Sleep:
I feel like a new woman today. My body appears to be recovering from a bout of self inflicted Chinese Torture by means of nap deprivation and I had a total of seven random hours of blissful slumber in a 24 period. That is the most sleep I have had in weeks.

Pets:
The animals are adapting well, if you call the cats’ indifference to another human life form in the house adjusting and using Costco bones and mozzarella cheese as a means of distracting the dog attention away from the baby. When Samson does get a little too turned on by the smell of dirty diapers however, Sebastian the cat steps in and hisses and spits and swats violently with his razor sharp cat claws that I keep forgetting to trim. I have finally found justification in my neglectfulness.

Evolution:
I am starting to wonder how come the marvels of evolution missed the boat on equipping babies with a snooze button. How blissful would it be if you could push their little noses and reset their hunger clock for nine more minutes because yes – an extra 540 seconds of sleep really is that important.

Tough Love:
When Nate was in the NICU the nurses asked if they could give him a pacifier. I was still determined to breastfeed and knew that might impact the transition onto the breast, but he just looked so helpless that we wanted to do whatever we could to make him comfortable. Also, I wouldn’t allow them to supplement him with formula and insisted on expressed colustrum only while he was still attached to his feeding tube of sugar water. The least we could do for the poor kid was let him satisfy his need to suck while he hung out all by himself in his lonely little isolate. And satisfy his sucking reflex he did. When flailing arms prevented him from keeping a finger in his mouth, he sucked that little paci like a champ.

Once Nate’s feeding tube finally came out, learning to breastfeed was quite easy for us, and I am forever indebted to his night nurse (who just happened to be getting certified as a lactation consultant) to help us get things started. All the hospitals lactation consultants were on Christmas holidays and after unsuccessfully latching him to my breast in the beginning, we were finally able to make the transition by first using my finger and a lactation aid (a feeding tube attached to a dropper of colustrum) and then eventually transferring him to my breast with the lactation aid until he mastered how to use his new food source on his own. At that point I thought I had a brilliant baby on my hands when he seemed to be able to coordinate the different mouth muscle required to breastfeed versus suck on a pacifier, but as turns out, he is a product of humanity and follows the path of least resistance because recently his latch has been suffering from me sticking a pacifier in his mouth when I can’t make him stop crying. I have resorted to tough love and banned all pacifiers until we perfect his latch, unless of course his hissy fits and grief-stricken crying sends me crumbling a slow painful death to child torture hell first, at which point Mark can feel free to get some sleep and resume stuffing artificial nipples in his mouth.

Surprises:
I am trying to remain calm and see past the red haze of panick exploding out of my head lately because holy fuck, Mark’s benefits did not cover my six day hospital stay when Nate was born. I know. Wah wah, what’s the big deal right?

Had we known, we would have been better prepared financially. Our government pays for Ward rooms here, but insurance through your place of employment almost always covers semi-private rooms, which is what I stayed in. Apparently, Mark’s place of employment is one of the only companies that doesn’t provide hospital coverage. I would have shared a bathroom with three other woman instead of one had I known we would be paying out of pocket. Also, I would have at least gotten my money’s worth and threw a postpartum tantrum over being served grilled cheese sandwiches three nights in a row, including Christmas dinner, made with rubber condom flavored cheese and gremlin ass.

Labels: All in the Family, The Learning Curve, Thinking Out Loud