adjusting to mommydom

I’ve really been wanting to update the blog but - and I was warned - I just haven’t had any time. It constantly astounds me how little time there is left for much of anything other than Nahanni - and she’s a really good little baby. I’m either feeding, changing rocking or sleeping. We don’t get long stretches of time, particularly when it’s just me here with her in the daytime. I maybe get a half hour here or there and I generally try to fly through some laundry or attempt to make the kitchen not look like a frat house (a feat at which I have yet to be successful, unfortunately). I still feel a bit run down and get tired before I expect that I should, but I have to say that I am feeling vastly better now that the antibiotics are done and this second bout of mastitis has passed (touch wood). I have been fortunate enough to be working with Marianne Brophy through the ihope centre on the North Shore and she is the resident breatfeeding guru, a woman who has clearly been called to help other women through what is often, but seems like it shouldn’t be, a difficult time. I cannot believe how much I took it for granted that breastfeeding would come naturally, that she and I would both know what we were doing so easily. I am ashamed to admit that I (wrongly) supposed lactation consultants to have been some trendy-richy kind of thing, that they were one more special thing to add to your ‘I’m up on the trends’ arsenal. I am now so thankful to have been able to work with one, I wish it had happened sooner, perhaps I could have averted the second round of mastitis - I’d been trying to make it to her group for weeks, since back when I suspected there was an issue but as I have alluded, there is precious little time to do anything. Eating is a luxury at this point, which is a particular shame considering how vital nutrition is to my healing in general and to breastfeeding as well. I’m reduced to standing in the kitchen amid the frat-house debris, jiggling her in one arm and eating cold spaghetti with the other. Peeing is yet another luxury, peeing alone being a particular treat. It’s a hilarioius dance you do, balancing this tiny baby on your shoulder, using your chin to hold her against you while you shimmy and shake and try to get your underwear down. I remember a friend talking about how life becomes what you can accomplish with one hand and I am here to certify that this is unerringly true.
At this point we are trying to foster a bit of independence in Nahanni, although not surprisingly there is a discrepancy between mommy’s version of this and daddy’s {and the older generation’s view, but that’s a whole other story...} I don’t deny that I seem to have a sort of wiring in my brain that makes it positively painful to hear my daughter crying, especially the sobbing, breath-gulping kind - it pulls tiny burning wires in my heart when she cries like that. Certainly I am more and more able to put her down and let her snuffle and whine a little but I am loathe to let her get into a full-blown state - for obvious reasons. I would rather have a happy child than a clean kitchen and that’s just that. I think she’ll have her whole life to be disappointed and to not get her way, but for now, she’s just a tiny new girl and I am still willing to cater to her every whim, if only to feel her soft head against my cheek, the sweet velvet smell of her, the vanilla scent of her breath. I love to watch her sleep on my shoulder, see the way her features relax, her skin smooth and translucent. I press my lips to hers knowing that someday she won’t let me and I inhale each breath as she releases it, thinking of the complex metaphysical miracle that brought that air into my lungs - how I somehow made her from a tiny piece of nothing and grew those little lungs inside of me and know, somehow I can breath the air that slides through them, pure and undiluted. It is a brilliant and shining joy for me, a salve for my weary tired self. I feel a love like I was previously unable to comprehend, as though all the love I felt before seems now sort of amateur and dilletante. This is by far, the greatest thing I have ever done - the hardest, the most challenging, but I know that someday I will look at this lovely girl and marvel at the wonderful human being she has become and I will be happy for every moment I gave to her.