New things

I can still remember how my sister's [various] house[s] smelled 20-some years ago - like breast milk and laundry detergent - and I wonder if mine smells similar to this now. I sure hope so.

The boys are fast asleep in the next room, and we are trying this new thing where I don't feed Hartley any sooner than three hours from his last feed. This means that for the first time in nearly one year, I've enjoyed a single unit of alcohol (a glass of red wine). Various sources claim that by the time I've metabolised this, my breast milk should be free and clear of any trace amounts, though I guess the worst that could happen is Hartley sleeps for longer than he should. In any case, Effy says that I am allowed one glass of wine per month. I ran past her the 2-hour, metabolising theory and she said ONE GLASS OF WINE PER MONTH so okay. One glass per month, I geddit.

Yesterday our postnatal instructor had to shoot off early and entrusted us with the securing of her mansion. Just pull the door to when you leave, she said, and I tried to look like I would definitely not go snooping through her four or five bedrooms once she'd left. I didn't, and then Effy invited two other stragglers to our afternoon lunch date, so now I have another couple of friends. I am trying not to overthink this, so will stop writing about it here-ish. In addition to lunch dates though, I'm adding a weekly trip to the cinema for an infant screening, plus swimming, to our growing repertoire of things we do whilst in this mother-son death grip of ours.

In the spirit of not feeding Hartley every time he grizzles, we embarked on another first, taking Robin's suggestion of a shared warm bath. That ate up approximately ten minutes of potential crying time, which in unfed infant years constitutes about two decades. That also means that Hartley has been asleep without me nearby for an entire lifetime, which means I must be relaxed by now.

Okay, Bruce is awake and hungry, so Here Lies This Post:

Post, I hardly knew ye (19:57 - 20:11)

Love is...

... sleeping on a wet patch of infant puke so that he doesn't have to.

Music should be heard and not seen

The babe and I have resolved my gentle agoraphobia and we’re out and about almost every day now, Hartley strapped to me in a front-facing carrier, fulfilling social obligations like tea with a friend, a check up at the health visitor’s or our meet-up with the postnatal group.

At some point it dawned on me that I am really no different from anyone else– i.e. not especially brilliant, but nor am I lacking fundamental qualities that would make me any less adept at handling new situations among strangers, baby or no (it only took me 32 years).

And so I am ploughing ahead with my resolve to join play groups and swimming lessons (for Hartley), and the pram-pushing group and infant-friendly film screenings at the local cinema (for me, mainly). I plan to approach these intimidating scenarios in the same manner that I’ve become accustomed to, which is with the confidence to at least show up and if something doesn’t work out, to not push myself to do it again. If I end up looking foolish somehow (which isn't likely, as we're all too busy focusing on ourselves to worry about what someone else is doing, unless we are very petty, which I suppose some of us can be at times), well, it's not the end of the world.

Who knew that it would take having a baby for me to finally grow up myself?

Bruce has taken him to the comic book store and once again I’m faced with the same dilemma as last time, which is that one hour isn’t quite enough time for a stress case like me to unwind properly. I usually end up wasting about twenty minutes contemplating various projects I could embark on before embarking on about four or five, poorly (like so), and then standing in place to scarf down a handful of Easter chocolates before putting in a load of laundry without actually starting the washing machine, tidying half the flat half-heartedly, putting the memory card from our camera into the computer without looking at the photos, making a cup of coffee I don’t really want and then watching ten minutes of an hour long programme while I force myself to drink that cup of coffee.

Next I plan to lie in bed and familiarise myself with the first sentence of a new baby book meant to help me decipher what went wrong with our son’s sleep, namely that he won’t do it unless he is on top of me or in bed pressed up against my belly. I will read that first sentence over and over again until Bruce comes home and then realise that what I really wanted was a long, hot bath. Ah well.