Due Date

Tomorrow was Matthew's due date. Now he'll be just shy of two weeks old. It's surreal to me how fast and slow the last two weeks have gone. I feel like I'm getting a handle on things, but I have yet to 1) make dinner myself, 2) try to get somewhere on time, 3) re-adopt any of my previous routine, or 4) take Matthew anywhere with or without his siblings. I also haven't left the house in 7 days. Not even to check on the chickens (thanks to my friend watching over them for a while). But hey, I'm getting used to everything else :)

I'm healing well from the c-section in every way. My 2-week post-op appointment is tomorrow morning. Hopefully, I will be approved to drive again. Sometimes, when I'm alone and it's quiet, I get labor flashbacks. There are just a few specific moments that I'm still trying to figure out. I have so much more empathy for laboring moms these days. Alice's birth experience was a golden, unmedicated, hippie dream. Robert's birth was a rough and tumble unmedicated torture. James' was a slower, calculated, and well-medicated bliss. Matthew, well, you know how that went...somewhere in between all of those and yet nothing like any of them. There are several reasons I feel compelled to share my birth experiences with other moms. It's partly therapeutic, like treating post-traumatic-stress, and it's partly the drama and chaos of it all. You never know what's going to happen next.

Anyway, Matthew has been a great eater, sleeper, and pooper so far. He's not as needy at night as I remember my other newborns being. Sure, he gets bouts of gassy pushing and grunting, but he doesn't need to be comforted through them. We tried something new this time around. Bobby sleeps in our room and I sleep in the guest room with Matthew's crib. That way, Bobby gets a full night's sleep so he can handle the big kids better, and I have a quiet place to keep sleeping once all the big kids are up and running around. Something like a newborn suite. Kinda nice.

I can tell that the big kids are stressed. Alice bursts into tears at the slightest provocation (even more than usual, I should say). Robert takes delight in pestering Alice and James in subversive, passive-aggressive ways (again, more than usual). And James, well, he's a whole new creature these days. He's soooooo affectionate with Matthew, that I fear for Matthew's life. He's soooooo sensitive to correction and soooooo stubborn about everything that I find it exhausting to help him with anything. James and Matthew are almost exactly two years apart. It's the shortest gap between any of my kids. James is just too young to understand certain things, and I don't have the time and attention to work him through things as thoroughly as I could his older siblings. It's frustrating for both of us right now.

And then there's the realization that we now have four kids. Four! The other evening, our whole family was playing in Matthew's room while I nursed him. Everyone. All six of us. It felt SO full. I just kept counting us over and over, wondering how it could possibly have come to this point just one day at a time. Time progresses so quietly.

Just for fun, here are newborn-ish picts of Bobby and me to compare to Matthew:

Bobby

Bobby

Susan

Matthew