoring of me - broke through the grey.

So it was one of those days - snotty, guilty, boring, grey and the most perfect sunshine of a smile.

Brain power shortage

In pregnancy, occasional flakiness is brushed aside as 'Baby Brain', as if somehow being pregnant messes with your brain waves and slows you down. I didn't find this - I was just as forgetful and slow as usual. I did make use of the excuse, however.

What I want to know though is why no one talks about Mum Brain, because since having W my ability to hold down a conversation has diminished dramatically. And I don't just mean because I'm forever having to run off to stop him launching himself off/into/under hazards or being interrupted by screaming. I mean my brain moves so slowly that minutes pass by before I remember that conversations depend on two participants or that responses are required to questions. 

Similarly the number of times I have caught myself trying to make coffee by putting the grounds in the kettle or the cold water in the mug or - once - the hot water into the coffee grounds container is more than a little disconcerting. And I find myself stopping mid sentence to search around the echoing cavern of my brain to find the word for sponge or frying pan or something else equally mundane and presumably difficult to forget. 

I write all of this under the assumption that this is common to all Mums - particularly the co-sleeping, night nursing Mums out there - and not that I have early onset something-or-other. 

And, writing this, I've realised why no one talks about Mum Brain...

...They don't dare. 

wonder week my arse*

Figuring out what's going on with a baby - why they're being so darn fussy or why they're waking up every 20 minutes or why they categorically refuse to be put down (and yes that includes the baby carrier because clearly if your hands are free you're not trying hard enough) - is a bit like attempting to play pictionary with someone trying to draw a cat. Only they're blindfolded, using their left hand and have never seen or heard of a cat. You wind up just guessing all the guesses in the world. Where the simile breaks down is that at some point, the pictionary guesser will be correct whereas the baby guesser (aka me) might never be right because the answer may be 'all of the above' or 'just because'.

Apparently one of the reasons he might be being fussy and waking every 20 minutes and demanding to be held by my aching arms is that we're in a "wonder week" and he's secretly making some developmental leap which he's going to surprise us with when the crying aching fog lifts.

He better be able to speak in full sentences is all I have to say. 

*let the record show that this has been typed one handed while the other hand/arm supports a sleeping yet-still-nursing baby.

Giving up

There was a moment, when W was maybe 36 hours old, when I realised I had to stop waiting for sleep. Up until then, any time in my life where I'd been tired, sleep was just a wait away. True deep long uninterrupted sleep. I sat in the hospital room and felt this dawning realisation seep into me. He was ours. We had to take him home. Sleep as I knew it was a thing of the past.

Later, there was a moment when Jeremy left the house - to go to work or to see friends or maybe just to take the trash out - but I understood with a searing jealousy that when he leaves the house he really leaves. That he's actually able to just walk out of the house without a care. That his autonomy and independence is still wholly intact. I missed being solitary singular Me with an acuteness that felt physical. And I kind of hated my husband a little. 

At four or five months I had to accept that W was not a baby who suddenly slept through the night. People had told me it would change at four months - that it would get better - and I believed them. I was stupid. So we started co-sleeping because it was the only way I could get enough sleep to function during the day. And that is how we live now. 

I haven't eaten cheese since May. If you know me, you know that I alone do not have the will power to forgo cheese (or butter or cream or cake or curry or chocolate or ice-cream) for 24 hours. But W has a dairy sensitivity. I'm thinner than I've ever been, which is the one and only upside and I think I prefer eating cheese and having an arse. 

I've never been super well-kempt. But I'm down to maybe two showers a week and I let Jeremy cut my hair. And if you can't see the baby sick on my jumper, it was never there.

New mum hair

Nothing to fear but fear (and Donald Trump)

I have always been a worrier. I self diagnose myself with at least one fatal disease a week. I see peril wherever I go and have to get Jeremy to watch me unplug the iron because there's no way I'll believe my own memory. Sometimes thinking about the future and all its infinite unknowns gives me vertigo and I have to breathe myself back into the present.

Having a baby has not helped.

Here are a few things I am now afraid of (and a few that I've always been afraid of):

Walls
Gravity
Donald Trump
Stairs
People who think Donald Trump should be a presidential candidate
Lonely sad men with access to guns
Electricity
Blind cords
People who are more afraid of terrorists than the lonely sad men
Elmo
Isolationism
NRA
Furniture
ISIS
Grapes
Fox News
Water
Compassion Fatigue
Cars
People who get their news from Fox News
Ben Carson
People who think Ben Carson should be a presidential candidate
Flying

With most of these things, I swallow down my terror and smile. I make sure there are no fatal hazards around and let him explore the world in the presence of walls and gravity. When we fly and it's turbulent and I imagine us all plunging to our deaths, I don't let him see my fear. I don't want him to be afraid of flying, or of grapes or of water. Or even of Elmo, although that high pitched third person thing is crazy creepy. I want W to toddle out into the world and to feel safe and confident doing so.

I'm perfectly fine with him being terrified of Trump though. That's just common sense.

Wholemeal Paper

W made a beeline across the kitchen floor. I looked to see what he was aiming for (he only moves that fast when it's something illegal) and saw I'd left a brown paper Trader Joe's bag in the corner. He's got a bit of a thing for paper. Junk mail is his favourite - the glossy finish perhaps, or maybe he likes bargains. He pretends he's just flapping it around, inspecting the artwork, and then I spend the next five minutes trying to fish out a wad of paper from his cheek while avoiding losing a finger to those new teeth we were so excited about.

So the approaching fate of this brown paper Trader Joe's bag was fairly obvious. However my first thought was not that I should move the bag he was about to gum into chokeable mush, but instead that 'brown paper has to be better for him than white...'

Human Pacifier

Our next child, assuming we have a next child, is going to have a pacifier thrust upon them pretty much the second they emerge (that seems too gentle a word... erupt? eject?) and henceforth will have it offered to them on every possible occasion.

They cry? Pacifier.

They breathe? Pacifier.

Yes it will become a sleep crutch and yes we'll probably curse the thing once it's decided that 'we don't use pacifiers during the day' but that's OK.

Our next child is going to love their pacifier.

Our firstborn - love of my life, dear of my heart, loves his pacifier too. But his pacifier has legs, a head and a Master's degree in International Relations. The next child's pacifier is going to be a lot less educated and a lot more bought from Babies-R-Us.

Accidental Parenting

I didn't go into this with any particular parenting philosophy. I knew I wanted to breastfeed and that I didn't want to do 'Cry It Out' and that was it. I figured we'd figure it out as we went along. I did not think that at 9 months I'd be co sleeping with my baby on a futon mattress on the floor in his room, or that his nap times would be spent with me sitting close by, ready to stick a boob in his mouth when he stirs.

And yet...

Sleep baby sleep

I've come to the conclusion, again, that the internet is a bad bad thing sent only to mess with the minds of new mums. On it, you can find all the answers. Like actually ALL the answers, so that you come away with no answer at all - just a sense of fear and paralysis that clearly you're doing it wrong because every way is wrong as far as someone on the internet is concerned. I know this. I've been here before. I've read the books and blogs and forums. I've memorized theories, strategies, philosophies. I've realised that everything contradicts everything else. I've put it aside, understood that babies are unpredictable and everything is a phase and I should just trust my gut. And then I've had two weeks of being woken up every two hours and have returned once again to the fountain of all information.

This week I decided to attempt putting him down to sleep semi awake - because the internet told me to. W had other ideas though. He's almost certainly a mind reader. And when I came to put him down without our usual count and rock and repeat dance, as I prepared to stay there with him singing and stroking but not rocking or nursing, he just stayed asleep. I put him in his crib, his eyes flickered open, closed, he gave a groan, rolled over onto his stomach and stayed asleep some more. Six hours more. And then after feeding, he did the same thing with the staying asleep for six more hours. And then he did it again last night. It's not officially sleeping through the night, but who the heck cares. He's in the 90th percentile for height and weight. If I was in the 90th percentile for height and weight I think I'd want a midnight snack.

I'm not counting any sheep just yet. I still haven't forgiven myself for uttering the words 'I think we've cracked the sleep thing' about 4 months ago (stupid woman). I am feeling slightly more alive for the first time in a long time.

Take that, internet. (she says as she joins the ranks of sleep stories and opinions on the internet).

It's all a phase

It's a phase is my solace and my sorrow. My mantra and my mourning.

He wakes up, I stumble blearily into his room and nurse him to sleep again, counting to 50 until I stand up and then rock him some more, counting again for no real reason other than it's what I do now. I ease him down into his crib, pausing if he resists, ready to rock again. Slowly, slowly, praying and begging for this to work, I rest him down and wait. He cries. I resist the urge to scream and stamp and instead pick up and soothe and repeat again. And again. And again. Then I give up and bring him into my bed, nurse him to sleep beside me and we both sleep - him more comfortably than me.

It's a phase. (It better bloody be a phase)

He wriggles awake and looks around, finding my face and smiles the sweetest smile, looking up at me and gazing in wonder as I gaze in wonder down. It's 6am but that face, that smile, that look.

It's a phase.

He rolls back to front and yells. He doesn't like to be on his front and even though he can roll the other way, he doesn't seem to have figured out that it's the solution to his problem. Or that rolling over in the first place isn't the best idea. We roll him back, he rolls again.

It's a phase.

We play peekaboo except just hiding behind our hands isn't enough - we have to hide behind couches and jump up like a jack-in-the-box. He laughs, gurgles, cackles. We hide and jump, hide and jump - anything for that laugh.

It's a phase.

He's half a year old now. Half a year of him and life without him seems an impossibility. My heart aches when I hear of mothers losing children - I can't get as far as actually imagining it, it's too deep and dark. That my own mum lost two sons makes my soul weep for her; makes the fact that she continued living and provided us a home full of laughter and fun and security and love actually incredible. Each phase of W seems to last a lifetime and pass in a flashing moment. Naps are too short, nights are too long, except if I sleep in which case they're too short. The hour before Jeremy gets home is the longest of the whole day. It's all a strange combination of exhaustion, joy, boredom, delight and wonder. I wouldn't change a thing (except the sleep bit).

Breastfeeding

(W is one week shy of six months. I find the days have so much time within them. Sometimes way too much time within them. And yet no time at all to actually do anything. Babies are like black holes for Time [and energy and clean clothes]. That's my reason for not blogging.)

Ever since I emerged from the delirious wondrous joyous hellish madness of the first 2 weeks of W I've been meaning to write about Breastfeeding. I feel like I owe it to all the women out there who may one day attempt this insane task, although they probably won't hear me so it's probably pointless, but I'm going to try anyway.

They say Breastfeeding is hard at first.

They need to learn to use their words better.

Breastfeeding is not hard at first. Breastfeeding is hell at first. It is a crazed obsessive compulsion. It would be hard if, say, you'd had a decent amount of sleep and could move about without cringing and wincing. Or if the baby, instead of screaming like the world is ending and will end very soon if he does not get fed immediately, simply asked politely for some more food please mummy (seriously - can we teach babies to talk already, like, in the womb??). It would be hard if the world around you was cool and relaxed about the whole thing and wasn't weighing the baby every 5 seconds to see if he's lost weight and wasn't telling you about all the benefits of breastfeeding, from lower likelihood of allergies to bonding to decreased tendency towards psychopathy (I made that last one up). Nope, Breastfeeding isn't hard at first. Hard is not the word.

Here are the bullet pointed 'high'lights of my breastfeeding journey. If you've already done this particular path, I'm sure it's entirely different to yours and exactly the same.

Here is what I remember:

• After approximately 48 hours of no sleep, of which 24 hours had been spent connected to machines and at least 12 in labor with 1 hour of pushing, a couple friendly neighbourhood lactation consultants stopped by to help me help him latch. They showed me how to hold his body with one hand, his head with another, my boob with my third hand and to help open his mouth with my fourth while also squeezing things a little to encourage the milk to flow. Instead of reminding them that I was one of those defective humans with only two hands, I smiled and nodded and fell apart when they left the room. 

• We brought W home and embarked on figuring out feeding him without all the tips and advice and chance drop ins of lactation consultants. It started to work. Sometimes. And on the times when it did work I felt like the cleverest most highly developed human being on the planet. 

• Our pediatrician made her standard house call and told us he was jaundiced and we needed to supplement with formula until my milk came in. 

• We did as we were told and then my milk took forever to come in. 

• W then decided bottle feeding was way easier than feeding from the crying woman with only two hands. 

• Sleep deprivation and hormones and goodness knows what else made me feel like if I couldn't breastfeed then all hope was lost for ever more. He was crying for food every 2 hours or more and every time I tried to feed him he just cried more. Then I cried. More. 

• I said the words 'lactation consultant' about 20,000 times a day. My buddy Henny sent me fenugreek tea by the busload. I drank all the tea. 

• I had to remind myself every five seconds that we were oh so lucky that he was healthy. That after all our fears with the genetic stuff he was fine. I had to remind myself that it was only day three, day four, day five. And that for flip sake there are other ways to feed the child and he was still gonna be OK. Get it to-flipping-gether woman. Etc etc

• The world almost ended

• My mum arrived

• We summoned the bravery to quit formula and went cold turkey for two days. I sat on the couch, more or less shirtless, and people waited on me while I breastfed for approximately 48 hours. By the end of it he wasn't screaming quite as much and was latching more than he wasn't. And my flipping milk showed up. 

It didn't all come together completely then, but that was the turning point I think. I wish I could tell me in those early days to take a breath. That there are benefits to bottle feeding too - the primary one being that Jeremy could get up in the night with him. I wish I'd known that this experience was so common to so many women. That 'breastfeeding is hard at first' is the world's biggest understatement.

i have no wisdom to impart. However this would have been a helpful article for me ahead of time: http://jezebel.com/5885739/what-type-of-nipple-are-you

The wave with all the love

Loving W is a curious thing. I'm not sure if it came upon me as a wave as much as a tide - one that's coming up and up and carrying me with it. (And, presumably, isn't going to recede otherwise this is a crappy metaphor for parental love). At first it was instinctive - the biting knowledge that I now came second to me, that he came first. It was responsibility and need and nature. I didn't know him, but I loved him.

Now I know him, or I know as much as there is to know so far. I know he loves the sky and will watch it with wonder. I know he loves my face and that he really objects to being woken up. I know he makes the very best faces when he's waking up. I know he likes it when Jeremy shaves or that he doesn't like being kissed when Jeremy doesn't. He's currently entirely indifferent to the cat, which is just as well because the cat is entirely indifferent to him. He is strong and big and we think he'll walk before he crawls. He's very very noisy. He much prefers being upright to lying down and isn't the biggest fan of sleeping for long stretches. He has the best smile and seems interested in books, although I might just be wishing that on him. He loves food and that there was ever a time when we worried about his weight or if he was getting enough milk seems utterly ludicrous. His eyes are the bluest grey or the greyest blue.

And I still wonder why we do this to ourselves, while also knowing there is no other way. I wonder if we'd still have done this had we known, while knowing that of course we would, or that it's all of a mootness anyway since now we know. Not the sleeplessness or the fact that everything I wear is spit up on before I finish my coffee in the morning, or even the craving I sometimes get for time alone, time to do something other than the basics, time to be separate and just me even though there is no just me anymore. But the fact that when you love this much you also allow the potential for sorrow and loss and a profound unmitigable (not a word) anxiety into your world. You welcome it in because with it comes joy and the best smiles and the bluest greyest eyes. It's insanity and yet there is no other way.

sleep

All through pregnancy there were questions everybody asked every time and I got tired, so tired, of answering. The questions bored me to actual tears and I used to avoid the office kitchen at times just to escape telling another person how I was feeling and when I was due.

The question everybody asks now he's here is "how are you sleeping?" But instead of groaning with boredom at the question, I want to answer. I want to talk and analyse and strategise - like when you first meet someone and all you want to do is talk about them and ponder their every move. That is how I feel about sleep right now. I miss it all the time. I think about it all the time. I wonder if it's ever going to call and I stare at the phone (the metaphorical sleep phone) and wait for it to ring.

And sometimes it does ring. Not often or predictably. Not enough for me to get comfortable and to rely on it. But sometimes, I get to sleep for more than 2 hours. Sometimes I get to sleep lying down. Sometimes I get to sleep when not holding a snortling infant at the same time and hearing a chorus of baby books judging me for lying down in bed with my baby boy instead of making sure he's not actually asleep before I put him down flat on his back so that he can learn to put himself to sleep (they clearly have never met an infant in their whole lives).

Oh my dearie me I miss sleep.

The good news is that baby is sleeping just fine, provided he's being snuggled or rocked or nursed or driven or walked with...

post breast-feeding snooze.

An attempt to put him down after he fell asleep in the sling. He woke up about 2 minutes later. 

Out and about snooze

Sleeping position of choice, if only mean old mummy could hold him like this all night long. 

Bloody good job he's so darn cute.

Where to begin?

I've showered and had a reasonable amount of sleep. The house isn't horrifically messy. We're ordering in take-out and Jeremy's out for an hour or so. I've a sleeping baby strapped to me in the carrier, there's music playing and a glass of wine waiting. For the first time in 6 weeks I'm able to write.

In many ways I've been writing all of these 6 weeks, narrating everything in my head and trying to pin down words to describe the indescribable. Because never has there been so much material or so little time or energy to get anything down. 

So, where to begin? 

At some point I'll write about the labour, which has faded somewhat in my memory but I made sure I jotted down notes soon after to be able to recall everything - the names of our amazing nurses; the icky uncomfortable leakiness following my waters breaking and me being confined to bed, hooked up to monitors and an IV (I was induced); the excruciating accuracy of the term 'ring of fire'; the bewilderment Jeremy and I both felt when left in a room on our own with a tiny baby, waiting for them to come back and tell us exactly what to do. I'll write about all of that, perhaps, soon. Each thing is probably it's own post, although I'll spare you one about leaky discomfort.  

I'll also write about the wonder and the way the world shifted. The moment I realised I had to stop waiting for a proper night's sleep and the heart rending joy of watching my husband become a father. 

And then there's the help we had in the early weeks - my mum bringing me toast, cut up apple, and coffee while I tried to reconcile the fact of another day beginning after 3 hours of sleep. There's watching my parents fall in love with their grandson. Watching my sister snuggle with him. 

And breastfeeding! I could write a book about breastfeeding. It'd probably scare most people off of it. It's OK now but oh my gosh how desperate those early days felt. They need to tell women that - that when they say it's 'hard at first', they mean it's the most heartbreaking thing you've ever experienced. Pretty much everyone I've spoken to so far since remembers this. They just failed to tell me before hand. Or maybe it's not possible to be told. 

Because certainly it's not possible to explain this Love. It's too much in some ways, in most ways. Like if you'd known ahead of time what it'd really be like, maybe you wouldn't have chosen it... except that once you know you're already locked in and there's no way you'd choose anything else. I remember a point immediately after delivery when they were washing and weighing him and I was sat there, exhausted, examining my emotions (I'm me, of course I was analyzing my emotions) and wondering if I'd felt the 'Wave Of Overwhelming Love' yet. And then I realised that I now came second to myself - that this screaming sticky creature, who I'd only held for a brief second, had laid claim not just to my heart but to my everything. That he was going to come first no matter what. That I'd die to protect him. The wave of love came later, when I was singing to him to comfort him, a song that I'd sung often during pregnancy, and he stopped crying immediately and I started crying instead, because here he was. 

So there's nowhere to begin, really. And some of this (most of this?) probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I'm starting to try to unjumble it where possible. 

In summary though, we're fine and he's amazing. It's not easy, of course, and it's not always pretty. There's been a fair amount of tears, mostly at 3am, but there's joy too. Hopefully this marks the start of me being able to write more often and I can start to unpick it all a bit more thoroughly. 

We're still doing cloth diapers by the way. Mostly. 

How am I doing?

If you've asked me how I'm doing over the past few days I will have told you I'm fine. Sometimes I may have added in a bit more detail, othertimes not. I appreciate your asking (really!) but I'm so darn bored with the answer that even saying 'I'm fine' can be hard to choke out. I wish I had something more interesting to say - like 'I'm in acute pain every 5 minutes for 1 minute long stretches and have been for the past hour'. That'd be much more interesting to report. Although chances are I'd be ignoring your texts by then. I'm not the best at talking about myself - I prefer to hear about other people and ask rather than answer questions. But here I am at 41 weeks pregnant (which has to be 10 months by anyone's counting, right?) and I feel like I'm been watched warily like an unexploded bomb. Heck, I'm watching myself like an unexploded bomb. A big one that ate all the cake. Even my spam email is taunting me, since 'Destination Maternity' and whoever else they sold my data to knows my due date and is now asking me what the first week of motherhood has been like.

I actually don't really know quite how I am. I'm not massively uncomfortable - a bit, but not ridiculously so... and for the most part I've been sleeping OK. It's just the mental element that's doing me in. This will go down as one of the strangest weeks of my life, where I have done very little and yet every moment has carried with it a weight of anticipation paired with the anticlimax of the moment before when I didn't go into labour after all. 

The snow and predicted snow isn't helping my brain. Even when it's not currently falling and the roads are passable, it makes me feel trapped. Poor Jeremy shoveled the roof snow onto our deck and there's now an actual ski mountain outside our back door. A non pregnant me might consider making it into a sledding hill. The pregnant me just looks and laments and eats mini-eggs. 

So it's just me and the cat, netflix and mini eggs... which isn't all that bad really. In fact it's pretty amazing, or it should be and would be if I could stop trying to think myself into labour. 

By Monday we can all stop watching me because by Monday they'll have induced me and he'll be here (or by Tuesday morning at the latest if I'm in for a long'un). For once I'm thankful I live in America 'cause in England this could be allowed to continue for another 2 weeks and by then I might actually have gone insane. 

Due Date + 1

We're at due date + 1 and no baby, which isn't massively surprising but it is weird to think that the date I've been reciting for 9 months has now lost all significance.

Snow just keeps on falling and Jeremy is currently up on the flat part of the roof, shoveling. A part of me wishes I could help but a bigger part is very happy I can't.

And I'm just waiting. Waiting for this baby to arrive (or the process of arrival to begin - if only storks delivering babies was a real thing) and for our lives to change. I've found myself feeling something close to sad or nostalgic for our child-free life together - for it just being me and him and the cat. I remember feeling something similar right before I got married. A strange feeling of sadness and loss as I gave up being just a daughter and took on being a wife also. And now of course I'm taking on 'mother' as well as wife and daughter. When it happened before our wedding - the knowledge of this change - it took me by surprise and I felt it like a shock of grief. Now it's more of a known feeling and I know that the gain will outweigh the loss. I know that Love is not a finite thing, and it'll grow to accommodate this baby so that Jeremy and the cat and my family won't feel any reduction in my love for them - that if anything it'll grow for everyone. That's a miraculous thing right there.

But when I woke at 5am this morning to pee and then lay waiting to fall back asleep, listening to Jeremy's sleeping breathing with the cat curled up at his feet, I had to acknowledge the passing of this time where it is just us. Almost to mourn it in some small way. Where I'm not listening for anything else or checking on anyone... where my world seems to be contained within one sleeping bed.

I'll miss it, even as I know I also won't.

On time

Pregnancy takes so long. Time creeps forward and everyone tells you how quickly it's going and they're delusional because time hasn't moved this slowly since secondary school maths on a Monday afternoon. 

And then, suddenly, it's over. 

Or pretty much over anyway. The next week or so may be the longest yet, but there's this weird anticipation hanging around. Life is going to change any moment now - so many hypotheticals are going to be proven true or false or insane. We're going to have to tell people his name. He's no longer going to be kicking my bladder or doing whatever it is he's been doing to my rib-cage. Life as we know it could literally change entirely right now. 

Or now. 

Or now. 

(It didn't, but it could, and it will on one of these nows, one of these days)

Weird. 

On sleep

I sleep at the edge, in the suburbs, on the skin of sleep. I sleep knowing the blissful depths beneath me, unable to swim down. And then I’m awake and if I’m awake then I need to pee because I always need to pee and then I’m bobbing around in some pretense of sleep again and then it’s morning. And I wonder if it’s nature’s way of preparing me for what’s coming / making the transition easier, or if it’s just mean and horrible. Probably mean and horrible.

On most things

On Nesting:

People/books/blogs say that around this time the body knows the baby is coming soon so you get an urge to ‘nest’. Bollocks. There’s a flipping date in the calendar – my brain knows the baby is coming soon and there’s a great long list of things to do before our house/lives are even a bit ready for an infant. And the list keeps getting longer. Every time I cross something off, I think of something new. Also, I’m not sure that ‘nesting’ is supposed to mean tearing-the-nest-apart-and-building-a-new-one, because that’s pretty much what we’ve been up to the past few weeks. There was a point last week when all our bedroom furniture was in the dining room and I knew that if Alan were to choose that moment to arrive, I’d prefer Jeremy to be home cleaning than with me at the hospital.

On Tronald:

 As predicted, the cat thinks that all the new baby stuff is just interesting / comfy new places to sleep. Hopefully all the exploring will be done by the time Alan is actually here… hopefully Alan will not be considered a comfy new place to sleep.

On working:

After today, assuming Alan isn’t early, I have 5 more days in the office. That’s still too many days, but it used to be 46 days so if I can do 41 I can do the remaining 5... more or less. I’m not massively uncomfortable most of the time except after sitting at my desk for 5 hours at which point my feet and ankles swell up like I’m on an airplane and whatever trousers I’m wearing forget they’re supposed to be maternity trousers. At this point I normally just give up and go home.

On ‘sleeping’:

I wonder if it’s nature’s way of preparing me for what’s coming / making the transition easier, or if it’s just mean and horrible. I sleep on the very edge of what’s possible with sleep, on the very skin of sleep, at times painfully aware that I can’t swim down into the depths, that I need to bob around on the surface . And then I’m awake and if I’m awake then I need to pee because I always need to pee and then I’m bobbing around in some pretense of sleep again and then it’s morning. But I seem to be able to bear it better than I would have before, so maybe there’s some hope in there.

The animals in my wood

One of the various impractical things I’m doing to prepare for Alan’s arrival is to draw a series of animals, using oil pastels, with the idea that we’ll frame them and have them up in the nursery and that he and I will look at them and have engaging ‘conversations’ about what the animals are doing / thinking / considering doing. I’m drawing ‘woodland creatures’ and, if I’m honest, this is largely inspired by Colin Dann’s Animals of Farthing Wood series although so far ‘Fox’ is the only main character I’ve attempted and otherwise I just have some of the lesser characters (frog / rabbit / mouse) and I don’t think any of those actually made it all the way to White Deer Park so I should probably think about doing Kestrel, Badger and Adder if I actually want it to pay true homage to the series.

Anyway.  Woodland creatures is a pretty clear mandate, right? We all know what counts as a woodland creature. Except that Jeremy’s suggestions have included ‘Bear’, ‘Raccoon’, ‘Possum’ and ‘Skunk’ and I am reminded that here in America the woods are a little more hazardous and smelly . I could bend to the fact that I’m raising my son in a country where foxes are not at the top of the food chain (we’re ignoring people) and allow that, here, bears live in the woods.

 I could, but I’m not going to.

Overall it’s a battle I’ve already lost, but at least I get to say what animals are allowed in my wood. 

Bullet Points of Things

• Almost nine whole months of not drinking alcohol, including being designated driver during a tour of French wineries and forgoing the obligatory G&Ts on the beach in Maine, and this last month has been by far the hardest. Winter needs warming up and Mulled Wine is the perfect way to do this. Hot Chocolate certainly has it's place and has been used as a substitute with no regard to calories, but it's not the same as Mulled Wine unless spiked with baileys. Christmas parties, family gatherings, new years celebrations...all are made exponentially easier by alcohol. If my son ever questions my love and commitment to him, I shall point to the winter of 2014/15 as Ultimate Proof. 

• I've got to a point with all the pregnancy questions and baby care advice that I can no longer hear anything anyone says. It just comes out as a deafening hush of white noise while I smile and nod automatically. I've seriously considered wearing a sign around my neck that reads "February 7th. Tired but fine. Boy. Very excited. Not telling you the name." I'm such an asshole. 

• I think we have the name but Jeremy won't commit to saying it's definitely the name even though there are no other options in sight and it took us a billion years to come up with this one. It's kind of unusual and we found it not in a baby book but on a park bench (as an inscription, not random graffiti). It's not Trucker. 

• We have an ultrasound next week where they may or may not decide if I need to have a C-Section or not (low placenta that goes around the back and is sneaky and hard to determine if it's where it needs to be or not). Most of me wants it all to be natural and not to be immobilized and cut open (although if I have to be cut open, being immobilized sounds good) but the control freak in me would LOVE to have a date and time all of this is going down. Also it'd make booking my parents' flights over from the UK a heck of a lot simpler. 

• We've been canning soups and stews in preparation for easy healthy meals once Alan arrives. This level of organization is not reflected anywhere else in our lives and probably says a lot about where our priorities lie. 

Pregnant Noise

Do this. Do that. Don't do this or that or any of that. Go here. Get this. Read that. Try this and not that. When are you due? How are you feeling? Are you excited? Is Jeremy excited? Is your mom, dad, sister's neighbor's dog excited? Is the nursery ready? How are you sleeping? How are you? No but how are you feeling? Be sure to go here and look at this. And definitely get this but not that. If I give you one piece of advice... If you do nothing else... Just remember that... When are you due? Are you excited? How are you feeling, really? Is he kicking? Do you know the gender? Have you picked out a name?

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Calm

Many of you, if not all of you (I like that I know who you are), will know what I mean when I reference ‘the genetic stuff’. Hopefully all I have to worry about passing along to my son is a few missing teeth (I had braces, you can’t tell anymore, shhhh), teenage acne and frizzy hair (man, I was a lucky teenager huh?). That and a tendency to become quickly sensorarily (not a word) overloaded when faced with the need to use more than one sense at the same time (joke, obvs, mostly). Hopefully 'the genetic stuff' won't feature. 

We still don’t know why my two brothers died in infancy. Both had the same symptoms, both were boys and that’s pretty much all we have to go on. There have been many tests done on me and my mum and sister – trying to see if there’s a blip in our DNA that could indicate a faulty X chromosome somewhere. All tests have been negative, which is positive, except that it leaves us knowing a whole lot of nothing.

Early in the pregnancy, when tests were being done and Alan (not his real name) seemed less real, I worried more than I do now. I let my mind imagine all the things and I would make Jeremy tell me it was all going to be OK, even though his word doesn't mean a whole lot given he has as much control as I do over the whole thing. I’m not sure what stopped me worrying, but as Alan has grown more real and more kicky and as his birth has become more imminent, I've been able to put aside all the stuff I can’t control. Nothing so far has given us any actual reason to worry – no tests have indicated any problems and if something were to happen then we’re in a city with one of the world’s best children’s hospitals and medicine is 30 years older than it was for my brothers. 

But despite knowing all these things, I don’t think they’re why I’m not worrying. They’re probably why Jeremy’s not worrying, but rational thought isn't my strong suit. It's more that I have this feeling of being protected – not a feeling that we’re immune to bad stuff, but that I’m protected from the worry that my normal brain would be conjuring up in great detail. I think my mum’s prayer group might have something to do with it. And all the other people in our lives loving us and feeling excited for this future that’s about to arrive. I’m thankful for it, this feeling, wherever it’s coming from.

I also have heartburn this week. I had to Google what it was because I've never had it before. I don’t like it.

Hmmmmm

I always assumed that when I became a proper adult – y’know, with a house, car, pet, husband, child – I’d become a tidy person. I assumed not only that I would stop thinking it was acceptable to leave the day’s clothes on the floor, but that I’d also stop doing it. I assumed that my house would be clean all the time, not just when people were visiting, and that I would not leave dishes in the sink or allow clutter to mount and accumulate. I assumed I would water my plants and that they would not die.

And there have been incremental changes. If you compare now to 10 years ago, I’m definitely tidier. There was a time I stored my passport in my laundry basket (‘stored is a loose term, more like it fell in there and I knew it was there but didn’t remove it) and when dishes were only done when there literally were no dishes left to use and all the dirty dishes were balanced so precariously on top of each other they threatened to crash to the floor. These things don’t happen anymore. But my bedroom still looks like we’ve recently been burgled; post still piles up and anytime we travel the suitcases remains unpacked for a good 2 months or more. My plants just about survive, but I tend to bring them to the very edge of death on a regular basis.

But here I am – married with a house and a cat and a car (let’s not talk about the state of my car…) and about to bring a baby into the mix. Yet those magical shifts in personality and habit don’t seem to have happened. All those tidy houses I visited as a child, with made beds and folded clothes (that were then put in drawers and the drawers were then closed) and done dishes – how does that happen? I’m clinging to the hope that the magic is in the baby and that his presence will have some sort of transformative effect. Yet even as I type it, I know that that’s ludicrous.

And we’ve decided to do cloth diapers…

A few things

• I think we've made the decision to use cloth diapers (yes, I said diapers). I’m not sure at what point I’ll know we've made this decision – probably a few months in if I’m not laughing hysterically at the idea that I ever thought I could ever do such a thing. I have a feeling it might be a bit like the time I wore white trousers, only to realize within 20 minutes of leaving the house that I am not a person who can navigate the world wearing white trousers.

• I also think I’m going to try and go without an epidural. If you’re inclined to give me your opinion on this, don’t.  I’m not dead-set on the idea because I have absolutely no clue how painful it’s all going to be or what my pain-tolerance is actually like. I am horrified by the fact that America does not do 'gas and air'. The options are basically total sober agony or epidural. And yet for some reason I'm still leaning toward not getting one. Jeremy thinks I can do it. Jeremy's biggest concern about labor is boredom. Jeremy doesn't really get to have opinions on the matter. 

• We graduated our child-birth class this week. I have a feeling that any sense of preparedness the class offers is a placebo and given I know it’s a placebo, I’m not feeling especially prepared. I did however learn that I am incapable of imagining I am floating in the ocean. 

• I am quite literally counting the days of work left until I leave. There are 46 days left. That's too many days. 

Look at you!

The thing about being pregnant is that it’s so darn obvious. It feels like it should be a secret I can hold close and share only with those I trust most. And I guess, at first, it was like that. At first it was this precious thing I knew and kept from the world. But now, of course, it’s public information. Announced everywhere I go by my tummy.  I don’t like the word belly.

I can’t be put out or annoyed because it’s exactly what I do and have done to pregnant women. Because they’re carrying this miracle out in front of them and it bears exclamation – demands it – so that upon greeting it’s all anyone can see and comment on. Hands reach out and, although no one’s actually patted me yet without permission, they hover in deference, in recognition, in waiting perhaps for me to give permission (which I don’t).

I’ve done this too – my hands have hovered and I’ve exclaimed on bumps before saying hello to faces. Certainly I did it before and probably I’ll do it again. And I don’t resent people doing it to me as much as just feel quite bewildered by it because generally, in normal life, I like to choose when I step into the lime light. I tend to avoid talking about myself. I prefer to ask questions rather than answer them.

Probably the most gracious thing to do with the new attention is to smile, thank and bask. To indulge the questions, to elaborate. What I end up doing is blushing, squirming a little and deflecting or minimizing.

“Look at you!!!” is replied to be a sheepish “yup, he’s in there.” “Are you excited?” is followed by a nervous laugh and a hesitant “yes”. Not because I’m unsure about my excitement level but because it’s kind of a funny question. And because I’m not very good at demonstrating excitement. This bothers people, including my husband. I can’t help it.

I’m writing all this and I feel like an ungrateful brat because I know it’s all meant with the very best intentions and love. And I know I’ve done it and will do it again to other pregnant friends. And I don’t resent it. Really. And of course. OF COURSE. If it all stopped tomorrow and everyone stopped noticing and commenting and asking, I’d probably be equally bewildered as to why.

I’d probably be missing it.

***

Related funny story – a few months ago our very pregnant neighbor walked by with her dog. We waved and said hello. “Getting Bigger!” Jeremy called out. She laughed awkwardly and walked on murmuring something about having a few months to go. Jeremy called after her “I was talking about the dog”. I turned to him, confused…

 “Was that a joke?”

“What?”

“About the dog – or were you really commenting on the dog?”

“What do you mean? I was talking about the dog – he used to be tiny”

“I’m pretty sure the dog hasn’t changed size and I’m pretty certain she thought you were talking about her”

He hasn’t stopped squirming about this since.