I’m hoping not to become someone who’s constantly talking about her child at the expense of all other potential topics of interest, but it is the most time-consuming thing going on in my life these days.  Still, it reminds me of the cinematic trope of a mother crying “my baaaaby!” — think of the cliché of the runaway baby carriage heading towards a busy road — which I find cheap and annoying.  There’s a kind of myopic selfishness in the loving motherly gaze that I, as a viewer, can’t share in — at least, not in the context of a movie or TV show where said object of adoration is a doll wrapped in a swaddling blanket.  But, you know, that little lump wrapped in flannel is just starting to flash heartbreaking smiles at the walls and light fixtures and show the tiny signs of a personality that’s expanding beyond “gassy,” “sleepy,” and “hungry.”

No, this post is about babies and cats, since people seem generally curious about how the two species are coexisting within the Jejune household these days.

Sebastian basically can’t be bothered to take an interest in his new flesh-brother, and does not deign to recognize him as an entity deserving of any more attention than a sofa cushion, albeit a sofa cushion who further prohibits us from relieving him of his poetic angst.

Garth, on the other hand, is operating more and more on Theo’s frequency.  For one thing, Theo is an absurdly loud baby, and Garth is himself a pretty vocal cat.  And, when Theo is vocally distressed, Garth will quickly appear to sympathetically share his pain.  The daily indignities of infant life are now marked not by a solitary cry, but by an anxious duet:

Waaaa!  mew!  Waaah!  meow!  Waaa!  mew!

It’s clamorous, but also does a fine job of injecting some humor into otherwise stressful moments.

The other day, Pete and I had shut ourselves in the bathroom with Theo, a bunch of towels, and the space heater, trying to give the baby a bath.  This involved him burping up a mucousy slick of the past three days’ worth of milk all over himself and into a moat around the baby tub and culminated in a red-faced screaming jag the likes of which I haven’t heard since I was in the delivery room at the hospital a month ago.  While Pete and I furiously sponged and toweled Theo off, Garth paced back and forth on the other side of the bathroom door, mewing loudly in time to Theo’s screams and pawing anxiously at my feet — the only thing within paw’s reach, I suppose — through the crack underneath the door.

It’s a charming, if currently one-sided, relationship, and one that I genuinely hope flourishes despite the fact that Theo’s initial attentions will probably involve grabbing, yanking, and otherwise harassing Garth in an uncomfortable and undignified fashion.  Oh, Theo.  You don’t know it yet, but you’re going to be put on kibble-distribution duty at a very young age.  After all, both you and your cat buddy understand that food = love.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve received some remarkably kind comments and emails from friends and family and strangers alike, assuring me that we are not alone in the newborn insanity and inanity and that it gets better.  And I want to say just how much those mean to me, and how much they’ve bolstered my spirit at some lonely and tedious times.  All things considered, we’re doing pretty well.  Theo’s slowly making progress, Pete and I are functioning as a solid and mutually supportive parental unit, I’m gradually learning how to live my life on a complete non-schedule, Pete’s keeping up with things at work, and I only get teary under extenuating circumstances (which may or may not have involved the crib sheets being in the wash while projectile cat vomit was distributed over the cat tree, wall, curtains, couch, carpet, armchair, and floor, SEBASTIAN).  It can be a grind, but I’m glimpsing the light at the end of the tunnel more and more clearly.  So, thanks.

The other thing preserving my sanity these days is available for $199 at Amazon — my Kindle Fire.  Sure, it’s not the most full-featured tablet on the market, and it’s got its issues, but for a relatively cheap little device that I can prop on the edge of my nursing pillow and not have to worry about if it’s accidentally knocked onto the floor it provides a remarkably sturdy lifeline to the outside world.  I use it all day, at all hours to listen to podcasts!  Read library books!  Stream radio!  Catch up with my RSS feeds!  Read things on the internet!  Watch TV and movies on Netflix!  Play Angry Birds!  Read books!  Compulsively check Facebook!  Tap out misspelled and ill-formatted emails!  Granted, all of these can be easily done on my computer, but it’s remarkably reassuring, and somehow deeply meaningful, to be able to do all of the above when nodding off at the 2 a.m. feeding.

Raising a baby, it seems, takes a village.  And a decently fast wireless connection.

Babies, man.  Babies.  Sometimes I feel like their sole purpose is just to mess with our collective heads.

Theo is such a mysterious little cipher these days.  We’re still working through his reflux / gas issues — his innards are, more often than not, in a state of audibly roiling discontent — so his rest is interrupted by sudden eruptions of discomfort.  It feels like a real triumph when he sleeps for two hours in a stretch at night before waking himself up; one of the reasons why I don’t keep up with lists of developmental milestones is because I’d rather keep myself happy with the minor coup of those two uninterrupted hours between 2 and 4 a.m., instead of torturing myself with the knowledge that other kids his age are slowly starting to settle in for the night, or nap for long enough stretches during the day to allow their exhausted caregiver to catch a quick snooze.  (I’d assume.  Again, not going to Google it.)  But, you know, I’d always expected that taking care of a baby would be incredibly hard, Theo’s still largely healthy and content, and I’m told that babyhood is something that one grows out of mercifully fast.

Still, the irregularity of his behavior — of any baby’s behavior — is enough to turn cool, logical minds fanatically superstitious.  Screams of discontent can break out at any moment, for any mysterious reason, and so I find myself cringingly running through a mental checklist before putting him down so I can eat a bowl of cereal: does it seem like a nice, tight swaddle will calm him down, or enrage him?  Is there enough ambient noise?  Will one more diaper change ensure that he settles down faster, or wake him up more?  Did he eat enough?  Will one more burping just make him mad, or stave off a small, spitty eruption in another five minutes?  Does he feel like being alert, not sleepy?  Is it wrong to wish that he could sleep more?  Why is he crying again?

So, reasonably enough, once I successfully initiate a short nap or deter a potential crying jag, I find myself trying to replicate every possible detail of the circumstances.  Was it the species of blanket?  The particular flavor of white noise?  Something felicitous in the barometric pressure?

I’m not joking when I say that, after another month of this, you may well find me walking a choreographed path of counted steps around the house with a drowsy baby between precisely 2:11 and 2:16 a.m., wearing a lucky sweatshirt and mumbling a repeating series of six random numbers under my breath.

Thank goodness it won’t be long before the toddler years hit.  There’s a thin line between superstition and neurosis, and I, for one, am not eager to cross it.

Since any clothing that I wear these days is destined to sop up impressive quantities of milk and spit-up, I’m placing an order online for a couple of pairs of slightly less threadbare sweatpants to share the burden of absorption and the subsequent frequent washings.  And since my body is in a state of postpartum flux, and it’s hard enough to navigate the world of pants size even when said pants have an elastic waistband and are made of soft cotton jersey, I grabbed my tape measure from my knitting bag to see what my current measurements are.

I was shocked to find that my waist-to-hip ratio is now about 1:1, and that I’ve got over ten extra inches encircling my waist these days.  Shocked, you see, because I actually feel pretty great.

Here’s the thing: I spent the previous nine months slowly packing on pounds and slowly increasing in circumference.  Every few days I’d look in the mirror and think “… more?  Wow,” as I just kept swelling.

And sure, birth leaves you with all kinds of floppy skin and a jiggly round toddler-esque belly and a whole host of other indignities.  But you also drop a chunk of that extra weight and fluid and size during the following weeks — weeks, as opposed to the months that it took for you to gain it.  So even though I’m far from my pre-pregnancy size or weight, and I’ve got weeks to go until I’m cleared to exercise (and I’m under no illusions about how difficult it will be to get said exercise to return my body to its former state), I’ve still undergone the most dramatic weight loss that I’ll ever see in my life.  Thanks to, you know, giving birth.

One of the highlights of my day is now the brief period between when Pete comes home and I start the seemingly unending cycle of constant evening baby feedings, when he takes on baby duty and I eat dinner and have a leisurely shower.  (Even when running on next-to-no sleep, the shower!  The shower does so much to make me feel like a human, and I will choose it over even the most badly-needed 30-minute nap.)  Sometimes I’ll glance at myself in the mirror as the water’s heating up and scan my reflection, in its stretch-marked, floppy-skinned, round-bellied, and saggy state.  Damn, I’ll think without a shred of irony.  I’m looking pretty good.

Here’s hoping that I can hold on to that uncritical eye even as I continue my relationship with maternity pants.

Until two-odd weeks ago, I’d been pretty resistant to hormonally-induced mood swings.  Fertility drugs?  Left me equipped with my standard, fairly muted emotional range.  Pregnancy?  Still entirely myself; no unpredictable cravings or crying jags to report.  But since delivery, I can feel waves of unfamiliar, gut-level emotional responses bubbling up from some previously unused part of my frame to do battle with my normally more dispassionate self.  It is disconcerting, to say the least, and turns listening to the squawking of a random unhappy infant at Target into an entirely different experience.

In the hospital, I achieved an unprecedented level of delirious exhaustion because every little squeak and murmur coming  from the hospital-issue bassinet sent my heart pounding and my nerves twanging.  But when Theo was sent to the nursery for one of his twice-daily wellness checks, I’d fret guiltily and groggily until he was wheeled back into the room.  “Is that my baby?” I slurred to the nurse who came in to check my vitals, who was wheeling her small cart of pulse- and blood pressure monitors.  (She was also really amused.  Come on, like I was the only sleep-deprived patient in the postpartum recovery ward.)  After we went home, I (in the classic style of new parents everywhere) abandoned my plans of having him sleep in the nursery at night in favor of placing him within arm’s reach of the bed, because every little creak and half-cry forced me bolt upright, and I figured it was at least easier to be able to crack open a bleary eye in his general direction umpteen times a night instead of trudging down the cold, dark hallway.  Never before have I felt so dominated by my own visceral responses.

And when it comes to Theo, the absurdly easy baby, the other shoe has indeed dropped — in the form of pediatrician-diagnosed acid reflux.  (“Wow, he’s so talkative!… Actually, hear that sound that he’s making?  That’s not normal; that’s him wheezing.”)  For something that so recently made its appearance, it’s also remarkably acute: my sweet, easy kid was swiftly robbed of the basic pleasures of sleeping and eating, screaming and clawing his way through feedings and waking himself out of a firm double-swaddle doze to emit inconsolable blurts of red-faced fury.

Maybe the drugs are slowly kicking in, or maybe it’s the fact that we have resigned ourselves to basically never being able to place him flat on his back for any great length of time — more often than not, diaper changes still involve a sudden cascade of milk leaking out of his nose — but Theo’s slowly getting less outrageously burpy and less uncharacteristically angsty.  And thank goodness — not just because it’s hard to watch him suffer, but because the alien force of those postpartum hormones made it such that I could only stare blankly at him, quivery-lipped and liquid-eyed, as he fussed.

But the advice to keep the baby upright or inclined at all times has given me a new sense of agency, as has my (highly uncharacteristic) decision to throw money at the problem.  (I mean, we’re talking about something that can take a year to improve, and it’s not like life with a newborn involves a high baseline level of sleep and relaxation to begin with; also, with all of the hospital bills coming in, it seems like a drop in the bucket.)  So behold, my weapons in this particular pitched battle:

• The Large, Plasticky, and Ugly: one remarkably unattractive baby swing (with pages of glowing reviews about its ability to soothe the refluxy beast on Amazon) with variable incline and the ability to move side-to-side as well as back-and-forth
• The Crunchy-Granola: one large fabric wrap carrier for keeping the baby both upright and content as I putter around the house
• The Hail Mary: one obscenely overpriced Swedish bouncy seat, also with adjustable, close-to-upright angles of operation

Important Swedish safety advice: always stare daggers into the top of your baby’s head.

• The Not Pictured: one janky-looking jacked-up pack-and-play topped with a donated vibratey seat in the bedroom (deliberately left unphotographed because, while surprisingly stable, I don’t wish to invite a smattering of well-intentioned emails gently lecturing me about safety risks)
• The Jury-Rigged Sleep Wedge Alternative: one crib mattress elevated via cardboard box, which I’m pretty sure is the nursery equivalent of putting your car up on blocks in an overgrown patch of crabgrass in your front yard

Perhaps I should cover the boxes with decorative wrapping or scrapbook paper?  Actually, that’s not a bad idea.  Hmm.

Like I said, I can’t report magical success yet, but I’m optimistic about Theo’s slow return to form.  And maybe — just maybe — my one-time sleeps-like-a-log self might someday be able to successfully snooze through a light case of baby hiccups.

I’m relishing the final days of my postpartum Big Lebowski period, where I exercise my prerogative to do Very Little and wander around the grocery store in my bathrobe if I so choose.  (The other day I uttered an unironic “… what day is this?”, which made me realize the similarity.)  Theo continues to be an unbelievably cooperative baby, last night’s unending bout of gassy angst notwithstanding, so I’m trying to enjoy the fact that even though I don’t get much sleep or do much that’s productive, he still prefers naps to being entertained.  While I appreciate that he’s gradually spending more time opening his eyes and staring blearily at the shadows on the wall, that’s fine for now.

Non-pregnant life these days is filled with other unexpected perks, too, like:

• Sleeping with only one pillow and experiencing no heartburn
• The ability to effortlessly bend forward and pick up objects
• Cats’ evident delight that we have now decided to become nocturnal
• Squatting without knee pain or scrambling for support on the way back up
• Old t-shirts not exactly flattering, but can at least now be worn and expected to reliably cover the navel
• Renewed access to my toenails
• Sleep deprivation really enhancing my viewing of Twin Peaks over the weekend
• Slowly demolishing the freezer / pantry stockpile instead of, you know, cooking
• Lots and lots of time to read and surf the web on the Kindle.
• Awakening Sebastian’s latent guard-cat instincts: never before has the household glitterball population been so rigorously patrolled and relentlessly herded
• Regained access to the top shelves in the kitchen cabinets
• Being able to sleep flat on my back.  (“You were snoring pretty loudly last night.  I think the baby found it soothing.”)
• Official clearance to eat delicious unpasteurized cheeses (would be more helpful were we still living in Montreal).  (Slightly less exciting: official clearance to clean the cats’ litterbox.)
• Baby not terribly expressive yet, but able to display some impressively fierce poop faces

So!  Parenthood!  Here we are!  A totally new and original subject to write about!  Sleep when the baby sleeps!  Surf Facebook while the baby eats!  (I’m not sure why the latter hasn’t been formally added to the annals of trite-but-sensible infant-care lore, because I’m now incredibly well apprised of every event taking place in my friends’ lives.)

Of all the stages and responsibilities involved in having and raising a kid, the newborn period has always been the least engaging to me.  Because that’s just it — they don’t engage.  Can’t even focus their squinty little eyes on you, in fact.  Developmentally, they’re still completing their fourth trimester.  As I’m more interested in the care and development of a small person, the newborn phase always seemed like some nightmarish test of fortitude to be toughed out.

Theo, however, is a really great kid.  It’s been a week now, and we’re all settling in with one another.  I don’t want to presume that life will always be so simple and placid — for one thing, I’m being utterly spoiled by Pete’s being home and taking care of everything that isn’t baby-feeding, and by my ability to luxuriously spread my (albeit unpredictable and highly choppy) sleep intervals out between the hours of 7 pm and 11 am, but at some point things like work and leaving the house are going to have to enter the picture — but I want to be appreciative of just how good we have it right now.

And what I’ve finally discovered is that newborns’ mental and emotional incoherence is totally ideal.  I can handle (with generous assistance) the unending eat-and-sleep cycles.  Eat-and-sleep cycles combined with any kind of additional intellectual demands, though, would be torture.  Like, right now, I’m delighted that there’s no additional need for me to entertain the baby, or discipline him, or educate him, or chase after him, or instill some sense of morality into him.  All I need to do is to help with the feeding and the sleeping, and gradually grow more comfortable with manhandling a baby with a heavy little wobbly head, and I don’t need to feel bad about zoning out to the latest episode of Downton Abbey while I do it.  Here’s to the fourth trimester!

Theodore Rhys!

Born Wednesday, January 11th, 2012, after a labor that his mother didn’t think was a labor until after good 12 hours had elapsed, a whole lot of breathing exercises, two filled barf bags, two epidurals, and four hours of pushing.

8 pounds, 20 inches

a.k.a. Theodore, Ted, Teddy, El Tederino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing, T-Rex, Teo, Teddy Pants, Ted “Theodore,” &c.

We think he’s pretty great.