Saturday, March 26, 2005
simply the best
I know I keep saying this, but it's true: I have the best husband in the world. Not only has he been doing everything for me except breastfeeding (but I bet he would if he could), he gave me the most precious gift of all the other night - sleep. After a month of interrupted or non-existent sleep, I was starting to get a bit stressed. When I say "a bit stressed", I really mean "on the brink of insanity and prone to bursting into tears every ten minutes or so". Although everyone says to sleep when the baby sleeps, that only works if the baby actually sleeps. Jack sometime goes through bouts of feeding every 2-3 hours, taking 30 minutes to feed, and then taking another 30 minutes to an hour to settle...24 hours a day. Math has never been my strong point, but I'm pretty sure that works out to very little sleep for Lisa.
So a couple of nights ago, with a glazed look on my face and the inability to form whole words, I sobbed and told Paul that I was finding this motherhood thing too damn hard. He sent me up to bed at 10:00 and said that he'd take care of Jack downstairs so I could get some rest. I thought that meant he'd do the next feed to give me a couple of hours rest, so you can imagine my shock and delight when I woke up and saw that it was 5:30 in the morning. Paul stayed up with Jack almost the whole night, feeding him and cuddling him while I got some much needed sleep. Keep in mind that I'm not the only sleep-deprived new parent in this house; Paul was also practically running on empty when he did this. So this is just one of the reasons why he's the best husband in the world. No contest.
On the downside, this meant waking up with incredibly full breasts due to a lack of use that night. Imagine filling your boobs with cement and then inadvertently rolling over on to your stomach. Rude awakening, that is. If I could find a way to express milk through the night without actually waking up, I'd make a fortune.
Luckily, Jack's been on a more reasonable schedule and taking far less time to settle. Of course now that I've written this, I've jinxed it and he'll be up every 15 minutes demanding milk, pizza, and a large order of fries. I better start pumping.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
"la-sers"
"Are those frickin sharks with frickin lasers on their heads?"*
*(with apologies to anyone who hasn't seen any of the Austen Powers films and thinks I've gone totally insane.)
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
and finally...
It's only taken me a month, but I've put up a couple of photos from Jack's birth day. You can see Jack shortly after the birth, Paul with a J Cloth on his head, and me in my fetching NHS gown here.
time flies
Jack is one month old today - holy macaroni. I cannot believe how quickly this month has gone by. On the other hand, being pregnant feels like a lifetime ago and my week in hospital is a distant memory (thankfully). I'm still writing my birth story, but it's close to completion and should be posted soon. We are feeling a bit more adept at this parenting thing and, touch wood, I am starting to feel like it's getting slightly easier. I think I've even got the hang of breastfeeding now (this is on my list of "Baby Things Nobody Tells You About" - breastfeeding is NOT an easy feat for everyone by any stretch of the imagination). We're not really used to the lack of sleep, but at least Jack hasn't screamed his way through the wee hours for a couple of weeks now. We've ventured out of the house a few times and I'm feeling more human by the day. I'm still a bit feeble (oh how I wish I could drive) but much more mobile than before. Dare I say it, life is starting to feel normal again.
Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to listen to a piece of advice almost every mother has passed along to me: sleep while the baby sleeps. Mmmmm afternoon catnaps.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
the many faces of jack
Ranging from "I'm gassy" to "Stop taking my picture, Mummy", here's a sample of Jack's many faces:
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
lookit me, i'm three (weeks old)
My name is Jack, and I'm half Canadian!
Monday, March 14, 2005
it's a learning experience
I have learned so much about newborns and my boobs recently. Truly, it's been fascinating. For example, I never knew that newborns don't quite have the knack of using both eyes in unison. I thought Jack had lazy eye or that I was hallucinating from the sleep deprivation. Also, none of my pregnancy books ever mentioned that the "letting down" feeling you get when your milk comes in could hurt. Most described it as a "tingle" or a "trickle", so I had no idea what was going on when I was experiencing very uncomfortable pins and needles. I finally saw it described as such in a book I got on breastfeeding, and apparently this should go away after a few weeks. Plus, did you know that newborns tend to make alarming gasping breathing noises and sometimes stop breathing altogether just to give their parents a cardiac arrest? It's a fact! Oh yes, and all those books that say breastfed babies don't have smelly nappies? They lie.
I am so glad that I'm a voracious reader/researcher, because I would otherwise be in a state of panic. You figure that newborns basically just eat, generate dirty nappies, sleep, and perhaps stare at you in wonderment and disbelief ("I cannot believe you removed me from that nice watery warm place and forced me into this strange world"), but they do a whole host of strange and wonderful things that no one tells you about.
Now if you'll excuse me, Jack is now doing one of those strange things I've just learned about - crying hysterically for no apparent reason. Ah, motherhood.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
twinkletoes
Friday, March 11, 2005
week deux
I think I know why newborns have a fairly limited repertoire - it's to give new parents a chance to get the hang of things more easily. Our days tend to be as follows: give Jack an early morning feed, burp him, let him sleep, change/"top and tail" him, feed again approximately 3-4 hours later, burp him, let him sleep, change him, feed 3-4 hours later, and repeat until the following morning. Of course there is also lots of cuddling, singing, talking, playing in his new bouncy chair, and other stuff in between, but mostly it's about the feeding, burping, sleeping, and changing. Once you have these skills down pat, your confidence grows and you feel like you can handle this whole baby thing like a pro. We are becoming skilled at avoiding pee spraying during nappy changes and baths, we know which cry means "Feed me!" or "I'm bored, entertain me!" or "Get me out of this dirty nappy!", we have identified facial expressions that indicate the filling of nappies, and we have discovered that Jack enjoys being marched around the house while his Daddy hums various tunes. We have now fallen into a routine. Most couples dread the "r" word in other circumstances, but when it comes to babies, it's a welcome development. Until your baby learns a new skill or decides to create an entirely different eating and sleeping pattern, that is.
I'm still not feeling wonderful, thanks to a scar that isn't healing well. I'm on antibiotics, so hopefully things will improve. I suppose I lucked out in that I never did get any stretchmarks and avoided an episiotomy, but whoever thought that a c-section is somehow the "easy way out" when it comes to giving birth was hugely mistaken. Perhaps if we had staff to do everything for us I would agree with this, but speaking for myself, there is nothing glamorous about being unable to make myself a cup of tea or lift my son out of his moses basket. On a lighter note, Paul has been making Harry Potter jokes when I mention that my scar hurts ("Voldemort must be close by!"), which has been good for a giggle.
I am still amazed that Jack is ours. Making the connection between my bump and Jack is rather surreal, and I sometimes have difficulty believing that this gorgeous little boy came out of me. On the other hand, having him at home is completely natural. It's like he's always been here and my life as a pregnant lady feels like a million years ago. Now if only everything would stop hurting from between my neck and legs, life would be grand.
Monday, March 07, 2005
picture perfect
Strongman Jack flexes his biceps for the crowds:
He does have hands; his outfit has built in anti-scratch mitties. The blue thing with dogs on it is a Grobag, which is like a little sleeping bag. They are fabulous and he can't slip under it like a blanket or sheets. The only downside is that they are a bit bulky and I have to remove it before a feed, or else Jack ends up trying to suck on the Grobag instead.
Speaking of feeding, I think the wahwahwahwahwahwahwahwah noise I'm hearing means it's mealtime again. With our genes, we were guaranteed to have a kid with a healthy appetite - but can I keep up with the demand?
Friday, March 04, 2005
the scales never seem to work in my favour
So the midwife came to visit today and she brought her scale. She wasn't convinced that Jack weighed 10 lbs. at birth (in fact, every midwife who's seen him said the same thing, but thought he did look long) and decided to put him on the scales today. You can imagine our shock when he turned out to be 7 lbs. 14 ounces - hardly the hefty bairn he was supposed to be at birth. She said that at around 2 weeks babies return to their birth weight (they lose a bit during week one, then put it back on again), so she thinks this is his birth weight.
Well peachy, now what the hell do we put on the birth announcement? I am opting to leave his weight off the announcement, but it's still a bit annoying. One of the doctors questioned the scale when Jack was born (she was also convinced he wasn't 10 lbs.), but they didn't double check him on another one. So, this means there are probably a lot of babies in this region with incorrect birth weights if they were delivered by c-section. The scale in the operating theatre seems to have been a bit wonky, so now we don't really know Jack's birth weight. Good thing the midwife was canny enough to weigh him today or else the health visitor on Monday probably would have thought I was starving the poor boy.
Hmph, he certainly felt like a ten pounder in the last couple of weeks of pregnancy, believe me. Then again, I'm relieved because apparently baby #2 tends to be heavier than the first. I had visions of being bedridden for the last two months of pregnancy the next time round.
dummies for babies
After another sleepless night filled with inconsolable shrieking (on all of our parts), we decided to haul out the big guns and used a dummy (pacifier) last night. Whenever Jack went into "I'm going to scream my lungs out and I have no idea why, but I can keep it up for at least three hours - go ahead and try to stop me" mode, we placed the dummy in his mouth. Instantly, the crying stopped and our son turned into the male version of Maggie Simpson until he happily fell back asleep and let the dummy fall out of his mouth. He woke up at midnight, 4am, and 8am with his tiny little crying voice and promptly fell back asleep again after a feed and/or nappy change. That's right, we had four hours of continuous sleep throughout the night. Oh yes.
Another great discovery yesterday was my breast pump. After a week and a half of feeding the Milk Monster, let's just say that mealtimes were becoming rather painful and tense. I got the bright idea to give myself a rest and express some milk for every other feed until my wounds healed. After fumbling around with various fiddly bits (assembling a breast pump is worse than putting together Ikea furniture, and the instructions are just as useless), I read through the instructions carefully. They stated that it could take several attempts for the milk to begin flowing, and not to worry because most women find that they need quite a few tries before it works. After a few squeezes, streams of milk came shooting out, which was both interesting and slightly alarming at the same time. I had no idea it came out like that; I imagined a slow dribble like tapping sap from a maple tree. Equally interesting/scary was the fact that my milk looks just like cow's milk, which led Paul to start calling me "Ermintrude". I did Jack's next feed au naturel, but the following one was given to him by his daddy using a bottle of my expressed milk. We both thought it was very cool that Paul could now share in this ritual, and I am very pleased to have a bit of a break to heal.
We woke up feeling drugged and a bit hungover after finally getting a decent night's sleep. A couple of hours later and I feel like a million bucks. How lovely to wake up a few times in the night without the frustration and stress - it's heartbreaking when your child is crying uncontrollably and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. It gives us the chance to simply enjoy being with Jack without the chaos of trying to comfort his frantic sobbing. Here's hoping we have another night like last night.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
a week in review
I'm a little less shellshocked now and flashbacks to horrible hospital moments are fading fast. Although I'm still fairly useless (unless you need milk, then I'm your woman), I am starting to feel more human and I can move around a bit more each day. Jack and I have got this breastfeeding thing down pat now, but unfortunately having a 10 lb. baby means he's got quite the appetite. He's now been dubbed the "Hungry Hungry Hippo" and the "Milk Monster".
We are well and truly sleep deprived, with last night being the worst so far. Jack would cry, feed, fall asleep in my arms, and then start crying his tiny little lungs out as soon as we'd put him back in his moses basket. He continued to shriek despite Paul's countless attempts to figure out if it was gas, a dirty nappy, boredom, loneliness, or illness. Jack had very short pauses in his crying marathon (not enough so that we could actually sleep), and with each subsequent feed every couple of hours, we prayed that this time he'd conk out for at least an hour or more. He finally fell asleep at 4am and didn't stir until around 10. He woke up for a feed and has been asleep ever since - it's now 3pm. Phew. I am wondering if he's having some problems digesting because my milk came in recently. He's been filling nappies like a trooper and farting for England and Canada (seriously, I thought it was Paul trying to put blame on the baby), so maybe it was a bad night due to prevailing winds.
Despite the lack of sleep and constant parade of poopy nappies, we can't help but simply gaze at him and wonder how we managed to produce such a beautiful little person. I find myself teary-eyed, gently stroking his incredibly soft skin and telling him how much I love him. Even when he's screaming in my ear, I press his head up against my chest and cradle him, somehow still managing to feel overjoyed that this little creature is mine. His coos, chirps, gurgles, and squeaks make us smile and we call him a Gremlin. Jasper has taken to the new hairless pink puppy, and pokes his head over the side of the moses basket whenever Jack makes a sound. He stood against the side of the basket when the midwife came to visit yesterday, making a protective canine barrier between Jack and the strange lady in our house.
I feel very jet lagged; I'm never sure what time or day it is. But what a wonderful trip this has been.