Not A Birth Story

...Because wow, having three kids can really take it out of you, even with a wonderful support system and a super helpful husband and very nice friends bringing so much food that Jim finally catalogued it all in a list so that we could REMEMBER what we had to choose from without staring into the fridge for a full five minutes.

It appears, upon rereading that paragraph, that it is the world's longest run-on sentence. Ah well. No time for rewrites!

We are all doing quite well, overall, except for our poor dog, who chose this point in time to develop a raging eye infection that we first assumed to be a cataract. By the time we'd noticed he was having trouble, he was half the time not even using his bad eye, just letting it close or roll back in his head. Ack. But vet says its just a bad infection (well, actually something else besides a run of the mill infection that neither of us can remember the name of, but) and that he should recover with vigilant eye-dropping three times daily. Because we're not doing enough disgusting things round the clock right now; additional thrice daily dog-face wrestling sessions were exactly what we were hoping for.

Anyways! Enough about the dog, GEEZ. The BABY is so adorable and smells so scrumptious, and the kids are being so gentle and sweet with him. The only moment of detectable jealousy I've seen so far is when Addy's friends from down the road came over for a belated birthday tea party, but spent most of their time ogling the new baby and ignoring the birthday girl's requests (ahemwhinyDEMANDScoughcough) to play dress up with her. It got a bit ugly, frankly, and by the time they left Adelay was actively crying. "It is MY birthday and they just want to look at that BABY!" she sobbed. It was very very sad, and I was very sad for her. There just wasn't much to do to make it better, though. So Jim took her for ice cream, which turned out to be pretty healing.

But yeah, relatedly, Addy's birthday was Sunday, and we had a family party planned for Saturday and went ahead with it... Which was maybe crazy but everybody brought food over, and my MIL cleaned my house and my sister made the cake and overall that went off pretty well, though having a house full of new baby paraphernalia AND new birthday stuff makes for a very cluttery house, let me tell you.

Addy also started dance class last night, and everyone yelled at me for being out and about after just giving birth a week ago. They were kind of right, but also, kind of wrong, 'cause dang if I don't feel pretty ok most of the time already. Not to spoil The Birth Story or anything, and also not to put too fine a point on it (sorry guys and squeamish girls,) but there's a big difference between going home with a newborn AND a giant rip in your body and going home with just the newborn part. You might feel so shockingly normal you find yourself crazily asking to go home from the hospital a day early, which is in hindsight SUPER DUMB of you now that you're remembering what tired really feels like.

Not that Jameson is so fussy or such a dreadful sleeper, but his bilirubin levels were high and rising, so each morning for four days after we got home I had to take him BACK to the hospital to get a heel prick blood draw, which is an excruciating process on a newborn, especially one with the skinniest feet you've ever seen, not an ounce of cushiony fat to spare. I'd have to sit in another room and wait while he screamed, and then they'd bring him to me to nurse him back to sleep. Four days in a row, plus two doctor's appointments already. So between that and the girl's birthday parties and dance class and preschool and the dog's eye, my brain and body are both a bit taxed. But thankfully his levels finally started going down, right before we were about to start the dreaded lights.

We're also weaning him off the formula supplements, which we were offering at the doctor's insistence to try to help flush the bili out. Now that he's without those occasional ounces of formula, baby has been nursing like a rabid wolverine, hours at a time sometimes, so that's fun too. I honestly don't know how I'd be managing right now if Jim weren't working half days still and my mom wasn't available to drop Addy off at her preschool. I sort of feel pinned to the couch much of the time, which is totally normal of course, and I love the snuggle time and the fact that he's such an eager nurser, but it's a little stressful with two wily opportunists lurking around, bent on killing each other or eating jumbo bags of M and Ms every time they see you sit down and pop the boob out.

Speaking of, just had to go rescue the saddest little newborn ever (seriously, I forgot how their little cries actually sound just like they're saying, "Waaah!") and am now typing one handed, so that's it for now. More from the frontlines soon!