The Second Month: December
The Second Month: December
3rd
T is 4 weeks and 1 day old. We sang him ‘Happy Monthday’ yesterday. This morning in bed I sang:
Good Morning
Good Morning
Good Morning to you
(from Singing in the Rain), and he smiled. He smiled again each time I sang it. His first proper smiles, when awake. He has smiled in his sleep, and I imagine he’s having a lovely dream, although apparently it’s just wind.
I love his soft skin, and his little face, which sometimes looks like a dormouse, so tiny and vulnerable. I nuzzled to his neck when he was just a few days old and thought how his sweet smelling softness was just poetry, and wished I could write a poem about his deliciousness. Now his neck smells of old milk, but he is just as lovely. His cheeks are rounder and he has a sizeable double chin. P discovered putting him on his front makes him quite contented. He makes these sweet sounds that I can’t quite describe, but they are happy. Sometimes he has a furrowed little brow and looks a bit anxious and I worry if I am making him insecure by not getting to him fast enough, when he cries to be fed.
Amazing how in the first few weeks I though it was quite easy, apart from my soreness. He slept a lot in the day and I could do things, like hang out the washing or download the digital camera. I felt all I had to do was feed him. P was still at home and changing all his nappies. Then I’ve had a week or so where he has wanted to feed, snacking continually and not sleeping very long and it felt impossible to do anything else. (I remember during his third week he seemed to feed about every 10 minutes. I spoke to someone from La Leche, who suggested he was having a growth spurt.)
I have ventured out each day with the Wilkinet sling, which always sends him to sleep. He was about 2.5 weeks the first time I took him out, just up the cycle track at the back of our house. At first it was hard to walk.
I don’t feel ready to go very far, or even hang out with other mothers and babies, too noisy and I worry about him getting a cold. Lara and Lizzie have been to visit me this week with their respective babies (Jed, 3 months and Robin Autumn, 6 weeks). I don’t feel like going out in the car yet.
8th
Days melt away, as I sit on a chair or a bean bag, breastfeeding, listening to Radio 4 or Radio 2 at lunchtime; reading a snippet of a magazine or a book; Penelope Leach’s Baby and Child or Trevor Gunn’s Immunisation, a Point in Question.
Sometimes T seems to hardly sleep; he will fall asleep in my arms, over my shoulder or at my breast, but if I put him down, he soon realises there is no warm body or heartbeat, and his eyes pop open.
This writing is interrupted by his cries for comfort and feeding and my exhaustion. He is 5 weeks today, and I am just surfacing. My ‘parts’ are almost better – I can walk and sit, though just discovered a cut (?) inside my labia, very painful, and I don’t know how it got there. Also feel mildly incontinent.
It’s the first night I am not exhausted and collapsing into bed at 9pm. Miraculously he has slept from 7 – 10pm and I have listened to an old ‘Round the Horn’ programme on BBC7, with Kenneth Williams making me laugh out loud. Just my style and what I need. Also watched a documentary on righting dysfunctional teens and spent 1 hour (!) on the web researching immunisation, reading Informed Parent website.
My mind feels fine but my body is exhausted I long for a sauna and look forward to my first massage tomorrow. Realise my posture is awful and I am holding tension in my arms, wrists, back and shoulders during breastfeeding and through carrying darling boy in the Wilkinet sling. P out for first time at some talk on paragliding in the Himalayas. Nearly 11pm and I am wondering when he is returning…hope this is not a regular thing as it is a long day without him though amazing to have a quiet evening of solitude so early on.
This was the first time Theo slept through from 7- 10pm, and I took it as a cue to put him ‘to bed’ in his Moses basket, which lay next to our bed, after feeding him. Later I regretted starting this bedtime thing so early, because later on he never really settled and we’d spend the whole evening running up and down stairs when he woke crying.
17th
Lovely boy rarely sleeps for longer than 15 minutes in the day. I mean – he will sleep on me, after feeding or being held upright, head over our shoulders, but occasionally I can snatch half an hour - yesterday I made a fruit salad, craving some fruit. He has a couple of smiling moments, again in his wide eyed contented face, after feeding, when he stares in to my eyes and I sing to him, he will smile and chuckle and make those wonderful sounds of childish wonderment. ‘Agu’, ‘aou’, soft open mouthed laughing sounds.
We did our first trip out alone this week (15th Dec) by which I mean negotiating the baby car seat and driving. I drove with Sophie and baby Samuel (9 weeks) to the Galleries in town for 2 hours of concentrated Christmas shopping. Hard pushing the pushchair, carrying bags etc. My shoulders and back are in a permanent ache from holding growing boy and breastfeeding. You become invisible with the pushchair. Apart from a few old women and other mothers, people look through you.
When I took him out to the post office aged 3 weeks, my precious cargo strapped to my front, the women behind the counter didn’t pass one remark about this special tiny being I carried, even as I struggled with my large pile of envelopes. I was posting our birth announcements, which I had written lying in bed, leaning on a tray, still in pain after the birth. I wanted to tell everyone – see how wonderful he is! But I am just another woman with a pushchair.
3rd
T is 4 weeks and 1 day old. We sang him ‘Happy Monthday’ yesterday. This morning in bed I sang:
Good Morning
Good Morning
Good Morning to you
(from Singing in the Rain), and he smiled. He smiled again each time I sang it. His first proper smiles, when awake. He has smiled in his sleep, and I imagine he’s having a lovely dream, although apparently it’s just wind.
I love his soft skin, and his little face, which sometimes looks like a dormouse, so tiny and vulnerable. I nuzzled to his neck when he was just a few days old and thought how his sweet smelling softness was just poetry, and wished I could write a poem about his deliciousness. Now his neck smells of old milk, but he is just as lovely. His cheeks are rounder and he has a sizeable double chin. P discovered putting him on his front makes him quite contented. He makes these sweet sounds that I can’t quite describe, but they are happy. Sometimes he has a furrowed little brow and looks a bit anxious and I worry if I am making him insecure by not getting to him fast enough, when he cries to be fed.
Amazing how in the first few weeks I though it was quite easy, apart from my soreness. He slept a lot in the day and I could do things, like hang out the washing or download the digital camera. I felt all I had to do was feed him. P was still at home and changing all his nappies. Then I’ve had a week or so where he has wanted to feed, snacking continually and not sleeping very long and it felt impossible to do anything else. (I remember during his third week he seemed to feed about every 10 minutes. I spoke to someone from La Leche, who suggested he was having a growth spurt.)
I have ventured out each day with the Wilkinet sling, which always sends him to sleep. He was about 2.5 weeks the first time I took him out, just up the cycle track at the back of our house. At first it was hard to walk.
I don’t feel ready to go very far, or even hang out with other mothers and babies, too noisy and I worry about him getting a cold. Lara and Lizzie have been to visit me this week with their respective babies (Jed, 3 months and Robin Autumn, 6 weeks). I don’t feel like going out in the car yet.
8th
Days melt away, as I sit on a chair or a bean bag, breastfeeding, listening to Radio 4 or Radio 2 at lunchtime; reading a snippet of a magazine or a book; Penelope Leach’s Baby and Child or Trevor Gunn’s Immunisation, a Point in Question.
Sometimes T seems to hardly sleep; he will fall asleep in my arms, over my shoulder or at my breast, but if I put him down, he soon realises there is no warm body or heartbeat, and his eyes pop open.
This writing is interrupted by his cries for comfort and feeding and my exhaustion. He is 5 weeks today, and I am just surfacing. My ‘parts’ are almost better – I can walk and sit, though just discovered a cut (?) inside my labia, very painful, and I don’t know how it got there. Also feel mildly incontinent.
It’s the first night I am not exhausted and collapsing into bed at 9pm. Miraculously he has slept from 7 – 10pm and I have listened to an old ‘Round the Horn’ programme on BBC7, with Kenneth Williams making me laugh out loud. Just my style and what I need. Also watched a documentary on righting dysfunctional teens and spent 1 hour (!) on the web researching immunisation, reading Informed Parent website.
My mind feels fine but my body is exhausted I long for a sauna and look forward to my first massage tomorrow. Realise my posture is awful and I am holding tension in my arms, wrists, back and shoulders during breastfeeding and through carrying darling boy in the Wilkinet sling. P out for first time at some talk on paragliding in the Himalayas. Nearly 11pm and I am wondering when he is returning…hope this is not a regular thing as it is a long day without him though amazing to have a quiet evening of solitude so early on.
This was the first time Theo slept through from 7- 10pm, and I took it as a cue to put him ‘to bed’ in his Moses basket, which lay next to our bed, after feeding him. Later I regretted starting this bedtime thing so early, because later on he never really settled and we’d spend the whole evening running up and down stairs when he woke crying.
17th
Lovely boy rarely sleeps for longer than 15 minutes in the day. I mean – he will sleep on me, after feeding or being held upright, head over our shoulders, but occasionally I can snatch half an hour - yesterday I made a fruit salad, craving some fruit. He has a couple of smiling moments, again in his wide eyed contented face, after feeding, when he stares in to my eyes and I sing to him, he will smile and chuckle and make those wonderful sounds of childish wonderment. ‘Agu’, ‘aou’, soft open mouthed laughing sounds.
We did our first trip out alone this week (15th Dec) by which I mean negotiating the baby car seat and driving. I drove with Sophie and baby Samuel (9 weeks) to the Galleries in town for 2 hours of concentrated Christmas shopping. Hard pushing the pushchair, carrying bags etc. My shoulders and back are in a permanent ache from holding growing boy and breastfeeding. You become invisible with the pushchair. Apart from a few old women and other mothers, people look through you.
When I took him out to the post office aged 3 weeks, my precious cargo strapped to my front, the women behind the counter didn’t pass one remark about this special tiny being I carried, even as I struggled with my large pile of envelopes. I was posting our birth announcements, which I had written lying in bed, leaning on a tray, still in pain after the birth. I wanted to tell everyone – see how wonderful he is! But I am just another woman with a pushchair.
posted by f at 11:37 PM
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