Mom Radar

One month ago today Phillip joined our family. In some crazy, miraculous way somehow, overnight, we became parents.

It is all still fairly surreal, but it is also completely natural at the same time. As we expected it is tough -  among other things we don't get much sleep, it is harder to get places, and our schedule is pretty much dictated by this little tiny person - it is an uphill battle when we try to add anything besides hold, feed, burp or change Phillip to it. Also as expected, we weren't able to understand the extent to which his arrival would change things. I never understood how it was that having a new baby could really make it that difficult to have a shower, eat, get dressed and even just get to the bathroom. Everybody says that newborns sleep a lot. I clearly missed the part that added "as long as you don't put them down." I also always heard about how moms have eyes in the back of their heads, but nobody ever mentioned that babies have mom radar.

(Added 6:30pm - the flip side to the difficulty of him not wanting to put down is that he is super-snuggly)

About an hour ago (~12:30pm), I decided to try putting a sleeping Phillip down on the bed beside me. I knew there was a risk that he would wake up immediately, but figured that I would go for it. After maybe half an hour with only a few little startles, I started to plan my next move, prioritizing the things I would like to do that I can't really manage while holding him. Just like most days, the list looks like this:

• have a shower
• get dressed
• brush teeth
• put in contacts
• find food
• rinse diapers (we're still working on our cloth diaper routine so we sometimes have a backup of diapers that need to be rinsed - thankfully it's just breastmilk poo)

Things specific to today:

• get diapers into the laundry

(If you parents out there have figured out ways of doing these things while holding a newborn, please share)

I decided that I could actually hold off on having a shower, but brushing my teeth and putting in contacts would go a long way to making me feel somewhat human and after that I really needed to get the diapers going. I vaguely planned eating and getting dressed for after that, but didn't count on getting that far. I slowly crept away and got up to collecting the diapers from overnight that needed to be rinsed and moving them into the bathroom before the mom radar went off. It couldn't have been more than 5-7 minutes. Sometimes I'll get 15 minutes, but usually not. The nurses at the hospital did say that he responded to the hearing test faster than any baby they had ever seen - maybe this accounts for some of it. 

It has gotten to the point where I actually start to worry if Phillip hasn't woken up within 15 minutes. Yesterday he slept from the time I put him in the shopping cart at the grocery store until after I got home. I figured that he would wake up shortly after I brought him into the house, but he slept for probably another 20-30 minutes. It was great - I got the groceries put away, the dishes washed, got the mail, went to the bathroom, straightened things up downstairs and a few other things, but it was also disconcerting. After 10-15 min I had to check on him to make sure everything was okay.

Back to today - having gotten to 2.5 things on my list today, I came back to a fussy, hungry baby. He is now asleep again and I'm back to debating whether I can set him down again and get anything else done, though getting food has now jumped to the top of the list and I've added picking up the camera cable so I can load photos onto the computer as a nice bonus item.

In the mean time, I'm going to publish this. I hope to get back and add some pictures of the little rascal, but, like everything else these days, we'll see if I get to it before the mom radar goes off.

Rascally baby!

P.S.  We do love parenthood - we wouldn't trade it for anything. Phillip is kind of amazing...and really, really cute (which you'll see if he lets me get that cable).

Update 6:40pm:

After initially publishing this, I was able to run downstairs and get a sandwich. With food in tow, I returned to a wailing baby. He went back to sleep while I ate my lunch. In another quick break I was able to rinse the diapers and get them downstairs. Picking up an only marginally fussy baby, I took him downstairs and put him in the swing while I started the wash. The swing doesn't go high enough for his tastes, so I sat on the floor and pushed it myself until he fell asleep. I put the swing on auto and went to work getting a chicken into the oven for dinner. He woke up just after I got it in and was part way through the dishes. We've since had a few more rounds of chipping away at the list and, despite the fact that I still haven't showered or gotten dressed today, I'm feeling marginally successful. The chicken is done and smells amazing, the diapers are in the dryer and he did finally let me get that cable.

He's our little boy and we love him and he is really sweet and ridiculously cute and that all goes a really long way.

After wetting through his second outfit of the morning earlier today.