I had Lucas on Tuesday, May 21st. We came home the next evening, around 5:00pm. We stopped by our office on the way home to show him off. A girl was holding him and he was crying like crazy. She tried to calm him down and nothing she did worked. I could see the panic in her eyes that people have when it's someone else baby and you cannot make it stop crying (I've had that panic multiple times before with my sister's babies). So I picked him up and he instantly stopped crying. I felt like I had mommy super powers. I thought to myself, "damn straight, I'm the momma!" That was a pretty cool moment for me.
The next few days are a big blur of visitors, diapers, crying (lots of crying, for both him and me), and questioning everything that I was doing. I was worried about taking care of his little pete correctly after the circumcision, making sure that the umbilical cord stump wasn't being suffocated by the diaper and not getting wet with his baths, and just trying to figure him out in general. The books say that you will start to recognize what your baby needs by his different cries. They lied. At least to me. All of his cries sound the same. I am only just now, 7 (almost 8) weeks later, getting to know what he needs when he is crying. Not because his cries sound different, but because I know his little schedule now. And even still, it's mostly a trial and error process to get him to stop. For example: He was crying when we got home from lunch just now and I knew that it wasn't because he was hungry because he just ate before we left. So I noticed that he was a little wet. Not really enough to make him cry, but I changed him anyways. He still was not happy. It's about time for me to pump, so I couldn't very well hold him, so I put him in his bouncy seat next to me, strapped him in, and popped the pacifier in his mouth. That seems to have worked for a little while. He was kicking his legs around like a happy baby for a while which leads me to believe that he was just bored and wanted to do something (like kick his legs). He just got a little fussy, so I bent over and popped the pacifier that had fallen out back into his mouth. He seems to be happy. So really, I still have no idea why he cries. I just try a bunch of things until something works.
Anyhoo, the most distinct memory of my first week home with him was the Sunday after he was born. Nicholas and baby were taking a nap snuggling together and I was laying next to them trying to do the same. I just could not seem to shut off my brain long enough to sleep. It was terrible because I was exhausted and really wanted to sleep, but I just couldn't. I grabbed the telephone and walked out to the back deck with the dogs and called my sister. I just started bawling out of no where. I don't remember what I was so upset about. All I remember is that it was over something that, logically, I knew I shouldn't be upset about. Unfortunately, crazy hormones do not listen to logic and cause you to be a huge crying mess regardless of whether or not you know better. This is a prime reason why I called Renee rather than discussing with Nicholas. Men do not understand raging hormones. They understand logic. Therefore, the one time that I did try to discuss my feelings with him, he got frustrated with me when his logic-talk did not calm me down at all. In the end, one event that was both extremely frustrating and so incredibly helpful happened to help me get out of my hormonal funk: my dog rolled around in a giant mud puddle.
Parker Brown absolutely hates his flea and ticked medication, which Nicholas had administered only hours before I let them outside with me for my crazy lady call to my sister. Apparently, while I was distracted with my breakdown, P Brown decided to try to rub off all of his flea meds in some mud. I flipped out when I saw him. He is a big dog, 110lbs. So it's a big deal for him to be completely covered in mud. I got off of the phone with Renee and went inside to see if Nicholas was awake. He was not. Still sleeping soundly with little love. I decide no to wake him and do my best to take care of the issue myself. Now the decision: hose or bath tub? I had never used our water hose before and it's connected in the front yard and not the back, so I wasn't about to deal with finding a place to hook it up in the back and lugging it back there. I decided to grab a towel for his paws and lead him through the house to the bathroom.
Chloe (lab-pit mix) and Parker (shepherd-hound mix)
Bathing this giant brown mess was so therapeutic of me. I needed this disaster to happen for multiple reasons. (1) It was a distraction from all things baby. This was something that I was doing that had nothing to do with Lucas at all whatsoever. And that was nice. Keep in mind that this happened on the Sunday after he was born. I had 5 days of obsessing over every little thing that had to do with Lucas and was so exhausted by it all that it took everything in me to take a shower and change my pants on a daily basis. So this break, while it took work to bathe that big brown monster, was very much so welcome. (2) I yelled and cried some more. I think that I did end up waking up Nicholas from the yelling. I was scolding P Brown for his mischievous behavior and also letting off some steam from being so tightly wound for the past few days. Poor P Brown. I apologized for all of the yelling later after I had calmed down a bit.
So thanks Parker Brown Town for keeping me sane!
No comments:
Post a Comment