Day 1391: And I Am Alive
I sat down to try to type this entry about an hour and fifteen minutes ago, foolishly believing that my daughter had settled down for a nap, but it took an hour and fifteen minutes to actually get her to stay down, so here I am, finally writing. (The only reason I know she's asleep is I'm obsessively watching what my husband calls Olivia TV, or rather the baby monitor feed on the app on our phones.)
Today, my little daughter is all of 17 days old. Already she's too big for some of the outfits she was given labeled "newborn", and she's about outgrown her "newborn"-sized diapers (luckily we have a box of diapers one size up already squirreled away). Her hands used to look so tiny, but today while she was hanging onto my thumb while she ate I noticed that her hands are definitely bigger. The only reason I'm managing to write this at all is that my mother-in-law is here to help with things like cooking and taking the dogs on bathrooms breaks (my husband is asleep, because we were silly and stayed up late watching UFC fights last night - really good fights - and I got to nap earlier today and now it's his turn).
Usually when I find words at all, it's because I'm hiding in the loo, typing away on my phone, as it's one place I am pretty much guaranteed peace and quiet for all of...five minutes. I have been fortunate so far, that I've been able to have a shower every day, though most days I barely manage to get out of the shower and half into clothes before Olivia decides she's not really going to nap and I need to soothe her again. One of my friends who's a psych major sent me the info she used to help get her kids on a sleep schedule - she has three kids and is an amazing high school teacher - and I've been working on that, but it's sort of hit or miss, when we have doctor appointments and things.
Little Miss Olivia showed up three days after her due date. I went to the doctor's office the day before for a routine check-up, and as it turned out, my water had broken (this I discovered when I went to the bathroom for the standard urine sample I was supposed to provide at every pre-natal visit; turns out water breaking is not always super dramatic). The doctor sent me to the hospital, though we had to take a bit of a detour to meet up with my husband and sign the paperwork to finalize the sale of our house back in Utah.
And then...labor was boring for the first few hours. I didn't get to eat any food - it was all broth and jello and sherbet. But my mom was there and my husband was there and the nurses were super nice. Getting an epidural wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be, probably because I went to that prenatal education class and knew what to look out for.
Labor is called labor for a reason. It was super hard. Once the pace picked up - well, it was exhausting. Imagine, every minute or so, being told to suck in a breath and hold it for ten seconds while shoving against a brick wall with all your might, and then doing it again in rapid succession two times more. I barely got time to catch my breath between pushes, and barely time to recover between contractions. With the epidural, at first the contractions were no big deal. I could hear another lady screaming in a room down the hall, and I felt pretty chill in comparison. Apparently I have comparatively epic pain tolerance. But even with an epidural, at the end, those contractions were painful (I shudder to think what they'd be like without meds) and I was hollering just like on TV. Six hours of hard labor and nothing doing, though, so in the end it was a C-section for me.
It was kinda freaky, being awake for it, even though I couldn't really feel anything. My husband got to hold her first. The nurses and doctors kept talking about how beautiful she was, and how much hair she had. I figured they were just being nice, but finally they showed her to me, and she was really beautiful (general consensus is that she has my mouth and maybe my nose but otherwise looks like my husband). Poor little girl was super jaundiced, though, so we had to stay in the hospital two extra days (one to recover from the C-section, one for her) and she had to do phototherapy, which was miserable for her.
But then we brought her home, and the dogs did really well. They sniff at her sometimes, but they don't try to steal her stuff and chew it, they don't try to get into the diaper pail, they don't try to lick her face, and they don't freak out when she cries. Because Cody had only started his job the week before, he didn't qualify for FMLA paternity leave, so he only got a week off before he had to go back to work. Luckily my mom got into town the day after he started work, about a week before Olivia arrived, and she helped me get the nursery space ready, bought me a really nice glider/rocker (which, along with the white noise machine and the changing table my dad made, has been a godsend), and helped make a bunch of freezer meals so Cody and I won't starve after all the relatives are gone.
My dad arrived when Olivia was one week old, and Cody's mom arrived the day after. That Sunday Cody blessed Olivia at church (it's a pretty big deal for us - my dad was in the blessing circle; had we been back in Utah we'd have had more friends and relatives in the circle but we did our best). My parents left the following Tuesday, and then Cody's mom is here till Sunday.
It's been an adventure. I am definitely chronically sleep-deprived, and I have no real idea how I'll actually fare as a parent all by myself. The one time my mom left me alone for 40 minutes I accidentally melted a hole into one of Olivia's bottles, so there you go. Also one time even though my mother-in-law was around I totally spaced a pot I'd set to boiling on the stove (granted, she did the same thing later that night).
Olivia has been on two road trips successfully, one to Fayette to see a church history site and also a couple of the Finger Lakes, and one out to Amish country, because apparently Cody's mom has always wanted to see Amish country (my parents went on their own one day).
Cody is really enjoying his job, so I'm super pleased for him. We're all constantly a little bit sleep-deprived, but so far everyone here has been super nice, not just the people at church but also the people at Cody's job. One guy from his company lives upstairs, and sometimes he invites us around for food. He works in a different department, but he is super nice all the same. Pretty much everyone in New York is super nice.
So far the only TV we've managed to watch is Forged in Fire, usually when Olivia is asleep. I started on the first episode of Good Omens but haven't really had a chance to watch the rest (so far so good, though!). I catch random YouTube videos sometimes. I read to Olivia when she's feeding, just so she gets used to my voice. Cody will talk to her about totally random stuff when he's playing with her - about martial arts, science, blacksmithing, or the history of his favorite classic rock songs. Somehow the opening riff to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here has become her official lullaby. I start humming it automatically whenever she's upset. Cody will sing her Pink Floyd and Rush and U2 to try to get her to sleep.
All in all Olivia has been an easy baby. Some nights she wakes up once, other nights she wakes up twice, but really she's been a joy to take care of.
We are scheduled to close on our house here in NY later this month, and our lease in this apartment is up next month. We hope to get a fence installed at the house to prevent canine escape before we move in. The movers will move everything out of storage and to the house for free, but I'm going to need a lot of help unpacking. It'll be an adventure.
But hey, I'm alive, and my daughter is too, and that's all that matters.