1 Month

Posted by E-George on October 20, 2008

Today Evelyn is 1 month old.

It has been 4 weeks of learning and adjusting with all the smoothness of an 8 second ride strapped to the back of an agitated bull named World War Three.  From what I can tell, that’s all parenthood is: a protracted episode of Learning and Adjusting.  I’m not sure if Matthew has felt the adjustment to the same intensity, but I can say from my own perspective that I wouldn’t care to repeat these past 4 weeks.  Once is enough.

In the past 4 weeks, I have:

• Learned to breastfeed
• Learned to breastfeed through excruciating pain related to cracking and chapping
• Learned to breastfeed while healing said cracking and chapping using lanolin
• Learned to breastfeed after discovering (after 3 weeks of unadulterated misery) I have a sensitivity to lanolin and switching to Vitamin E oil
• Learned to not completely hate breastfeeding
• Learned how to use a breast pump
• Learned to distinguish between crying tones: pissy, uncomfortable, unhappy, outraged, startled, diaper, etc…
• Learned to put clothes on over her head without smashing her nose or ears
• Learned how to give a wriggling infant a bath
• Learned how great it is when infant goes into something of a schedule
• Learned how awful it is when infant decides schedules are for sucks and goes off into the scheduling weeds
• Learned that sleep is overrated
• Learned that spit-up, pee, poo, and other various semi-solid outputs via indiscriminate orifices aren’t as gross when they come out of my own baby versus someone else’s
• Learned how to use a baby sling and a Moby wrap
• Learned that no matter how much one may wish to think so, there is no equal effort of care giving between mother and father because father can’t lactate
• Learned how strong the temptation is to chop off all my hair in an effort to create one less thing to deal with
• Learned that sometimes it’s OK to let the baby cry a little
• Learned that as soft as babies are, the have some pretty sharp corners
• Learned how to trim  sleeping baby’s finger nails after awake baby grabbed a fistfull of boob skin with untrimmed finger nails

I’ve also accepted that I look like a Fraggle most of the time.   A Fraggle with circles under her eyes and running on an emotional hair trigger.  Especially after nights like last night when Evelyn saw fit to flip day with night and was awake and wanting to visit and/or nurse every 30-45 minutes.

We’ve survived the first month.  I expect we’ll survive the coming months as well, but it’s hard to look that far down the road when I can’t even predict if I’ll get breakfast today.   Evelyn is still adorable, despite all the challenges and I’m madly in love with her.  Even when she’s showing me her pissy face.

Filed Under: Evelyn, Happiness is, Lookit - Comments: 4 Comments to Read



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