I was due on the 23rd and born on the 30th. Luca was due on the 23rd and born on the 30th. He has Diogo’s nose, but my pale skin and hands and ears. His eyelashes are lighter than the rest of us but equally as long, and they curl up at the ends instead of sticking straight out. Maybe he’ll be a swimmer or a basketball player: he’s exactly average in weight, but 98th percentile for height, with the longest, skinniest feet I’ve ever seen on a human.
I’m so happy he’s here.
I’ll write about his birth, not just because it helps me to get these things out, but because I think it’s helpful to others who’ve given birth. I don’t want to scare expecting mothers and I definitely think there’s a very helpful place for uplifting natural birth stories, but I also think they crowd out the people whose experience was traumatic or awful or just so much more intense and affecting than they expected.
They sit with their births silently, thinking maybe the problem was them, or they’re weird or over-sensitive or just unlucky, but so many of the people I know use the word “trauma” when asked about their births… they just don’t say so unless you ask. Or get them drunk.
In the meantime, I’ll take the stitches and stretch marks and only sleeping in two-hour chunks while giving effusive thanks to any deities listening that I’m not pregnant anymore. The baby came out, and (once the shock wore off), my feelings came back. I looked at Brazil and felt a rush of love so overwhelming I proposed on the spot (I think maybe I did this after Nico too, he always just laughs and says yes like I’d asked him if he wants a cup of tea). My desire to do things came flooding back, along with the point of doing those things and the ability to look forward to them.
It’s been a rough nine months. This year has felt like a battle: against my hormones, against guilt and boredom, against my own body. It has, in a word, sucked.
Antenatal depression sucks. Antenatal depression with a still-small baby sucks. Add in bronchitis, a cracked rib, FOUR bouts of gastro, a sinus infection, constant daycare-induced coughs and colds, hemorrhoids, IBS, the state of the wider world, and then several weeks of contractions-but-not-labour and I think 2017 can officially be awarded my worst year ever.
But the baby came out, and my feelings came back.
Now, my heart throbs watching my big baby give my little baby his Phillip when he cries, and try his hardest to be gentle when he strokes his tiny head. It hurts as it expands for this new little person who’s somehow his own little person already.
Luca is seven weeks old and getting chunkier by the day. His furrowed expression of wide-eyed concern is interspersed now with gummy, scrunched-nose smiles and earnest chatting. He sleeps fantastically during the day and barely at all at night. Mostly he’s so chill we sometimes forget he’s even there.
Not that he really has a choice: Nico is 18 months old, and a ball of frantic, utterly charming energy. The speed at which he’s learning things is incredible to watch, and he’s suddenly so much fun to hang out with. He’s a performer and a show-off, and his comic timing is impeccable for someone who only has a handful of words. I’ve said before that happiness is different once you have a baby — the highs are higher but the lows are lower. You live in extremes. Turns out that’s also toddlers, but squared — ours is by turns the sweetest, most hilarious human you’ve ever met and a demonic, rage-fueled beastling. Every day is a new exercise in patience, but is also more fun than the day before.
Without the routine of work, time has gone sort of fuzzy around the edges. Days are faster and slower at the same time. I’m aware this time that Luca’s babyhood will be gone before we know it. People tell you that the first time, but you can’t actually grasp it. You will sleep again and see your friends again and wear a normal bra again, and your baby will roll and sit and crawl and then get up and run, until the day you find them standing on a chair trying to get into the fruit bowl.
We’re tired and frequently living at the very edges of our physical, mental and emotional tolerance, but we’re both at home at the moment so we get to enjoy this period, instead of having to just survive it. I can’t even imagine being alone with both of them all day every day — that most families don’t have a choice is dumbfounding to me now that we’re here. The correct ratio of adults to under 2s is at least 4:1.
Brazil is at home until May and I’m back to work part-time this week. It made perfect sense when we planned it, and it still does: I have freedom about when and where I work, and I make more an hour. He enjoys his job, but can’t do it in less than four days a week — so logistically, either he works full time and I’m at home all day with two babies, or he takes parental leave and I work part time, mostly from home. It’s a no-brainer. Plus he’s the best dad ever, so it’s awesome for him to get to spend extended time at home with the boys while they’re little.
But now that we’re here the guilts are back. I love what I do and I’m a better person and a far better mother when I have time and space to do things other than mothering… but it still feels terrible sometimes to admit that. And I still wish I was with them every time I leave them.
There are those extremes again.