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.