All I wanted

I think infertility blogging is a lot like songwriting or poetry.  The best content comes from a place of heartbreak, when you're so unhappy you just need to write to get everything out.  But once you make it through the dark times, it's damn hard to write from a place of happiness.  You're not dissecting your life in exquisite, agonizingly artistic detail anymore.  You're just enjoying being happy!

That's kind of what it's like around here lately.  I don't really have anything to bitch about, so this blog has been pretty quiet.  Cue inevitable "whither my infertility blog now?" discussion.  Even when I was still in the trenches, I liked it when my bloggy friends who had made it to the other side posted every once in a while with updates on their life with baby.  I mean, I didn't want to know about every sleepless night or dirty diaper, but it was nice to read they were doing well and I liked seeing/hearing about their babies from time to time.  I kind of figure this is what I'm going to do myself.  I'm just going to post updates whenever I have the time or desire, and if you're into that I'm glad.  If it's too hard for you at times, or you're in a bad place, then I get it.  I didn't want to read any complaining about baby's first tooth when I was fresh off a negative pee stick either.  It's cool.

So yeah...things around here are going pretty great!  Q is charming the virtual pants off of everyone he meets, and is continuing to keep things pretty chill at home.  Last week we ventured out to our first ever mom-and-baby activity, a free afternoon infant program at a local province-run centre.  He was one of the younger babies there, but I think he got a huge kick out of looking at all the other babies and he definitely enjoyed the song circle time, while mama was quite happy to engage in some adult conversation!  We'll be going back for sure.

Development-wise, Q is starting to get a lot more interactive which is fun.  We have full-on cooing conversations now, and just this week he started trying to grasp and bat at some toys which is a whole lot better than me sitting there just shaking them at him.  He absolutely loves standing up, and basically can fully support his own weight as long as you're holding him to stop him from toppling to the side.  This was really cute at first (especially given the look of pride he wears on his face while he's doing it) but it's also really fucking hard on the arms after a while.  Guess I'll just have to suck it up and get me some awesome biceps.

The one area that is starting to be a bit more challenging is sleep.  Q has always been a pretty good sleeper, and back around 6 or 7 weeks old had gotten to the point where he was only waking once a night to feed.  He even teased us with a blissful few nights where he slept about 10 or 12 hours, straight through from 8pm to about 6am.  It was awesome.

Then we had one weekend where we had tons of family visiting, and he hardly napped at all due to the overstimulation.  This totally threw him off, and we still haven't gotten back to where we were.  Right now he's waking twice, once around 3am and again around 5:30am.  The 3 o'clock feed isn't so bad since he's all business and back to sleep, but the 5:30 one is a bitch because it's starting to get light outside and he's like, "IT'S MORNING!" and hence he's almost impossible to put back down at that point.  Daytime naps are also proving to be a bit of a challenge.  He used to just kind of nap wherever/whenever, but I've been trying to start more of a routine by swaddling him and taking him upstairs to his crib.  He'll usually settle eventually, but crib naps seem to be capped at about 30 minutes right now whereas swing/stroller/carseat naps can last upwards of two hours, so you can guess which ones are more appealing to me.  I know it's still early days but I really don't want to get into the habit of needing to rock or nurse him to sleep.  I'd also like to get a bit of consistency going, since some days he'll have a couple of big long naps but other days he takes four or five short ones and I never know which day will be which, so it makes things a bit difficult to plan.  Can I do some dinner prep or will he be awake in 10 minutes?  It's a mystery!

So yeah...I'm happy which makes me boring blog-wise.  A couple of times over the past few weeks I've had random moments where it's hit me all over again that we made it through to the other side of infertility.  Like, we'll be walking to the dog park with Buddy on his leash and Q in his stroller, and it's sunny and the smell of lilac is in the air and we stop and buy iced tea from some kids on the street and I just think, "Yes.  This is it.  This is all I wanted.  Was it really so much to ask for?"  It seems so simple, and it should be so simple for everyone.  Yet it wasn't, and isn't.  But I wish it was.

Groundhog days

I have a confession to make.  I have no idea what to do with my two month old baby.

I mean, I know how to take care of him, obviously.  Feed, burp, bathe, change, swaddle...I've got the hang of those.  But over the past couple of weeks, my teeny tiny baby who could barely rouse himself from sleep long enough to suck on a boob has turned into a slightly less tiny baby who is now awake and alert a lot of the time.  It's awesome, of course, and there's absolutely nothing to compare to the gummy grins that I'm now getting on a regular basis.  Along with that, however, comes the need to actually do something to entertain the little guy in order to elicit said grins, or to keep him otherwise occupied and stimulated.  It's kind of making me wish that my prenatal class had included a section on children's songs and nursery rhymes, as it has become apparent that my knowledge in this area is sadly limited.  Once we've sung Old MacDonald, The Itsy Bitsy Spider and The Wheels on the Bus, I'm fresh out of ideas.  Lucky for me there's this YouTube channel that has turned 80s hair metal (among other things) into lullabies.  Now those I know!

Nothing like the dulcet tones of Axl Rose to put a baby to sleep.

Otherwise, right now my days are kind of blending into each other.  The most mentally challenging aspect is trying to figure out what order we should do things in.  Do we want to do tummy time, then walk the dog, then sing songs?  Or sing songs, tummy time, and dog walk?  Oh the variety!

I'm looking forward to taking advantage of some mom-and-baby activities in my area soon, but right now Q is still a little young for a lot of them.  I'm also sort of waiting for next week when Q has his two-month checkup and will get his first set of vaccinations before I venture out anywhere that has a ton of germy toddlers.  One cool thing I discovered is that there's a kiddie play centre within walking distance that has drop-in play during the weekdays.  Did I mention it's free for kids under 1 year?  The infant area is pretty small, since the place is mostly geared towards kids aged 2 to 6, but I'm hoping that I might meet some other moms there who are hanging out with their infants while they let their toddlers run amok.   I need to find me some local mom friends!

In the meantime, it's kind of ridiculous the sorts of things that I've been looking forward to doing since they get us out of the house.  Case in point: no one should ever, ever be as excited as I was to go to the passport office last week.  I wanted to get Q's done sooner rather than later so I wouldn't be rushing in advance of our semi-annual beach trip to Maine in July, so now he'll have a 6-week old baby photo on his passport for the next five years.  Luckily he napped like a tiny drunk so I didn't have to whip out a boob in front of everyone, although part of me was sort of looking forward to horrifying/offending a whole bunch of strangers.  Oh well.  Next time.

In other news, I got the go-ahead from my OB to resume normal activity at my post-natal checkup (which happened at 4 weeks instead of 6 for some reason) and have been using Q's nap time to squeeze in some workouts.  At first progress seemed agonizingly slow, and I was getting really frustrated and down on myself about it.  The first night that I put on my workout clothes to go to dance class I ended up in tears because of all the bulges that weren't there before, as well as the fact that the "baggy" shirt I tried to wear as camouflage turned out not to be baggy at all.  I was actually writing a whole big blog post about it in my head, but in the end I never put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?) because I was afraid it would just come off as too whiny and ungrateful given the fact that all that really matters is that Q is finally here.  Now that a month has passed I've gradually started to see some of the remaining baby weight come off, and was pretty stoked to fit into a pair of pre-pregnancy jeans earlier this week.  Granted, they were my stretchiest pair, but still.  Which made it all the more tragic when I discovered this only a day or two later:

Inner thigh hole!!  AGAIN!!

The universe giveth and the universe taketh away, I guess.