I promise I won’t turn this into a mommy blog, but I think I owe a follow-up to the previous post. So here is how the first month of parenthood turned out. I’ll still call my spouse Pink and I’ll call our baby Pixie (it’s a bad translation of the nickname I call him in Hungarian).

Day 0: labour and love.

Labour, as expected, wasn’t my favourite thing in the world. For all the yoga classes I went to and hippie literature I read, I didn’t spend the first ten hours of labour cooking or hiking, and I didn’t find labour to be ecstatic, sexual, or in any way pleasant. It was just painful beyond my wildest imagination. The kind of pain that makes you projectile-puke into a bath full of water which you are sitting in, and beg for the epidural you didn’t want. That said, I made it through with lots of encouragement from Pink and our midwives, and some gas (the kind you get at the dentist). The gas didn’t touch the pain, but made me sufficiently out of it that I was unable to argue for the epidural. In retrospect I’m very happy about this because as it turned out I’m quite good at pushing. Once we finally got to that stage Pixie was out in less than half an hour (the norm for first births is closer to two hours). He was in great shape and I was in one piece, which made for a very easy physical recovery for both of us. That was good because the emotional impact was enough to deal with, but I get ahead of myself.

Love. Last time I mentioned how I had expected to love Pixie as soon as I knew I was pregnant and then I didn’t. After that I wondered if I would love him as soon as I saw him: I know that everyone experiences this differently and I thought maybe it would come gradually over months of getting to know him. As it turns out, it was love at first sight. It was the perfect new family moment, all three of us crying (in Pixie’s case it was more like squeaking), Pink and I marvelling at this perfect little baby we made, and lots of cuddles for everyone. If I wanted to be more cynical I’d say that his very birth meant that I was no longer in labour and that was enough to make me fall in love. (By the way, how do our bodies know that the baby is out so no more contractions are needed? I’m mystified.)

Days 1-2: bliss.

For the first couple of days I was high on the endorphins from birth, and Pixie was mellow and still a bit dazed, so we did really well. I spent most of the time holding him, feeding him and looking at his perfect little face in wonder. We discovered that he won’t sleep in his crib but we weren’t too worried about that yet. Due to the easy birth I was in virtually no pain and due to the hormonal high I had lots of energy. It was bliss.

Day 3-10: the implosion.

Day 3 is when the natural high ran out, and was followed by the predictable natural crash. It was also the day milk came in and all of a sudden Pixie wouldn’t latch. Feeding problems are extremely unpleasant and get progressively worse really quickly. By day 4 I was miserable, very uncomfortable, exhausted, and a snotty, teary mess. Luckily, we had this amazing midwife: she was lovely through pregnancy, fantastic throughout labour, but it was in the two weeks after Pixie’s birth that she turned out to be truly worth her weight in gold. She visited us at home almost every day and provided everything from baby care instruction and health checks to emotional support. She was like a professional grandma in addition to health care provider, a lifeline to hang on to. (In general we have been very impressed with maternity care and family support in Australia.)

They say having a baby changes your life, and that is a complete misrepresentation of what happens. It’s not a “change”, a change would imply that there is some kind of continuity, or at least a comparison between before and after, but it’s not like that at all. It’s a singularity, an implosion. It’s like aliens abducted your life, your brain and your thoughts, and replaced them with something completely new and foreign. The things you used to think about: work, your hobbies and interests, social life, relationship, etc, are replaced entirely with the overwhelming and relentless needs of your newborn: milk, diapers, and 24 hours a day of physical contact. Your life (and your partner’s if you’re coupled and lucky enough that he or she has time off) is replaced with being a full time caregiver to an adorable but incredibly demanding little creature: morning shift, afternoon shift, and night shift.

The only thing that might remind you of your life before is your partner, so (s)he better have been your absolute favourite part of that life. I imagine it would have been super depressing if Pink had been an annoying part of my life and then became all that was left. Luckily, he was, and is, an amazing part, and having him around was very comforting. What drove me crazy though is that one of us had to be holding Pixie at all times and so there wasn’t any opportunity for us to hold each other. I needed a cuddle so badly, and it was over a week before I got to have a little 10-minute quickie one. I sobbed through it.

Weeks 3-4: redemption.

Towards the end of week two we started to be able to get Pixie to sleep an hour or so by himself during the day. That is not a lot and it has only been improving slowly, but it was my first glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel. I also got better at doing things one-handed (like this entire post). We discovered a baby carrier that works and gives us our hands back, and Pixie can sometimes sleep in his car seat for a long time.

I have become more confident driving with Pixie, which I had been terrified of initially. Pink has given him milk from a bottle out of necessity, and it didn’t destroy breast feeding or harm Pixie in any perceptible way. Slowly but surely, we are getting better at life as parents. Pixie has grown so much already, and he only gets cuter every day. We are in love with the little bug and so proud of his little baby steps towards becoming a person. Pink is back at work and I feel like I have about 5% of my life back (I have baked a few things, done a minimal amount of work, and Pink and I can sometimes be a couple, not just a pair of parents). That’s enough for now to make me happy.

Before we had Pixie, I had thought our life was fairly child-friendly already: most of our friends have small children so we hang out with kids a lot, I love “kids’ activities”, and it’s not like we used to party late into the night. This may well be helpful in a year or so, but it turns out that parenting a newborn is a whole different ball game. A game you never see because parents of newborns don’t go out, and for a reason. This point is driven home as you carry your screaming, hungry, distraught infant through the Ikea showrooms, making a beeline for the nursing room amidst the disapproving stares of the childless, sympathetic smiles of families with older children (who already know that a trip to Ikea is a treat), and terrified glances of pregnant couples.

But newborns are so much fun too: every day they learn something new, every week they look different. Pixie is so cuddly, so sweet and smells delicious. He knows our voices and turns his head towards us. He loves to shower with us. He makes the cutest faces and little sounds. He is a month old in a few days, and in 11 more months he might be walking around. Every day I’m more aware of how quickly he is changing, and how precious this time is: this time when a cuddle is always preferable to no cuddle.