Good news: I went to the dentist about that chipped tooth, and it “only” needed a replacement filling, not a crown. So it was “only” $250—but that’s a heck and a half better than it could have been.

Bad news: We thought Paul had paid vacation time saved up, since he never uses any. He took 8 days off from work when Henry was born. We just got his paycheck and there’s no vacation time on it. I thought it was a problem of Paul forgetting to tell his employer he wanted to use vacation time. Paul thinks it’s a problem of not having any vacation time, possibly because of vacation time expiring, unpaid, when it’s not used, or for some other stressful reason.

Good news: It looks like our new insurance does not have higher copays for office visits, even though they told us it would.

Bad news: They were also wrong about the monthly employee contribution being lower.

Good news: The library was having a book sale, and I got 19 new-looking children’s books for $7.

Bad news: Rob lost a library book. I’m feeling that compulsion to keep looking and looking and looking for it, even in places I have already looked for it.

Good news: Less than a week until the trip to my cousin’s wedding (I’m going with my parents, Edward, and Henry), and I’m still glad I’m going. I think it’s going to be fun. My parents and I are buying lots of treats for the car ride, and my mom and I saved up a whole bunch of celebrity magazines to read.

Bad news: I tried on the dress I was planning to wear to the wedding, and it looks terrible on me. I’d thought the high-waisted style would be kind to my postpartum figure, but actually it looks maternity. Also, I’m not sure why I ever bought such an ugly dress.

Good news: I have a skirt and shirt that I bought a long time ago because they looked cute even though they didn’t suit the occasion I was shopping for that day. I tried them on, and they’re PERFECT. Not only does the skirt hide my tum, it’s long and I won’t have to wear nylons, and also the shirt totally emphasizes my great breastfeeding rack.

Bad news: I’m pretty sure my incision is infected. It started getting bad on Friday at 5:00. I am not kidding: my body knows office hours, and is mean to me. I’ve never had an incision get infected before, so now I’m worrying about hysterectomies performed in a last-ditch effort to save my life. Also, I’m worried that this will mean something bad for the trip.

Good news: I have Demer0l.

Bad news: Henry already looks older. He’s not even 2-1/2 weeks old and he’s lost some of that itsy newborn look.

Good news: Henry nursed for a long time last night, and I was up until 11:30 nursing him—but then he slept until 7:00 this morning.

Bad news: I’m practically blowing off Father’s Day. I kept forgetting to have the kids make cards or even to have them tell me what to buy. Last night I got Paul a bag of Doritos, a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and a box of Gobstoppers. The kids didn’t even choose it, and I think of that as being the number-one most important thing for a Father’s Day present: that the children be involved in the selection.

Good news: Who the hell cares? I’m okay with this plan for this year. At least he’s getting something.

Bad news: I’m having a problem with Blogger: it’s really really slow to show what I’m typing. Paul thinks the problem might be with my computer, not with Blogger. Either way, I don’t know what’s wrong or how to fix it. Also, I’m getting a headache.

Good news: I have a big bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. (Not Paul’s.)

Shannon is suggesting we pool our recipes for chocolate-chip cookies, and I’m all for that idea: I’m going through my cookie stash even faster than I’m going through my muffin stash. Go on over and sign up so I can steal your secret family recipe.

This is my fourth time through postpartum, and Paul and I are getting better and better at handling it. What helps most of all is this kind of thing (also, observe my mad Photoshop skillz):

Paul is worth all the food scraps he crams down our non-garbage-disposal-equipped sink when he does stuff like this for me. While I’m the hospital he goes to the grocery store and buys all the foods I want after I have a baby (theme: “things they fed me in the maternity ward where I was ha-a-a-a-a-a-ppyyyyyyyy *bursting into tears*”): cranberry juice, milk, deli turkey and fancy chunky grainy breads, colored wraps and Romaine lettuce and tomatoes and chicken breast and Caesar dressing. Then, whenever he’s home, he handles my meals. The above photo is of what I found when I was exhausted and sad at the end of the day and had just peeled an endlessly-nursing baby off of me for what felt like the first time in a week. I went to my computer and there was a chicken Caesar wrap, a glass of milk, and a vase of roses. I shouldn’t even be telling you about this, because in the future when I want to complain about Paul you’ll all be like, “Yeah, whatever, you spoiled bitch.”

Food is the absolute best thing for my morale (well, good food and good narc0tics), but I’ve also found that small accomplishments are helpful. I’m not saying I wear myself out cleaning the house from tip to toe, because AS IF, and also I think it’s more helpful to let that go as much as possible. But if the kitchen counters are making me feel sad and overwhelmed and hopeless because they are covered in dried milk puddles and little blue marks from someone’s clay and speckles from boiling fudge, and I manage to wipe them down, I feel like maybe I have a grip on life after all. Also: pretty, sparkly counters.

So this is what I do. I am good at keeping a mental list, but you could do this on paper too—as long as the list itself won’t overwhelm you by its very existence. What I do is I put small items on the list in order of priority, choosing each day which one I really want to try to get to. Today it was the counters: I didn’t care if I got nothing else done all day, but I did want to get to the counters. Yesterday it was a couple of bills I wanted to pay. The two days before, it was that I wanted to get some digital photos cropped and uploaded so I could order prints for my in-laws.

If I don’t get the task done that day, it’s no big deal—I just try again the next day. But if I DO get it done, I feel pretty good. I feel like I’m managing to get things done after all, and like maybe I’m coping okay after all. Sometimes, if I got the top list item done, I might even think of tackling the SECOND list item! Superwoman!

I am most likely to be successful if I do my list item early in the day. Today I did the counters while I was still in my pajamas. I got breakfast for Rob and William, and I went into the kitchen intending to make Rob’s lunch, and instead I spritzed all the counters. I let the spritz sit while I got Edward dressed. When I came back, I went swipe-swipe-swish with a couple of paper towels and I was done. I didn’t lift up the toaster and clean under it, I just did the minimum—but it’s surprising how much of a difference it made, and I felt all perky and pleased with myself. Highly recommended, if you can keep yourself from launching one of those cleaning cycles where now you have to scrub the sink, and that reminds you to fill the soap dispenser, and that reminds you to do the one in the bathroom too, and that causes you to spritz the bathroom sink “while you’re at it,” and so on until you’ve totally overdone it and also Rob has missed the bus.

What the hell is up with Blogger and/or my computer? I’m typing, and it’s way, way behind. For example, right now the screen is showing me typing “and/or” near the end of the first sentence, even though I’m all the way over here at the end of the third sentence typing “typing.” Frustrating.

I took Henry for his 2-week check-up this morning. On the way, I dropped off my prescription at a pharmacy with a drive-up window. My plan was to thank them when I picked up the prescription for having a drive-up. What a great thing for a mother of five, four of whom are currently in the car and three of whom have to be buckled/unbuckled and can’t be trusted to walk. But when I came back 90 minutes later for my “this will be ready in 30 minutes” prescription, it was not yet ready.

One reason I get very, very crabby when that happens is that I know there is no one to bitch at. I worked for awhile as a pharmacy technician and the problem is usually understaffing, and bitching at the clerk just makes the clerk feel yuckier than she already feels: she doesn’t like the understaffing, either, and she’s about to quit from being run off her feet and yelled at all the time. Complaining to management doesn’t help, since then they yell at the clerk, too, rather than drawing the conclusion that their “save money by pissing off customers” idea isn’t working out. So I just held my teeth together in a grim approximation of a smile and said, “These things happen” and “I’ll come back later”—when I would really have preferred to let loose about how annoying this was and how I really couldn’t come back later unless I loaded FOUR children into the car.

One thing that helps get the prescription done on time is to tell the clerk at drop-off when you’ll be back. Like, if I’d said, “Okay, we’re going to a doctor appointment and I’ll be back in an hour,” she would have written that time on the prescription and it probably would have been ready. But I was a big dim and didn’t think to do this.

Hey, do you have any pressing pharmacy questions? Like, why does it take so long to fill a prescription? Or, why do they always give me the generic? Or, do the clerks remember everyone in town who has a male-enhancement prescription, and do they notice how many tablets are gone through per month? Ask away, that’s what I’m here for. Swistle: Where to go for HOTTT pharmacy tips!

Last night was a bad night: Henry was fine, just nursing as usual, but Elizabeth woke up crying at 3:10 a.m. and never did go back to sleep. I wrote a whole post about this and about how Paul handled things (a highlight: he hit the wall with his open palm and said in an aggrieved “is this too much to ask?” tone of voice to his post-surgery, up-breastfeeding-in-the-night wife, “ALL I want to do is SLEEP”), but then I deleted it because I noticed it crossed the line from “Ha, ha, my husband is such a cheesehead” into “I actually dislike him and this is a bad marriage,” and since that’s not true, I thought maybe 2 weeks postpartum on 4 hours of sleep was not the right time to write about whether he could possibly love me if he thinks missing sleep is so catastrophically miserable and yet happily lets me suffer it for eight and a half years and counting.

Then I wrote about The Sadness and how I feel it creeping up on me the way it always does after a baby, but then “The Sadness” seemed like such a stupid name as soon as it was out of my head and on the page, and the whole post seemed melodramatic, and I thought it sounded self-pitying and like I was asking for a huggy comment section, so out it went and I will talk about postpartum sadness some other time when I can handle it in a less maudlin manner.

Then I wrote half a sentence about kids not letting Rob sit down on the bus, and I realized I don’t even want to think about that, let alone write about it.

It’s a Down day. I was planning a Target trip, but what was I thinking? With FOUR children, one of whom will want to nurse on 15 seconds’ notice and one of whom woke up four hours too early and one of whom has been grabbing things off shelves and flinging them? I would end up grabbing upper arms and hissing, I just know it, so let’s not do that today.

Instead I put in a load of laundry and tried not to go all martyr over it. Later perhaps I’ll make some fudge. I’ll nurse the baby and not try to do anything else. I am on the verge of tears for no reason, which is classic postpartum for me, and I think it would be best not to push it today.

Also, I have a question for you: What on earth are you doing for Father’s Day? It snuck up on me and I have no idea what to do. I mean, what to have the KIDS do. I don’t get Paul a present from me, but I organize the children to do something for him, and that usually means a trip to the store, but I don’t see that happening. Should I just have them scribble some cards and then I can order a pizza or something? What are you doing that’s easy and cheap? (Hey, keep it clean!)

Look, you can see my pretty new car seat. Er, Henry’s pretty new car seat. Since we knew we were having a boy, my intention was to get a boyish car seat—but it happened that my clear favorite was one that could be for either boys or girls. That’s the Graco SnugRide in the Devon pattern, in case you want to be car seat twins with me.

Today I loaded Henry into it, and I took four children downtown, half an hour away, to City Hall to get the birth certificate error fixed. This is the kind of downtown that is all one-way streets, paid and/or parallel parking, and other cars swooping around as I bumble along anxiously looking for the right street number, driving in the wrong lane because I am not sure I know how one-way streets are supposed to work and so I treat them like two-way streets. I was not made to live in a big city, and my periodic forays confirm this time and time again.

I would like to milk this situation for all the pity and sympathy I can get—but the fact is that I found City Hall on the first try, I found the parking lot, I chose the entrance that happened to be right outside the correct office, and I dealt with helpful city employees who got me out of there in about 10 minutes. The only glitch: I got all the way in there and realized I’d left the form in the car and had to lug everyone back out to the parking lot and back in again, but that was over quickly.

You are going to think I’m just trying to impress you when I say we stopped at Taco Bell on the way home, but the thing is I was feeling high on the success of the outing so far, and I pushed it, and I shouldn’t have because by the time we left, Elizabeth was making awful toddler noises (it’s screaming! no, it’s whining! no, it’s screaming!) and Henry was wailing that riveting newborn cry. Still, I felt good! We survived! We ate tacos! And when we got home, it was naptime!

One more thing, and then I should really spend some time with one of my many offspring. On Sunday–get this–I actually said to my mother, “You know what….Henry hasn’t spit up even one time.” Oh oh oh. *shakes head sadly* You would think that a mother of five would understand at least the basics, but no. So of course yesterday Henry spit up all over my shoulder, and today he did one of those projectile spit-ups that left his own baby self pristine but covered his car seat, my nursing pillow, and the blanket and pillow I use when I sleep in the recliner. Nice shot, Henry! Also, now I live in fear, because what I actually said to my mother was that he hadn’t spit up OR peed/pooped on me.

I have been up and down all day today, and it is only 9:00 in the morning. This is Paul’s first day back to work.

Last night started out well: I nursed Henry at 8:00, and he was still asleep in his infant seat at my bedtime so I went to bed, and he didn’t wake until after 2:00 in the morning so I got some nice by-myself sleeping done, and also it was encouraging to see him sleep a big chunk of time like that.

But what woke him was Elizabeth, crying, which she’s been doing a lot more of since we brought Henry home, especially at bedtime and naptime and during the night. And Paul let her cry for a long, long time, and I could hear him SNORING which made me feel like putting a stake through his heart. And when he finally went to her, he BROUGHT HER OUT to let her sleep snuggled on him. And then he said nonchalantly, “She’ll probably be up at 5:30 when I get up.” That’s what he said to his exhausted, breastfeeding-in-the-middle-of-the-night wife, who was facing her first day of five children on her own. So that was not a good beginning to the day.

Then he went off to work, clearly happy to be getting the hell out of here, and Elizabeth did indeed get up when he did, so at 5:30 in the morning I was watching a newborn and a toddler through bleary, uncomprehending eyes. But she was cheerful and cute, humming to herself and making little comments about everything, padding around in her pink sleeper feeties, and Henry was all alert and cute, and okay, I can handle this. Then the sudden awareness that the twins have a check-up this morning, and that probably means I should scrape a layer of dirt off of them first. And the discovery, in the kitchen, of a piled-high-and-squashed-down trash can, and a teetering-full dish rack.

I am always hoping, when Paul has to do (some of) my job for awhile, that he will be left thinking, “Oh my god, I had no idea how hard that was! I’ve got to help out more!” Instead he seems to be left thinking, “Oh my god, I had no idea how hard that was! Thank god I don’t have to do it anymore!”

********

But THIS was a big Up: I took the twins to their doctor appointment (Oh, hi! It’s 11:30 now! This post is taking me forever!), and of course I had to take Henry and William also, and it went fine. Totally fine. I put Henry’s car seat and the less well-behaved twin Edward into the double stroller, and I let Elizabeth walk, and William opened doors, and it went fine. So now I feel better about the goddamned stupid department of vital records making that stupid-ass mistake little birth certificate mix-up, and I think it will be humanly possible to go this week to fix it. Not today, though. Today I’m all used up.

I am currently using my Newborn Survival Sleep Plan, which took me four babies to perfect. The NSSP takes these things into account:

1) That I can’t comfortably sleep lying down for a couple of weeks after a c-section (I like to sleep on my side, which pulls at the incision).

2) That I start losing my mind if I have to repeatedly deal with a crying, crying baby in the middle of the night when I am so tired already, and I hate how that makes me feel about the baby.

3) That in my experience so far, newborns are too dim to learn much from what I do to them at this early stage.

4) That sleep is more valuable to survival and sanity than almost anything else, and that I don’t really care what I have to do to get it.

So this is the plan: I sleep in our extremely comfortable La-Z-Swistle recliner, mostly reclined, which is very cozy. If the baby wants to sleep there with me, he may. (He always does.) If I nurse him in the night and fall asleep that way, so be it. (It is always so being it.) Bad habits be damned!

Actually, I’m more nervous about it than I pretend. Who DOESN’T project forward, imagining that each deviance from your intended path will lead to a permanent, unchangeable, highly regrettable situation? I imagine the baby, two years later, still sleeping only on me and only in the recliner.

But so far I have had great luck with this gamble. What happens is that after a few weeks the baby gets a little heavier, I get a little tired of sleeping in the recliner, my incision heals, and pretty soon I don’t feel as much like having a damp hot baby pinning me down all night. I start going down my intended path without even meaning to, feeling naturally inclined to put the baby down in his bassinet instead of automatically going back to sleep with him on me. I recover from the surgery and am less desperate for sleep, and so I can tolerate a little nighttime training. Before I know it, the baby’s in the bassinet and I’m in bed. (See how it sounds so smooth and easy when I am looking back on how it happened with other babies? Stay tuned to see how it goes in real time.)

But for now, NSSP is in effect, and it is cozy.

I love the newborn stage. I wish there was a way to have more newborns without having to have more children.

Henry’s torso is the size, shape, and approximate heft of a loaf of zucchini bread. His skin is soft and foldy, like a soft elephant’s. His hands and feet are purpley. His legs are skinny. His eyes look like they belong to a woodland creature. He has big wrinkles under his eyes. A newborn-size diaper is big on him, down to his knees. He still likes to have his legs folded up against his tummy. His hair is too, too soft. His mouth pops open if you touch his cheek.

I had my stitch check at the OB’s a couple days ago. He was showing me how he wanted me to take care of the incision, and he was using a huge q-tip dipped in hydrogen peroxide and he was saying, “Really GET IN THERE with it.” And I was like, “Uh huh. Listen: the best I can give you is blind, fearful dabbing.” And when I say “I was like,” what I mean you to understand is that I said nothing of the sort, and in fact I said, “Okay!”

I got the preview copy of the birth certificate in the mail. If there are any errors, I have to bring it in person to the city where Henry was born, to the downtown area of one-way streets and paid parking, and I have to do it within 14 days, and they’re not open on weekends so I have to bring four children with me including two toddlers and a newborn. I was fervently hoping there would be no errors. There is an error. It is such a dumb error: they listed my maiden name as Swistle Middle Maiden Maiden. Just, my maiden name twice. But I have to go tell them in person that that’s not correct, and I have to do it this coming week. Furthermore, I know from experience that when I correct this error, they will claim to be unable to put my current legal name in its current legal form (Swistle Middle Maiden Married), but will claim to be able to do only Swistle Middle Married. I hate them.

This picture looks as if I’m showing off the bandaid, but in fact I’m showing the foot and the attached skinny leg. But tell me the truth: my hand looks like the hand of Miss “I Think of Myself as a Model” on those Baby Einstein videos, doesn’t it? It’s something in the pose, as if I were conscious of how I wanted my hand to look in the photo. I swear I was thinking only of the foot at the time, and of keeping my hand from blocking a single toesie.

Notice I was not wearing nail polish. My plan was to wear my new L’Oreal Blush It Off, which is just as good as Sundry says, but the little pamphlet from the hospital said no nail polish. Well, bah.

Henry nurses every two hours for an hour. I am glad I have been through this before so I’m not panicking at the way half my time is spent pinned down to a chair. This part improves with time. And already he is not literally nursing every two hours: he often does, but then there are a few longer stretches in there.

A few weeks ago I read a post, I think it was on Playgroupie but I’m too aware of the countdown of the Nursing Clock to go look, about cracked nipples. I think my brilliant suggestion was Lansinoh. I would like to change my answer. My new answer is: Cut them right off, because it will be far less painful in the long run. Save Lansinoh for something less painful, like, say, a leg amputation. And I would like to add that everyone who says that nipples don’t crack if you’re “doing it right” can BITE ME (please do not, already too sore). The lactation consultant who came to see how things were going at the hospital said she doesn’t know why anyone says that, since she herself got cracked nipples when she breastfed, and if a lactation consultant doesn’t know how to do it right I don’t know who does, and neither does she. I wish she would spread the word to her colleagues.

I sure am glad I have all the bigger clothes I wore before I looked right in maternity clothes, because that’s all that fits right now. I had jeans in one and two sizes too big, and a couple of men’s t-shirts that I wore Every Single Day, and that’s what I’m wearing now. I think otherwise I’d be freaking out, and so I would like to take a moment to re-state what I think is an important rule for pregnancy: buy yourself a very small wardrobe of bigger-than-usual clothes. They’ll get you through the “don’t look pregnant, just look fat” first half of the pregnancy and then they’ll serve you again post partum. I’m getting steadily smaller, but I still look about 4 months pregnant. It’s sad but there it is, and it’s a whole lot less sad if you can wear some comfy big clothes instead of having a choice between (1) squeezing into clothes that won’t even button, and (2) wearing maternity clothes. Both depressing options.

It’s nice to see my body deflating. I didn’t retain a lot of water this time, but I retained enough that I’m happy to see my foot bones looking so pretty. My calves look all slim, too. I see my face returning to normal, which is such a relief: all through the pregnancy I think, “Oh, I am AGING and I am so much less cute than I used to be, and why is my Good Skin all blotchy and pore-y and shiny?,” and then I deliver the baby and there’s my face coming back to me, cute as ever, albeit with undereye circles that rival an eclipse.

On the other hand, I’ve lost the Goddess of Fertility look I’d gotten used to. It’s lovely to walk around feeling all gorgeous and round, even if you’re also feeling heart burn, shortness of breath, and shooting pelvic pains. Now my look is, what? Goddess of Awnings and Rashes? There is a–*shudder*–FLAP where my stomach was. And pretty much everything they put on or in my body in the hospital left a mark: the adhesive (back, hand, chest, stomach, neck), the enormous synthetic underpants (whose brilliant idea were those?), the fentanyl (which feels delicious but makes me itchy).

Edward is crying “Lah! lah!” (lap), so that gives me a good ending for a post I wasn’t sure how to end anyway. Thanks, Edward!

It makes my mother heart happy to read all those comments about how beautiful my baby is. But it also makes my mother heart nervous and darty-eyed, because the truth is I deliberately chose an exceptionally flattering photo of the child, and now it occurs to me that if I post any more photos you will discover the truth, which is that…..well….

Let me put it this way: every baby is beautiful in his or her own way. Which is to say that even this baby’s love-eyed mother knows not to enter him into any beauty contests:

I mean, the comb-over alone would disqualify him.

The thing is, I never think my newborns are particularly…attractive. I stare at them for hours, endlessly fascinated by their every detail, so I speak as one who has had time to judge. When the nurse says, “Oh, he’s beautiful!” I think, skeptically, “Uh huh.” If anyone says the baby is cute and I accept the compliment without arguing, I imagine them snorting behind my back, “She actually thinks that thing is cute!”

Oh, I’m FOND of the baby, clearly! And there IS beauty in the eye of this beholder! But it is difficult to get photographic evidence of that kind of beauty.