7.29.06
No sleep til Brooklyn!
When Leila was about five days old, and I was still so unbelievably exhausted that my only two thoughts were feeding baby and sleeping, I was nursing her back to sleep one night at around two or three in the morning. I had this habit (and still do on some nights) of dozing while she nursed. She was so small and my breasts were so engorged with all the new milk that had only started flowing a couple days beforehand that her nose would get smooshed right into my breast and I would end up having to hold back my breast with my other hand so she could breathe while she ate. Anyway, that night I had fallen asleep in my rocking chair with her cradled in my arms. She twitched herself awake and it startled me awake, too. It was not a little twitch, but a full body shake, like when you dream you are falling down a flight of stairs and startle yourself awake. Except I thought that her nose had gotten so squished against my breast that she had been trying to breathe for who knows how long and had almost died had it not been for that last twitch that popped her off the breast and saved her life. Looking back, the story sounds funny now, but it took me a good two weeks to see that sometimes she just has those twitches while she is asleep and to finally let go of the horrible guilty secret that I almost killed my child with my breast. I told Steve once I felt better about it, and he laughed and hugged me and asked me why I did not tell him sooner. I was scared that he would be mad.
Looking back on our trip to Nova Scotia last month, I realize that maybe we were a little nuts to take a trip with a ten day old baby and an anemic mother. It has only been in the last two weeks that I have really started feeling like myself again, that the haze and glow and high of childbirth and new motherhood has lifted (a little). I have started running again, albeit slowly and not very far, and I have been doing abs, too. I feel ok about my body, about the stretch marks and the extra fat. Sometimes it gets hard to look at myself in the mirror, or to see a picture, because everything is so different than it used to be, but I try not to think that way. I try to think about my healthy baby, and how I am working towards a fitness goal again.
It is hard to believe that Leila has been here for six weeks, and my pregnancy is starting too fade into memories. I was looking at pictures last night and was shocked by how big I was at the end, even still when I look at her, I am sometimes amazed that she grew inside of me. That she is her own combination of Steve and I, of our parents and our siblings and our grandparents. I wonder what her personality will be and if she will be short or tall, if she will be stubborn or have a temper.
We went to our Childbirth Class Postpartum Party last weekend, and it was amazing to see all of the women transformed. Every parent was glowing while they looked at their child, and I think that half the reason most of the people went was to show off their baby. Or babies as was the case for one extremely sleep deprived couple with twins. But from that afternoon came a movie date with our soon-to-be neighbour and an invitation for coffee at another couples house this week.
We close on our house on Monday and yesterday was a last minute flurry of getting things straightened out for the final approval, signing a pile of papers at the lawyers office with a fussy baby in my lap and a little bit of stress. It all worked out in the end, and we will get our keys Monday, tie our mattress onto the roof rack of the car and finally sleep in the sweet cool air of AC. As we get more and more ready to move, every little thing about the house we live in now starts to bother me more and more. The slow drains, the shifty neighbours, the noise from the train tracks, it all adds up into a big pile of not wanting to live here anymore.
Leila is having a big nap right now and while I was itching to come in here and write an entry, I managed to wash the dishes, clean the kitchen, sweep the floors and clean the bathroom before. Now hopefully she gives me enough time to change my layout, because I decided about a month ago that I do not really like this one after all and it has been bugging me ever since. So away I go, probably to get halfway through changing it before it is feeding time again. But hey, at least the shitter is clean.
wunderwuman at 3:37 p.m.