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what I did over thanksgiving break, by Fox
So I had a baby Wednesday night. Pretty sure I had the best Thanksgiving ever.
We went in for induction Tuesday morning, and because Reasons of one kind and another, kiddo didn't ultimately arrive until late Wednesday. In fact the nurse was joking lightly about a bit of a betting pool to guess whether we'd have a Thanksgiving birthday or not - but by 11:15 pm she said "Yeah, no, it's going to be Wednesday for sure, because you are totally going to be done by midnight." (I'd been pushing for about an hour at that point, so I was glad to hear it even as I was thinking "That's less than 45 more minutes, so if the contractions keep coming two minutes apart, that means maybe about 20 more sets of pushes, okay, I can do this.") For related Reasons they had to rush the squirt to the NICU for observation; everything is totally fine, but they had to wait 48 hours to say so, so we were in the hospital for longer than any of us wanted or had expected to be. Poor Himself, the only one of the three (!) of us who wasn't a patient there, was fair climbing the walls by the time we were discharged. But on Saturday afternoon we finally came home, and we're learning how to be a family, and working out the balance of sleeping and feeding and so on the first night was so, so hard - but last night was a little better, and tonight we're trying a slightly different plan and I hope it is better yet. Also for the past two nights the kid would sleep in the crib if placed there by anyone other than me, which didn't work at all when I was the only adult awake, but is even now sleeping in a location that is not in my arms, which means I'm still the only adult awake but can do something - anything - other than hold the baby. (In my next shift I'm going to pump milk, for example, which takes two hands right now because my dairy-animal bustier isn't due to be delivered until tomorrow.)
It's a boy, by the way. S (for my dad) D (for Himself's dad) Gentleman Caller. I've been calling him Muffin Man, Cookieface, Buddy Boy, and occasional other terms of endearment, but of course what he is now is the prince of my heart - and I knew I was going to love him more than I've ever loved anyone or anything in my life, but I wasn't prepared for what that was going to feel like. ♥
We went in for induction Tuesday morning, and because Reasons of one kind and another, kiddo didn't ultimately arrive until late Wednesday. In fact the nurse was joking lightly about a bit of a betting pool to guess whether we'd have a Thanksgiving birthday or not - but by 11:15 pm she said "Yeah, no, it's going to be Wednesday for sure, because you are totally going to be done by midnight." (I'd been pushing for about an hour at that point, so I was glad to hear it even as I was thinking "That's less than 45 more minutes, so if the contractions keep coming two minutes apart, that means maybe about 20 more sets of pushes, okay, I can do this.") For related Reasons they had to rush the squirt to the NICU for observation; everything is totally fine, but they had to wait 48 hours to say so, so we were in the hospital for longer than any of us wanted or had expected to be. Poor Himself, the only one of the three (!) of us who wasn't a patient there, was fair climbing the walls by the time we were discharged. But on Saturday afternoon we finally came home, and we're learning how to be a family, and working out the balance of sleeping and feeding and so on the first night was so, so hard - but last night was a little better, and tonight we're trying a slightly different plan and I hope it is better yet. Also for the past two nights the kid would sleep in the crib if placed there by anyone other than me, which didn't work at all when I was the only adult awake, but is even now sleeping in a location that is not in my arms, which means I'm still the only adult awake but can do something - anything - other than hold the baby. (In my next shift I'm going to pump milk, for example, which takes two hands right now because my dairy-animal bustier isn't due to be delivered until tomorrow.)
It's a boy, by the way. S (for my dad) D (for Himself's dad) Gentleman Caller. I've been calling him Muffin Man, Cookieface, Buddy Boy, and occasional other terms of endearment, but of course what he is now is the prince of my heart - and I knew I was going to love him more than I've ever loved anyone or anything in my life, but I wasn't prepared for what that was going to feel like. ♥
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I was just rereading my own chronicle of those first few nights, and good God were they hard. It gets easier from here, I promise you that it does. The road from there to here is winding and isn't the same for any two of us, but I can promise you that it will not always be as difficult as that first night home.
Thinking of you and of your Gentleman Caller and of your young man, with much love.
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(It really is amazing -- and kind of scary -- how they re-hardwire your head when you aren't looking.)
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