30 July 2015

Back from the dark side of the moon.

Pardon the radio silence - 3 weeks and 1 day ago, we had a baby!  Theres so much to catch up on, Ive been pretty intimidated just about where to start, but unless I just write, I'll never start at all.

Mom was here from the middle of June until the middle of July - amazing.  I'm sorry to say, we went to ASDA a couple of times, Costco a couple of times, to the botanics once and to Portobello beach once (in the rain) and the rest of the time, we were pretty much at home!  Thank you mom (if you're reading this) for doing my dishes for a month, cooking for us, organizing loads of recycling, looking after Munchie and introducing me to Ultimate Jewel.  Next time, we'll show you a better time.

My mobility dropped significantly in the weeks leading up to the birth.  It was an effort to go anywhere - even just up the stairs to my bedroom.  I was waking up every few hours in the night and feeling pretty pathetic and achey all the time. Fast forward a month and I'm back to bending and lifting and able to sit on my knees or even on the floor and cross my legs and roll over in bed and step into the shower without help and get dressed independently - woah, I'm amazed at how limited I really was for so long.  I'm still feeling some pain, but I am so so so so much better than I have been!

Picking up from the last post, I'm glad I had the experience of reading the books I read, but nothing really prepares you for the trauma of actual childbirth.  I really thought I was going to die.  And people say, 'Oh, as soon as you see the baby, all the pain goes away and you forget!'  Ha.  Lies.  I couldn't move, I just remember thinking - 'woah, there's a lot of blood around that baby.  Why am I sweating so badly?  Isn't the pain supposed to stop now?' And they had to give him to Simon, because they were still working on me for a couple of hours, but fortunately we were able to stay in the same room together.

But that's the prequel to the actual story which is --

TITUS PETER COURAGE RIGG

born 7th July 2015 at 9:40pm

8 pounds 15 ounces

And over the last 3 weeks, he's amazed me with how strong and sweet he is.  The first night I spent alone with him in the hospital, he was ravenous.  He honestly munched non-stop from about 9:45pm when Simon left, to 9am-ish when Simon came back to the hospital.  Drinking takes a lot of energy for a baby that young (I know, because Felicity was a very sleepy baby who rarely was able to stay awake long enough to fill herself up.)  The midwife on duty had said - you'll probably need to wake him up to feed him every 4 hours so he doesn't get too hungry.  HA.  By 6am the next morning, I had to beg the nurse to take him so I could have a bathroom break!  And I was worried he was going to go floppy on me because he was so obviously hungry and working so hard for so long.  I called the midwife on duty (a different one in the night shift) just to check him and make sure he was okay!  Sure enough, when Simon brought in the formula, he chugged it down and then settled.  Strong, hungry boy!  

I hate overnights in the hospital and after that, I was pretty desperate to go home.  Please!  I was missing Felicity and mom and ready to be away from the labor ward.  It still took a ridiculously long time to be discharged the next day, but we finally made it home around 8pm.  My favorite memory that day was walking in the front door and hearing Felicity squeal excitedly from the top of the stairs,

'Did you bring my baby!!??'

The first week at home was pretty brutal and I am very grateful to the midwives who visited us and kept checking up on me.  Mom was able to stay a week after Titus was born, and then Simon was on paternity leave for the following week.  He was then able to work from home for the remainder of the following week, so this has really been the first week I've had the two kids solo. 

I've only been a parent of two kids for 3 weeks, so I'm no expert, but immediate reflection:  No individual task or job about this work is particularly difficult.  However, it is *relentless* and when you look at the actual amount of tiny little jobs that have to happen just to keep things ticking over 'normally' - that's what's hard.  I feel like my days are literally 24 hours long.  There's the day shift anywhere from 5am-8pm and then there's the night shift from 9pm-ish to 7am-ish.  Because I'm feeding him myself, I've got to do the bulk of them both.  However, Simon has been giving Titus one bottle sometime between 9pm and 11pm, which I feel is my sanity time.  Mostly, I've been using it to try to get some sleep (3 hours together - ooooohhhhh bliss!) but it's also the time I've been using to get the house somewhere back to square one before all chaos breaks loose the next morning.  So far, at least for this week, it's been working okay.

Some funny things:

Felicity baby talks to Titus.  she picks random inanimate objects and starts saying things like: 'Awww, you little button!  Are you a little button?  You tasty little button!'  (Now replace button with 'sausage' 'cookie' 'bunny'.  In a high squeaky Alvin-and-the-chipmonks-type register.)

The other day, she started calling him 'Mister Babes!' which cracked me up.

F was always a very high-maintainence child, particularly considering her heart condition.  Titus is completely different.  As long as he's dry, warm, fed, burped, pooped - he's totally chill.  He'll lie in his basket or cot and just look around until he falls asleep -- and I'm like, 'wha?? you mean, babies actually do this?  It's not just a fairytale?'

OKay, you've read all the above, but I know what you really want is pictures.... let's see if my camera phone is cooperating,....

 Okay, kid's nap time is almost over.  More soon, I hope.  (Ha!  see, I've sacrificed at least an hour of sleep to write this post - there is no higher price for me at the moment!  Sleep is currency right now.)