Anyway

Hav­ing a new­born is a les­son in many things — in fact, one could prob­ably write one of those “Everything I Needed to Know About ABC I Learned From DEF” (try typ­ing that into Amazon, there are some inter­est­ing titles in the res­ults that show up, includ­ing “Everything I Needed to Know about Busi­ness– I Learned from a Cana­dian” and “Everything I Know About Women I Learned From My Tractor”).

1. The top les­son would have to be patience — when you think that almost 6 weeks after being born, the baby is still not in much of a routine (well, she some­times has a nap in the morn­ings, and she inev­it­ably wakes up and wants to be fed just as we put food on the table for us, no mat­ter what time that is, unless I wake her up to feed her first). Even­tu­ally babies can get to a routine of sorts, but it can take a long time. So you just keep try­ing. Even if it takes weeks.
2. The next would be just how much you can get done when sleep-deprived, and when to recog­nise that you really do need a break. Doing some­thing when you’re sleep-deprived is fine when the qual­ity of the end res­ult isn’t import­ant, or it’s easy to do (it’s hard to really go wrong put­ting laun­dry in the wash­ing machine) but hav­ing to redo things because you mucked up the first time is annoy­ing. Sleep depriva­tion often equals not think­ing prop­erly, or for­get­ting import­ant aspects, or over­weight­ing unim­port­ant aspects, of any­thing you’re think­ing about. And drink­ing cof­fee only helps a little if you’re really sleep-deprived (and too much cof­fee just makes the baby fussy any­way, so it’s self-defeat­ing). I keep lists for lots of things, it’s the only way to make sure noth­ing import­ant is forgotten.
3. Which leads me to effi­ciency — when the baby only naps for short peri­ods, and you need to get things done (blog post­ing, shower­ing), you can­’t pro­cras­tin­ate or muck about. If it needs to be done, you need to do it in the few minutes you have, oth­er­wise you may not have anoth­er chance until tomor­row. Or next week. Or next month. And you really need to pri­or­it­ise (which explains why I haven’t been post­ing much, showers take pri­or­ity if I only have time for one of those in a day).
4. Break­ing action items into steps is also neces­sary. Since the naps might be short, which will only give you a few minutes at any giv­en time, you need to have stop­ping points all the way along and a sys­tem to remem­ber quickly where you were. Unfor­tu­nately this does­n’t work when you need to think deeply about some­thing, but there’s the think­ing time you get while nurs­ing, which you can try to use, assum­ing sleep depriva­tion, see (a), does­n’t make it a waste of time. Or you don’t nod out while nurs­ing (I haven’t yet, but I’ve come awfully close). And you have to fig­ure out how many items you can stand to have going at any one time, so the house or com­puter isn’t overly littered with items in vari­ous stages of completion.
5. And finally, the need for bal­ance. I take walks to the corner to clear my mind and get me out of the house, with or without the baby depend­ing on wheth­er someone at home can mind her; this gives me some bal­ance and a chance to be a per­son in my own right rather than solely “moth­er”. Being a per­son and not solely a whatever-your-job-is, no mat­ter how inter­est­ing or import­ant or ful­filling that job, is equally import­ant to life’s bal­ance in the work life. It seems to me that every­one I know is busier than they were a few years ago (maybe it’s just the people I know) and they’re hav­ing to work harder at find­ing that elu­sive bal­ance, while at the same time real­ising more how import­ant it is.

Time is mov­ing slowly right now, like mov­ing through treacle or molasses. I’m blam­ing it on the sleep depriva­tion; I have to be care­ful what I do and how I do it and think­ing straight isn’t all that easy. Once the baby starts sleep­ing for longer at nights it’ll be easi­er. In the mean­time, I’m learn­ing patience. Slowly.

Those not inter­ested in preg­nancy-related mus­ings should skip this post…

I’m recov­er­ing well from the birth, and my feet are finally back to their nor­mal size. So I thought I’d bore every­one who has­n’t been, or isn’t likely to become, preg­nant mut­ter­ing about vari­ous preg­nancy-related ail­ments and how I tried to cope. Not that I’m com­plain­ing about hav­ing been preg­nant, of course, since hav­ing a baby makes it all worth­while, but some of the symp­toms are less than pleasant.

Unlike when I was preg­nant with my first child, I had no morn­ing sick­ness. One or two days of feel­ing vaguely queasy, but that was it! So much for the old wives’ tale about hav­ing more morn­ing sick­ness with girls than boys; I had 5 months with my son and had to take dic­lectin to stop los­ing weight and not one day with my daughter.

To make up for that, in the third tri­mester I had reflux. At first diet kept it under con­trol, then I took Gav­is­con, by the end of the preg­nancy I was on Zantac 75 every day and still hav­ing to watch what I ate and sleep with my head propped up on mul­tiple pil­lows. For­tu­nately Zantac is com­pletely safe (at least in late preg­nancy). The reflux dis­ap­peared imme­di­ately after the birth.

As in the first preg­nancy, I had edema. At least this time it was­n’t related to pre-eclamp­sia. I man­aged to keep the swell­ing more or less under con­trol with pren­at­al mas­sage and keep­ing my feet up when pos­sible until about week 36 when things went hay­wire. First the feet, then the ankles, swelled up, no mat­ter how much I res­ted. By the time I had the baby, the swell­ing had reached my back, and was mak­ing walk­ing dif­fi­cult. I tried the vari­ous sug­ges­tions I found on the web (tak­ing flax­seed, soak­ing the feet, drink­ing lots of water), but none of them worked. It took almost two weeks after the baby was born to lose all that flu­id again.

And, of course, the big belly. I tend to stick straight out in front when I’m preg­nant ( pho­to­graph­ic evid­ence), and giv­en the size of this baby (9.5 lb) I stuck out an awful lot. Since I’ve been doing Pil­ates for a couple of years, my back and stom­ach muscles are much stronger than before and I had no more than a couple of twinges of lower back pain. I did find that wrap­ping a strong cloth around the belly to sup­port it helped, as did rest­ing (a lot!). I also had to be care­ful walk­ing down stairs since my centre of grav­ity shif­ted so much and I had a tend­ency to tip for­ward. The Pil­ates stu­dio I attend (up till about week 35, when I got too tired and could­n’t do more than half my sim­pli­fied pro­gram) helped a lot with my pos­ture, help­ing me fig­ure out how to stand and sit to min­im­ize the strain on vari­ous muscles and avoid over-com­pens­at­ing. I’d recom­mend doing Pil­ates to any­one think­ing of get­ting pregnant.

Those were my major con­cerns; I had a very healthy preg­nancy in all and these issues were minor com­pared to what a lot of oth­er women go through. Now the baby is here, and all of this will shortly be for­got­ten in the dim mists of sleep-depriva­tion. Nature is some­times kind.

As Tim pos­ted, our baby daugh­ter was born on Thursday June 8, and today I finally had the energy to pick up my laptop and post this. It’s amaz­ing how intensely a squirm­ing squeal­ing bundle can rule your life; right now she’s burbling in the bassin­et, threat­en­ing to wake up [and did, so it took a while to actu­ally fin­ish this short piece].

First off, thanks to all who sent Tim and me con­grat­u­la­tions on the birth. We both appre­ci­ate it and have saved all the emails to share with her when she’s old enough to appre­ci­ate them.

The sense of relief that she is finally here, healthy, pink, and strong, is over­whelm­ing. We’re start­ing to settle in to the new regime and got a reas­on­able amount of sleep last night; by no means enough of course, but bet­ter than it’s been. We’re not think­ing about wheth­er the same will hap­pen tonight or any oth­er night in the near future – we’ll have to see what hap­pens when the time comes. Life has slowed down right now, we’re enjoy­ing each moment of peace (wheth­er she’s awake or asleep or feed­ing, which is a twi­light state some­where in between), and endur­ing each moment of cry­ing and frus­tra­tion. It’s a cliché to say that each child changes your life; the non-cliché part is that you nev­er know how until they’re there.

Reg­u­lar-style post­ings will recom­mence at some stage, with some­what more reg­u­lar­ity than in the last few months. That’s the plan any­way, although it’s sure to be derailed, either occa­sion­ally or often, by the new­est mem­ber of the household.