Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • So, there I was, just minding my own business

    I was minding my own business, standing in front of the fire with Evelyn on my shoulder, when with a bit of a shudder, she puked all over me. Down my back, on the hearth stones, running down my arm. You can tell she’s a third baby however, because I managed to catch it before it dripped into my cleavage.

    I can’t say my reflexes were that great with the other two kids.

    Puke catching: It’s a skill I’ve honed through the last six years of motherhood.

    Where’s my medal?

    A bit later, Isaac was sitting on the potty in the loungeroom, while I read blogs and held Evelyn upright (all the better to stop her throwing up anymore), when Isaac accidentally tipped his potty over and sort of fell off it.

    Nope, I don’t quite know how he managed it either, he’s got skills, my boy. For the record, eucalyptus oil is a great cleaner.

    It’s all bodily fluids and eye-gunk over here you guys. The trifecta of motherhood.

    Yes, eye gunk. Amy has conjunctivitis and despite dripping breastmilk, chamomile tea AND antibiotic drops into her eyes, it’s getting worse, not better. School has been missed. A doctors appointment has been made. Lots of shrieking to “NOT TOUCH THE BABY” has occured.

    It’s frankly awesome, this motherhood gig.

    Isn’t it?

    ** I’m not really complaining.

     

     

  • I am a storyteller.

    At least I have the decency to call my lies fiction.

    A warning:

    I own my stories, and I own the right to tell them.

  • Four weeks old. Or full term corrected. Either/either

    We had the Clinic Health Nurse out to visit us this week, to weigh Evelyn and measure her. You know that there was a small amount of confusion as to how far along I was when I gave birth, and no one has agreed on anything.

    I said 36 weeks, minimum. The early ultrasound said 34 weeks. Evelyn’s nurses in Special Care agreed that she was acting like a 36 + week baby, and so did the doctors. The clinic nurses however, they couldn’t decide, and we’ve had a number of confusing conversations regarding actual age, versus corrected age and how many weeks to correct by, and really, I get a headache thinking about it.

    ANYWAY.

    Evelyn has now, at four weeks old, reached the size of a regular newborn. Slightly heavier than Isaac at birth, slightly lighter than Amy, she is teensy tiny, in a huge kind of way. (Honestly you guys, I cannot believe I birthed two babies as huge as Evelyn is right now. CANNOT BELIEVE.) During weighing, she was 3.17kg, or a spectacular 6lb15oz, with a grand total weight gain of 760g in two weeks.

    [Digression: Turns out, Isaac was only 6lb10oz at birth – not the 7lbs I’d been told by a midwife with a conversion chart. I didn’t realise this until Evelyn was weighing more than Isaac at birth, yet wasn’t quite 7lbs. When I announced this to Nathan, he was all “why does this matter?” and I ended up shouting at him, because THESE THINGS MATTER TO WOMEN. And it doesn’t make Evelyn’s 5lb2oz seem so tiny when her brother was only 6 and a half pounds.]

    So, four weeks old. Or full term corrected. Or two weeks old corrected. ONE OF THESE IS RIGHT.

    See also: headache.

    In any case, prematurity is not holding her back.

    CAN YOU SEE THAT SMILE?

    Yes, that’s right, she’s smiling. Smiling properly. Grinning at her siblings. Smiling at me of a morning. Delightedly pulling faces at my breasts. My breasts get most of the smiles at the moment, which doesn’t surprise me – they’re spectacularly good breasts.

    SMILES.

    She’s also stopped sleeping for 20 hours a day and is requiring entertaining and talking to and extra attention. In fact, she’s lying across my lap as I type this, trying to eat her fists. She’s practically a real baby now.

    [Second digression: I was watching the news last night, and there was a piece on doll making. They showed some of those “real dolls”, you know, the ones that are meant to look like newborn babies? In any case, the lady discussing them was gushing over how REAL they look and how they’ve been mistaken for real babies when they’ve been left alone in cars. I looked at my real baby, snuggled up to my breast and back to the “real dolls” on TV, comparing them.

    LADY, if you think your “real dolls” look anything like an actual baby, then your eyesight needs checking. Either that, or you birthed demon spawn and have no other field of reference. And if someone thought that a “real doll” was an actual baby left in a car, it’s only because it looked terribly terribly sick and in need of immediate medical attention.]

    HUGENORMOUS BABY.

    Accept no imitations.

     

     

  • On grief, and the addition of hormones

    I was in the supermarket today when I walked through a cloud of perfume. It’s said that scent evokes memories stronger than other senses and I’m inclined to agree, as I breathed the perfume and tried not to cry. You see, someone had gotten up that morning and headed to the supermarket wearing the same perfume my grandmother used to wear and it was her smell that I was surrounded by for a few moments, standing between the leeks and the strawberries.

    If I’d been able to pick which woman was wearing the perfume, I would have asked her what it was, because I don’t know anymore. Sadly, there were quite a few women standing in the fruit and vegetables section and I didn’t think it would be polite to demand to smell them all.

    So I turned and walked away, with my tiny daughter tucked under my chin, burying myself in her new baby smell. I regretted it, you know, the not asking. Just quietly.

    I knew that this would be the hardest part of having a new baby, the grief and missing, mixed with hormones. It’s a potent mix, guaranteed to have you sobbing on the baby’s head while you burp her.

    A few days ago, I went looking back through the baby photos of Amy and Isaac, searching for their newborn photos. I wanted to compare Evelyn’s hair colour with theirs and see how long it took for Amy’s jaundice to clear up. It was a stupid thing to do I realised, as I found photo after photo of my grandmother holding them.

    I’m glad I have those photos (oh so glad) and I am also grieving the fact that she will never know Evelyn, who looks so much like her as a baby. Genetics are a funny thing.

    Death is so final. There are no do overs and no “just wait, I just need you for right this second”. It sounds stupid to point this out, but it’s the finality of death that continues to slap me in the face, long after the shock and initial pain have faded. Can’t we just rewind time for a little? Borrow her for a day? No. No you can’t.

    In the meantime, I admire my daughter’s cheeks that I have worked so hard to fatten up, and I demand that the Internet admire them too.

  • Sleepless Nights. Again. Still. Something something.

    Newborn sleeping patterns: They’re not fantastic, are they?

    Evelyn is asleep on my shoulder at the moment and I’ve rigged the keyboard to sit half on my desk and half on the arm of my chair so that I can type with two hands. Turns out, I am way too impatient to cope well with one handed typing, preferring instead to not write anything, rather than write slowly.

    Instead, you have been able to find me sitting somewhere, while Evelyn naps on my shoulder, fusses or feeds, with my kindle in my hand and my older children arranged around us, begging to cuddle her too. Which is nice, but doesn’t work so well when all Ev wants is the boobs and the smell of the milk bringer. I left my dirty t-shirt with Nathan last night so that I could shower in peace.

    She is very snuggle-able, so I’m not minding. Plus, it’s kind of nice to not be feeling guilty about not helping fold the washing, or clean the bedrooms, because sorry dude, baby needs me. I’ll just hang out here with my cup of tea and my daughter, okay?

    (HUGE props to Nathan, who is making sure we don’t live in a hovel and changing Isaac’s nappies without being asked. Also bringing me cups of tea and keeping my quota of adult conversation in the “not going insane yet” levels.)

    In the meantime, there is this: