hygiene

Skipper got her first bath last night. We've been wiping her down here and there, but we hadn't given her a real bath in all her eleven days of existence. She was filthy. She smelled funky. She had bits of food in her creases (the only problem with carrying a baby everywhere in a wrap).*

We were dreading the bath, and putting it off, because Dutch HATED baths for the first 18 months of her life. She screamed so hard during her first bath that we were afraid she was going to rupture some important blood vessels. While aware that Skipper is an entirely different personality, Cook and I were expecting the worst with the bath. Of course, Skipper handled it like a pro. She fussed** some, and didn't seem happy about the whole thing (but how would we tell, anyway?), but she didn't scream until Cook pulled off the bandaid over her spinal-tap-puncture. (It's been on a week, and showed no sign of ever peeling off on its own.) Then she screamed. We forgave her.

I know I've got to stop comparing my two children, since that's not a good path toward a healthy sibling relationship, but it's hard not to at this point, bcause Dutch represents all we know about babies, so she's necessarily our reference point.Skipper is a lovely baby, but we still know very little about her.

*Today, after eating a hardboiled egg, I found a small yellow thing on Skipper's shirt. I looked at it, decided that it was either egg yolk or a curd from Skipper's latest poop, and THEN I PICKED IT UP AND ATE IT.  Without  thinking twice or even smelling it. I think that's really all you need to know about my current state of sleep deprivation and general disorientation.

** When Dutch was small, I'd hear other parents use the word "fussing" to descibe their baby's response to something, and I would be mystified.  Dutch would cry or scream or not cry. She never fussed. Skipper fusses. Now I know what it means! I love it! It's so mild and manageable!

fear

I don't check Skipper's breathing too often. For some reason, I'm okay with the breathing during the day. When I wake up in the night (the few times I do that when I'm not awakened by her snuffling piglet noises), I do reach for her in a panic every time, convinced I'm going to touch a cold stiff body. But I think I've mostly reassigned my fear. Now I'm afraid she's going to catch a regular virus* and die. Because new babies do that! And she's SO LITTLE! Dutch is, of course, a spectacular vector of regular viruses, spending her day in close contact with 10-40 preschoolers, about half of whom have runny noses at any given time. I'm resisting the urge to make her take a sanitizing bath upon home re-entry every day. I'm also resisting the urge to stay in the apartment all day every day, muttering incantations under my breath. 

I keep making little bargains with any Powers That Might Be. Let her stay healthy until she's six weeks old, then she can get sick. But not die. And not get really sick. 

I also take other, more sane precautions. I wash my hands. I make Dutch wash her hands twice when she gets home every day. I don't let people touch Skipper unless they've just washed their hands, and then I ask them not to touch her face. (I keep her in the wrap when I'm in public, to avoid touching opportunities.) I avoid crowded places, and if somebody's coughing, I move away from them at high speed. 

I'm not a panicky mom, normally. Really. I don't think I'm at all overprotective as a general rule, in spite of being a terrible worrier. But the experience of being in the hospital for three days has popped the delusion bubble around this baby, and she seems so very fragile and mortal to me. I worried about Dutch, but I didn't really believe anything could hurt her, since she was protected by my crazy love for her. Skipper,  though I love her just as crazy much, feels much less securely anchored to my world, and I feel a constant ache of anxiety in my gut.

Now I'm going to take Skipper to the grocery store, where I will suspiciously scan everyone around me for signs of illness.

*No, not swine flu. Geez, I've got enough to worry about. I'm waiting till we get to pandemic Phase 6!

Look, I can cross my eyes!

Newborn=Weird

This is a movie from Day One

This is a movie from Day Nine.

In my life.

My new life has begun! Cook is back at work, Dutch is at daycare all day. I'm not working or doing anything at all other than parenting Skipper all day and doing the Big School Project. My daily goals are pretty achievable:

1. Do 3 hours of BSP work
2. Wash the breakfast dishes and wipe the counters and table
3. Do 1 small household task, like making granola or doing laundry
4. Get dressed and brush my teeth and hair
   
5. Eat more or less properly
6. Check to make sure Skipper is breathing no more often than once every 10 minutes

That's it! I can do that, right? I'm not going to shoot for showering every day or anything silly like that, since Skipper likes to nurse for about 10 hours a day. I do need some more reading material, though - all this sitting around having my nipples gnawed has allowed me to catch up on my New Yorker backlog.

Just before Skipper was born, a coworker of Cook's told us that he'd been surprised by how much of the difficulty of having a second kid was actually due to the need to care for the first kid. "Babies are easy!" he said. Now I believe him. Other than the whole not-breathing thing, caring for Skipper has been a breeze. Now we know that newborns are really odd, and even though this baby sticks her tongue out all the time, squeaks and quacks, and has wandering eyes, she's probably going to turn out okay. I know how to breastfeed. I have already nursed this kid while standing up and wearing her in a wrap (in a bus shelter!), I've nursed her in the dark, I've nursed her lying down - all stuff I came around to much later in the game with Dutch. I know my nipples are not actually going to fall off, and that they'll feel much better in four or five weeks. I also know that Skipper is in some ways much easier (so far) than Dutch was, better able to self-soothe and to de-escalate when she gets upset, so I can be grateful for that.

Haircut

By the way

Some of the words deleted from my emails and blog posts by the hospital computer system were "blood," "urine," "dead," "terror," "nipples," and "hardcore."*  I guess I can kind of see where they're coming from, but really - urine? I've got to wonder how people in the hospital longterm, say, with a dying child to care for, can possibly communicate about their experience through a filter like that.

*Which makes my emails sound waaaaay more exciting than they actually were.

life goes on

I'm proud to announce that Dutch ticked off another developmental milestone today! I was sitting talking to a midwife (the third of my three postpartum home visits - midwives are AWESOME) when Dutch breezed through the living room and went out the apartment door. A few minutes later, Cook came in and said "Did Dutch just leave?" and I said "Um... yes?" and just then the doorbell rang. Cook went down to let Dutch in, and found her on the doorstep with a dustpan, from which she had just emptied a big chunk of her own hair, which she had cut with her own scissors. She did not cut herself bangs, which I believe is the classic cutting-0wn-hair approach, but she did cut a bunch of random short sections.

Tonight (with 4 hours of naptime under my belt, making me more reliable with scissors) I cut her hair in an attempt to even things up.* She was perfectly happy about it until she went to look in the mirror and freaked out because she no longer looks pretty. She doesn't want to go to daycare tomorrow because she's not beautiful. She spent a good 10 minutes sobbing in the bathroom. Cook, after attempting to console her, came out in the livingroom and looked at me. "How did we end up getting this kid?" he asked. (I cut Cook's hair, and I used to cut my own, for a good 10 years. We don't look very pretty.)

Meanwhile, Skipper has been sleeping a lot, and staring at her sister in amazement a lot. The hospital, where she's spent nearly half her life, is much quieter than our home...

*It's a good thing layers are fashionable. I think they're supposed to be more carefully arranged, however.

Here's a belated picture from Day Two. Skipper is looking an awful lot like Winston Churchill, like most babies. I wish Winston Churchill had worn booties with bells on them.

Home

We're home! Skipper has no infections and is super-healthy. We will never know why she decided to take a break from breathing, and we're all kind of okay with the not-knowing (to varying degrees). Skipper has a few new punctures in her, but otherwise seems unscathed by her hospital experience.