Well, that’s not totally true. I actually do know where those 6 weeks went. In a perfect world, they would have been filled with cuddles and hugs, milestones (big and small), and lots of time getting to know each other. And the last 6 weeks have seen some of that. But they’ve also seen feeding problems and weight gain problems brought on by a really bad infection that took a lot of my attention away from watching my little girl grow. I spent the week between Christmas and New Years in quite a bit of pain (though it’s only in retrospect that I realize how much pain I was in), and that week culminated in a trip to the ER for me.  Two weeks later, I am almost fully recovered, though I’m still on antibiotics, and we’ll see what happens when those run out at the end of this week.

I feel like I lost a huge chunk of time, between getting sick and then dealing with trying to get better, and all the while living with huge amounts of anxiety over whether my little girl was getting enough to eat and whether I’d be able to keep feeding her. Luckily, as of today, it seems like everything is resolved — I think we are finally in the place we should have been in three weeks ago, feeding-wise — and that feels really good. But I’m still really sad for the two weeks (really, three weeks, since I was sick for about a week before I even saw anyone) that I lost in the fog of pain and fever and anxiety.

And of course, the 6 weeks that have already gone by mean that I am 6 weeks closer to having to go back to work. Which is difficult to contemplate right now. I am in a new moms’ group and I told them all yesterday that I’m not all that ambivalent about going back to work as a theoretical matter — I love my job, I’m good at my job — but conceptually, I have no idea how I can actually leave my little girl to go to the office. Luckily, I have more than two and a half months to figure that out. I hope I manage to do it in that timeframe.

For now, though, I am going to relish the fact that things — at least some things — seem to have gotten easier around here, and that from here on out, they should continue to get easier. And I have those two and a half months to keep enjoying my little girl 24 hours a day.

So we have a 3-week old (close to 3-1/2 weeks now) and things are going about as well as I think they can be. Despite my fervent hopes (and my apparently misguided belief that I am a laid-back person), I do not have a terrifically easy baby. Thank heavens the opposite is also not true — I do not have a particularly difficult baby — or at least I don’t think I do, but what do I know? First baby!

We’ve been dealing with a lot of different stuff lately — some breastfeeding issues, that seem to be mostly resolved; some colic-like issues (but pretty sure we’re not dealing with colic, as it’s a little too early for the classic presentation, and most of those issues can be traced back to the aforementioned breastfeeding issues); some weight-gain issues; and some mommy issues. At the risk of this being a little too TMI, we’ve been weaning off a nipple shield (which we did successfully, despite my belief a week ago that it would NEVER EVER happen); but that seems to have caused some freakouts by my baby when confronted with WHOA MILK; at our last weight check (before we left off with the shield) she still wasn’t back to birth weight at nearly 3 weeks (though she was gaining, and I am so happy we have a pediatrician who was very relaxed about the whole thing and never once suggested we start supplementing with formula, which I would do if she needed it, but would rather not do if she doesn’t). And the mommy issues…well, let’s just say I always hoped I’d be a laid back mommy, but it turns out that I am a huge ball of anxiety.

Maybe that last bit shouldn’t surprise me — I am, after all, the kind of person who always wants to “win” at stuff. I like to think that I’m not particularly competitive, but I’m really just deluding myself. Which is not to say that I am particularly competitive vis a vis other people. No, it’s more that I just want to be good at (OK, OK, the best at) whatever challenge it is that I’m undertaking. In some cases (cough cough, law school), that necessarily required me to compare myself to others, because I (and all of those others) were being evaluated on the same scale. But in other contexts (mommyhood), the metric is really just whether I’m doing all The Stuff Mommies Are Supposed To Do — and doing it well. Does my kid sleep well? Does she cry a lot? How does she poop? (Seriously.) And, critically to me right now, how does she eat?

Needless to say, my ambitious, achievement-seeking personality has had a hard time dealing with a kid who has not wanted to do all of those things that babies are supposed to do on certain timeframes. There were early pooping issues. (GOD, this is super TMI.) There was the shield issue. There’s the weight gain issue. And there are more potential issues looming on the horizon: potential Introducing A Bottle issues, Introducing A Pacifier issues, and continued Has She Gained Enough Weight issues.

And in the midst of all of this, I realized today that it is Christmas Eve. I mean, I knew it was Christmas Eve, but it wasn’t really something that was front and center of my consciousness. Part of it is that this is the first time I’ve ever spent Christmas away from either my family or Mr. D’s family. We’re not traveling for the holiday this year (obviously), and that’s made it easy to sort of forget about the holiday. Don’t get me wrong — we haven’t dropped the ball on the holiday. We’ve ordered and sent all of our gifts (and those relatives who are peeved at getting gift cards 25 days after I gave birth can suck it), we have our tree up (that was done before the baby arrived), and we have (perhaps ambitious) plans to make a special, though not super labor-intensive, dinner tonight. But I (still!) haven’t really internalized that today is Christmas Eve. Or that tomorrow is my little girl’s first Christmas, and our first Christmas as a family of three.

I’m not really sure what the point of this post is, other than to say that new parenthood is hard, and doubly hard at the holidays. I hope that I’ll look back on my anxious self in a few months and shake my head at what sleep deprivation wrought. I hope that I’ll look back and cherish this first Christmas. But for right now, man, it’s tough.

in other words, I think we’ve managed to clue her in to the difference between day and night — or at least to straighten out which one of those equals “awake” time and which one means “sleep.” Joy!

Being the research-oriented person that I am, I have of course spent a lot of time with Dr. Google, trying to figure out what I can do about the excessive sleepiness, the evening fussiness, the feeding issues. And I think I’ve just about exhausted my need to read all about what other people think I should do. This is a good thing. When I’m drafting something at work, I know I’ve reached the point where I can start writing when I am sick of running more searches. Well, I’m sick of running searches, y’all. Everyone has a different opinion, a different solution, a different philosophy; what almost every source agrees on is that this stuff is totally normal.

It feels a little silly to not know that, but, hey, this is my first baby. And while I have younger siblings, they are step- and half-siblings, so I wasn’t in the house with them when they were newborns. I’ve babysat a fair number of kids, and changed lots of diapers, and even held my fair share of newborns, but I’ve never spent an extended period of time with a brand new baby. So I needed the reassurance — such as it is — of multiple online sources (and not the crazy wackadoo ones, but the respectable ones) telling me that this is Normal.

Anyway, that’s a long-winded way of saying that things are going as well as they can, given my daughter’s unwillingness to stay awake to eat and her propensity for evening fussiness (and cluster feeding, oh God, the cluster feeding).  We’re doing well. And I am more thankful than ever that I have four months (or, now, three months and three weeks) to spend at home with her.

I managed to miss my last day in the office as well as any pre-baby maternity leave, and I had to send two work emails from the hospital (yes, I know…), but I am so in love with this little girl that I just don’t care. I am so enjoying this adventure.

If you do not receive a phone call, text, or email message from me telling you that I am in labor, or am heading to the hospital, or have had a baby, please assume that nothing is happening. If you are on the list of people who Need To Know, I promise, I will Let You Know. The daily check-in calls, texts, and emails are really, really, really annoying.

Kisses,

k

• I’m thankful for my wonderful husband. Yes, I get annoyed at some of his habits and sometimes wish he’d pick up more of the slack around the house, but watching him get excited about this baby is one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. And watching him work three weekends in a row to bank up enough paid time off to take a full month of leave has been amazing.
• I’m thankful for my family. They drive me up the wall, but no one knows me the way they do.
• I’m thankful for a healthy, easy pregnancy. I feel lucky every day that my body can do this.
• I’m thankful for a job that I love and that I’m good at, for coworkers who genuinely seem to care about me and each other, and for a workplace culture that is accepting and accommodating of our growing family. It’s not all sweetness and roses, of course — I can’t imagine any workplace in which management would celebrate an employee taking off four months — but they’ve made it as easy as possible for me, and I am incredibly thankful for that.
• I’m thankful for good health insurance. I’m so grateful that I haven’t had to stress about deductibles or copays or minimum contributions during my pregnancy. I wish everyone had access to such good health insurance.
• I’m thankful for the excellent Indian restaurant that just happens to be 10 minutes from our house, and for the excellent shahi paneer I had for dinner last night. It did not kick off labor, but it was good enough that I’m almost OK with that.
• I’m thankful for my smelly, stubborn, sneaky beggar of a dog. He follows me around constantly nowadays, refuses to eat his breakfast if I’m not close by, and has developed a bad habit of pawing at me for attention (mostly over the last few days, and I think it’s related to having houseguests and all the Thanksgiving hubbub), but he loves me unconditionally and protects me as much as a 17-pound terrier can. I couldn’t ask for a better dog.

But mostly, I’m thankful that, in no more than 10 days, we’ll be bringing home a beautiful baby boy or girl. We’re excited and we’re ready.

For all the complaining I’ve done to Mr. D. over the last few weeks, things haven’t really been that bad. Oh, sure, I can’t bend over. And it’s hard to walk up the hill to the bus stop. And I get heartburn all the time, and sleeping is difficult, and getting up from the couch really is as comical as it looks like on TV. But my pregnancy has been pretty easy, overall, and up until about a day or so ago, I really wasn’t feeling all that bad.

But now? I am done. I’ll be 39 weeks tomorrow, and I want this baby OUT. Now. My hormones are raging, so I am in a foul mood, certain family members are being asses, and I can barely concentrate at work to get done the four minor things I need to get done before I go out on maternity leave. Oh, and I am so effing uncomfortable I just can’t stand it.

The discomfort alone would be bearable, I think, if it weren’t for my shitty mood — made worse, no doubt, by the shitty weather, by the shitty things certain family members are doing, and by the fact that we’re hosting Thanksgiving (IN OUR HOUSE) starting today, when my in-laws arrive. I really like my in-laws — I really do! — and they are helpful around the house as well as relatively self-sufficient, so it could be worse. But, see above about my shitty mood. The last thing I want to be doing right now is playing hostess.  Six months ago, it sounded like a good idea; now it just seems like folly.

So today’s goal is to make it through the workday without bursting into tears (and I never cry, so the necessary coping mechanisms to make that happen are probably not very well tuned in my case), get home with some semblance of sanity left, and put on a happy face for my in-laws. And then maybe bury myself in Thanksgiving prep, because if I’m cooking, maybe people will just leave me alone.

Trip to Target: 1 inexpensive bathrobe, 1 comfy nursing top, 1 pair low rise maternity yoga pants (low rise enough to accommodate potential C-section incision — I like to be prepared), 6 pair cheap socks for me, 6 pair socks for baby, 1 monkey-printed sleeper/gown with matching hat, 1 tube Lansinoh, and 1 package wipes.

Stop at McDonalds: 1 large chocolate shake.

Three loads of laundry: 3 giant balls of lint.

Long walk with dog: 3 contractions (not painful, just Braxton-Hicks).

Given the last item on that list, I’ll call today a success, even if the contractions weren’t the real thing.