Thought Dump

Oh MY do I miss writing. Sitting here and hammering these keys and sending out some sort of “Hello! I’m alive!” into the world each day.

I’m trying to blog, LORD am I trying. Every day I compose long, witty posts in my head while I sit glued to a couch or a bed, Miss Olive glued to me. But what I’m realizing is that with a little one, everything comes with a cost. Writing a blog post costs me the equivalent amount of time in minutes spent sleeping, it costs me one completed load of laundry, or sometimes it costs me a happy baby when she has her fussy days of wanting to sleep nowhere but on my chest (and on those days I’m learning to just give in to that. To try and enjoy it, the weight of that little bundle, the milky breath).

Every action comes at the cost of some other action because free time doesn’t exist anymore, and although I am desperate to write, it’s one of the things that makes me feel human, and I so want to record my thoughts from these early days, but despite the desire, some days I can’t afford it.

Thus, the blog languishes, and my witty posts sit, unposted in the increasingly cluttered chaos of my mind and I wish I had some sort of dictation device or a third hand or another hour in the day.

Olive has been quite gassy for the past day or so, which means that our sweet baby has turned into a screaming baby and it breaks my heart to see her face contorted with pain as she pumps her legs and grunts – and all of that fuss just to produce one tiny toot, a fart so small she could’ve snuck it out unnoticed in a quiet elevator.

I’m hoping this is just a temporary thing and not the beginning of something larger (what I’m really saying here is that I hope Adam and I didn’t curse ourselves with a colicky baby by bragging about our perfect baby a few weeks ago) and today my big foray out of the house was a mad dash for the pharmacy at 10pm to get some magic drops that the internets tells me will break up the gas bubbles and allow us to get some much needed sleep.

(Did you ever think you’d spend so much time reading about the intestinal workings of a stranger’s infant? WELCOME!)

I’m deep in the trenches of parenthood, wading through important issues like: Do we give Olive a pacifier? Or just let her keep using me as a human substitute? (Sub question: Do I ever need to leave the house again?)

Do we keep her crib in our room? Or let Adam slowly go insane from sleep deprivation because he is unable to sleep through her grunts and squawks and sighs? And if we don’t keep her crib in our room, where, exactly are we putting it?

Do I join one of those terrible mom groups I keep hearing about? This is when I wish I wasn’t so picky with friends, and that I would have accepted the friendly overtures of women with kids who have reached out to me in the past. Ironically I declined to hang out with them because all they talked about was their kids and now here I am, KARMA!

I should be sleeping, but I needed to write. And I needed to break the cycle of not writing, because each day that passes with nothing posted I feel like I need to post something really good the next day to make up for it, but then the next day passes in another blur and the cycle repeats itself until I sit here, unable to post anything instead of just posting something, for gods sakes.

And I always think I shouldn’t post without pictures, because it’s sort of an unwritten rule on the internet that no one likes reading huge chunks of text without pictures. So then I try and find pictures but the camera is still in the car or my iPhone is dead and I can’t upload the links and GAH no post, again.

So this is me writing to say I miss writing and I hope I can figure out a way to do more of it. I always hated it when my favorite bloggers had a baby and then just dropped of the radar completely, because their life post-baby was the part I was most curious about. I would be left compulsively checking their site every day, hoping for an update, for some indication of what life was like, after, and be met with radio silence. Nothing but unanswered questions.

I’m trying not to be that douchebag blogger. I’m hoping to get better with blogging. I’m happy to answer questions if you’ve got em.

Life is good, I’m still happy and in love, but I’m also wrapping my head around the challenge that is parenting a newborn. Sleep deprivation will kick your ass if you’re not careful, and from there it’s just a short stone’s throw to going completely insane and laughing way more than is appropriate while your husband contorts your briefly-sleeping infants’ face into little old man grimaces.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Hopefully I’ll have something more substantial soon.

(ALSO: I am wearing regular underwear for the first time in almost 4 weeks. So there’s that- HUZZAH!)