Calvin is 2 months old!

 In an attempt to keep baby awake a bit more during the day, we have been using diaper changes after feedings rather than before, and the changing a diaper with just a tiny pee is so sad, so I busted out the pack of cloth diapers that were gifted to me. Calvin who poos very infrequently, then immediately poops in his first cloth diaper. Cleaning it was not nearly as bad as we feared, so we have dove right into using them during the day time. I bought someone’s stash and have them hang-drying in the backyard. John, who once swore he would never do cloth, is helping me “strip and sanitize”and I’m feeling very Berkeley. I asked another mom friend who is also doing cloth diapers, some advice for cleaning, and she told me that she was going to leave the facebook group cause she wasn’t doing cloth as a hobby. I then realized, I was! Cloth diapering is a hobby, it’s fun, I’m enjoying it, and I marvel at how much less waste I’m producing already.

The last month has been one of healing, while I am still having some pain, it is manageable, and I imagine within the range of normal. I am reading accounts online where more people are chiming in to say that they are also feeling it, and have common suggestions and purchases suggestions, for ways to remedy... whatever they think it is. Amazon is getting a lot of my dollars. It feels good to feel like I’m just dealing with normal relatable mom stuff now. I’m so grateful to everyone who reached out to share their experiences, it really helped to normalize a really rough period. It strikes me that I went from being not entirely convinced that I was pregnant, to being consumed by constantly trying to figure out this changing landscape. I was having so many issues I wondered if I was just becoming a hypochondriac. It was only last month where I had wondered if the medical system was not set up to take women’s pain seriously, I realized that I also doubt my own experience. It’s been a bit of a journey but I am now learning to take my own body and my own pain seriously. I have never been big on rushing to get medical treatment, so there is no reason to think that I would have started that now. Between the intense out-of-it-ness at the hospital, the mastitis and eventual abscess, the missing piece was me being my own advocate because I had so much self doubt. So when I realized that I was feeling an odd short-lived perpetual rush of anxiety and dread around breastfeeding during every feed/pump to the point where I felt like I couldn’t press the button, this wasn’t just me not enjoying the process, having trauma related anxiety, or if I was experiencing “DMER”. I read that this was considered a rare response, but it seemed that many women experience varying degrees of this and never seek medical treatment, or had their experience lumped in with Postpartum Anxiety or depression. There doesn’t seem to be much in terms of treatment, but there’s limited evidence that dark chocolate helps, and knowing that in 15-30 minutes, it will be over makes overcoming the dread a lot easier. The other night, I had a dream where my alarm went off, I woke up panicked that I missed my alarm and went to pump, only to realize 10 minutes in that was an hour early because the alarm hadn’t actually gone off, that it had only happened in my dream. Calvin is significantly less wobbly, he’s sturdier, he is now probably larger than other people’s newborns (10.5 lbs!). He’s starting to grow hair on his head except for his sleep baldspot, and he has eyebrows now. His sneezes are different, wetter maybe and when he cries there are tears! He can grasp items now, he smiles at his dad all the time, he loves staring at the weird art we have in his room, sometimes he talks to the armrest on his highchair, and he doesn’t quite smell like the newborn he did before, but still wonderful. Like warmth, and cookies, and sometimes like cheese. I desperately want a way to remember all of this because I know that I will lose it. I’m already starting to lose some of that feeling because I’m not constantly feeling it. I want to capture the sense of wonder, and joy, and gratitude, and love, and dread, and anxiety and perfectly capture it to revisit and drench myself in at a later date when I have more time to process.This has been so odd, that the intense feelings come and goes, and things that I think I’ll never forget starts to fuzz, and fizz, and fade. The days blur, the only thing that’s clear is the present moment, and everything else is just a memory. Then a memory of a memory. And you told me it would happen, but it’s getting easier. I don’t know if he just requires slightly less constant upkeep, if we are getting used to it, or a combination of the two. But then sometimes, it’s harder again. John is back to work at his 12 hour a day job, and near hour 10, I’m watching the clock waiting to be able to hand him the baby and a bottle, to prepare a quick bite. But on the days that he’s home, it’s a dream. I have time to run errands, to read parenting books, and to try out new mom things.The other day, I even took a shower. I am having this feeling every time after a pump that I cannot just sit there, I need to get up (put the milk away, wash the bottles, get the baby), that there is no time to be lazy anymore. I didn’t even think of myself as particularly lazy before, but there is definitely a sense that if I ever find myself doing nothing, that I should consider making sure I am doing something, anything, because there is never enough time. But then there is. Calvin woke up wide awake the other night. I read that you are not supposed to engage as much with them at night if you want them to learn to go back to bed. I had things I wanted to get done, but here he was smiling and cooing, and making sounds like we were having a conversation. So I held him, and covered him in kisses, and talked back, and I think about how I should savor this, that soon enough he won’t be a baby anymore, and he won’t want all my kisses (don’t know if he wants them now), and I’m struck by how completely and utter in love I am with this little guy, and how just two months ago, that was not the case, that by becoming a mom, it’s like I have expanded my ability to love, like I didn’t know how much I could feel love before. Not only for him, but also for my husband, who now also loves someone else. And I feel really lucky, and I think I might be feeling like I might be feeling like I’m growing into this identity as a mom.