What Anil and I have in common with great danes

Eight weeks out, I think I officially have to give up the "I still have water weight" to lose excuses. I have like twenty pounds to lose--I'll just put it right out there. I don't think I look like it. All the weight that was concentrated in my belly has distributed itself nicely and proportionately so that if I'm standing up straight and wearing the right clothes, you can't tell that I have a giant spare tire around my midsection. I'm not worried about it. I just had a baby, so duh, I'm going to have pounds to shed. What's funny though, to me not him, is that Anil gained pregnancy weight too. We could both stand to lose about twenty pounds, if we're being honest. And the kicker was a few weeks ago when we were at our friend Andrew's house to see his new puppy. A friend of his brought over her giant grate dane, and it came up in conversation that this great dane actually weighs in at my pre-pregnancy weight, about 135 pounds (when I say I have twenty to lose I'm hoping to also shed those extra five I was carrying around from grad school last year). So the girl goes, "That's nothing, his dad weighed closer to 175 pounds!" And Anil goes, "That was my pre-pregnancy weight!" Awesome.

I snagged this photo from my friend Andrew's Facebook page--the little one is his dog Koda. The big one is me before I got pregnant.

uh oh, what do we do now?

First of all, is anyone still checking this site to see if I'm ever going to write again? I hope so. I'm determined to get back to it.

Maya is 8 weeks old this weekend. And it marks a new era because for the first time, Anil and I are on our own up here. Both of my parents were in Boston for the first month, then my mom stayed with us in our apartment for this past month. That wasn't the original plan, but we were so overwhelmed with the labor and c-section aftermath and general insanity of a new baby that we looked at Anil's work schedule for March and thought it would really help to have my mom here to help me out some more. It was a huge help; not only did I get to avoid going to the grocery store or Target for another month, but she stayed up with me when Maya was struck with reflux all night and bounced her on the yoga ball for endless hours. She also babysat so that Anil and I could go out to dinner a few times, which was a huge treat.

She flew back to Florida today, though, and while it was not only helpful but also just a really nice, unique experience to have my mom here with me, with my new daughter, Anil and I are ready to jump into this on our own now. We inaugurated this next step by driving out to Marblehead, on the north shore of Boston, this afternoon. Anil wanted to see the ocean, and we'd gone there almost a year ago, on our anniversary, so we sought out the same park with the lighthouse, overlooking the rocky shoreline. Anil packed up a cooler with a Belgium beer to split and cheese and crackers that we had around the house, and even though it was in the 40's and windy, we had a picnic and toasted to our crazy new life together. We had Maya bundled up in her down-insulated Patagonia bunting and the Baby Bjorn (two items I've gotten endless use out of lately). Even though at one point we looked at each other and asked, "Who does this? Who takes their 8 week old baby outside when it's this cold and has a picnic by the water?" Well, we do. And we like it. And Maya liked it too (trust me, she makes it very clear when she isn't happy).

almost 6 weeks later...

We're all starting to smile now that Maya's going on 6 weeks old!

There have been a million times that a line or two have come into my head that I wanted to remember to post here when I finally got back to the blog. Of course, I've forgotten them all. When I say lines, it's because my head doesn't work in paragraphs any more; it prefers single sentences. Fragments even. Some of them even make sense.

I want to just write and write and end up with a novel of a post about labor, about the first week home, about how things started clicking after the third week, about all of the elastic pants that I've never appreciated more, about the parents that I've never appreciated more, about how many places Maya has been in the past two weeks and how proud of us I am ... but let's face it; I'll never get around to all of that. So while Maya is asleep in her baby sling on my chest and my computer is on my lap and Law & Order is on TV, I'll see what I can put down here.

So... labor. Insane. In the days after it, Anil and I promised each other that we wouldn't let labor amnesia make us tell people that it "wasn't that bad." It was. But it does feel far away now, and I don't want to gratuitously rehash it. Here's a highlight reel: I woke up around 3 a.m. with contractions that were notably not anything like the strong menstrual cramps that other people report. We figured out later that I was having back labor because M was facing sunny side up, so it was really intense from the start. By 9 a.m. my contractions were less than 5 minutes apart, and I was ready for an epidural, so we headed to the hospital. I was admitted, and after about one minute of deliberation, was ready for that epidural. And it was fabulous. Just fabulous. I was progressing quickly, was comfortable and happy, and Anil and I relaxed and psyched ourselves up for a few hours. We played music and patted ourselves on the back for a job well done. We had every expectation that things would continue to go smoothly and we'd have a baby that afternoon.

But then... I pushed for three hours. People run marathons in that time--just keep that in mind. The first hour, I thought it was gonna happen. The second hour, I realized it probably wasn't, and the epidural had worn off (I don't know if it wore off completely, but I was in absolute agony). The third hour, the doctor said she still thought it could work, and they upped my epidural so I stopped cussing like a sailor. But then the doctor felt a bruise forming on the baby's head and could tell that she was stuck enough that she wasn't going to budge--she was just getting pressed against my pelvis again and again (sorry Maya, for three hours).

We went to C section, and honestly, I was relieved. Pushing was much harder than I expected, mentally and physically, and I was just glad for it to be over and for us to get our baby out. Plus I didn't have a choice--she was stuck, and they'd done absolutely everything to not have to go that route.

There are lots of details and ups and downs of that whole ride--the C section, the recovery, the hospital... but I just don't feel like going into them all now. Maybe later. It was hard. People were nice though. I was lucky to have a good recovery. It's done.

Coming home was another roller coaster. Adjusting to having a newborn, navigating hormones, going from wanting my parents to come just for lunch to wanting them to stay and never leave, sleeping in two hour increments, not sleeping in two hour increments. The first three weeks were crazy tough.

But we turned a corner after that. Maya started sleeping longer at night, so we didn't have to rotate staying up on the couch with her till 2-3 a.m. until she was ready to really go to sleep (i.e. not on someone). I started feeling better physically from the C section recovery, so we could go out a little more. I started a new moms group. We tried things like lunch out, brunch (new favorite--M is most sleepy in the morning and I can have a drink without being so tired from the day and impending night).

Other highlights? Maya has just started smiling--super cute. Anil was calling her the brain stem at first, and I think she's starting to grow out of that nickname. Her hair is amazing and so much fun. It turns golden after a bath. I've never been so tired, but that's getting better as she sleeps more at night and has a so-far pretty steady pattern of sleep, so the anxiety of "how much will we sleep tonight?" has dissipated. Basically, all of the insanity and uncertainly and, let's be honest, awfulness of the first few weeks home will go undocumented because I wasn't functional enough to write a post-it note, let alone a blog post. And now that we've come out the other end, I don't feel like revisiting it all. And does anyone even want to hear about the bad stuff or the really hard stuff? I'm not sure. For now, I don't feel like writing about it.

This is the most coherent train of thought I think I've had in at least five weeks, so I'm going to stop while I can (and not read through what I just wrote for fear that it wasn't coherent at all). Here are some photos to show M's journey through the past five weeks!

Week one, at home, little M

2 weeks old, my new Valentine

3 weeks, starting to have some fun

4 weeks, our little punk

5 weeks old, it's good to be here