Resurgence

     

Hello! I’m alive! I haven’t drowned in breast-milk or been buried under piles of dirty cloth diapers – I haven’t succumbed to exhaustion or curled up under the hood of a truck parked on the side of the road somewhere, grateful for the still-warm engine block and the silence, sweet sweet silence.

No Internets, it’s quite the opposite in fact. My mom has been here for the weekend, this means that I’ve had meals cooked and laundry done and the first night she was here she took Olive to bed with her and I swear she bewitched her (that’s the only reasonable explanation) because that girl of mine slept for five hours straight.

Also, she probably only woke up after those five hours because she could feel me nervously hovering above her after Adam and I woke up worried that perhaps mom had smothered her.

(Read this as less of a reflection of my confidence in my moms non-baby-squishing abilities- being as she is a mother to six still living children- and instead a reflection of FIVE HOURS people! 5! FIVE! 5IVE!)

What’s more, after that initial five hour sleep (12:30am-5:30am), after I loomed over my tiny sleeping daughter and woke her with my not-so subtle efforts to ascertain that she was indeed still breathing, she woke up and I fed her and then put her back in her crib and she slept for ANOTHER FOUR HOURS from 6:30-10:30am!

WITCHCRAFT!

(Also Mom, when are you moving in?)

So in case you were keeping track that’s nine hours of sleep and on Saturday I felt like a whole new woman. It was brilliant.

To celebrate this momentous occasion and the new-found energy bought by that nine hour sleep we brought her to the Farmer’s Market. It was cold and wet and rainy, but so fun to show her off to all of the vendors who had seen me grow larger and larger throughout the summer. She got lots of love.

     

The three of us then went for lunch and Adam left a bit early to go back to work (with Olive in the Ergo, as I still can’t carry her because of my incision) and I guess my mom and I lingered a little too long, enjoying our baby-less freedom because THIS is what awaited me when I walked in the door to pick her up from Adam.

     

She was screaming, wailing, her little face contorted with rage- I swear she was even frothing at the mouth. Since she was born she’s let out a few indignant squawks and even cried a little here and there, but she’s never cried like this, she’s never been so inconsolable.

I thought my heart would break seeing that crumpled little face, I’ve never felt so guilty, never so culpable.

And then, THEN Internets, just in case you would like to add to the list of things to judge me for (after #1: Letting my newborn sleep more than 3 hours without feeding, and #2: Letting her scream while I finished a leisurely lunch, blissfully unaware of her torment) I continued my campaign for worst mother of the year by feeding her, soothing her and then abandoning her again to go get my hair cut.

Seriously, who am I? What sort of horrible mother does this?

On one hand I do think it’s important to be able to do this, to leave my little Olive in slow, small increments to see that it’s ok, that she survives, I survive, we can exist without each other (for a little while at least). On the other hand OH MY GOD THAT FACE! That face.

That face haunts me. I never want to leave her again.

      

In other news, here is a list of things that I miss:

• Pants.
• Walking quickly
• Laughing without pain
• Wearing normal underwear
• The deep, blissful sleep of the childless

and a list of things that I am in love with:

• This girl, obvs

     

• My mom, the baby whisperer. I don’t know what it is about having your mom around, but as soon as she walked in the door I felt more sane, more relaxed.
• Showers. (I have never liked showers, and I say that not as a dirty hippie, because I still DID shower, but every other day instead of every day, and always grudgingly. Bitterly. Not now, now showers are a blissful retreat. I pop Olive in her chair and bring her in with me, the sound of the water and the steam are hypnotizing and I get to do grown-up things like shave my legs and blow dry my hair)
• Eating whatever I want because NO DIABEETUS
• Seeing Adam as a father. It’s beyond words.