Still here

I've had several people tell me to get on with the blogging and post something new. There are two reasons why I've been slacking on this. a) because being a new mom is so much more time consuming then I ever thought possible and b) because I don't want to bury my last entry. My last entry was the best entry I've ever written and the best moment I've ever experienced. And now all other entries send that one stellar entry down south to no-man's land on the blog. Sigh.

So it's day 8 of Eleanor's life and I had no idea things would change this much. I wasn't prepared for the anxiety, the oh-my-god-she-hasn't-moved-in-over-a-minute feeling. I wasn't prepared for the emotion, for the intense, rock your world LOVE that would occur. I could sit and look at her for hours, studying every grimace, every crevice on her beautiful baby skin, listening to every coo. She is so totally awesome.

But there have been struggles. Number one being my MILK. It seems that my milk is here, but not a whole lot. I've never felt engorgement or let down. This has really led to some feelings of inadequacy. Of course I want to be able to provide nourishment for my baby as nature intended. But apparently I have to work a little harder at this than others. So now I have rented a hospital grade breast pump. When Ellie wants to eat I feed her from breast as normal, then pump, then give her the supplemental milk that I create. It's very time consuming; about an hour per feed. But I am willing to do whatever it takes to make this happen. The experience of breastfeeding is very important to me. However this lifestyle certainly can't be maintained for a super long time. So I'm just praying to the milk gods to please give me a little extra attention right now.

I cry a lot. And I'm not really sad. I'm told that this milk production business really messes with your hormones, so I'm attributing much of the crying to that. Plus there's the lack of sleep, the quintessential new mom phenomena which has not escaped me. It's amazing how well you (think you) can rally on very little sleep. Which probably yields to the crying. And then there's that little precious nugget of love that you realize you'd do anything for. And that feeling makes me cry because I don't know what else to do with that emotion. So I cry it out. Kind of wierd.

So if you saw me 10 days ago, and you saw me today, you would have to notice the changes. I'm not pregnant (!) for one, and for two I've become a different person. I'm a mom now. And I see the world through these new mom eyes. I think of things as how they will affect myelf and my daughter. If you could look inside my body you would find a heart that was so engorged with love that you wouldn't even recognize it as my own. And that's the way I feel. Overcome. Overfilled. Overtired. Overjoyed.