A New Kind of Normal

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Now that Scarlett’s first month home is wrapping up, I’m finding that life is finally starting to come back around to some sort of normalcy. Not exactly the normal that I was used to before, but a new kind of normal, and after the month I’ve had, that’s good enough for me.



Scarlett is falling into a very predictable schedule, WHICH IS AWESOME. Like really awesome. Like both kids napping long enough for me to take a shower kind of awesome. She still wakes up twice in the night, but at the exact same times every night. Seriously, you could set your watch to her. And even though waking up at 12:30 and 3:30 in the morning to sit in the dark for 40 minutes, staring at a baby is pretty boring business, it’s a big improvement from waking up every hour on some nights and completely randomly on others. I’m finally spending more time asleep through the night than I am awake.

What also makes it a TRILLION times nicer is that Spencer started waking up earlier so that we could spend our mornings together again. Since I’m on full-time night watch with the little one, he’s made his own breakfast since the baby was born. And up until now, the usual 4:00 a.m. time for us to wake up together has become my first opportunity to sleep for a full two-hour stretch before having to feed her again and then immediately afterward wake Mary up for school, and otherwise start my day. By waking up a half an hour earlier, he syncs his breakfast time with Scarlett’s last feeding, and he brings his breakfast - along with a nice, hot cup of coffee for me - into the bedroom to eat. Because that time together at breakfast was sometimes the only alone time that we got throughout the workweek, it quickly became a favorite time of day for the both of us, and losing that really kind of bummed us out more than we realized it would. It’s really, really nice to finally have that part of our routine at least back a little, even if it isn’t exactly the same.

Matthew is finally settling into his new role as Big Brother-- which has been an enormous, I’m talking tyrannosaurus rex kind of enormous, adjustment in our home.
Now, he’s adored Scarlett from the start; he’s never been anything but affectionate toward her directly, but there was no denying he’d come down with a textbook case of the jealousy bug. And even though it’s perfectly normal (even expected) for a kid his age to need some time to adjust to a shift like that, it really kind of took us by surprise. We’d put so much time and effort into preparing him for all of the changes the new baby would bring home with her while I was pregnant, and he’d always shown so much enthusiasm for it all. He couldn’t wait for her to come. He’d even come to me on his own and tell me that when she’s born, Mommy, I’ll rock my baby Scarlett Barlett to sleep and give her my puppy dog to make her feel better when she cries. I was particularly vigilant about catching warning signs of insecurity and never found a single one.

So NATURALLY I assumed that my son was… you know, superior than other two-year-olds and just above such silly behavioral trends. Duh, right?

The funny thing is, I honestly think it’s been a subconscious insecurity. He’s so adoring to the baby directly that it’s as if he doesn’t even realize she’s the reason he feels jealous. He asks to hold her and “pet” her all throughout the day, and when he touches her, his whole face softens and he cocks his little head to the side and he looks down at her like a little guardian angel. He calls her “Scarlett Barlett” -- (Not exactly flattering, I know, but precious nonetheless, especially because he made it up on his own) -- in this adoring little sing-song voice. And when she cries -- even when she really wails, he speaks to her in this soothing voice that’s just as soft as silk, and with the patience of a pint-sized saint, he peeks into her bassinet, or up at her in my arms and tries to hush her back down to tranquility. It’s really… Ugh, it’s just so sweet it could give you a tummy ache.

But when it comes to me? He’s possessive like a motherfucker. Our normally self-reliant, prideful, all-too-eager-to-be-grown-up, two-year-old going on 16, who never wanted anything done for him, suddenly refused to do anything for himself. The smallest glitch in his plans would throw his whole world off balance, and weathering temper tantrums became part of our daily routine. Anything that got the response, “Yes, honey, in just a minute,” would trigger an immediate fit of tears. “Noooooo… Not in a minute. Don’t get my juice in a MINUTE!!” We’d spent the past nine months of my pregnancy training him to be completely adept at using the potty on his own, only to have him refuse to go unaccompanied the moment we brought the baby home. Even in the middle of the night, AS IF I WASN’T HAVING ENOUGH FUN AT THAT TIME AS IT WAS. Once, (when I suggested he play with his toys while I nursed the baby) he even cried because he wanted me to play with his toys for him. Dead serious. Not with him, but for him. And if the baby is in my arms crying, he’ll run to me needing to be held RIGHT then and RIGHT there. And if the answer is “yes, honey, in just a TEENY TINY BABY LITTLE HICCUP OF A MOMENT,” of course, he’ll need to cry too.

The truth is he was missing me, and I was missing him just as much. The mommy he was spending the day with wasn’t the mommy he was used to, just like this kid… well, this kid DEFINITELY wasn’t the Matthew I remembered from before that hospital stay a month ago. But day by day it’s getting better. We may not spend everyday chasing each other around the monkey bars and wrestling in the dandelions, but we get outside when we can and we get a whole lot more out of it when we do. We’ve gotten more creative with how we spend time together indoors, and we’ve even been able to finagle a few educational activities back into our everyday routine. He’s putting in an effort, too. He’s sharing things now that two weeks ago he unexpectedly guarded with his life and he’s gradually adjusting to the art of taking turns with a sibling who has to come first sometimes. He’s going to the potty on his own again, though he’ll ask for me to keep him company sometimes if he’s in for a good, long poop, and I’m down for that. His tactic for getting attention seems to have finally shifted from throwing hellacious tantrums at the drop of a hat to simply being a little more affectionate toward us -- which of course, is the total opposite of a problem.

In fact, the other day when I was chewing into him about listening the FIRST time, Matthew! he looked up at me with a huff and said “Okay. Sorry, mommy. I love you.” Then, before I could even process the transition, he walked over and gave me a hug on the leg. “I will listen the FIRST time.”

It may have been a bold faced lie, but it was good enough for me.

Her First Month

Pin It Letter to my Lollipop: 3 little weeks


Loving the baby head wrinkles. SO. MUCH.


Dear Scarlett,

When I was pregnant with you I can honestly say that I had no idea I would love you this much. Scarlett, you hit my heart like a ton of bricks. I knew that I’d love being pregnant again, I knew that I’d love to have two children, and in my heart I knew that I’d love that second child of mine - whoever they turned out to be. But to be completely honest with you, the idea of loving another child as much as I love your brother was difficult for me to imagine before you were born. I’ve heard a lot of first-time mothers say the same thing. And it’s understandable; A love that overpowering is really a force to be reckoned with. Being the keeper of that kind of love times two or times three? The idea is something I think a first-time parent really just doesn’t have the capacity to understand until the day her second is born.

Then you were born, and sometimes I look at you and I think that I love you so much it really could kill me. Then Matthew walks into the room, and I have no idea how I’m still breathing. This whole beautiful family of five is a gift beyond what word can describe. Really, there are no words powerful enough to do you three kids justice. Daddy and I are just beside ourselves in gratitude for how lucky we are, every single day. But right now is not about all of you. It is just about my girl. So much of me has to be shared right now -- my time, my focus, my affection, my energy. So for right now, my love, while you lay sleeping in the bassinet beside me in this quiet hour of the morning, this moment is all about you.


Loving the baby feet, too!

You were born on a Wednesday morning, and on that Wednesday morning you were handed to me purple and bloated and screaming… You were a sight. Your face was kind of squished into your neck so you had like three chins, and your lips were distinctly mine; fat and kind of pointy. I remember thinking right away that you were going to look like me once you were a little cleaned up. Only, I think when they cleaned you up, they accidentally cleaned all of the “me” off of you. By Thursday, you looked unmistakably like your father. And three weeks later, you only look like him more. Just… you know, prettier.

I could never decide who I wanted you to look like more. The one and only thing I was sure of, was that I wanted to someday have a little brown-eyed baby. And you, my love, I’m sure are going to fulfill that. Even as a newborn your little eyes are just as dark as sin. They are breathtaking… Even when the rest of you is all floppy and wrinkly with newness.




And who doesn't love a silly babyface in a cute outfit?

Speaking of floppy, by the way, you are starting to get some muscle in that scrawny little neck of yours. Your arms and legs were strong straight out of the womb, so I knew the rest of you would catch up soon. I don’t think there was a single nurse in the hospital who wasn’t impressed with your ability to hold them back from checking you each day. Daddy’s favorite thing is to watch you flex those neck muscles while you get burped. Unless you’re sleepy, I hold you on my lap to burp so that you can sit up (well, lean against my hand) and look around. And if Daddy’s home: you’re looking at him (hence: his favorite part). Your head used to just lay plopped in my palm and get jostled around while I patted your back. But now, you straighten your whole spine into an upright position in an effort to balance your head, and there really isn’t much leaning involved until your body catches up with your ambition, remembering that it’s only three weeks old, and you go flopping back down into my hand again. You should know that we laugh at your expense almost every time this happens. Don’t worry, you have the whole rest of your life to make fun of us.


But the baby yawns? The baby yawns top it all.

But best of all, baby girl? The day you turned three weeks, you did something so incredible it made the whole world light up. The day you turned three weeks, you smiled at me. Now that you have a couple of weeks under your belt, I’ve really tried to spend whatever time I have with you awake and content during the day chasing that first little grin. So after a feeding I had you sprawled out on the bed, and I told you I was going to steel a smooch right off your face. I pretended I grabbed your lips, then I plopped the smooch on my own face with a silly pop sound, and you smiled! Right at me! Of course, at first I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just a convenient time for gas, but the next day you gave me SIX different smiles in one little play time. It was awesome! You did it so much and held them for so long that I was able to call Matthew over to see.

It was a nice way to mix things up a bit, because for the past few weeks the only face you’ve made at me is this one:




Which of course, I love too.

Love, Mom.

Barracuda Baby

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Scarlett came into the world with a roaring appetite. They say that babies don’t actually get hungry in their first few days of life, and that’s how they can survive on only teaspoons of colostrum before their mother’s milk comes in. But you couldn’t tell that to my daughter. In the first few moments after she was brought back to me cleaned up in the delivery room, I adjusted my gown so that I could put her to my breast. After kind of fumbling through only a few months of breastfeeding Matthew, I’d put an extensive amount of research and preparation into the idea of breastfeeding Scarlett over the past six months of my pregnancy. I remember feeling a little anxious, out of practice, and unsure of myself, but I was ready to start what I expected to be the rocky beginnings of a roller-coaster experience. I was shocked when the child practically lunged at my nipple from across the room. There was no guiding her, no adjusting her, she didn’t even give me time to fumble over proper positioning. I virtually took her from the nurse and got attacked… In a good way -- not a completely painless way, but a good way.

I later browsed through the postpartum section of my What to Expect book and found the name “barracuda baby” appropriately attached to the description of my child. Basically, a child who nurses so enthusiastically you’d think she was trying to literally eat through the flesh to get to the milk. But more importantly, a child who at least knows what to do.

Ever since, it’s only gotten easier. Especially with her being such a… productive suckler, I fully expected all of the discomforts that came with nursing Matthew, but got none of them. When a nurse from the hospital called me a few days after returning home for a routine postpartum telephone check-up, I was able to tell her that breastfeeding was still going wonderfully. She responded proudly, but quickly added, “of course, your nipples are pretty sore, I’m sure…” and the only thing I could say was… “I have no idea how they aren’t, but no. I feel great.”

My milk came in before I left the hospital and about a week after being home, the engorgement had already gone down. There have been no tears, little discomfort, and thank God, no need for that awful lanolin cream. I also have a great baby sling that doubles as a perfectly discrete cover for public feedings. (I’ve even had two strangers tell me that they were surprised to see me take a baby out of it later on… that they had no idea I wasn’t just carrying a neat shoulder bag). I’ve been so thrilled with the unexpected ease of breastfeeding that I look forward to it now in a way that I just never fully could two years ago; transforming the chore I once viewed it as into what now feels much more appropriately like a wonderful privilege.

Because Scarlett shares me with a whole family of people, feeding her has had to incorporate itself into other parts of my life, and that’s really been the biggest challenge. It can definitely be tough at times to not feel a little detached from the rest of the family. A mother knows in her heart that when her newborn baby cries, that baby is calling for her… She isn’t crying to have her cradle rocked and she isn’t crying to have her music turned on -- she’s crying because you’re not holding her, and most of the time that she wants you to be holding her, she also wants you to be feeding her. I’ve tried to ask Spencer to help out here and there when he’s home from work, and even though he’s more than willing to, it just doesn’t work for me. Try as I might, I just can’t breathe easily until I get to her myself. Even when she’s perfectly content in his arms. I’m sure that when she’s a bit older that’ll change, but for now, I relish being her main source of comfort and security.

So I’ve learned to feed her in the sling while I’m cooking dinner one-handed, and I’ve learned to maneuver the cover a little more gracefully so that feedings don’t have to mean being banished to an empty room when someone drops by. And because sometimes a toddler just can’t wait to be cared for, there have even been times already that I’ve had to climb the stairs or hop up abruptly and scurry over to his side without breaking the latch between Scarlett and I.

Whenever I can though, I try to just be still with her while she nurses. And even though most of the time it can be a challenge (challenge being a pretty RADICAL understatement) to keep Matthew safe and under reasonable control from underneath of the Boppy Pillow on my lap, there’s nothing like the feeling of having my son scoot into the nook of my free arm, lean over with all of the delicacy that a two-year-old boy can congregate, and whisper to his baby sister that she is “so, so pretty.” To watch them study each other as contentedly as they do during times like these is Heaven fifteen times over.




A kiss from my son to my daughter




So I guess like anything else in parenting, I’m finding that where there are new conveniences in breastfeeding, there are a whole host of new complexities, too. But hey, at least my nipples aren’t bleeding.

Milburn Orchards - surviving a first (full) family outing

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The Hayride


Of course the only time he stops smiling all day is when we pry him away from something fun to take a picture.

So even though life with Scarlett has been a little less than exciting for Matthew, life for Scarlett (considering that she’s a newborn) has stayed pretty exciting. We celebrated her homecoming by taking all three of the kids out to Red Robin for dinner and milkshakes on her first Saturday night home. And while most newborns really only venture out of the house to visit grandparents, our week old baby made two separate trips into Pennsylvania so that I could be a bridesmaid in my friend’s wedding. She wore her first pair of tights and danced her first dance between her father and I when she was ten days old.

We learned early on that Scarlett doesn’t like to be bored. When Matthew was a tiny baby, the most entertainment he required was to have a little music played for him and to be rocked once in a while. Of course I read to him and showed him things, but only because I wanted to - never because it was demanded of me. Scarlett will literally cry when she is completely full, completely clean and completely dry solely because she wants a story, or a song, or a little dance around the living room. Unless she is asleep, she is never content to just lie around in a swing or a crib somewhere while Mommy does the laundry. She has to be attached to me and at the same time able to see everything around her. I end up spending a good deal of my day playing and having very one-sided conversations with my child who is too young to even hold her head up for more than sixty full seconds at a time. She’ll let me play with Matthew only as long as I let her watch and narrate everything that we do to her as we go along.

Our plans were interrupted on Saturday by a family visit, so on Sunday we were able to make it out extra early to Milburn Orchards. The weather was impeccable. Even much better than Saturday. I tossed Scarlett in the sling and wore her around the whole day. And even though she spent a good deal of the time awake and alert, she loved it so much that we didn’t hear a peep out of her until well after she was due for a feeding. Mary, of course, loved it. She’s been there “like, a million bazillion times,” and it is still her favorite place to visit. She had every step of our visit planned out like a day in advance. And Matthew? I don’t think he’s ever has so much fun in his life. You could definitely tell that he’d been cooped up inside the house for a little too long… he ran from one activity to the next for hours on end and flipped over every new activity. It turned out to be a really good thing we went on Sunday instead when we had more time to stay because it took even Spencer and I a good five hours to get our fill before we were ready to pry the kids away and get home… And that’s saying a lot considering how little sleep I’m running on and the fact that Spencer picked up seventeen hours in overtime this past week.

After the weeks we’ve had since Scarlett’s been home, it was definitely nice to have a break from all the crazy, and to have a day to just remember what made us dumb enough to want a family of five in the first place.

I love his face here.

He was a little freaked out when the chicken actually pecked from his hand.

The best little Pumpkin in the patch :-)

We sat across from a really nice family who also had a 2 and a half year old and a newborn on the hayride. Matthew liked telling them about his baby sister.

The haystack maze

A little love on a hay bale

Hostages

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My precious daughter being quite the little charmer for her family visitors.

My son and I are going stir crazy. I knew that having a newborn around the house would temporarily throw everyone’s schedules all to shit, and I happily accepted that things weren’t going to always run smoothly around here for the first few weeks… but I don’t think I realized how much I would miss the outside world. I think I thought it would be a little easier to get everyone at least out back to play -- what with me being so much more experienced in mothering these days than I was the last time I was trapped indoors with a newborn. Ugh, but it is so much harder. Add to that two consecutive weeks of howling wind and freezing rain that fall coincidentally on your first two weeks home with a newborn… and you’ve really got yourself a fun situation.

It was like Scarlett brought this fall with her through the birth canal. At the end of my pregnancy - right up until the very day I went into labor - it was too hot for my daily walk with Matthew and the dog to even be enjoyable. But then, the night I labored through was tepid and clear and practically void of any wind whatsoever. It was almost like there was no weather at all while we were walking around the outside of the hospital, talking over contractions. Spencer and I couldn’t get over what a beautiful night it was to have a baby. (Awww….) Then, Scarlett was born and the rains came down like it was the end of days. I kept joking with the nurses that I couldn’t have picked a better time to be trapped inside of a hospital room for three days. Roads were flooded out all over the place and the list of school closures rivaled last year’s blizzard. Then, as if it were just for us, the weather cleared up for one, absolutely picture perfect fall day the afternoon we brought Scarlett home from the hospital. And I thought out loud to Scarlett, Wow, we really lucked out with the weather, my love, while we sat out front and took our first family photos in the glaring sunshine.

The next day it rained. And the wind howled. And a few tree limbs snapped from their trees. And that beautifully tepid air dropped into what felt like subzero temperatures compared to what we’d been used to. And it’s been that way almost everyday since.

Under normal circumstances, I could get pretty creative thinking of rainy day activities for my son and I to do. But the first two weeks with a newborn are a far, far cry from anything normal -- especially when that particular newborn is this particular son’s very first younger sibling… And this particular mom is a little afraid that this two-year-old son of hers is going to realize that his life became incredibly boring the exact moment his younger sibling set her tiny, high-maintenance foot inside his house.

Between nursing sessions that are almost on an hourly schedule, and (not to mention) on very little to usually no sleep at all for days and days on end, I’ve had to keep our daytime activities mild. At the beginning of each day Matthew and I have filled a basket full of toys and brought it down to my bed, where we’ve camped out next to the bassinet so that I’m always within arms reach of the next feeding. We’ve read stories, we’ve built forts out of bed sheets, we’ve danced to nursery rhyme videos, we’ve played with our alphabet flashcards, we’ve snuggled up to entirely too much television together, and we’ve Magna-Doodled so much that frankly I’m surprised we haven’t developed Carpel Tunnel. We’ve done the kind of things that are a lot of fun for about a day or maybe two… And we’ve done them everyday for two and a half weeks.

So Saturday Spencer and I woke up bright and early with a plan for an awesome day of fun with the kids. The weather was finally nice. We spent hours looking up the best fall activities, and we promised Matthew and Mary hayrides, and apple-picking, and playgrounds and face paint and pony rides and a day of eating their weight in cider doughnuts! We were so excited (ME INCLUDED) to get (THE HELL) out of the house that we didn’t even mind that it took five hundred and sixty-two hours to get everyone packed for the day and ready to leave. We practically skipped off of the back steps to the truck…

Which was the exact moment that an SUV full of aunts and uncles and cousins from out of town pulled up behind us in the driveway bearing gifts for the new baby. So instead of ponies! And doughnuts! And hayrides! Matthew got to pose for group pictures in the living room and watch us open eighty-two tons of presents for Scarlett.

It’s kind of a miracle he doesn’t despise her at this point.


Matthew was a little "F this" during the family pictures.
Come to think of it, Scarlett was too.

Loving Scarlett

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Four days ago, her umbilical cord fell off. It took me more than a week just to catch up with myself enough to write her birth story, and then four days ago, Scarlett’s umbilical cord gets up the nerve to fall off? Already!? What IS it about life with a newborn that makes the Earth spin on hyper speed? One minute I’m 156 pounds of pregnant, feeling like every day that passes without the birth of a child has lasted three eternities… and the next: she’s born, I’m home from the hospital, I’m telling curious googly-eyed strangers in the supermarket that she’s eleven days old, and I’m opening her onezie to find that the first piece of her history has already been made.

How is it that I’m already feeling nostalgic over her? How is it that she can still be such a brand new, unfamiliar part of my life, and be able to stir up such overwhelming emotion over the thought of her growing up too fast?

The second she was born and her umbilical cord was cut, I was able to reach down and take her straight from the doctor’s hands. The nurses helped to loosely wrap her and lay her safely on my chest while she wailed up at Spencer and I, arms flailing and purple in the face. For more than ten full minutes, we hovered over her together, claiming this piece of her lip and that part of her chin; kissing, laughing, and falling in love until the nurses whisked her off to look her over.

I’ve always teased Spencer about that moment of Matthew’s birth. How nervous he was to ask if he could leave my side to follow Matthew over when the nurse whisked him away from us to take his vitals -- as if he needed my permission to see his own son. When he finally got up the courage, and I laughed at him for even asking, he left me in a cloud of dust. It was a good thing he did because what happened the moment he walked over there (small as it was) practically shaped their entire relationship. Giving Matthew a finger from each hand to grip onto, Spencer told him that it was okay, that he was his Daddy -- and at that exact moment, Matthew looked up at his dad and stopped crying for the first time. Our son is only two and a half and his dad has already proudly told and retold him that story at least a hundred thousand times. This time, when they took our daughter from my chest, he just looked down at me with a huge, knowing grin and waited for me to nod my head… We both laughed a little, and he was right on her heels.

And as he stood over our daughter on the other side of the room, taking her in and telling the nurses her name for the first time since she’s come into the world and made it real, I watched, thinking… I have a daughter, and I can’t wait to find out what that really means.



Tell me that those are not the prettiest lips you have ever seen, EVER.

Ever since we’ve all been hooked on that little girl. But me? I have been completely entrenched in her. Maybe it’s that I’m three years more experienced in parenting, or that I worried so much about being able to bond with her, or that she’s a girl, or that she is just so irresistibly her -- but there is something about the relationship I have with her (brand new as it may be) that feels kind of epic. Like I just know it’s going to grow into something that will shape me.

Most nights she wakes up every two hours, like clockwork, to nurse. Other nights, she gives me a little bit of a break, and it’s me that’s waking her up; I haven’t slept for four consecutive hours in weeks and there is no foreseeable end to this pattern for weeks still to come… But still, somehow, I miss her to pieces when she sleeps. And for the past two weeks, Scarlett Rebecca has bitten and clawed and chewed at my breast, gnawing away at my nipple like a piece of beef jerky, draining me of time, and energy and nutrients and more time and even more energy almost hourly… so much that I actually feel naked when she’s not at my chest. But still, I savor the experience of filling her tummy every single time. She’s like a good book I just can’t put down. The kind of book that’s so good you wouldn’t mind rereading the same chapter over again before even moving onto the next. And now that her umbilical stump is stowed away in a tiny ziplock bag beside her diaper wipes, it’s hard to find a place to keep it. I guess a part of me is not ready to accept that the first chapter with her is ending; that after so much time spent waiting just to feel those first contractions, the time has already come to start boxing away pieces of her childhood and relics of our pregnancy.

But then again, as I spend this ridiculous hour of the morning (as only the mother of a newborn would) looking over pictures of my husband holding our daughter I have to admit that it wouldn’t be the first time I fell in love too fast… and how it all worked out pretty well.





Exactly what Spencer would look like with a binky in his mouth and a bow in his hair.