I have been furiously writing notes on my phone though, ready for the next time I had a second to spare for blogging. Not sure I understand most of them, though, as I don't even have the time to write notes properly nowadays. In fact I'm way too busy feeding and burping and changing nappies for trivial things like, say, writing full sentences. Or writing anything noteworthy, really. In fact these are the highlights of the questions I was asking myself the day after I gave birth to our second beautiful baby boy:
- Breast pads are useless, aren't they? Oh right, without them I look like I am sweating from my nipples...
- What's that warm feeling? Oh right, Henry just pooed on my hand...
- How can such a small body poo so much?
- I'm freaking out - why does Henry look like a shrunken head version of my husband
And other such gross and scatological Pulitzer-worthy gems of literature. The rest of the weeks since then has gone by in a daze of to-do lists that never get done, and of life-changing milestones. Here's my entry for 4 December:
"This is the day my son found out how to get out of his sleeping bag and climb out of his crib. Just one week after the day my other son sprayed poo in my hair and all over my pjs and bed cover."
Yes, Oscar, the tiger, has graduated to a big bed. After witnessing him throwing himself over the side of his cot a few times, I came to the obvious yet depressing conclusion that I would have to take the sides off before he killed himself. This - at a time when son number two, the rabbit, was not even remotely sleeping through the night - was NOT good timing. A few days of leading the truant back to his bed after he climbed out to see what we were up to (and repeat several dozens of times) and we are now down to bedtime story, short sing-song and no real trouble. Apart from early rising in the morning, and some baby juggling around bedtime in the evening, it was much less painful than I expected. And seeing my baby tucked up under a duvet, with a pillow and everything... It's the end of an era. And the beginning of a much more interesting one, no doubt. One where we feel like we have pets rustling around the curtains in the early hours of the morning.
And if a pregnancy is any indication of things to come, Henry should be a doddle compared to Oscar. The latter was breech, with the cord around his neck (no doubt from all the climbing around, trying to get out), came out a week before planned and was, as a first child, a bright light eclipsing all others, totally all-encompassing and engrossing. Henry, on the other hand, was complacent, turning his head into the appropriate position at the right time, not keeping me up at night, waiting until the day of the C-section to come out... He is more of a soft, ambient light that I don't really have time to pay proper attention to but who really adds to the quality of my environment.
Blimey I'm happy.
