In the minutes between meltdowns, and the moments between staring out at the world in awe and terror, you sleep. You dream. You lie across my chest, the perfect fit, with your little head softly resting against the pillow of my bare breast. You dream intensely — perhaps of memories in the womb, or smile at thoughts of quickly swallowing sweet milk from a bottle, or colors and lights you’ve learned that day. You shiver in fear out of nowhere and then return to contentment. I still wonder how you dream without words or comprehension to tell a cohesive story. To you, life is a constant acid trip, and as I’ve never done acid, I don’t know what that’s like and can only imagine.
Your eyes form two perfect closed slits in the center of your round head, widely set. Your eyebrows are lightly traced an inch or so above those slits in the finest of hairs. Your nose is a little button, not yet showing if it will turn into mommy’s blocky noggan or dad’s long british snoggle. Your lips, those perfect Gerber baby lips, rest openly, as if you are gasping in wonder — that is, until a tinge of hunger ravages your tiny belly and those perfect lips and nose and eyes twist into the features of a little cranky devil, contorting your forehead into a thousand lines of distraught madness with those perfect little hands attempting to communicate: feed me, or, burp me, or, change me.
Your steady breath whistles softly in harmony with the white noise of the fan. Occasionally, your outer lips tilt upwards in that pure, innocent smile.
It is our now morning routine. Husband wakes me up at 3am, I pump you milk to eat for the morning from my engorged breasts — you will wake up screaming in hunger soon. I carry your swaddled body out to the living room as you squirm around getting angry while still lost in a dream. I wait to see if you will fall back asleep in my arms. You rarely do. Minutes later, around 4am, you are screaming so loud I’m sure they can hear you in Palo Alto and maybe San Jose and occasionally you let out a cry so loud I imagine you’ve rattled the celllars of the wineries in Sonoma. I feel sorry for our neighbors and quickly try to quiet you down.
A pacifier, to soothe you, should you accept it, then, the bottle, which despite paced feeding you guzzle down too fast leading to your least favorite experience in the world to date: hiccups. Each hiccup hits you as a surprise, rattling your tiny belly, making you more and more upset. You want more bottle but I burp you as patiently as I can at 4:30am and wait for the storm of hiccups to subside. I know we should practice breastfeeding now but I’d have to set up with the pillow and nipple shield and I can barely keep you from such cries that shake the earth and trigger tsunamis. We sit and I guiltily bring the bottle back to your mouth, enabling you to swallow another ounce or two which may help you doze off for a few minutes, waking only to burp as I gently smack your back to remove the gas that will undoubtedly wake you up later. I should change your diaper but you’ve fallen asleep so deeply I know better than to wake you. There will be plenty of time for that in a half hour or so when you wake confused, angry, and somehow starving again. The 7am screams can go on a little longer. I change you then. You hate getting changed but you seem to mind it less each day. I’ve gotten super fast at changing you and have yet to be sickened by the sight of your poo. It doesn’t smell yet, so maybe that’s why. I somehow find even your excrement endearing.
You scream bloody murder after a brief moment of silence to revel in your clean diaper. Your hunger is now at a level where you might as well not have eaten in months. I feed you 2–3oz, and you eat more slowly after you gulp down the first ounce or so. I slowly remove the bottle from your lips as you drift to sleep, then again wake with a loud hungry cry. We repeat this process until you finally fall asleep, deeply, across my chest again, just in time for when I desperately need to hook myself up to that godforsaken machine and pump again, but I don’t want to move. I let you sleep and hold you and worry my milk will dry up or I’ll develop mastitis because I’m failing to pump 8 times a day every 2–3 hours, but I don’t want to let you go. So I’ll wait until your next baby panic attack to pass you off to my husband or his father — I know the sleep state won’t last long — and hope my breasts hold out until I can dairy farm myself.
I’m determined that for as long as I can I’ll take the 3am-8am shift, although in the months ahead when I return to work and can only fantasize about double shot lattes and downing 3 Red Bull’s in an hour, but instead sip minimally caffeinated tea, my body may crumble from sheer exhaustion, as it may at any point now. The week or so after giving birth was suffocating in its lack of sleep. I’m doing slightly better now. In order to survive I need longer than 3 hours of sleep at any given time. I can get by on four and five is best at a minimum. That means I don’t pump often enough, nor would I be able to feed my child enough should he figure out how to latch — though I understand now why some families end up co-sleeping so sleep and feeding can happen. We won’t do that because of safety issues, but I get it.
So that’s life with my three week old child, at least life in the mornings every morning so far, as we get into this new routine. It’s hard and wonderful and scary and peaceful all at the same time. I’m sure it will continue to change and so will I. But I do look forward to those moments in the mornings, even when I’m so tired, even when he’s screaming at the top of his lungs and I can’t figure out what’s wrong… those moments bring me so much joy — a joy that is desperately needed right now, and one that lifts me up and gets me through each difficult day.
life with interest 