Holy cow. This little lady is 6 weeks and 1 day old today. Each week brings its own set of firsts. On Saturday, Ellie celebrated her first New Year's Eve and mom and dad were awake at midnight for the first time in years! We watched When Harry Met Sally and the grown ups had homemade pizza. Ellie had her usual -- a bottle of white. We squeezed all the relaxation that we could out of the long weekend, knowing that Nitin would head back to work on Tuesday.
As Nitin pointed out, we started out with a whole medical staff caring for Ellie, and leaving the hospital seemed inconceivable. Then, Nitin, my mom, and I took care of this little nugget for ten days -- I put on my bravest face when my mom left for Chicago, but I secretly worried about how our child would fare without her expert guidance! Nitin and I managed, together, to keep Ellie fed and changed and cuddled with for weeks -- and then foolishly, we sent the MVP of our parenting team back to the office on Tuesday. Leaving yours truly responsible for our precious, ravenous infant who is only truly happy when sleeping on my chest, and a rambunctious labradoodle puppy whose mission in life to another aforementioned infant with potentially lethal kisses. Big, but financially necessary, mistake.
Expectations have been lowered. If at first, I thought I would go for long walks, organize the pantry, and write my novel (seriously), on day two, I aimed simply to shower and empty the dishwasher. On day three, there has been no shower, one hurried meal, and we did not leave the bedroom until noon. The bottom line, I think, is that the goal is to keep Ellie alive and well; the runner up goal, on a decent day, is to eat a meal and shower.
The good news is that this delightful baby, whose soft head has the smell of sleep and whose eyelashes are already as long as mine, is the best thing that has ever happened to us. In time, our house may once again be cleaner than a gas station by the side of the highway, and we may sleep more than a handful of hours at a time, and I may be able to have an adult conversation without drawing a blank and then asking what I was just saying. But these are precious days. At my six week OB visit today, I felt somewhat nostalgic, and I realized that in eagerly anticipating Ellie's arrival, I had already forgotten to really soak up they joy of carrying her and growing her (magically!) in my body. A woman in the waiting room said wistfully to me, eyeing a sleeping Ellie, "I miss those days" -- and then added wickedly, "but not those nights!" I am keenly aware that I will miss these days -- and perhaps even the nights. I have the rest of my life to wipe down the kitchen counter, shave my legs, or fold clean laundry instead of wearing it right out of the basket.
Another postpartum insight -- one's whole body leaks. I had hoped that my breasts would stop spontaneously lactating by now, but apparently, they are unusually expressive. (Side note -- I also had mastitis over the last week and continue to be pretty breastfeeding challenged. I have intended to contact a lactation consultant for the past three days, but apparently useful phone calls have gone the way of showering. Oh well.) I am also more prone to sympathetic tears. I cannot help but view everyone a little differently -- as someone's precious child, who was carried, birthed, nursed, rocked, worried about during sleepless nights. It reminds me of the summer I had a (not very productive) vegetable garden, and realizing how much it took to produce a single misshapen zucchini, started wasting much less food. Nitin mentioned yesterday the imminent danger of the dam in Mosul, Iraq, breaking and killing more than a million people within hours. This grim possibility obsessed me. Each time I woke overnight I thought of mothers tucking their children in with the knowledge that a tsunami could engulf their homes and sleeping children overnight. The thought is chilling to me now, and I cannot help but return to it again and again.
Ellie and I have managed a couple of outings this week, despite my ineptitude. On Tuesday, we attended our first mom group meeting. Naturally, rain was coming down in sheets that morning, but I felt terribly accomplished for showing up (early!) and mostly keeping Ellie quiet while eleven other women shared the story of how they had become mothers. I think the idea of these groups is to scout out mom friends but I first week have to find a way to be with it enough to remember some names and string together sensible sentences. Yesterday, bless her, my friend Tiffani came over with bagels and walked Zoe while I pushed the stroller around the neighborhood. And today, we visited my OB and I was cleared for "everything" -- my only specific question was when I could take a bath. (Answer: now! Or whenever I have time. So, in several years.)
As for updates on the little lady herself -- how did I write so much without mentioning these? -- she is continuing to grow, grow, grow. This week, she lengthened and her limbs look skinny once again. Her hair continues to follow the pattern of falling out and growing back in. We are still learning to parse there difference between social smiles and reflexive smiles. I suspect that Ellie will be a careful and thorough thinker -- I often feel I can see the wheels turning. I also continue to believe that she will have strong, and adamantly expressed, opinions. I am noticing more and more how much she loves to cuddle, and hope that this, too, will be an enduring part of her personality.
These weeks have been composed of so many absurd, tender, and poignant snapshot moments. It is a struggle to capture them all. But I hope I will remember this afternoon, the afternoon of Ellie's first snowfall, when she slept on my chest for an hour as I wrote this. I hope I can remember that we were so much in love that on Tuesday, after a rainy, headache-inducing day, we were both happy eating pad Thai out of white styrofoam takeout containers on the floor of our bedroom, a sleeping Ellie stretched out between us.
No comments:
Post a Comment