smiles

Robin: I don't mean to, but I've started saying everything in a cutesy voice and saying it twice.

Jason: Like what?

Robin: Like, "Let's change that diaper! Let's change that wet diaper!"
Robin (sing-song, to Auden): Don't I? Don't I do that?

Jason: Heh.

But really, with a face like this, can you blame me?

pound a week

Okay, I'm blogging at 8am on a Saturday to tell you that there's no way I can possibly tell you all the brilliant and blog-worthy goings-on. The days are still a blur. Auden is smiling now -- great gummy flirty open-mouthed smiles that light me up (even at 4:30 in the morning). And he slept for four and a half hours IN A ROW last night. I've heard stories about this much sleep! Can it finally be true?

I've been going to a breastfeeding support group meeting every week to get out of the house and shoot the shit with other new moms. An added bonus is that I can weigh Auden and see how much milk he's getting at each feeding.

Apparently there is a three-week growth spurt and a six-week growth spurt, where baby is eating almost constantly and gaining quickly. I think Auden never took a break between growth spurts, as it seems to be his style to eat every hour and to put on nearly a pound a week. (!)

The other day he weighed in at 12lbs 10oz -- that's five pounds since birth. I had to dress him in this cute stripey outfit before he busts out of it:



And my good friend Beth came for a visit last weekend. She cooked and washed and displayed great new holds for calming fussy star-bellied sneeches:



Hooray!

Time for coffee!

*

the human line

From my mama to me to all of you:

The Human Line
by Ellen Bass

After I had carried her those nine months,
Those two hundred and eighty-four days, each
With its sheaf of hours, each hour fanned out
Into minutes, into seconds, as though time had been
Sliced thin as onionskin-

After I'd hauled this cache of cells as it swept
Through a kind of rough evolution, devising
Arms buds and sex buds
And the buds for twenty milk teeth-

And then birthed her, my cervix cranked open,
A rusty hinge. And the pain-
What a tree might feel when lightning splits it
And the two halves fall away-

Then I realized- I'm not proud
To admit this is what it took- that everyone
Was lugged in the sack of a woman's body,
A woman stretched past reason
Or slit with a steel scalpel.

Even if she left that baby right there
Without counting the pearly toes, thumbing
The miniature knuckles, even if she didn't
Look into the face, neutral as Buddha,
Before thirst even. If she was drugged
Or relieved and the baby whisked away, still

She gave this child every intricate bone of both feet,
The hollow vertebrae, tiny liver,
Lungs that fill with air for the first time
And begin, without a lesson,
Bringing this world in and releasing it.

Did Mary feel this when the angel came to her
Holding his useless lily? Not in the surfeit
Of gilt frames where she's poised,
Serene, but those few where the artist knew,
Had seen women already crushed, bowed.
I was standing in the long hospital corridor
When the knowledge entered me.
I didn't want it. It was grief-
Extending back through time
And reaching into the future, all these babies,
All these mothers with their hearts
Beating outside their bodies. And now
I was one of them, lashed to the human line.

*

lazy sunday

diaper free: an update

Since it's now May, I'm led to believe that the very long day and very long night that has elapsed since Auden was born has actually been a month. Happy one month, little bug!

So. I know the question on everyone's mind is: how 'bout that diaper-free? We jumped right in and started the diaper-free discipline within 24 hours of his arrival. We even managed to catch his first couple of poops in the potty -- which was an amazing and miraculous feat to us, the uninitiated (and to my mom, who said she'd have to see it to believe it). Since then it's been hit or miss, pun quite intented.

I'm just glad that despite my high expectations of effortless communication with my newborn, I did also invest in cloth diapers, sassy diaper covers, and more than a couple packs of disposables. We're more diaper-reduced than diaper-free.

Well, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it:




J drew up a score board so we can tally the results of "Potty vs. Diapers" every day. The diapers are unequivocally winning, although I think catching a poop at 4am as I have the past two mornings should be worth way more than one wet diaper.

Yeah, but that's not really the point.

I'm reminding myself that this is a process, and that it will take months... it's exhausting and rewarding, like everything else in this baby adventure. It is seriously gratifying when we get it just right, though, and I'd like to think Auden feels the same -- even when it's his bare bum in the chilly morning air.

[For those of you willing to take the challenge, allow me to recommend "Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene" by Ingrid Bauer, and also some helpful sites like http://www.diaperfreebaby.org/ and http://bornpottytrained.com/]

*

the unbearable cuteness of being*

I will now shamelessly join rank with countless other new parents who post video of their child doing absolutely nothing:



Genius! Hiccups AND sneezes!

*apologies to Kundera

these days

(To empathize: Put a 9lb weight in the crook of your arm and go about doing everything with your one free hand. Be constantly amazed that nothing was designed to be done one-handedly. Gush with admiration for the agility and patience of mothers everywhere.)



Oh, these days are exquisite and fleeting and difficult.

Already the first week of Auden's life seems like a blur, a tiny closed-in world of heightened senses and deepening awe. These days are imprinted indelibly in my memory now: awake, bleary, to hear the birds start singing at 5 in the morning; J playing old Tom Waits records, The Smiths, The Pretenders; stroking baby's impossibly soft skin, marveling at his tiny mouth and his many expressions; the smell of my body mingling with his and reminding me every moment (as if I needed reminding!) what momentous event had taken place by way of it... my body.

My mind is mush without sleep, but my body has taken over and propels me instinctively through moments of doubt and exhaustion and unparalleled joy. New motherhood is not a task for thinking.

And everyone says how quickly this time goes, so I am careful not to take any of it for granted. My senses are saturated with all this Living In The Now. Curiously, my sense of time is completely shot, defying linear expectations. It's more like a heavy sphere moving in an elliptical orbit around me -- speeding up, rushing past; slowing in a wide arc; now lingering, hovering on my son's eyelids as they flicker in his sleep. Is it already 4 in the afternoon? Is it too much to know that all of us were privy to such sacred beginnings?

One thing that seasoned parents like to tell parents-to-be is that Everything Will Change. I resented hearing that, especially the hundredth and the five-hundredth time. Yeah, yeah, I thought, everything will change, taking it like a tacky present and pretending to be appreciative. I think what they mean, though, is that You Will Be Changed: you will shed the old you and begin the richly delicate and demanding and painstaking (and sometimes painful) process of becoming a new you.

And indeed I am.

*