It has been almost a month now since the baby was born. I've been meaning to keep up with the blog. I have ideas for all sorts of posts about our early experiences with staying up all night, boob-feeding, diaper changing, and baths with our super-cute newborn daughter. However, these things that I'd like to write about are the exactly the things that have held me back from stringing together some even remotely lucid sentences. Frankly, I'm having trouble being creative. I have about 23 minutes each day of clear adult thought. These are the precious moments of clarity when the baby is changed, fed, happy, and asleep and AT THE SAME TIME I have just managed to drink some coffee and I have nothing pressing to attend to (e.g feeding and washing myself).
Thus, I have about 22 minutes left to complete this post before the baby awakens and demands that I put my boob in her mouth so that she can attack it with her little gummy mouth. I wasn't prepared for the fact that taking care of a baby means that your entire life becomes a strange, sleep-deprived math problem. My day is now broken into roughly 2-3 hour long segments, 24 hours a day. About 40 minutes of each segment is spent breast feeding, followed by about 30 minutes of diaper changing/ playing/ cuddling. After this, the baby usually will begin to get all adorably sleepy and I'll put her in her rocker or swing for a nap. Now this is where it gets complicated. The length of the nap is entirely unpredictable. It might be 15 minutes, it might be 2 and half hours. During this time I wander around the house attempting to complete normal life-tasks, like dishes, laundry, showering and going to the bathroom before Charlotte starts flailing her chubby limbs while yelling and grunting. This means that I have to drop everything I'm doing and battle her little fists to get my boob in her mouth, then cuddling and singing and staring into her eyes, then explosive, projectile poop ... and the cycle repeats itself.
Basically life is breast-feeding and poopies and no more than 2 hours of consecutive sleep (for me, at least) at any given time.
So when I experience one of these magical periods of clarity, I suddenly remember that I'm a highly educated adult who has friends, enjoys literature, science and creative hobbies,and I'm actually overwhelmed by all the things that I could do. I panic! I could read the grants for my new job! I could work on a painting! I could call someone and arrange to go out for a single delicious beer! Or even better, I could NAP! Right now I've chosen to write a blog post.
The next post will be more organized, I promise. And it won't include complaining. I know it only lasts a few weeks before she starts consolidating her sleep/wake patterns. Please spare me the comments about how I will miss this time when its gone. I know, I get it. The next post will be about how much I love my little spawn. She's so cute. She has these beautiful, huge eyes and she spends her waking time staring at the world and trying out her new face muscles. She makes this little scrunchy, pouty face and a quizzical raised eye-brow face. Sometimes she makes this super-concerned, angry face with a few loud grunts (like "eerrrrrgggg.... errrgggggggGGG!!! EERRRRrrggggggAAAH!) while she pushes out this huge farty poop into her diaper. Then she looks surprised, smiles, and immediately falls asleep for 10 seconds. Like that was the most difficult thing she's ever done. It's so adorable, I melt with love.
