Poor newborns. As soon as they come out, their skin totally goes to shit. Holden’s got a case of pizzaface and his skin has been peeling all over. Plus he’s got a goopy eye thanks to a tear duct that doesn’t want to drain (despite my massaging it and, yes, giving it a squirt or two of breastmilk). All that is perfectly normal newborn stuff but it’s still pretty weird to watch, and just to wait for it to pass. (Not to mention how hard it is to refrain from popping those little zits. Gross! I know! But I want to!) Poor little guy.
The big news around here is that this boy is learning how to smile! He may or may not actually know he’s doing it yet but I can snuggle a big grin out of him every now and again, and he smiles in his sleep or when he’s in his nursing haze, milk drunk. I like to tickle his face with my hair and I can’t tell if he likes it or not but it always makes his face go all silly in a way that I can’t quite tell is a grimace or a grin. Holden is a pretty quiet baby except for during some diaper changes and all baths, when he cries his pitiful little heart out. Many diaper changes, though, he just lies there and looks around. He’s very observant. He seems content. He makes good eye contact and seems to like for us to talk to him, even when I use him as a shrink. When it’s just the two of us in the house and we’re in the rocking chair, I sing to him. Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight” is our secret little lullaby.
This week has been nice enough that we could take a couple of strolls around the neighborhood to hear alllll the neighbors’ dogs bark at us. He gets nice and bundled up and falls right asleep as soon as we get outside, even though he protests getting into the stroller. Loudly. The walks have been good for my head, as I have struggled mightily with cabin fever lately. It sucks to look out the window onto a dreary landscape of dead plants and fallen leaves. I kind of hate winter, despite the festive holiday stuff, because the cold deadness (dead coldness?) is just so hard on my brain, especially now, what with the hormone cyclone happening in my skull and all.
We are getting nighttime figured out, sort of, although our approach so far has been more of a shift-sleeping schedule. Ray stays up late to give Holden his post-midnight feeding(s) so I can get a solid four hours of sleep, and then I get up and either pump or feed him so my boobs don’t explode, and either sneak Holden back into the bed with me for a few hours or, if it’s closer to 5 or 6, I stay up for the morning feeding and just hope for a nap later on, and Ray can sleep in in the bed. It’s not a perfect system but it seems to be working for us for now. I like it better than full-on co-sleeping, which Ray doesn’t like because he’s so scared he’ll hurt the baby. (He is a wacky sleep flailer.) I don’t like a full night of co-sleeping because I don’t sleep soundly when the baby is in the bed all night. I wake up every hour or so to check on him. Too bad that so far he seems to not very much enjoy being put down to sleep in the co-sleeper, either. If he doesn’t catch me right away as I’m putting him down, he’s usually only asleep for an hour or so in it before he decides he’d rather be somewhere else (preferably in bed with me).
Anyway, we’ll roll with it and get it much more figured out in the coming weeks. For now we’re doing just fine.
This was a weird time for us as well, sorting out everyone’s sleeping schedule and how to make it all kinda work. We ended up sleeping on couches in the living room, after trying to sleep in our bed failed, I think mostly because no one was really getting any sleep.
Fond memories though – she and mom would both fall asleep breast feeding, or I’d set her on my chest and we’d both fall out.