My, how the time flies.

My kid will be 6 weeks old tomorrow. I don’t know where the last 6 weeks went.

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.