I feel as if I should be better adjusted or falling into more of a groove or routine or something now that Alice has been ours for a month. But it's pretty hard to do any of that because my life is lived in 2-3 hour increments and its hard to get a groove on anything working with that.
What do I mean?
My entire purpose in life since oh, around October of last year has been: keep a human alive. Okay and me, so keep two humans alive. I've remarked to Matt how INCREDIBLE it is that all of her little bits, her human body parts used to be nothing, they did not exist, and inside of my belly they became something useful. She was once a gelatinous blob and out of that little blob grew skin, nails, feet, toes, eyes, nose, mouth, tongue, it's amazing! And after she spent all of that time on the inside growing, now she's out and I'm still responsible for everything that I eat going into her and helping her grow. The extra weight she has, the extra inch she is, that's me. I grew her in my tummy, now I grow her with my booby. Crazy right?
So she eats and eats. Every 2-3 hours, sometimes 4 if it's at night, I sit somewhere and feed her. Sometimes I can do nothing but hold and feed. Sometimes I watch something with Matt while holding and feeding. Sometimes I can wiggle a hand out to grab my phone to see what's new on Facebook (everybody but me was at the Paul McCartney concert). Most of the time after she eats and after some persuasion aka rocking and swaddling, she will fall asleep and that's when I get to live. Pee. Shower. Sleep. Eat. Poop. House Stuff. Blog Stuff. Walk to get food. How much living can one squeeze into those blocks of time before it's time to reset the clock and do it over again because that's my life.
As I was writing this post of course, Alice decided to screw 2-3 hour increments and just be fussy all day. She would nap for minutes at a time during the day and want to eat around the clock or be held. Sure she'd have some glorious smiling and laughter moments but she was not satisfied for long. We would work hard to get her to lay down for awhile singing, rocking, swaddling, and after much persuasion she would snooze for a few minutes and then be wide awake leading to a very tired baby and a very tired momma. I started to think of those 2-3 hour increments as the glory days. I should have been thankful for what I had! I'm not sure what's going on, hopefully just a growth spurt.
And the reality that makes me sad is knowing that I will go back to work and I will be leaving her for many hours a day so even those days when nothing gets done and she's nursing ALL day and I get no hours to rest will seem like such fond memories. I'm telling myself over and over that this is temporary and she won't be this little forever and time goes by so quickly and it's gonna get easier. But that doesn't make those times where I only get 10 minutes to scarf down some toast before I have to rush over to our friend with recently developed lungs and vocal cords that are SCREAMING for food any less frustrating. But that's motherhood I suppose. Sometimes, there are no breaks.
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