Becoming People

The sixth week of Gavin's life was the best week yet. He grew noticeably, both physically and mentally. And I was able to start getting stuff done around the house. It was a giant leap forward in me feeling like a person again.

Up until this week, Gavin had been alternating a 5-6 hour nap with 5-6 hour marathon feeding sessions. Not that he ate continuously for 5 or 6 hours. But he ate every hour for 20-30 minutes. It was often all I could do to find time to pee and eat between feeding sessions. There was no time for anything else. Though I did watch an insane amount of TV.

But Gavin has finally evened out, and is eating every 3-4 hours pretty consistently. It makes for a slightly more sleepless night (though Kevin and I have a good tag-team set up that helps). It also makes it a lot easier to get stuff done during the day. So on Monday, I was able to put Gavin down for a nap in the afternoon and clean the whole kitchen. Over the rest of the week I managed to clean the entire upper floor of the house. Kevin's been making fun of me for being so excited about this, but it's really nice to feel productive again.

Gavin has also been a lot more fun this week. He's more awake and alert. We've started doing tummy time every day, and I play with him a bit. He's not entirely interested in his toys yet, but he seems to stare at them with intent. At least for a little while. And he has this piano he plays by kicking that he seems to have fun with. It's hard to tell, but I'm sure he's only going to get more interesting.

He's also bigger. Clothes that he was swimming in a few weeks ago now fit perfectly. Which probably means that we only have a week or two of wear left in them. We've got some 3-6-month clothing that he should be able to wear soon. We're also expecting to have to buy some more clothes before we do the Christmas family tour. And he just graduated to the next size up of diapers, which happened surprisingly quickly. We ended up giving a whole bunch of diapers to neighbors because Gavin got too big.

I'm excited for Gavin to learn even more tricks and to get closer to being on a schedule. But for now it's nice to have reliable chunks of time when I can do things, even if the timing isn't entirely predictable. The nice thing about maternity leave is that my schedule is completely flexible right now. And we're so close to smiles and laughs and an actual interactive person. I can't wait

Thanksgiving

For the week of Thanksgiving, Kevin's sister and her new husband came to stay with us and meet their nephew. They cooked the big meal at our house, which was beyond convenient for me. And Gavin even slept through the entire meal, like a little angel.

Erin and Alex were out here for an entire week, and it was nice to visit with them, since we see them so rarely. They spent a lot of time holding Gavin and were a great help in getting him to calm down. Erin even changed a few diapers, making her the first person other than Kevin and me to do so.

Gavin continued to be adorable and lovable. He's still mostly a lump, but he's starting to be more responsive. His involuntary smiles are really cute and have me excited to see the real ones. And sometimes he grunts a bit when he smiles, which has me eager for baby giggles. He also spends a lot of time grunting and otherwise vocalizing, making us think he's going to be a talker. So long as he's not an extrovert I'll be happy.

Setbacks

A few hours after my mom left, I developed a pain in my lower back. It felt like I'd pulled a muscle, and I assumed I must have done something. But no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't come up with any sort of triggering injury. I thought maybe I'd done something simple that was amplified by my extreme weight loss. I'd been losing almost a pound a day since Gavin was born, and I know that can make you susceptible to injury.

When neither rest nor stretching nor ice helped my back feel better, I started thinking it was a pinched nerve. It took over a week before Kevin convinced me to go to the doctor where I got my shingles diagnosis. In the meantime, I was confined to the couch. It was a real let down, after such an active  week. But it took me three or four days just to wash the sheets on the guest bed so we'd be prepared for the next guests. And my grand plans of cleaning the house (or at least the toilets and floors) were thrown out. Luckily we were able to hire a professional cleaning service to come through and keep the house somewhat in order.

The shingles was exacerbated by Trump's win, which was a serious shock. I was almost glad to have a physical reason to stay on the couch for a while. During Gavin's third week of life, I let my world shrink. I focused on taking care of him and taking care of myself. I watched a ton of Star Trek in an attempt to feel optimistic about the future (turns out Deep Space Nine is not the right series if this is your goal).

At the end of this week, my dad and his girlfriend came to visit, and Gavin started to learn some new tricks. He seemed able to make eye contact and to be looking at things with more intent than before. It was exciting to start seeing him make some mental leaps, even if part of me still thinks that we're projecting skills on him before he really has them. We did go out and buy a mobile for his crib, but it was a couple more weeks before he seemed able to focus on it at all.

After dad left, I went to the doctor and started getting treated for my shingles. Just in time for Gavin to develop a second round of thrush that made it painful for him to eat from my left boob. It was just one more in a seemingly never-ending series of minor setbacks. And while we kept powering through, I still wasn't able to focus on anything much bigger than caring for my son.