Oh wow, so here we are.
Here we are with this sitting, laughing, reaching, chubby little twenty pound seven month old. Check out the blue steel action happening in the bottom left – she learned that from her papa.
Can we just…I mean…SEVEN months. Adam and I were out for lunch with her the other day, and our waitress was 37 weeks pregnant and I talked her ear off – as I always do with pregnant women…lord help you if you are visibly gestating anything with a twenty kilometer radius of me I WILL FIND YOU.
When she was able to get a word in edgewise she asked how old Olive was. I replied “Almost seven months!” and I saw in her eyes that sort of detached look, that “Your baby is so old. She has no relation to the tiny thing growing inside of me” look that I remember giving six and seven and nine month olds when O was tiny.
Like, how does this little person have anything to do with my lump of a newborn? and I felt like shaking her and crying like a crazy person and repeating that obnoxious cliche that every single mother out there repeats ad nauseum, “Oh, but it goes so fast.”
When you’re on the receiving end you sort of nod and smile, but when you’re the one saying it, oh, OH god do you mean it. And you are filled with a desperate sort of need for them to know it, and understand it, and GET it as you do.
But they won’t, not until they are sitting there like I was a few nights ago, ordering a baby book of Olive’s birth and noticing how the whole length of her body used to fit along Adam’s forearm, and how her face was so small and thin, and her skinny little legs were bowed from being folded up for nine months.
Jesus. It goes so fast.
Olive continues to be amazing, although with age has come an unpleasant development – my perfect sleeping baby has turned into a normal baby or something.
Huh.
Let’s recap: She started off sleeping through the night at 2 weeks old (and non-baby people, take note of this bullshit: “sleeping through the night” [or STTN, because everything has to have an acronym] only means five straight hours. Which, really? Who made that decision? So yes, technically she was sleeping through the night at two weeks because my mom took her and bewitched her/gave her whisky/lulled her with the sweet scent of oil of olay)
By Christmas (~ 3 months old) she was sleeping 8-9 hours straight, and by 4-5 months that turned into 10. And I was all, yyyeeeeeaaaaahhhh!
These days she has stretched that 10 hours into 12, but she wakes up way more. She goes down for the night at 10pm, wakes at 5 am…then 7am…then 9 am..then 10 am for the day.
Ugh.
The repeated wakings after 5am might have something to do with the fact that I take her into bed with me for that feeding – always intending to put her back in her crib afterwards, but she’s so snuggly and warm and I love hearing her snuffle and then I just….never do. And then since she’s basically sleeping next to an all night diner, she just wakes up. A lot. All the time. I go to bed at around 1 am usually (I know…I know) and every time I wake up, groggy and frousty, I swear that tonight will be different. But tonight REALLY WILL. No more sleeping in our bed, sweet, warm, snuggly baby. Sob.
Also: remember when I was all “nursing bras suck! don’t buy nursing bras?”. I recant. I think I’m getting mom boobs, and I need recommendations for nice nursing bras that don’t have three inch wide straps, or cups that peek our of my v-neck shirts. Yes, Internets, I am asking for you to show me a sexy nursing bra. (Or cute. I’d take cute, too!)
So. Summary of this post: Olive is seven months old, much hand-wringing and “oh god why? how?” ensues. She wakes up a lot for reasons totally under my control. I have mom boobs.
Oh, and this:
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