Brother

People keep asking for footage of E interacting with her brother. For some reason my good camera is never within reach during these moments, but let me tell you, the cuteness wattage is out the window. Watching the two of them would make a calendar of baby puppies look repulsive.

E likes to pet his head. She rocks his chair, piles blankets on top of him. She kisses his face repeatedly. She pats his back to help burp him, nuzzles her cheek up against his hair, rests her head on his chest and just gazes at him for minutes. She sometimes asks to hold him, which she does with assistance. She keeps trying to share her food with him even though we tell her he has no teeth and can’t eat it. She even insists he hold her prized gummy bear vitamins for her (I stuff them into his little fist). She wants to see him before going to bed and asks about him first thing in the morning.

She is always gentle and enthusiastic with him, despite the fact that it must be obvious that the reason I can’t be with her is because I’m always with him. She has actually adjusted amazingly well, maybe because D and my parents marinate her with lots of love when I can’t.

Until I pull my photography-self together, here's a picture taken with my camera phone:

Journal Excerpt

He has a nasty habit of peeing over everything during diaper changes. My sister, who already has a boy, warned me about this, but I guess I thought somehow I could work around it. Like we could have a civilized conversation in which I told him, look, just keep that thing pointed down into the diaper if you feel the urge. But no such luck. Between that and the feeds, it’s a minor miracle if any piece of cloth within a foot of his body does not become soaked with pee, leaking milk, or spit within a few hours. We’re just swimming in the fluids over here. Boys are so uncouth.

Reimmersion

“We continually remember.. your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. .. In spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.” -1 Thessalonians chapter one

I’ve reentered that existence again, the one without night or day, marked by feeding cycles and trying to use the one or two hours in between to sleep with varying success. Last time, my husband and mom were around to help with the newborn in between feeds; now they are taking care of our two year-old when not going to work, so it’s just me with the baby.

This time reminds me of surgery and medicine clerkships third year of medical school. There is the same sense of deranged isolation. I remember riding the shuttle back from the hospital after sometimes having been there for three days straight. The shuttle would cut through the Commons and I’d look at all the people strolling down Newbury Street in chic outfits, eating at roadside cafes, and feel strangely detached. There are normal people out there, I’d think, who aren’t attached to ten tubes. Who aren’t in scrubs or gowns; who have washed their hair. Now I look out the window of our bedroom and think the same thing about the people strolling by in their normal, rested bodies.

But the difference now is that I’m with someone, one little person. The world has stopped, and I don’t have anything to do but be with him all the time. When else in my life can I say that? It’s an enforced honeymoon, a period of dwelling, in which there is a sort of quiet, unrelenting suffering, but also the same timbre of joy.

The other night I was looking at him nursing. His gums are like the jaws of life, clamping down with great resolution. I once heard someone describe it like having your nipple stapled, and I’m sorry to say that’s not far from the truth at times. But suddenly I thought, this is all for you, the sleeplessness and soreness, so you can feed and grow and I can show you I love you. I was able to connect the suffering with the joy and it helped.

I think about dwelling with God, about loving Christ, about having the Holy Spirit. If we do it right, there is suffering, and there is given joy, and the two are together. That’s what I want for this time: given joy in suffering, labor prompted by love, endurance inspired by hope. Something to ask for at least.

e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

I've been stymied for a bit regarding what to call this baby here, given his first name also starts with E. As does his middle. Guess we can go with e.e. I should read more poetry; I forget how much I like it. One thing is I can see a lot of green trees and blue sky from the sunny space where he and I hang out all day.

In Which I Speak Freely Of Breasts

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you.” -Isaiah 49:15

People don’t like to talk about this, but when your milk first comes in, your breasts become engorged. Which is a completely inadequate term for describing how they become the size of melons and the consistency of rocks, and ache so badly it’s hard to sleep, which is saying a lot in the setting of sleep deprivation. Typically the engorgement gets worse the closer it gets to his every-three-hour feeding time.

Today D brought the baby to the doctor’s for a follow-up visit; we figured it would be easier if I in my pajama-zombie state just stayed in to watch E rather than all go together. My breasts were starting to ache already when they left, but he wasn’t due to feed for another hour and we figured he’d be back by then. Then D texted to say the baby had to get a blood test before coming home.

By then it was around his feed time, and I was in serious discomfort. Luckily my mom had arrived for lunchtime. I think she may have fed E and I may have tried to eat a few bites, but in the end all I could do was sit and stare stupidly out the window at the driveway. My breasts ached and pounded and became inhumanly hard and I couldn’t think of anything else except where he was, waiting in line for some blood draw, crying and hungry and for the first time not within arm’s reach.

Finally D said they were on their way back, and I sat upstairs in the rocker where we nurse, having taken off my bra because it hurt too much to wear, holding a towel to my breasts, which had started to leak whenever I thought about him. I was never more glad to hear the garage door open. They were just thirty minutes late for the feed.

I didn’t cry when labor was finished and they laid him on my chest for the first time. But I cried when he finally came back to nurse.

I will never, ever look at that verse the same way again.

Arrival

It must be said that he was a very punctual baby. Stroke of midnight on his due date, and the contractions started. The whole labor lasted about four hours; he crowned on the first push and came out on the second. This makes it sound like no big deal, or as my mom puts it, like I went and laid an egg. D, bolstered by the speed of it all and the ease of the baby’s temperament, has dared to say the word “third.”

Though faster, labor felt grittier this time around. I think there was a part of myself the first time that I reserved for wonder; a part of my mind was always on the side thinking, “oh my, how curious,” and it allowed me to embrace the worst times with a sort of hopeful generosity.

Labor this time felt more like digging my toes in the dirt and wishing the whole thing would be over. I had definitely forgotten how painful it was, or maybe my body didn’t have time to acclimate to the continuous wave of contractions at the end before it was all over. At one point the nurse had to remind me to open my legs to let the baby out and I all I could think was, but it hurts more that way; I had no idea he was at the time just a few pushes away.

They laid him right on me afterwards this time, still slick and slimy and blue. It was marvelous and surreal, though the entire time I was distracted by the sensation that I could feel every stitch they were putting in down below. That’s how these first few days have been: marveling at him, griping about the recovery. Everything is marginally better than it was the first time around, but that isn’t to say it’s any more pleasant having engorged breasts or soreness that makes you wonder if you’ll ever sit normally again. There’s nothing worse than desperately wanting your old body back only to realize you’ve become a relative invalid with a floppy belly to boot.

But he is something else. Our first was not exactly an easy newborn, and now we are all amazement. He actually likes car seats! He can go out in public without crying constantly! He can fall asleep on his own in the crib! He actually sleeps! Best of all, he doesn’t require total silence to nurse or stay asleep as she did, which is convenient since E has been obsessed with never being parted from his side, which involves playing and singing loudly next to his crib while he naps.

So here we are, the four of us. That has a nice ring to it.