Baby A

Dear all,

40 days ago I gave birth to a little girl. 40 days is the traditional period of rest for new moms, so here I am after 40 days... Not quite 40 nuggets of wisdom I want to share today, but some random thoughts.

She was gorgeous from the start (no bias there) - I had read all about ugly newborns and tried to get myself ready for a purple wrinkled misshaped baby, but there she was, incredibly alert with her eyes wide open taking it all in from the start.

She's got great muscle tone (dixit the pediatrician, not just the crazy parents) - practising against my ribs for months did help, I suppose.

Labour was no fun at all, birth was incredibly hard work, yet I did forget about it all as soon as she was born. The hard part is the aftermath. To go back to the marathon and sprint image, the postpartum period is like running an ironman after having completed the marathon of labour and the sprint of birth. Ouch. Incredibly aching and sleep deprived and clueless. Vulnerable.

Every day is different. Not only does her 'schedule' change as soon as we can figure out what it is (every couple of days at least), but we can almost feel the intense brain development happening. The new sounds she's making, the smiles, the staring at and then reaching for her little mobile animals. It's crazy to watch. Miraculous.

The cliches are true. It is a life changing event.

She's named after a wind. and after one of her great grand aunts.

She loves her baths. Almost as much as she loves eating. It's so much fun to watch her play in the water and do her frog kicks and big smiles, it's a privilege to give her bath. For me it was almost too much to watch her coming out of her bath during the first couple of weeks: with her hair all messed up she looked so much like she did on her birth day. Now she's all grown up (relatively speaking) and I don't have that flashback anymore, unless I look at pictures taken right after the birth.

We celebrated her first month with a homemade chocolate cake.

She wears some washable diapers (but not exclusively; maybe one day when I have it all figured out). Everyone thinks I'm crazy to add to the laundry load, but I strongly believe that if we don't follow our vision and principles for the things that matter the most (e.g. my own child), then those visions and principles are really meaningless.

Breastfeeding is a full time job. Over 8 hours a day at first in between feeding, burping, changing, more feeding, more burping, holding her for a while before setting her down to sleep. Full time job.

Someone (anyone) should've told me I'd get hungrier, incredibly hungrier after the birth. I eat my dear husband under the table at every meal ("what do you mean you don't want a third dessert?!?"). I read somewhere it takes about an additional 1000 calories a day for me to produce her milk.

People are surprising me - in positive ways. Our tax advisor was totally cool about her presence in his office during our meeting with him, and starting talking about how children are a way to reach eternity... Our car salesman was goo-goo-gaa-gaa'ing over her and reminding us all that we had all looked like that one day... The owner of a cute little cafe in Mougins whipped out a table, put it right in front of the heater so she wouldn't get cold and told us to go right ahead and change her diaper right smack in the middle of his cafe and not to worry one bit about anyone else who might walk in and want, say, a hot chocolate rather than a whiff of her fresh poo.

I haven't had a full night sleep in 10 weeks (the last month of pregnancy I was up at all hours of the night). A friend, a mother of 2 set 2 years apart, had once told me that after the birth of her eldest she hadn't had a good night sleep in 4 years. I didn't believe her, and was dead certain that she was hugely exaggerating. I do believe her now.
At the same time it's not the same tiredness as staying up late for an assignment or a party. It's more manageable. Or I'm too zombie-like to realize that it's not.

A birth has a funny way of bringing out old wounds but also lots of joy from people we barely know who are so happy to be sending her a gift or a welcome card, as if her birth is a renewed assertion that there is hope and good in the world. It's intense.

It is intense.

a new mom