Author: Veronica

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.

 

 

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:

I’d planned to go to BlogHer this year. When all of my friends were talking about seeking sponsorship, I was carefully looking at my budget and my contacts.

Then I got pregnant, due a few weeks after BlogHer finished. My New York imaginings were quickly replaced by the reality of having another baby. I wasn’t upset – the emotions weren’t that strong and after all, having a baby is very exciting. Getting to fall in love again, vs seeing New York? I won’t say I didn’t want both, but I will say that New York will still be there when my children are older.

I joked that my baby was going to be my BlogHer consolation prize, a few weeks later. Imagine my surprise when she was born the same weekend that my friends were flying out of the country.

Having a preemie baby and spending all my time traipsing backwards and forwards to Special Care, I didn’t get a chance to follow the BlogHer hashtag like I normally would. Instead, I got to breastfeed my daughter and hold her close.

Somehow, I think I ended up with a pretty great deal anyway. Not to mention, every time I look at her I am inordinately grateful that I am not still pregnant. Health is an amazing thing.

***

At almost three weeks old, Evelyn is starting to spend more time awake (not that you can tell from my photos). Unfortunately she’s still day/night confused and I’m not a fan of playing at 3am when I’ve got an alarm due to go off before 7am.

A side effect of this is that I’m spending a fair amount of time with a grumbling baby on my chest.

I still can’t call this a bad deal. She’s tiny, she’s snuggly and she’s my last baby.

Life is pretty great right now.

 

“It smells like yogurt.” Isaac announced this morning. “Smells like yogurt, Mummy.”

“What does mate?”

He looked at me like I was stupid.

“The yogurt does, Mummy.”

Of course. Yogurt smells like yogurt. Isn’t that obvious?

The interesting thing about this exchange was that there was no yogurt to be seen when this announcement occured. I can only imagine what he was actually thinking about.

—

I’ve got the new mother guilts. Guilt is such a useless emotion, but there it was yesterday, as Nathan cleaned up the backyard in preparation for Spring, and I sat inside with Evelyn on my chest, a cup of tea next to us and a good book on the Kindle.

Logically, this is how the newborn days ought to be spent – but it feels terribly unproductive. Again, logically, feeling unproductive is silly. No amount of cuddling the baby can be considered unproductive.

I didn’t say this was sensible.

It isn’t going to stop me doing exactly the same thing today if I can manage it.

—

School mornings and having a newborn are brutal. I don’t think mothers of new babies should be allowed to set alarms to wake them up. A baby is a perfectly good alarm and falling back asleep together after the first morning feed seems more than sensible.

Instead, when you’ve got an older child who needs a certain amount of time to get ready, you spend the first morning feed trying to mentally will the baby to hurry up, because if she feeds for another 10 minutes, you’ll spend the next hour running late.

God forbid that the babe also needs a clothing change, or pukes in her cot when you put her back into it.

In any case. School mornings are brutal.

—

Evelyn is still so tiny. She’s gaining weight beautifully and is losing the scrawny newborn look, but she is still so so tiny.

Last night, I caught myself cursing how big all of our 0000 suits are.

A month ago, I’d been cooing over these same suits, exclaiming how tiny they were.

Perspective shift.