99th post

The last two weeks since DJ came have been a delightful blur. I've kept up with blog reading (because that can be done with one hand) but not with commenting. He's gradually getting more predictable, and once I learn to use the baby sling, I think I'll be able to get more things done.

Here are some photos.

Here's us the day we came home from the hospital:


Here he is a couple days later during an alert period:


All ready to go to the supermarket (can't figure out how to rotate it):


And, my favorite -- totally milk-drunk (I'm glad he's a happy drunk):



He's a good, easy baby. He nurses like champ. He's gained back to his birth weight and then some. He's easily soothed. And, charmingly, he looks uncannily like J's baby pictures.

The sleep deprivation has gotten to me some. He nurses every 2-3 hours, and the whole nursing/changing cycle takes close to an hour, leaving only an hour or so in between. This morning J gave him two ounces of formula so that I could get four hours of sleep in a row. That was part of celebrating my birthday.

Like how I slipped that in there? I'm 38 today. So far J has given me four hours of sleep, buckwheat pancakes, a shoulder rub, a very sweet card (and another from DJ), and some fancy chocolate. Best. Birthday. Ever.

I want to write up the birth story soon. It really was a tremendous experience, and emotionally more challenging than I expected. We're having our follow-up meeting with our doula today, which, in my mind, is the coda to the whole experience.

Overall, it's going really well. The pregnancy weight is dropping off fast -- 34 lbs down, only 5 to go at 15 days post-partum. Hopefully, the 15 lbs of IF weight will follow. Our friends are bringing us great dinners every other evening. I've internalized the exhortation to "sleep when the baby sleeps." Not much else to say. I'm in heaven.