Touchy-Feely

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed and busy lately.  More than anything, I’ve been feeling a lot of different things, including:

• completely overwhelmed at what I need to accomplish during my student teaching
• exhausted from sleepless nights, coupled with teaching all day
• a deep sadness at the loss of Emmy Lou - more than I ever thought I’d feel
• sheer awe and humility at the intelligence, resilience, cleverness, affection, and persistence shown by 4th graders
• appreciation and excitement that I get this time solely dedicated to learning how to be a teacher
• profound wonderment that I had such a hard time deciding which Democratic candidate to vote for, and still in utter shock of the loss of feeling like I’m voting for the lesser of two evils (or, my favorite twist: the evil of two lessers), and instead feeling completely satisfied if either of the two front-runners get the nomination
• a deepended love and appreication for E., who cares for Mr. E. all day and night, crafts diaper liners and homemade wipes, manages so many household importances, and does it all with such grace and without any complaint
• complete relief and thankful that my mom, who is getting a lump removed from her breast, is ok and without a cancer diagnosis
• completely in love with Mr. E., who stays on my mind all day, and is the first thing I want to see when I wake up, and when I walk in the door after a long day, and whose skin I’ll never tire of kissing

The Babymoon is Over

I’m going back to work (student teaching) tomorrow - I can’t believe it. It’s been so great to be at home with E. and Mr. E. - spending so much uninterrupted time together getting to know him, giving him baths, and taking copious amounts of pictures of him, of course. It’s also been good that we’ve taken him out of the house together - to get the routine down enough so that we can manage it on our own in the future when we need to. I am excited to get back to the students, but I know it will be hard to leave my little guy.

E. asked me the other night if I was going to post about the birth from my point of view. I said I didn’t think I would. I feel like E. gave a very thorough account of what happened, and I was right there with her through every bit of it. The hardest part of it all was watching her in so much pain for so long, and that coupled with no sleep left my nerves shot by the early morning on the day he was born. But I learned, as these kind of experiences often teach us, how amazingly equipped our bodies, minds and spirits are to take on such extreme circumstances, and when my perfect boy was born I forgot about all of it. The other hard part was sleeping in a hospital for 3 nights, and I thought I might just lose it when they started threatening a 4th because of his jaundice. Thank goodness we broke out of there!

The best part was the experience of his birth, seeing him come into this world and then being the one to look at him and pronounce “it’s a boy!” Perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced.

Almost 2 weeks later, and Mr. E. has seemed to fit seamlessly into our lives. Sometimes he takes up a lot of energy - like when it takes us hours to get out of the house, but sometimes he is just the cartoon baby, plopped right down in front of us, silently sleeping while we carry on with our lives. This is going to be such an interesting journey…

Insomnia

Ok, I don’t really have insomnia, but it’s 4am and I’ve been awake since the last feeding at 1am.  Things that go on that prevent me from sleeping when this happens:

- I get too cold

- I get too hot

- I have to repeatedly scratch an insessant itch on my left shoulder blade

- I have to pee

- I feel like I have no space in the bed

- I need a drink of water

- Every possible sleeping position I try just feels WRONG

- After being awake so long, I’m STARVING

- As I’m finally relaxing, E. starts to snore

Why does this periodically happen?  And the irony is that while I’m tossing and turning, Mr. E.  is snoozing away beside me.  Go figure.

In Awe

It’s hard to describe how it feels the first week you have a new baby - the first week you become a mom. Things so far have been both wonderfully amazing and wonderfully hard. Things that are amazing: his sounds, his eyes, his involuntary half-smiles, times when I catch his eyes and he looks at me for a few seconds like he recognizes me. Things that are hard: dealing with his Jaundice - taking him for bloodwork every morning, becoming swiftly schooled on the difficulties of making medical decisions as a parent, the general worry of parenting a newborn.

I can’t believe he’s been with us a week already. I really don’t know where the time went - first our 3 grueling nights in the hospital, one without him, two with - and then the worry and stress of whether or not we’d be let home because of his Jaundice - it was the best news ever when they said we could go, and we avoided having to put him in the “light box” for who knows how long - and instead they sent us home with a contraption that wraps around his body and has him tethered to the box by a 4-foot hose. It has been hard for us both to see our perfect, sweet boy tied to this machine, and even harder to get the news each day that his count went up, and we can’t take him off yet. A first of many challenges as a parent, I’m sure - but I wasn’t expected it so soon.

ETA: Please, no advice about Jaundice - I’ve talked and read it to death, and at this point just want to focus on talking with our pediatrician on what we need to do. Thanks.

Hello World!

Our little guy.
So amazing.
More words when I can form them into coherent sentences.

So. in. love.