Life with a Newborn

...is overwhelming! Sometimes you're feeling overwhelming joy and pride, sometimes it's overwhelming frustration and desperation. There's no "preparing" for it - it's 100% on-the-job training. And I'm not talking about the practical aspects of diapering and feeding and dressing and generally caring for a newborn - those things, you can sort of prepare for. Exposure to newborns through friends and family, child care classes... there are ways to prepare oneself. What you absolutely cannot prepare yourself for with your first child is the complete and total TAKE OVER that occurs as soon as that little life enters yours. I can tell you all about how Eli has taken over our lives - how our schedule revolves around his, how our sleep schedule directly correlates with his mood and temperament during any given hour, how our conversations and activities have suddenly become 97% baby-related. But that really doesn't even begin to address the ways that he has changed my life.

Suddenly, my future is completely wrapped up in him. Whether I'm thinking about the next hour or the next 10 years, he is a part of it and will most likely dictate how things will go. Even while I was pregnant and knew he was on the way, that reality never set in for me. At least not like this! When I'm feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of breastfeeding or sleep deprivation, I also have to accept that these challenges are ours and ours alone to bear - no one is coming to take him to his real parents (which is what it sometimes feels like - like surely they wouldn't give us a baby to take care of!)... we're it! I also have to accept that I have little control, in the grand scheme of things, over when these challenges will get easier. I can do my best, ask other moms and doctors for advice, but at the end of the day this tiny little boy is in control of it all... and he's not even in control of himself! Scary, right?! It's a lot to handle, particularly in the wee hours of the night when he's screaming his head off for no apparent reason (which, admittedly, has only happened once or twice)! You very quickly learn to force yourself to live in the moment and to banish all thoughts pertaining to the future, because honestly, the future is just too much to handle right now. We're new at this and very unfamiliar with the course of how things will go - our only reference is this past week of our lives (which has been one heck of a roller coaster!), and thinking about moving or starting back to work or going back to medical school is WAY too overwhelming within that context. We just have to trust that as our little boy grows and we settle into a family routine, those things will become more and more manageable. People do this every day, right?!

All that said, we are truly in love with our beautiful baby. I don't mean to sound all "Negative Nancy" about life with a newborn... just being realistic about the massive changes that he has brought to our mindset and to our everyday lives. Looking at him in all his glorious perfection... it doesn't necessarily make you forget all about the challenges and the moments of complete and utter frustration, but it does put those things into a different perspective. Looking at him makes it all OK. It makes it all so "worth it"... beyond "worth it". It's not really a feeling that one can describe in words. In my experience, I think the closest I could come is to describe it as a calming effect. It's not so much the overwhelming love I feel for him (though of course I do feel overwhelming love for him!), but rather the calming effect that he has on me that has the power to alter my perspective. His perfect little face as he sleeps... the ways his little lips move or how his forehead wrinkles up from time to time or the little infant "smiles" that completely light up his face out of nowhere... it just relaxes the tension right out of me and recharges my ability to handle the next challenge. "It's a good thing you're so darn cute" is something that parents often say because it's completely true - if they weren't able to affect us in that way, we'd reach the end of our pitiful ropes in no time!

I can't say yet whether I think that Eli is a "high maintenance" or "low maintenance" baby. For one thing, I have no reference point to compare him to. We also haven't had much time to really detect any patterns. So far things are definitely on the upswing, but I can imagine that that might change at the drop of a hat! Our first few nights with the little guy were definitely rough - more waking than sleeping. Getting used to breastfeeding was a big part of that. He'd wake up hungry and it was such a struggle to get him latched and feeding that he'd get hysterical in the process and we'd keep having to calm him down. He was also having formula in the NICU, as I mentioned in my last post, which I think contributed to a lot of gas and fussiness as that worked its way out of his system. Now that he's nursing better and hasn't had any formula for almost a week, he's doing much better. He wakes up every 2 1/2 or 3 hours to eat (or we wake him up, to avoid him waking up truly starved and already hysterical!), and now that eating isn't such a struggle we're only up for 40 minutes or an hour to feed, burp and change him. Every now and then he'll get a little fussy after eating if he needs to burp (or fart!) again and I'll have to bounce or rock him a little more to settle him down, but he usually eats and passes out. It really only works out to 2 or 3 wakings a night, since we tend to stay up until his 11 or 12 o'clock feeding. He'll wake up in the 2-3 o'clock hour and again in the 5-6 o'clock hour, and then his next waking is pretty much "morning". He'll usually go back to sleep again after that too, so we've been staying in bed until as late as 11 (which is how we can stay up til 11 or 12 at night)!

During the day, he's having more and more "awake and content" time, as I like to call it. For about the first week, if he was awake and not eating he was mad, and he pretty much slept between feedings. He still naps a lot during the day, but he's doing a lot more peaceful observation of the world now. I think he's starting to adjust to life outside the womb and the fussiness is dropping off a little as a result. That seems to be helping our bonding process too, as he spends more time checking us out and getting more and more familiar with our faces and voices. He seems to prefer Ben when he's upset, which sorta hurts my feelings if we're being completely honest! I think he just associates me with food (and I probably smell like it!), so if I'm holding him he thinks he should be eating. I've heard many women lament the early days of breastfeeding and feeling like they've become nothing but a food source, and that's definitely where I find myself at this point. I'm SO glad that Ben can comfort him and that they're bonding so well, but I'm also selfishly looking forward to the day that he shows a preference for mommy ;-)

That pretty much sums things up, I think... and this post is long enough. I'll leave you with a cute photo, just for fun :-) This is Eli with his great grandma yesterday...