The one where I try to remember it all

It is crazy bananas how swiftly time and moments fly by these days. You would think that being insanely sleep deprived would make each minute drag on, but it is quite the opposite over here. One moment it is 3am and I am gazing at the boy in the soft glow of Anderson Cooper reruns and the next moment it is Saturday. It is killing me how things are passing me by. And by things I mean the stuff that I want to burn into my mind in a forever flashdrive: How his eyes get lighter every day, how he tucks his downy soft and fuzzy head into my neck after nursing, how his eyebrows wiggle when he is waking up…

The first week with him was hard. Brutally hard. The pain from the c-section was horrible and if I wasn’t hurting in the middle I was in a fog from pain medication or in a panic that I wasn’t feeding him enough. The beginning of the second week was almost blissful as I started to feel more confident/comfortable in my intuition. We started to fall into a pattern and things began to feel less intimidating.

Then the gut busting happened and it was a tedious set back for me. I am amazed that more of you guys haven’t written about this (those of you that shared that you experienced you own bit of busting) – or maybe you did and I was all bitter and evasive in my infertility. The revisiting of pain has been horrible. I had gotten to the point where I didn’t need the pain pills at all and then I was back to running to them just to endure the wound care.

I have been told (by my OB and the staff of nurses, and even by some of you) that I am lucky that it is a small bust. Some women have entire incisions split open, some women have insanely gross green goop splashing out of them. I “just” have one little sag of an opening. It is almost like a small mouth. And the antibiotics seem to have kept away green goop (for the most part) and the peroxide and steristrip wicking seems to be working. I also have been going to the OB’s twice a week.

However twice a day I have horrible anxiety/panic attacks about the cleaning of the wound. It hurts. And the memory of the hurt makes me utterly on edge as we lead up to each cleaning. I mean the size of the q-tip that gets stabbed into my gut (2-3 q-tips per cleaning) is eye poppingly large. And then having to shove in the strip of wick? Not fun at all.

I am shocked at how distant infertility feels to me right now. Motherhood feels so immediate and all consuming that there just isn’t any room in my brain for the pain of the wait. Oddly enough I had loads of brain space for bitterness when I was still pregnant. Oh I often found myself raging at the Universe that it had taken SO long for me to get to the place that I was. Even as I giggled at the Snork flipping around I could still manage a moment of ill will towards my ovaries.

The irony (if that is the right word) is that literally 2 days before I went into labor we paid off the final bit of my fertility treatment bill from the Alabama clinic. Not sure if I had even shared that with ya’ll- that for all these years I was still getting a monthly bill/reminder of the 13 failed IUI’s. It was a huge relief to have that bill behind me before moving forward with this new chapter.

And I guess that is where I am right now- in the new chapter. And I wonder how this transition will work. Will I lose my ability to be relatable to some of my readers? I really hope not. But I get that some days the last thing some people want to read/see is some gal all moon eyed over her new baby. However I am filled with this desire to firmly clasp all of you close to me and SHARE. Many of you have been following my blog for years- you have seen me at my absolute worst and pitiful. And then you reached through and propped me up.

Honestly I look down at WW and after I see GM’s nose, my eyes, and Mother’s stunning long fingers and dimples I see your name. I see how his perfect little ears wouldn’t be here without you. I see your name on his cheeks, on his toes, on his eyelashes. And as a single woman, in the early bliss of single motherhood, I feel the love of so many cradling this boy like a beautifully woven tapestry and I don’t feel alone.

I want to share all of it with you. How he gets a new nick name daily and that right now the list includes the following: Squirmy, Frogman, Milk Dudley, La La and Sweet Potato. I want to share that after I change his diaper he stretches his feet out like a true man of leisure. And that when he wakes from a mini nap and is ready to nurse he will bop his little head back and forth like a chicken. And when he nurses he will sometimes pop off and squeak and then go back in for more.

But like I said, the time whooshes by. It’s taken me nearly 24 hours just to write this much and still there are things that I want to jot down.

I want to tell you about how his navel thingie fell off inside his onesie and looked like a forgotten pecan. And I want to try and describe this beautiful sound that my clothes dryer makes when it is whirling around with 20 drying onesies. And I want to tell you how I stare and stare at his tuft of hair and try and figure out what color it is and what color it will be. And I don’t want to forget how I held my breath for the entire length of time it took me to cut his fingernails the first time.

And there are entire posts that should be filled with my thoughts about our sperm donor. How I have these moments of utter love and affection for this anonymous man that helped make this boy real. I honestly think about the donor more than I thought I would- and when I do think of him it is with beyond words gratitude. Like the sort of gratitude that could never be said out loud- it would just be this long standing open armed gesture of thanks.

Everything right now just feels new and shiny. It feels like a beginning.