little white truths

Well Mex went off to work this morning - after two weeks' leave - and I find myself in something of a predicament: there's a baby in the house and there's no one else to care for her but me.

My golly. Since when did I get qualified to look after a newborn?!

She's in bed now (fingers crossed, touch wood etc etc) but we've had a long morning. It was my turn for the extended shift last night (as it will be indefinitely now that Mex is back at work) and my daughter has this WONDERFUL habit of talking in her sleep, sounding like she's choking in her sleep, making tongue clicks in her sleep - basically making any kind of noise she can. In her sleep. Loudly.

As someone with a severe case of hyperarousal insomnia where sound is the problem (if someone breathes in Africa, I hear it and wake up), this could present something of...an issue.

Ha. I have to say, though, that I'm sleeping much better now that Alizé is here. On top of the fact that I already have a masters degree in sleep deprivation, the oxytocin produced by the body during breastfeeding doubles as a sedative - so while I'm not sleeping longer hours, the sleep I do get is much better quality. I'm dreaming without sleep medication for the first time in years. This is a wondrous thing, but of course, our entire household is tired nevertheless - including the poor dog, who had no say in any of this, the poor thing.

Anyhoo. You have a baby. You're going to be tired. You suck it up and move on. Compared to the lack of sleep I've had for the last ten years, this is, well, child's play. Fingers crossed that continues.

I'm rambling. I had no idea what I was going to say in this post - I just thought it might be a good idea to jot down a few notes on early motherhood as the days go on. People have said that they hated this period at the time but later missed it, so keeping a record could be a good idea.

Happily, I'm really enjoying being with my daughter and learning with her, learning about her, and I still can't believe how blessed we are to have her in our lives. Childbirth feels like a strange dream that happened to someone else, although I certainly remember it. Every farken detail. Some say they've forgotten it. I'm pretty sure I won't ; ), but we'll see.

In any event, the worst part of the whole thing was definitely pregnancy. I'll never forget just how taxing that 40 weeks really was, just as I'll never forget that first wonderful day when Izzy joined us in the world and everything changed in an instant.

Anyhoo anyhoo. People give you a lot of advice on pregnancy and parenthood, but two little snippets have stayed with me. One lady in our local park said 'you just have to give in to it' and a friend passed on something her local barista said: 'everything just takes a little longer'.

Both those things resonate with me. And yes, things take a little longer. This morning I made the mistake of putting on an active clay mask ten minutes before I planned to have a shower (Mex was still here at this point and Izzy had recently been fed, so it seemed like a good time), but sure enough, the little gremlin picked that moment to start wailing like a banshee and showing me all her hungry signs, so I wound up breastfeeding with the mask on my face starting to sting and there was nothing I could do about it.

Mex left, the dog woefully watched him go (I think she's wondering whether she'll get out this morning; she doesn't know this, but I do plan to try my first outing with baby and puppy - lord knows how that will go) and I'd made the mistake of publishing a blog post without first previewing it, so it may well have been sitting there in public view, littered with unspeakable errors, and I wasn't going to be able to edit it any time soon.

I have a feeling this will be my life from now on: getting caught with burning face masks on that I can't remove, and knowing that I might have - shock horror - thrown something with errors in it into cyberspace, where people might actually see them and know it was me.

Such is life. Fortunately I don't care. What I care about is that little gremlin making cooing noises in the next room as she sleeps, the sweet dog at my feet who's taken all this in her stride, and the man who has called me already to check that I'm ok, despite the number of emails he has to get through after two weeks away from the office.

Life begins.