Charlie is six weeks old!
The first six weeks of life are so chaotic, with no routine. They are a
mixture of A Nightmare on Elm Street (no sleeping) and Grey Gardens (shut-in with a messy house). I
remember when I was pregnant with Theo and one of my coworkers told me that the
haze starts to lift at six weeks. It was
the best thing anyone told me because that six week mark became my beacon in
the very miserable night. I don’t know
that we quite have a routine now, but I at least understand Charlie’s way of
functioning better than I did six weeks ago (super gassy). I guess there’s just no way around the misery
(except for a nighttime nurse and a wet nurse, which I would totally have were
I wealthy).
Six weeks is also the time when the doctor gives you the all
clear to enter into polite society, and the point at which I finally got rid of
my hospital cup. That hospital cup is
sort of like my security blanket. It
comes from the time right after birth when the world is filled with such hope
and happiness--when it seems like sleepless nights are totally fine and won’t
impact your mood/thoughts/functioning at all!
It is so very exciting to have a baby that I almost don’t fault the
Duggars for doing it again and again.
Being pregnant makes the world tender towards you and having the baby
sets off a flurry of love and well wishes that make you forget income
inequality, environmental destruction and the other harsh realities of life for
a few weeks.
Despite my horrific induction, I pretty much nailed it in
the hospital this time. I even had two
separate nurses compliment me on how easy it was to take care of me! I entertained 3 different sets of guests
during my stay, made a call to Malta to talk to my friend and did not stress
out at all over my new baby. With Theo,
it was all so terrifying and new and I remember being on the verge of tears
when leaving the hospital because I had no idea what I was doing and how to
have a baby. I was ready and excited to
leave the hospital with Charlie. Though
as I was wheeled out, the medical assistant did regale me with her story of
losing a baby, so there was that.
Here are some more hospital pictures:
Just born kangaroo-care with father (we think).
Water-fetcher with my comforting hospital cup.
I haven’t been able to do much so far on leave, but I did read 50 Shades of
Grey, which was a truly terrible book and not at all enlightening. Anastasia Steele, a college student in 2011, calls her computer the “mean machine”
(?). Poorly, poorly written characters
and no plot, just like Twilight, but that’s to be expected given its origins I
guess.
I also wrote a brief project synopsis for my black hole
research, which wasn’t very fun, but at least I finally understand what a
blackbody is at nearly 40 years old. Why
did I even go to college if not to learn the basics of our natural world?
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