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i woke up this morning and i wanted to call in sick.

of course, this was the third time i’d woken. the first was at four-thirty, when Oscar – who seems to be going through a ravenous spurt – awoke starving. the second was forty minutes later, when after a reluctant (on my part – i stopped nursing him through the night ages ago) feeding and return to our respective beds, he woke again. by the time he peeped his “i’m up for the day” cry around seven, i was done…where were the day shift people? i tried to burrow under my pillow and hide. on weekdays, i am the day shift people.

i am too sick to be a mommy today.

i’ve had a cold now for two weeks. it’s waxed and waned in virulence, but has bloomed with a vengeance these past couple of days. i’m stuffed up, and my throat is dry and scratchy and wretched. for the first couple of hours of every day, speaking feels like i’m talking through shards of fiberglass insulation. nasty. my nose drips. i hurt, and i feel whiny.

i am obviously not fit to care for children. so where the hell is Mary Poppins when you need her?

when i envisioned motherhood, i took the baby’s inevitable illnesses into account, and signed on for better or worse. my own illness was the part of the job i failed to anticipate. i’m not sure why…perhaps the fine print on this part of the contract was smudged or something…perhaps some other mommy’s nose dripped on it, and rendered it unreadable. perhaps it’s just something nobody talks about, like so many of the other quiet endurance tests of motherhood.

but it is the place where this job is perhaps most different from anything one does in the paid working world. i’ve taught for twelve years. if you’re sick, you cancel or call a substitute teacher, depending on the context of your class. you don’t want to spread your germs to your students…and, really, you just don’t want to get out of bed.

if a teacher were to go to work sick for two weeks in a row, dragging her tail behind her and leaving snot trails all over her charges, she’d be called crazy. but as a mother, there isn’t anything to do but suck it up and try to sing through the scratchy throat and hope to god you don’t breathe directly on the child while soothing him to sleep. this last part, i can attest, is difficult. i took to wearing a hospital mask my mother “borrowed” from work for a few mornings, but a sticky sneezing fit ended that plan. now i just try not to sneeze on him.

i have this fantasy where somebody starts a substitute mommy corps. i wake up sick, place a desperate call to the substitute mommies, and “presto!” one materializes. she is capable, and kind, and a little plump. she changes all the dirty diapers. she brings me lemon tea and honey while enthralling Oscar with educational songs. she fluffs my pillows, and does my laundry, and makes sure Oscar eats just the right amount and gets all his burps up. she reads him Dr. Seuss and does all the voices in charming accents, and i hear him laughing as i drift off to rejuvenating dreamland. i sleep, and sleep…and get up to cough a bit, maybe, and then sleep some more. we have a delightful day, me and Oscar and the substitute mommy.

this is, currently – and a little sadly – my favourite fantasy ever.

at the end of it she gives him back, of course. i don’t want her forever. mothering O is my job…and i want to do it well, to be the one to make Oscar giggle and teach him things and watch him try to sit up on his own. i even take pride in the clean laundry.
i just want this one day off.

and maybe some lemon tea, and some cherry-flavoured cough medicine. :)

so, i really did go running yesterday.

or, at least, i went out in the rain and trundled along at a fast waddle. my panting, bosom-bouncing scoot earning me more than a few glances from passing cars (i think i need a better sports bra), but i did it. for at least a whole kilometre, i did it. and magically, i did not collapse nor die in the doing.

of course, neither did i magically discover that elusive “runner’s high” that i hear so much about. i did get a wee thrill from the oxygen deprivation, reminiscent of the thin, strained feeling one gets right before one passes out from hyperventilation, but no identifiable “high.” pity. i could use a high, and the promise of it brings me sporadically back to jogging every year or two, for a few weeks. i’ve always suspected that runner’s high runs faster than i do. i galumph along chasing it for a bit…but it gets away on me, and then i forget about it.

this morning, however, it’s hard to forget yesterday’s little jog. i woke up feeling vaguely pleased with myself, like i’d done something virtuous and deserved a nice pat for it. when i glanced at the clock and realized it was ten after seven and we’d all slept right through the night, i thought that sleeping must be the good thing i’d accomplished. then i rolled over, and my bleary brain wondered why – and how – the cat was gnawing on both my legs under the blankets. when i realized that the cat was sitting across the room staring at me, i remembered. went jogging. yay. crippled now. ow.

turns out that walking around the house holding a baby whilst working out the lactic acid from one’s limbs is not fun. Oscar has learned a few new swear words this morning…but he is polite. he neither criticizes nor repeats…nice boy. i’m going to miss this baby stage when it passes.

as hobbled as i feel, i’m proud of myself. mostly just for following through on the commitment to go: i want to keep trying to be a person who actually does what she sets out to do. i’d like to set that example for O. but i’m also amazed, in a much deeper and less personal way, at the capacity of my body to adapt and rejuvenate itself. yesterday, as my legs plodded along the trail and my lungs opened up, i remembered that only five months ago this body was completely confined to a bed. for ten weeks, i lay around and watched my calf muscles atrophy. and yet here they were, despite a lack of any focused recovery effort, carrying me faithfully along at a pace twice as fast as they’re accustomed to. i’m grateful they didn’t dump me in a heap.

i will go again tomorrow.

it appears i am running dry.

this isn’t entirely news, as Oscar began pulling off the breast in the middle of feedings at least a month ago. but that didn’t last, and i chalked it up to nipple confusion from too much bottle supplementation. i wondered whether the fact that it happened right at the end of my first cycle back on the pill might have some significance, but my doctor had sworn this pill wouldn’t affect milk supply. as my hormones didn’t sort themselves out well after the delivery, leaving me a wan and prolapsed estrogen-free zone, i’d gone willingly back on birth control in hopes of getting my body and certain, er, aspects of my relationship back in order.

(for Dave’s dad and any other faithful readers who may feel squeamish about the paragraph above, you will be excused if you wish to flee this screen and resume playing Spider Solitaire). :)

i just finished month two back on ye olde pill a couple of days ago. i also spent half the week away from Oscar, up to my nicely waxed armpits in two very lovely weddings, one of which i stood in, as a claret-befrocked and fully decked out best woman. it was fun. but pumping one’s milk in one’s skivvies next to the wedding tent while one’s bridesmaid’s dress pools on the bathroom floor and mosquitoes nibble on one’s thighs is not fun. nor fast. so i probably didn’t do it as much as i should have. and by the time Dave & i made it back into town to our boy (and his kind, babysitting grandparents) the morning after the grand event, i’d apparently lost some of my milk supply.

it didn’t seem so…i woke up that morning with breasts the size of melons, and i faithfully pumped them in the car on the ride back into town – not as risque a practice as it sounds, though i don’t recommend pulling up directly behind school buses. i fed Oscar without difficulty the first feeding back home. but the next, he started to pull off again, almost immediately after we started. i thought remnants of the wine i’d had at the wedding might be affecting taste, so we gave him a bottle of formula.

this continued on and off for three days – him sometimes feeding normally, sometimes not. he also started rejecting his soother, and being in proximity to his crib. yippee.
yesterday, i finally clued in, at least to the feeding bit. i’d taken O to see the pediatrician in the morning, just for a checkup, and i mentioned his nursing resistance and how i wondered whether the pill was affecting my milk, as most of his pulling off seemed to coincide with the end of my cycles. she said nothing. but when we got home, he flat out refused to nurse, though his wailing made it clear that he was hungry. so i tried to pump…and got nothing. i tried squeezing milk out, just with my fingers – which has always previously resulted in a shot splashed clear across the room. i got nothing.

i googled milk supply and discovered that, indeed, any  pill combined with a few missed feedings, or even with the kind of regular once-a-day supplementation we’d been doing, can cause a fairly sudden supply problem. the cure? most sites suggested what they coyly call a “nursing holiday,” where O and i take to our beds – or rather, to the big family bed – and do nothing but nurse for a coupla days. interesting. so much for all the independent sleep training Dave & i’ve been working on with him for the past five weeks.

but we’re trying it. when Oscar peeped at 2 am last night, instead of getting a soother and a pat back to sleep like he’s grown accustomed to, he got the Vegas treatment: free transport to a queen-sized bed and unlimited breasts shoved in his face all night long. he seemed shocked – perhaps my mother’s Methodist streak showing through in him. :) and i’ve been pumping like a mad thing, whenever O’s not at work on the girls. but trying to get them to give again feels futile, at this point. there are drips of milk and little else left, even after 24 hours of stimulation. in a supply-demand system, i was hoping for more.

my boy is hungry, and his routine is shot to hell.

i feel dismayed, and slightly betrayed. partly by my doctors – in one dark corner of my self is a surge of righteous anger, a sneaky, hateful streak of blame that wants to lash out at them for not warning me that this could happen, or for not recognizing it when it did. but like most inclinations towards blame, this one covers for a lot of anger and self-pity and guilt – it is myself  i’m struggling with here. i wonder how i’ll feel if i have to stop nursing my son against my wishes?  i wonder if the formula really agrees with Oscar after all, and what effect it’ll have on him if it’s his only food for the next two or three months? i wonder how i’ll cope with this, if my choice to breastfeed ends up being out of my hands from here on in?  i wonder if four months of breastmilk have given him enough antibodies?

i wonder if there’s something i’m missing, that would bring the milk back?

and a part of me wonders why i care so much…what the breastfeeding really signifies to me.  i’m not sure i’ll know until this story unfolds itself, and i learn whether or not O and i can keep on with our nursing or not.

i do know that, once again, i seem to have no clue what i’m doing.  welcome to parenthood.

i’ve started a mom’s group.

those words make me blush. rather self-consciously, like i’ve exposed a secret fetish for something turgidly wholesome. in my former baby-free life, i might have conjured up an image of a mom’s group founder as a rabidly perky, baby-obsessed keener, replete with matching tupperware and a “Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul” collection. which i swear i’m not. really. i own army boots. i wore them just last year. and i still have friends who don’t have kids, and i wouldn’t want them to think i’ve gone over to the Disney side entirely….hence the blushing. i do still read things other than “The Baby Whisperer”….in very short intervals.

but the fact is, i don’t really have friends who do have kids, at least not here, in the milk-stained, sleep-deprived flesh. and i’ve been feeling the lack, deeply. so this Wednesday afternoon mother’s group that i cobbled together with a few phone calls two weeks ago is actually something i’m kinda proud of. it’s the first time i’ve ever really been the one to take that first step with people i didn’t know well; the first time i’ve been willing to stick my neck out and try to make a group come together out of a scattered collection of individuals. i’ve spent the last twenty years or so letting people come to me…and i’ve been lucky. they’ve come – i am blessed in my friends. but asking new people to come, even just for coffee, sent me into paroxysms of adolescent angst.

the other mamas were acquaintances, mostly, or the friends of friends. i worried before i called them: would they think my mom’s group idea was lame? would they would think i was some kind of mom cheerleader, too earnest to hang out with? would they think i was deficient, eager to commiserate with other new mothers because of my inability to cope? was the city already clotted with groups, and was i advertising my sad isolation in not knowing anyone who’d invited me to join one? were their thighs already contracted to pre-baby size? would anyone even show up?

in the end, i got over myself and picked up the phone, four or five times over, and called them. and i noticed something that i probably would have noticed decades ago if i’d swallowed my insecurities and learned to initiate friendships better. it really wasn’t so risky, after all. they all came. they were happy to be asked. they, too, welcomed the chance to get out of the house and talk to adults. and they’re nice.

we don’t do much. we descend on a coffee-shop patio in the middle of the city and circle our prams like wagons, making ourselves and our babies a little oasis of shared experience. we talk. most conversations are erratic and unfinished: a baby cries or falls asleep or throws a rice biscuit into someone else’s stroller. the topics are mundane, mostly – sleep schedules, when to switch from three hours between feeds to four. how hurt and angry one of us was when flatly told not to bring her newborn to a friend’s wedding shower. how frustrated one of us (moi) is trying to find a foundation garment to wear under the bridesmaid’s dress i’ve got to squeeze myself into next week – who thought spaghetti straps were a good idea for a nursing mother? and how hard it is adding a second child to the mix of a family, and what babysitters come recommended, and how we’d really like to go to New York. not all mom stuff, just…talk.

the group is good for me. and i hope, as the babies grow, it’ll be good for Oscar too, in the socialization sense. but i think it’s already served a valuable purpose, in teaching me a lesson i hope i can pass on to little O, sometime before he hits thirty: it’s not so bad to reach out to people. and it’s much cooler to try to get what you want from the world than to freeze up and lament your loneliness.

if you try sometimes, you get what you need. trite, but true. thanks, Stones. thanks, fellow mamas in my group. see you Wednesday.

so…tell me honestly. do you think Oscar’s too young to send away to summer camp for a couple of weeks? :)

it’s been a bit of a nightmare weekend. for three days, the boy has been crying whenever he’s awake, which is approximately every hour or two around the clock. he appears to be on a bit of a nursing strike and a growth spurt at the same time, so he latches on, pulls off, screams, latches on again…and around we go. hurts like hell, and apparently doesn’t make him very happy, either. we’ve resorted to using more supplementary bottles as a result, which is likely exacerbating the problem: i suspect he’s gotten spoilt by the easy flow of the bottle nipple and not want to work for his dinner anymore. fair enough, son. but i fear our days of nursing may not be long for this world…and that makes me sad.

not quite sad enough to spend the next seventy hours withholding bottles and trying to train him back on the breast properly, admittedly, as poor little O seems to think he’s starving each time the flow slows down, but sad. i am grieving my own hopes for Oscar’s babyhood – those best-laid plans that had no place in them for colic and allergies. ah, sweet baby O, this whole ride has not quite been what i had in mind. i’m trying to forgive myself that…and resign myself to the road we’re on. i’m getting there, but i don’t like it much. bah. humbug.

mama is tired – actually, beyond tired. mama is bone weary. and cranky. and hot, dammit…here we are having this fabulous stretch of summertime weather in a part of the world not always known for balmy temperatures, and all i want to do is crawl into bed and stay there for about a week, sunshine or no sunshine.

i should have stayed in bed – or at least in the house – this evening: drove my mum home, and managed to back into a car. a parked car…that Lincoln just popped out of nowhere, i swear, officer! or rather, it was just minding its own stationary business…and there was the hind end of my Kia, butting into its bumper. completely my fault. and there went eighteen years (god, i’m that old?) of a perfect driving record. sigh. kinda sums up how i feel about the whole weekend.

i did leave them my number. and felt vaguely virtuous for doing so. i wonder if any of that smug pleasantness will be left over by the time the bill comes in?

when i feel cheerful enough, i remember to tell myself “this too shall pass.” if anyone knows when, they’re invited to please let me know, and to hurry it up, if they can. before i seriously consider sussing out that infant summer camp, or sending myself off to one.

i do love campfire songs…

home again, home again, riggity jig…i can never remember the end of that nursery rhyme.

but we are home, and happy, if not a lot more informed than we were when Oscar went into the hospital a week ago. i’m still off dairy, and citrus, and – sniff! – chocolate, and he’s still sporadically miserable, but we’re working it through. he had a miserable eighteen hours or so through Sunday night and yesterday, but this morning, he seems like his cheerful, alert little self again. my fingers – and most of my nerves – are crossed.

he came home on Saturday, just in time for Father’s Day. Dave didn’t get his Dairy Queen cake, but Oscar considerately got him some tasty Father’s Day chicken wings instead. and he almost got breakfast in bed, except that by the time the coffee and the fruit shake were ready, the baby was howling for a feeding, so the huevos rancheros went on hold until later in the day. they were eventually scarfed down around 2 pm while Dave jiggled the stroller in one hand and tried to keep from dripping salsa on the cat. much flexibility is required in this parenthood thing.

we also finally got around to making the switch to cloth diapers over the weekend, once Oscar got home from the hospital. despite his long-running diarrhea, the boy has been gaining and growing like a foie gras goose, and the newborn Huggies that seemed so enormous when we came home with him the first time were now looking rather wee…and rather pricy, since we’d finally run out of donations from the hospital and from O’s grandmas. so, we leapt into the brave old world of wet diapers that actually feel wet, and little wrap covers that rustle like snowpants when he moves.

they add kind of a retro baby-bumpy-butt look to his little outfits…and they do leak a bit around the legs, but they’re not quite as intimidating as i’d begun to think they might be. while i was pregnant, before Oscar was actually an individual making waste of his own, i’d intended to use cloth right from day one, or at least from the day we brought him home from the hospital. it makes economic and environmental sense, and – the real bonus – the idea made me feel virtuously earth-motherish. after all, i’d be home all day – wouldn’t i have piles of time on my hands to spend on laundry?

insert loud guffaw at my naive and foolish self.

as it turned out, he came early, and by the time we brought him home we’d already gotten used to the tidy little preemie Pampers he’d worn in the hospital for that first two weeks. plus he was still way too small for the stash of cloth we’d bought, and heck, we’d been given four packages of newborn-size disposables by our own wise mothers, “just in case they might come in handy.” very handy indeed. five more weeks of handy, especially with all that diarrhea. and there was plenty of laundry without diapers…more, in fact, than all that “time on my hands” could manage. i was starting to look at my diaper genie as a beloved companion.

and that’s how i knew it was time to make the change, if we were ever going to do it. rumour has it the cloth’ll do wonders for the low-grade diaper rash that’s built up through weeks of diarrhea. and i can stop feeling quite so horribly guilty about the landfill contributions our household is making.

but we’re not necessarily going to retire the diaper genie just yet. the diarrhea might come back.

Oscar is in the hospital.

he’s fine, really, in a weird way. but he’s been, since Tuesday at suppertime, the wee resident of a big old crib in a big old room all to himself in the local pediatrics ward. they sent me home that first night to unfray myself and sleep, because his admission followed a 48-hour crescendo of incredible, inconsolable distress on his part, and we were both exhausted. but the sight of him lying there alone, such a small bundle, his big eyes peering up at me and his face confused by all the strange smells and noises – it nearly unhinged me. i walked out of the pediatric ward and seriously considered checking myself into the psych unit just across the hall.

i’m only half kidding. having a child in the hospital is a miserable thing, no matter the situation. i felt doubly wretched – the much-touted ‘mother guilt’ i was warned about – because i myself am part of “the situation” that’s landed my baby here. turns out Oscar’s diarrhea and discomfort (lamented at length in my last post and thought to be lactose intolerance or a milk protein allergy) are apparently as much a breastfeeding problem as an allergy: a vicious circle we’ve fallen into because nursing comforts his pain, but also causes it. so every time i’ve nursed my crying child, i’ve inadvertantly ensured more crying. sigh. go figure.

we’ve gotten that cycle broken, at least for the time being. he spent 30 hours off the breast, on a special hypoallergenic formula that costs more than my mortgage payments, cleaning out his little system. the improvement was startlingly sudden, and heartening – he stopped howling, stopped flailing his little legs in pain, stopped leaking diarrhea.

all very simple, then, right? except that this fancy-ass formula is only supposed to be given in hospital. it’s not something parents can buy over the counter, even if we wanted to spend his entire education fund getting him through until he starts solids. and i’m still not entirely ready to give up on breastfeeding until we get straight answers about these allergy issues. but to do that, we need to play more with trial and error, and risk making him miserable again in the process.

as so often happens once the ‘experts’ get involved, there are umpteen opinions floating about as to the correct course of action from here. his nurse gave an “i’m not telling you what to do, but…” sermon this morning on how all her kids were raised on cow’s milk, straight from the barn, from day one. i thanked her for the advice…and refrained from commenting on my unfortunate lack of a barn and cows. another mentioned that soy formula might be a less costly replacement for the hypoallergenic stuff – which is true, though about 50% of kids with milk allergies also react to soy, apparently. the lactation consultant has helpful if inconvenient advice about pumping off the first ounce of milk from each breast before i feed, thus limiting the amount of lactose in the milk. will do. but she also instructed that if he wants the breast every hour and half, i should give it to him and nurse for as long as he can stay awake. which is all very nice, but my dear glutton of a son can nurse for well over an hour at a stretch. by my calculations, that will leave about twelve cumulative minutes per day for me to shower and attend to those other pesky things the world seems to require of me. like eating, and unloading the dishwasher. and writing blog laments.

i’m not sure what we do from here. i stayed here at the hospital last night, and put Oscar back on the breast, after carefully pumping off that troublesome foremilk and eschewing dairy with vigilance. these precautions may help deal with his allergic symptoms…we’re waiting to see. whether they help deal with the insatiability three weeks of diarrhea seem to have created in him, and make it possible to get him back onto a two-or-three hour nursing routine remains to be seen. i hope so. i felt good with his little head in my hand, his little mouth smacking away on me. it’s the scenario i want…but not at the cost of his discomfort or every second of my spare time.

so…the blogger’s cry for help…if you out there in the great ether have words of wisdom that don’t involve me buying a farm or giving up all attempts at sleep and personal cleanliness, they’re very very welcome. dear abby, dear readers…what would you do?

ah, the sacrifices of parenthood.

Oscar has had diarrhea for almost three weeks now, poor wee beastie. no, this is not another post on poop. but when one’s newborn is miserable for weeks on end, the desire to seek out the root of that misery and rout it out grows with each passing sleepless night. so after a few calls to the public health nurse, a few sheepish am-i-just-being-a-paranoid-mom visits to the family doctor, and a Friday referral to the children’s clinic at the hospital here, we finally have a potential answer to the mystery of how our sweet baby turned into a leaky, tortured screech owl. lactose intolerance, says the specialist of the moment. blame it on the cows.

since i’m not quite ready to give up this breastfeeding thing Oscar and i’ve worked so hard to master, i’m giving up cows instead. or at least their milk and its byproducts…for the next two weeks or so, to see if it makes any difference in the little guy’s comfort and bowels.

one does not realize how much one owes to the poor cows until one goes to give them up. i’ve gone off the hoof before…i was a fairly strict vegetarian for a number of years. but even then, it was the beef i missed. i could go years and not look at chicken or pork or seafood…but…however much i’d like to be more politically and environmentally noble and avoid mad cow disease and all those fine things, i like the taste of cattle. a lot. in all their myriad forms.

now, as a decidly fallen vegetarian, i can eat as much steak as my postpartum anemia might clamour for. which i thought would be more of a consolation in the rest of this cow withdrawal, until i realized that giving up milk doesn’t just mean switching to soy milk on my cereal. that part’s fine. but ditching yogurt – and thus tzatziki? and cheese – and thus those little frozen pasta lunches i’ve been subsisting on! and butter – oh poor naked popcorn and wax beans. i grew up on margarine. i only discovered butter in my twenties. and while i don’t eat it on much, those few things i eat it on i really eat solely for the butter…what good is corn on the cob without it? all baked goods made with milk are also verboten, as are any whey byproducts flavouring my snack foods. and Dairy Queen. no Dairy Queen hot fudge sundaes. no blizzards. not a single slice of the Dairy Queen cake i was going to buy Dave for Father’s Day next Sunday. as we happen to live right next door to the local Dairy Queen, this whole ice cream prohibition is a particular hardship, as i can’t step outside my door without the temptress staring me in the face. ach, what one endures for one’s offspring!

if poor Oscar really does turn out to be lactose intolerant, i think we’ll have to move to a different neighbourhood…imagine growing up next door to the town’s major purveyor of ice cream and not being able to eat any? cruel, methinks.

ah sweet Dairy Queen, parting is such sweet sorrow.

and i suspect Dave is getting a nice tie for Father’s Day instead of that blizzard cake. wouldn’t want him to feel guilty having to eat it in front of me. :)

the honeymoon…er, babymoon…is now officially over.

Dave went back to work last week, after taking Oscar’s first two weeks at home off so we could figure some of this parenting stuff out together. this practice period, which was apparently not thunk up by us, is officially known in cutesy parenting magazines and msn articles as a babymoon. and our two weeks was a babymoon to beat all babymoons – the Fiji resort vacation of babymoons, i daresay.

we had unseasonally beautiful weather, a happy, sleepy baby, and two weeks to hang out and clean out all that scary shit in the shed between naps. heck, we got to nap! and i had a willing volunteer for the diaper changes, even the 3am ones…it was dreamy. we even took the boy on his first road trip – to his grandparents home in new brunswick – and heard barely a peep out of him the whole way. he even slept through the night once. i started to feel as if i’d landed in pleasantville…and while half of me was looking over my shoulder waiting for the other shoe to drop, the other half of me got comfortable, cocky even, in this happy routine of sweetness and light.

then Dave went back to work and all hell broke lose. literally. some nasty stomach bug must have wormed its way into Oscar’s little digestive tract during one of those truckstop diaper changes on the trip back home, and about an hour after Dave departed for the office, Oscar woke up screaming bloody murder and leaking explosive green stuff all over. nice timing, my son. i swear your father paid you off.

he kept this up for six straight hours, only working himself into an exhausted sleep about half an hour before Dave returned home. that night and the next day…same thing. the doctor’s office assured me by phone that he wouldn’t die and that since he had no fever and wasn’t dehydrated i should just keep him home and keep an eye on him.

in truth i pretty much had an eye and a hand on him at all times, trying to soothe him, to rock and pet out the gases making his little face wrinkle up in sudden squealing grimaces. but patting and holding and carrying a baby takes up an amazing amount of hand time – the time, in other words, that one used to have to do things one never even thought about, like surfing blogs or buttoning one’s pants after peeing. or entertaining/disciplining the cat, who’d seemed quite okay with her new furless brother during the babymoon but became inconsolably jealous once he began howling and demanding my constant attention, thus leading her to bite my ankles and add her own lamentations to the general wail. plus eat the plants, unless she too was being petted. hand time, i now realize, has a price above rubies.

five days after the end of the babymoon, though, i feel vaguely relieved. Oscar’s misery has abated, and he’s gone back to sleeping, at least some of the time. the cat has stopped acting like a spurned lover, and i’ve gotten both my hands back long enough to sit down and type for a few minutes. i’m still exhausted…but i’m starting to accept that as a state of being. and i’ve stopped looking over my shoulder, waiting for the pretty, brittle facade of the babymoon to crack.

it rained all week. i changed all the diarrhea diapers. my cat appears to resent me deeply. and my poor baby cried and cried and cried, and i couldn’t do a damn thing except hold him…which meant my kitchen turned into a pigsty and my biggest accomplishment all week was a load of laundry. but i did it. and i didn’t completely lose my mind.

now i feel like a real mom.

today was supposed to be Oscar’s birthday…but the early bird is almost four weeks old.

and he’s becoming more and more a little person every day. he’s awake more, and he peers about blearily, taking in the world. he’s a content, watchful little creature, round, downy-fuzz head on a sausage roll of swaddling. when he breaks free from his blankets, he flaps his arms like a wild thing, but always seems surprised when the appendages whack him in the face. he peeps when he first wakes up, and he snorts a little when he feeds. he weighs almost seven-and-a-half pounds, and has the beginnings of little baby fat rolls – already i can see his newborn face disappearing, giving way to the round babyface visage he’ll have in the coming months. i grieve and delight in this growth, this changing Oscar. i keep meaning to footprint him now, before his tiny baby feet outgrow the preemie-sized sleepers that get smaller every day. now, i understand all those people who said “it goes by so fast.”

in Antoine St. Exupery’s “The Little Prince,” a fox entreats the little prince to tame him. he instructs him to come at the same time each afternoon, and sit a little closer every day. “to me you are just a little boy, like all other little boys,” says the fox. “but if you tame me, you will be unique in all the world.” my boy has been taming me for four weeks now, batting his little blond eyelashes, distinguishing himself from all the other babies he might have been – teaching me to love him for who he is and is becoming.

but there are other, less Hallmark-worthy revelations in this wonder of new parenthood. the baby’s growing fast and charming me with his small self, but the 3am vigils still seem to last like timeless torture some nights, as i slump in the chair by the bed, struggling to keep the gnawing little mouth latched properly on an aching nipple and the small squirmy body balanced on the breastfeeding pillow. i look at my child, in these moments, and i don’t always see the individual Oscar, but just a baby, a needy baby like a thousand other babies. and i wonder at the survival of the human race.

in the middle of the night, it becomes blatantly, overwhelmingly apparent that this squalling hungry infant is entirely dependent on the adult who happens to be awake with him…which is usually me, though his father is a star at middle-of-the-night diaper changes. but we could ignore him, if we chose. i could sleep (maybe with earplugs). i could leave him lying in his own waste. i could scream at him to shut up already. or, at the end of a rope i hope i never run out of, i could do worse. and he, small mewling thing, could do nothing at all. he is totally, entirely vulnerable to the whims of the adults he’s been entrusted to. this realization – that we are those adults for Oscar – is bald and frightening, and amazing. i have never, ever had such power. or such responsibility.

“The Little Prince” closes the chapter on the fox and the prince with the caution, “you are responsible forever, for what you have tamed.” as a parent, i think the reverse is also true. you are responsible, forever, for the little life that tames you. and sometimes, that responsibility is immense, and exhausting. but Oscar, he of the pointy chin and grasping hands, has become unique to me in all the world. and that – only that – will keep me semi-conscious at 3 in the morning, feeding my little prince.

it has been an amazing four weeks.