Tuesday, April 14, 2009

A Riff on New Babies [Ellie]

Love it
-new baby smell
-his scrunchy face with its thoughtful expressions
-huge toothless smiles
-cuddling a sleeping baby on my chest
-tiny little shoes
-his chubby thighs and soft skin
-bath time
-knowing someone is so comforted by my presence

Could do without
-the feeling that I'm swimming in body fluids (One day recently I counted seven different body fluids--mine and others--that had been smeared on me during the day. Don't think about this too
closely. . .)
-smelling like sour milk all day every day
-changing shirts three times a day
-having my carefully constructed a wall of airy indifference ("It doesn't matter what happens at home while I'm out; I deserve some time off!"), crumbled by the guilt of opening the door to hear my baby screaming and see my husband looking weary
-the desperate feeling of really needing to nurse
-my incredibly limited attention span
-this terrible sugar craving which is sabotaging my efforts to lose the baby fat

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOVE toothless smiles!

Becky said...

I hear you! Having a new baby can be breathtaking, and knock the wind right out of you!
Hannah turns 10 months old in a few days. I miss the oh-so-fresh sleeping newborn, but I can't say I miss all the crying (hers and mine!) Life is a bit less chaotic now (well, okay, at least some of the time).
Enjoy/hang in there!