our first week with Professor Stink Bottom

It's hard to believe (REALLY hard to believe) that I'm due (or at least was due) today...

this Friday if you go by the ultrasound dating, and here we are with a 9 day old human.

It's been a total time warp. day. night. sleep. waking...really no difference between them. we eat. we poo. the kid and I leak (pee for him, breastmilk for me). we change butts and outfits. lather, rinse, repeat.

I seem to alternate between good days and bad days energy-wise. During a good day, I clean the house, warm up some food and maybe (that's a maybe) take a warm bath...then, after having over-done it the day before, have a "bad" day during which I seem to do nothing more than nurse, loaf and drift.

both kinds of days...are actually kind of nice.

lazy hours pass looking at his perfect little head, kissing his soft little cheek and wondering what he's going to look like and whether or not he'll be a lady killer.

let's face it. he will.

his schedule is...erratic, at best. the only consistent thing thus far has been that he has absolutely no idea (none whatsoever) that momma likes to sleep...

at night.

he invariably cluster feeds between 2 and 5am...usually involving at least three diaper changes, two outfit changes, a case of the hiccoughs and vomit on my shoulder. again...

I really don't mind. if all he needs to keep his world a'foot is to fall asleep (5 or 6 times over the course of 3 hours) at the breast...I'm down.

he's wicked cute.

thankfully, he's nursing like a champ. so much so that I even let his great aunt Debbie (I think after yesterday, though, we'll have him call her evil aunt debbie) give him a pacifier.

heartbreaking and devastating. partly because I'm scared it will interfere with his nursing (and I'm extremely committed to that)...

but mostly because its hard to watch someone else comfort him.

so I pried the Nuk outta the evil auntie's hand (it involved something of a clint eastwood western style show-down, I'm almost ashamed to admit)...and almost threw it away.

instead, dreaming of uninterrupted hot soaks and a meal using more than one arm...I put it aside for later...

"just in case."

evil aunt debbie laughed.

my mother has cooked and frozen enough food to keep us fed for another three weeks, and I hear I've got 3 more casseroles coming.

go, mom. go, go. go, mom.

my family has been keeping a respectful distance since I had an all out crying jag after our first bout of visitors. I'm still having trouble letting anyone else touch him...he's just SOOOO SMALL.

by next week, though, I'll have to break down and start letting people parade through to show off the cutie. first the aunties...sans husbands and children (it's flu season. they're gross), then maybe some of the older cousins that don't strike me as having cooties...

then in three years, The Professor can start meeting his same generation cousins.

maybe.

yesterday he gave us a bit of a scare. he was overly lethargic and limp. last week his bilirubin was on the low end of high and we were told if he were to become...you guessed it...lethargic or limp, to call right away. of course, by the time the nurse called us back, he was wailing up a storm and had nursed.

all clear there, but still...try not to scare us like that, again, lil' man.

friday a photographer from the local paper came out to get pictures of the kooky home birth couple who used hypnosis for a human interest story next week.

we tried so hard to look normal. really, we did. oq wore a penn state shirt with a red sox hat, I did some stripey looking thingy and The Professor wore your standard issue baby garb. the photog got here just as Mr. Stink Bottom exploded, and had to wait 15 minutes while I disinfected the pup. by the time I got downstairs, PSB was in a roar, and I was sweating like a pig.

I pointed out the two clean places in the house suitable for picture taking...

and he picked two others. at one point (near the end of our lil' photoshoot, no less), I asked him if my hair was ok. he replied, "yeah. yeah. sure." I pulled a face and asked him, "no. really. is it ok?"

he smoothed a giant chunk down and said, "no worries. we'll just photoshop that."

sweet.

the goal of the piece is to highlight the benefits of HypnoBabies birthing (four hours of painless-fearless labor and five minutes of pushing. I HIGHLY recommend it. for realz)...and perhaps shed some light on the crazy hippy practice of home-birthing.

instead...people are gonna take one look at my drawn, gaunt face and effed up hair and go get IUD's.

either way. community served.

so we count our days listening to coos and whimpers...not to mention loud peeling screams (the Prof's got a set o' lungs on him, he does)...

hoping it doesn't go too slowly (I'm a little eager to get fit and climb stuff, again)...

but really hoping that it doesn't go by too quickly.