8 Weeks Post-Partum

Isaac is an easy baby. Praise God and Hallelujah. I was prepared for nightly hours of screaming and a constant desire to be held (him and me).

Instead, he only cries when there's a reason I can figure out. He'll hang out in the bouncy seat, on the floor, in the Ergo, in the car, on the boppy, and of course, in my arms. Eye contact makes him light up with smiles (which started at 5wks), and just yesterday he chuckled for the first time.

I have enjoyed each of my newborns -- their feathery hair, warm skin, rubbery necks, squishy-soft cheeks, teenie fists, frog legs tucked under their rumps, and that baby smell that is miraculously delicious. Still, I feel like I'm soaking it up even more this time, perhaps because I'm more confident with him, perhaps because he's been less complicated, and perhaps because I'm getting more sleep.

Yes, more sleep. Ahhh. The schedule has worked well with Isaac. Sometimes I feed him more frequently before bedtime, but otherwise we've stuck to it. He reached 11lbs at 5 weeks, so I was tempted to push him longer at night, but then I got mastitis and needed him to eat at night. So we waited, and I got more tired.

By 7 weeks, he was 12.5lbs and went 7-8hrs on his own twice in a row, so we decided to keep it going by feeding him at 10:30pm and setting my alarm for 6:30am. I don't use the monitor at night, but I can usually hear him if he's really screaming, so I'll feed him anytime after 5am. Which puts us lightyears ahead of where I was with my other boys at 8wks.

And does it show. I'm already running and swimming again, ready to go back to work (my freelance writing), and jumping into the fall schedule.

Sort-of. Lest you get the wrong impression, here are a few reminders that we're still in transition, I'm still nursing, and yes, I have baby brain and the body to go with it...

-- My 3- and 5-yr-old do not need sleep during the day, but I do. They play through resttime in their rooms while mommy sleeps in hers.
 

-- A few weeks ago, I was sitting upstairs nursing Isaac when I heard honking outside. I casually ruminated on the fact that someone--probably a teenager--would resort to honking rather than just knocking on my neighbor's door. Thankfully, a friend pulled up to drop off Noah at that very moment, saw the school bus sitting in front of our house, honking, and ran to help Aaron off the bus and into the house. Oh, yeah, I do have three now, don't I.

-- Then there's last Tuesday night, when I got two texts confirming carpool for the next day - from two different people. When I counted up the kids I was committed to bringing home from preschool, I realized they would not physically fit in my minivan. Nice.

-- Or early one morning, when I took a swig from my coffee mug and thought, This coffee ain't right. Good reason: It was cranberry juice, which I had poured in the mug minutes before.

-- Or last weekend, when I blithely walked into Old Navy to buy a few clothes and was stunned to discover I'm still twice my pre-pregnancy clothing size. That's like, a multiple of my old self. Bummer.

-- Or the time I took the boys to meet Josh for errands and forgot...the diaper bag with e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g inside it. I mean, every time we leave the house I forget something. This time, it was more than something. At least it wasn't a child. I've learned to count them now.
 

Not that it's all fun and games. The fog that comes with transition and interrupted sleep has affected my thinking. I can see it in my sensitivity to others, the way some fears haunt me, and the frequent feeling that my mind is cluttered with more than I can coherently understand.

For me, the best antidotes are silence, prayer, writing, exercise, time alone with Josh, and many alarm/reminders on my phone. Now that school is in full swing and Isaac is taking a bottle (!!), I'm thankful to have more of each so that when I am with my beautiful boys, we enjoy each other all the more.