Kid Amnesiac

Simon is two weeks old today. He marked the occasion by losing his cord stump last night, exposing a very cute little belly button in the middle of his equally cute belly.

While this will make changing and bathing Simon much easier, I find myself bittersweet about the event because I sense that time is racing by and I can’t do anything to slow or stop it.

Where did the past two weeks go? Can’t I stop the clock for just a minute or two? Don’t get me wrong, newborns aren’t the most interesting creatures, and I know intellectually that our best days together lie ahead. And on the nights when Simon had gas pain (before we discovered Infant Mylicon), time seemed to expand exponentially. But on the whole, it’s been a very fast two weeks, two weeks that I’ll never get back.

Soon enough, Simon will be holding his head up, then crawling, then walking, then talking, and then–to quote an old boss and good friend of mine–before I know it I’ll be driving him off to college and wondering where the last 18 years went. I have a whole new understanding of what my mom must have been feeling when she would ask me to just stay five a tiny bit longer. It must be a universal parent thing, and after a lifetime of looking forward to things–to being old enough to drive, to vote, to get married, to live on my own, etc.–it’s odd to begin wishing for time to halt in its tracks.

I hope I can keep these thoughts in mind the next time Simon’s cranky and I’m desperate for the next hour or so to speed by. In the meantime, I’ll be spending a little more time staring at his face today.

Matt and I are considering offering a cash reward for anyone who can name the phenomenon I am about to describe. I’ve tried Googling and have come up blank, and the book What to Expect the First Year has no mention of what we’ve experienced. (The book covers just about everything else with an authoritative but reassuring tone; it’s a great book.)

So here’s the no-name experience: The first two nights we had Simon home with us, he slept beside us in a Moses basket with his head between mine and Matt’s. Neither of us could stand putting him at the foot of the bed, much less in a separate room. Every two to three hours we awoke to feed him or check on him, and at each instance we spent a lot of time just staring at his face and learning his features.

By night three, Simon moved to the foot of the bed to give us more space. That’s when things got weird. Percival (the cat) hopped up on the bed by my face, and in my groggy state I thought I was seeing Simon instead. Then, the very next night, something similar happened, only this time I understood I was seeing a cat, only Percival had Simon’s eyes. I finally confessed these visions to Matt, only to learn that Matt saw Simon’s face in my hair when he awoke and was facing the back of my head in the late night or early mornings.

Neither of us experienced this beyond night 3 or 4, so there’s no need to contact social services on Simon’s behalf. But I’m curious: What the heck was that? Some sort of odd parental imprinting? The hallucinations of the sleep deprived? New parent psychosis? Given the human tendency to see faces in everything from parking meters to food items (we’re hard wired to recognize and relate to faces), I’m guessing it’s the first. But it was certainly odd and I’d give anything to know if there’s a name for it.

Matt and I have now had Simon home for five full days, during which time–despite warnings from friends, siblings, and parents–we have been shocked by the amount of biological waste that our little one emits on a regular basis.

As Simon is a boy, we’ve endured several requisite episodes wherein the little darling pishes on us, the wall, the changing pad, and even himself. He was particularly unhappy yesterday when he pished in his own eye. We’ve already blogged about at least one diaper blow-out, which is probably one more than you wanted to read about. Added to this is the fact that it was Simon’s genetic destiny to be a world-class spitter. As our moms have reminded us more than once, I was a horrible spitter as a baby and Matt was a projectile spitter.

All of this activity has added up to quite a pile of soiled baby clothing. Like 99% of American parents, we’re washing baby clothing with Dreft because it’s gentle enough for baby’s skin and that’s what everyone told us to get. Great. But what about the stains? We need the detergent equivalent of a blow-torch to get rid of those. So I did my first “heavily soiled” load with Clorox 2, figuring I’d rewash later with Dreft and hope Simon didn’t notice. No dice–the stains barely budged and Matt and I started wondering how we could afford to clothe our child if he ruined several outfits per week.

Matt’s solution was to skip clothing and keep Simon in a diaper, tee, and swaddle wrap all day. I decided to explore better living through chemistry and had my mom buy Dreft stain remover (thanks Mom!) and picked up OxiClean baby formula while at Target. Each garment got a stain treatment with Dreft, a soak with OxiClean, and then a wash in detergent with an OxiClean booster.

Overkill, yes, but the results speak for themselves: Simon’s wardrobe is intact once more. I, however, am left with a lingering question. How is it that cleansers designed to be gentle enough for baby can so completely outperform their fully armed adult counterparts? And knowing how well this stuff works, why would I ever buy Clorox 2 again?

Today was Simon’s first trip to the doctor since, well, since Friday when he was released from the hospital. Kiddo went two full days without costing my health insurance plan a bundle. Thanks United! Please don’t drop me for being too expensive…

Thank goodness, today’s trip was a simple new baby check-in with his pediatrician, Mark Newstadt. Matt himself was a patient at this practice over thirty years ago when it was the Kaplan and Barron group, and he can remember sitting in the parking lot as a kid and wondering if there 26 letters in the alphabet, how many numbers were there? My own connection is through my Aunt Linda, who worked in the practice’s front office during the ’80s and dispensed untold amounts of sound (but unlicensed) medical advice during her tenure.

In an attempt to humble us for feeling smug about our timing (we fed Simon just in time to pile in the car and get home in time to feed him again), Simon urped up part of his lunch and blew out his diaper just when we got him in the carseat.

On the medical front, Simon checked out just fine. His bilirubin has continued to drop, all his basic parts checked out clear with the doctor, and he has gained two ounces since Friday. Best of all, he’s not due back to be poked or prodded for two full weeks.

Matt’s done the lion’s share of blogging lately, as he has more time than I do. Which is funny, because the guy has been a full time pump assembler/cleaner, caterer, errand boy, diaper expert, burper, and entertainer for the last few days. In fact, if you list the number of daily tasks he accomplishes, it’s much higher than mine. So what’s the difference?

So far as I can tell, it’s that Matt can still move at a near pre-delivery rate whereas I know 100-year olds who now move faster than I do. (Slight exaggeration, but I saw my 97-year-old great uncle two weeks ago and he certainly is getting around faster than I am these days…) It now takes several minutes to sit down or get up from a seated position. Walking is slower than it used to be. Going to the bathroom is a 20-minute adventure. I’m supposed to be taking four 20-minute sitz baths a day, breastfeeding for 20-40 minutes a session (pumping for 15-20) every three hours, along with eating a lot (check!), drinking a lot (check!) and resting a lot (only if I can figure which of the eating, drinking, breastfeeding, going to the bathroom, etc. is optional).

But I digress. What I wanted to write about tonight is a little phenomenon which is either hormonal attachment doing its thing or the beginning of an opium addiction. I’ve noticed that when I feed Simon, it doesn’t take long before a general feeling of well being washes over me. I feel calm, warm, happy, and slightly sleepy. By the time a feeding session is over, Simon is in a milk coma, I’m super-relaxed, and both of us are having trouble keeping our eyes open.

Until tonight, I wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t really the doing of Oxycodone (trade name Percocet), a pain medication I’ve been taking since delivery. Frequently, I sit down to feed or pump, take my pills with a glass of water I’ve poured to drink during my session, and then get down to business. So when the wave of contentment rolled over me, it was hard to say if it was Simon or Oxycodone that was responsible.

Then Simon flipped out tonight. I had just finished feeding him when Matt went to diaper him, he got fussy, and no amount of burping, swaying, bouncing, cooing, begging, or shushing calmed him down. When Simon gets really worked up, he shrieks, turns bright red, and ends each shriek with a hiccup. So it’s gasp, shriek, hic; gasp, shriek, hic. When this happened two nights ago, I knew exactly how much milk had been poured down his gullet and I was able to remain philosophical. “He’s been fed, diapered, burped and cooed to; babies just cry…”

Tonight, however, after a full day of breastfeeding, I began to worry that I was starving him. And so my agitation progressed from mild to moderate to my being in tears watching him be so upset. Our little drama closed when Simon finally urped all over me, settled down, and went to sleep. Whew!

While I hope to hold it together better the next time, at least a question has been answered for me. I figure if the hormonal attachment to Simon is so great that I could be in tears and feel mild uterine contractions when he cries, than surely those same hormones are the ones blissing me out when all is going well.

I’ve gotta say, much as everyone told me it would be like this, I’m still amazed and alarmed to see how completely I am owned by this little 6 1/2 pound bundle of humanity after just under a week.