Night one was a little wild, coming home with the little guy at 4 am and then thinking "OK, so I guess he's ours, now what?". Actually, I was the only one who had enough energy left to think that. Holly passed out within minutes of hitting the bed. We've mentioned it before, but Holly really found it to be a blessing to be in a familiar place with Max a.s.a.p. I think we all got about two or three hours on the bed before morning came. It would have been nice to get some more sleep but those blasted 31 years of ingrained Circadian rhythm seem to get in the way. We tried to keep visiting to a minimum that day, but we just couldn't say no to some family members who were only briefly in town (one of whom made a six-hour pilgrimage from southern Ontario the day before!!), nor could we sensibly keep Max from meeting his local grandmother. It was wonderful to get to see the smiles on the faces of close family, welcoming the first member of the new generation!
Many more visits with friends and family have followed - we are indebted to all of our visitors for bringing food, doing a load of dishes, taking Max off our hands briefly (like we could let him go for long!!! Sigh...), fixing our &*$@ fence and just providing some good adult conversation and missives from the outside world. Not that we haven't gone out - Max dazzled at a family birthday dinner this past weekend and has been to two medical appointments. Little dude LOVES the car seat (thanks CB squared!!), although going-out duds seem to overheat him a little bit. Is exhibitionism genetic?
One of the most wonderful things about this past week has been the postpartum care provided by both our midwives and our doula. After all three women partied with us (i.e. helped Holly deliver Max) all night long, the midwives stopped by for home visits later on on day 1, as well as on days 3 and 5. Not only did they take the time that Max was in good shape, but they also made sure that Holly was recuperating well. On days 2 and 4, our doula came by to make sure that the breastfeeding was going smoothly and to answer any other questions that we had. She also provided us a photocopy of her written notes from the birth, which was really special to me. While Holly obviously had other things on her mind at the time, I constantly found myself trying to store everything that was happening on the 8th to put it down in words later. Obviously, this is a little hard to do while trying to be a supportive birth partner so I wasn't surprised to find that I had misremembered things and event sequences after going over the notes. Like that part about there being no hot water just as Holly was going to hop in the tub - CRAZY!
Sleep was a little rough in the early goings. Max seemed to have difficulty sleeping without physical contact with one of us. I wasn't too keen on sleeping right up next to him in bed, so for the first eight days or so, one of us was up with Max while the other one caught up on sleep. Holly would feed Max while I slept and then I would wake up and lull him back to sleep while Holly would grab a few winks...at least Max would get the sleep he needed, but it kind of took its toll on us, particularly because the whole dance would go from 10 pm to 10 am and we'd have something like 4-5 hours of sleep apiece to show for it. Two days ago, we started putting him in a bassinet when he falls into a deep post-feeding sleep around midnight. He seems good for about 3 hours or so of sleep in between feedings throughout the night so now we're getting more sleep in less total hours. Yay!
Almost, but not quite, lost in all of this was Holly's 31st birthday today. It was a nice low-key day spent with family, friends and half of Ottawa's florists. Her first birthday as a mother; kind of gets you right here
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