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.

I am stealing a moment to blog. My goodness, a newborn certainly is a time-sucking vortex! Yesterday was gone before I knew it. My hospital bags are still on the kitchen floor. I have a huge intriguing baby present I haven’t even opened. The mail from when I was in the hospital is still on the counter, and I have to be careful or there will be bills that get away from me. …No, I am not going to think about bills right now, or I will trigger a whole series of panicky “Must do this right now!” thoughts and I will never get any blogging done ever again.

I am too scattered to even know what to blog about. Normally I think of something as I’m going about my usual morning routine, and the topic gradually fleshes out until I’m ready to sit down and write it. Since the baby was born, this is more how I’m thinking:

1) Flowers make such a great hospital-room present. My parents gave me a huge geranium and the whole room looked prettier.

2) Two paramedic students sat in on the c-section. I loved that. One of them let me squeeze her fingers while I was getting the epidural, a gesture I would have thought was useless but to my surprise it seriously helped.

3) I tried to start baby-name conversations with several nurses, but got nothing good. One said, “Yeah, Madison is getting really popular.” Hey, great insider information!

4) A newborn has, like, no butt at all.

5) Paul and the kids cleaned the fridge while I was in the hospital. I hadn’t realized the shelves were see-through.

6) Hey, I’m doing great! Hardly any postpartum sad feelings at all!

7) *weeping*

8) I did not bake even one single muffin too many.

9) Must choose baby announcement photo open that present write thank-you notes unpack hospital bags find that hospital pacifier make baby’s 2-week appointment bring baby to see the bus driver put deli turkey on the list email friend about being home eat breakfast take medicine see if Paul can manage to do a load of laundry help Rob with his homework remember to get out the gifts for William’s teachers.

It is a good thing we didn’t arrange to meet earlier, because here it is 9:20 p.m. already and I am just getting to this. I had forgotten, perhaps through biological necessity, how much time everything takes when there’s a newborn. We’ve been home more than eight hours, and all my hospital bags are still sitting on the floor in the kitchen.

Anyway! You are not interested in the status of my hospital bags! You want to know if there is a BABY. And there IS:

Henry
May 31, 2007
8:35 a.m.
8 pounds 2 ounces
21.5 inches long

I can tell I’m not firing on all….eight? is it “eight”? cylinders…..is it “cylinders?” Hey, what’s that expression I’m looking for that means I’m not exactly running at full mental capacity? This afternoon I was hungry, and I had a nice heaping bowl of vanilla ice cream with Keebler “Bug Bites” (glazed cinnamon graham crackers in appetizing insect shapes) broken into it–and then I suddenly realized I never had lunch. I got all distracted, I guess, and then when I was hungry I looked at the clock and thought “Snack time!” It was convenient that I didn’t realize this until after the ice cream was down the hatch, wasn’t it?

Whatever Paul has, they gave him an antibiotic for it, so I’m glad he stayed home, and I told him so in a grudging tone of voice. I do wish he’d found out some of the little details such as what he has and whether it’s safe to be near a newborn with it, but he’s got a call in to the nurse now because of what I can only assume was intense pressure from me–all I remember is all the light leaving the room and there was a voice like thunder, and then suddenly he was making the call and also hiding behind the microwave cart.

Around lunchtime, Edward’s cough got worse and he was digging at both ears, and Elizabeth started coughing the way Edward was yesterday. I was reluctant to go back to the pediatrician after yesterday’s “Whooping cough? Pfff. This isn’t even a cold” session with Robert, but I thought, what if we get up tomorrow and he’s even sicker? So I just took them both in, and they both have colds. Well, it was worth two co-pays to be able to tell the disapproving maternity nurses that what our children are hacking all over the brand-new baby is only cold germs and not plague.

Now, let’s see, when will I be back again to tell you about the baby? It seems to me like it will be a million years from now, on the other side of an unfamiliar galaxy, and yet if everything goes as expected I should be back home on Sunday afternoon. I’ve scheduled a session of “weeping with homesickness for my quiet, immaculate, food-serviced hospital room” for right after I get home, but after that I should be free. Er, assuming I work up the nerve to ask Paul if he can watch all five kids so I can go blog. Maybe we should plan to meet up Sunday evening, after (four of) the kids are in bed.

Hey, that’s a good thing to think of. As soon as I thought of Sunday evening, I started thinking of a sweet little BABY and how much fun it would be to post his beautiful-in-a-mother’s-eyes-if-not-technically-in-anyone-else’s photo–as opposed to what I’ve been thinking of most of the day, which is having a tube put into my spine, and the way they always call in these offensively burly guys to lift me from one table to another, and the way the nurse asks Personal Bathroom Questions in front of Paul. Our Sunday night arrangement is way better to think of.

I took Rob to the pediatrician yesterday, and the pediatrician said he doesn’t see how it can possibly be whooping cough. Then he retracted that statement, saying that whenever he says something like that, he can almost guarantee the test will come back positive just to show him doctors shouldn’t get too full of themselves. (Ha ha. Thanks for giving my child WHOOPING COUGH with your HUBRIS.) He thinks it’s probably not even a cold, just seasonal allergies. But in any case, the test results for whooping cough won’t be back until Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. This is me, not freaking out about the minuscule risk that we might expose a zero-day-old baby to whooping cough.

Now Edward and William are coughing. Listen, I am this close to kenneling these children for the next week. If the rates were reasonable I might throw Paul in, too: this morning he said he hadn’t wanted to tell me but he’s had a sore throat for two days and today it’s worse. He stayed home from work, which is actually good timing because he can help with the kids while I bump around the house like a caffeinated bumblebee.

Normally he wouldn’t go to the doctor for a sore throat, but I am getting really jumpy about all this illness and I said he had to. I believe my voice got a little shrill. I’d been up since 4:30 (couldn’t get back to sleep after third pee of the night) dealing with the existing situations (note to Rob’s teacher about the doctor appointment; email to my in-laws explaining that if they send me last-minute crucial contact information at 8:00 tomorrow morning, as they have done twice before on my c-section date, I will not be here to receive it), and I was in no mood to add yet another complication. If he’s contagious, he can stay home tomorrow with all the children and I will go off to the hospital free and easy and not give any of them a single thought.

I feel queasy and fluttery. This day is the one day of the entire pregnancy that doesn’t seem long. I gave the twins baths, and I’m on a second load of laundry. I don’t have much I need to do, but I want to have plenty of hours to let that truth be felt. I want to be able to go into one room and then another, seeing the empty laundry baskets, the empty trash cans, and the fresh sheets. I want to visit my muffin stockpile in the freezer. I want time to go over my hospital bag list twenty extra times to make sure I’m not forgetting anything that will make me unable to have the baby after all, and I want to re-read the hospital pamphlet so I won’t forget not to get up at 3:00 a.m. and eat a steak. Oh my god, what if I lose my mind and accidentally eat BREAKFAST in the morning? What THEN? I need to re-read the pamphlet right now.