Three of us coming home November 14 - 22, 2003 only now our home looks like we're a real family. It feels great, but I would not wish upon you to have to clean it up.

	Tom could not take it anymore at the hospital

How are we coping with everything? It depends. Although technically still in post-partum, I feel quite well. Through the fact that Tom was born before I even began to have a huge belly, I have now got something which I can pretend to be flabby muscles (after all, lots of much younger girls show off their belly buttons without shame). I managed to avoid birthmarks. All that is left is - breasts. I had never longed to be extremely gifted by Mother Nature (it gets in one's way during rock climbing, one can't properly watch one's step), but now, I am the owner of two blimps. I see that "the baby is hungry", but I don't see why it could not have been arranged any other way. I don't appreciate all that bulging, Tommy takes no advantage from being suffocated by opulent mass, and whenever I imagine that anyone would touch my tender mammaries (despite being my legal spouse), various things come to my mind, but they are definitely neither romantic mood, nor a sense of erotic hotness.

	Now we can eat without a hose - which means that they shall soon let us go home

My physical condition is, of course, forfeit. I tried to climb, just recreationally, and I could not cease to be amazed at which all muscles had stopped functioning. I also sometimes forget that I can, again, bend forward to tie my laces and such, and I start performing some pregnancy acrobatics, even if I don't have to. I assume it will get better over time, but I don't get to practice much. Most of my days, lately, I have been sitting -- in the car, in the hospital, at home; behind the wheel in traffic jams, breastfeeding Tom, while pumping milk.

Mentally, my baby's stay at ICU was quite an interesting experiment. On one side, it was obvious that it represented a huge stress, on the other side, an intensive care unit for newborns tends to straighten out your priorities. Babies on oxygen, babies with IV to their heads, babies with reflux, babies after surgeries -- all that is a daily routine there. And how can I complain about a bad traffic to a mother, who has been coming to see her twins over four months already? Do I have a right to whine that Tom was not into breastfeeding today, when a baby next door has a food tube going right through his stomach wall and an outlook to not be able to eat for some months or years (or perhaps never)?

	What is the meaning of this? Am I a test pilot now?

Tommy eventually spent three weeks at the Intermediate Nursery. I tried to keep this journals up to date, but there was so little time. I spent each free moment at the hospital, pumped milk every three hours, day and night, and so even before we got our baby home, a question arose: "Which ones are larger? Milk stains on my shirts and trousers, or dark circles under my eyes?"

It seems to us that Tom has grown up incredibly over those three weeks at the hospital. He also became an ever better expert on "making faces". And though he makes them rather randomly, sometimes he manages to fit the situation so well that I wonder whet he may be thinking. Like when he wrinkles his forehead as if in doubt, while focusing, cross-eyes, on my breast, which I urge him to take. Almost as if he wanted to say "I have seen this before. If I could only remember what it was good for." He always gets me as he starts to smile whenever I try to tutor him. Is this a sign of an early puberty?

	Who did the kid turn after?

Last weekend of Tom's hospitalization was relatively dramatic and I must say that I substantially marred our impressions about the hospital and its staff. But we shall write about it some other time. What's important, Tom has grown strong enough, by reaching his 36th week, gestation age, that he can now feed himself (i.e., he has enough energy to finish breastfeeding or bottle suckling to get his full rate). On Monday, November 17, they told us at the hospital that they would probably release him on the following day, and that we should get ready. I quickly bought some diapers, Sid announced at work he would take a day off, we vacuumed our bedroom, moved Tom's bed in, and I began to frighten what I would do once the hand me over a little baby. They can't be serious that I should start taking care of something this small!

	I don't want to wash, I want to sleep.

On eighteenth of November we were, all excited, rushing with a car seat into the hospital. It actually felt like Tommy had just been born. During the actual birth, it became clear to me that this was going to be a run for a (undetermined) long distance, and now, after finishing this marathon, we were to get ready for the actual, real start. I was pleasantly surprised how many things (little bottles, pacifiers, vitamins, formula milk powder) we got right there from the hospital. We also received many notices, baby handling leaflets, and we had to view a video about giving CPR to infants. They got me, however, by the fact that I had to leave the hospital riding atop a wheelchair, pushed by a nurse. I would understand it in the case when they release a mother two days after giving birth -- my birth was easy and still my knees trembled; but after almost four weeks, which I spent roaming the hospital on my own, it seemed somewhat absurd. But this is regulation.

	Will I get milk as a reward?

Right the first night, Tommy began to grunt. Last time I heard a baby grunt like this, was in an incubator next to Tom's, and the baby had a stomach reflux, so we did not waste any time in the morning and went to the doctors'. The doctor said that Tom had just a slightly plugged nose, which happens to little babies - their nasal passages are so tiny that they clog easily. We were to suck mucus out with a little suction ball.
My first official visit to a pediatrician was due on the next day. The doctor was quite surprised when according to their scales, over 24 hours separating our two visits, Tom had gained three ounces (85 grams). I assume that someone made a mistake, although I would not be surprised if he gained really that much. Our hungry boy grows right in front of our eyes and I feel like he nibbled me all the way to my ribcage. Besides that, we also add some special formula to his bottled breastmilk. Tom naturally drinks easier from a bottle, so we give him a second chance to catch up his missing calories, if he gets too tired at breastfeeding. I must say that to my great delight he began to show some disgust over rubber replacements, and so I hope that we soon get rid of tiresome washing of little bottles, mixing milk, and warming it up.

	Merry ... and sad.

Life with a baby is certainly different from anything before, but I must admit that compared to times, when I used to drive to the hospital, I find it rather easy. I don't have to waste four hours a day in traffic, I don't have to be somewhere at any exact hour. There is no schedule, when to feed and when to sleep; we don't have to keep weighing Tom before and after; we don't have to watch our baby connected to hoses and wires. I am not trying to claim to be a motherhood machine, who besides faultless care of a baby manages to bake three loafs of home bread from scratch every week, and routinely wins county rose growers' competition -- only that the level of my sleeplessness and the (catastrophic) state of our household had stabilized over last month. There has not been any dramatic change in that. Also, for over a month now, I don't get fazed by finding occasionally that I happen, in public places, to wear a (naturally wrinkled from lack of ironing) shirt barely held together by a single, top button (in better cases -- if I manage to button up that one after breastfeeding). Sometimes I find I have not combed my hair for two days.

	It's a bright day? I don't mind that, for I can sleep anyway.

Of course, Tom has surprised us a few times -- our quiet, mellow, baby learned to scream like a slaughtered pig on the second night at home. This he has been performing since, at every suitable opportunity (changing, feeding). I also feel like a complete idiot every time he manages to pee on me (plus wide surroundings) while I change his diaper. Hospital nurses warned me of this boy's trick, but what can I do -- I am ready ten times, watching Tom closely, and nothing happens; on the eleventh time, I may be in a hurry or I lower my vigilance for a picosecond, and I'm rewarded by a fountain.
Tommy is quite obviously a very social baby -- every time we manage to make him sleep, thinking the two of us could have a proper dinner (not that we would hope to have a normal conversation), right then our baby is up and demands to get invited to the party.

The worst thing for me is accepting the existence of my "baby radar". Twenty four hour a day, I am tuned to Tom's frequency, which is unbelievably exhausting. The only way I can turn this radar off, is to turn Tom over to Sid's attention. I did not have any idea how refreshing it can be to clean up the house, if I can afford several minutes of thinking about frivolous things like which detergent I should use. Or to lie down and SLEEP whole two hours without listening to every squeak. To go to bathroom and to devote whole minutes to my OWN physical needs. Little things can make me happy, these days.

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.