Yet another of my expectations of new motherhood has turned out to be totally wrong: when I was pregnant I thought that after the baby was born I would revel in the chance to sequester myself in my home with my newborn and have a perfect excuse to ignore the whole world. It's not that I'm completely antisocial, but I am a homebody and like my alone time, plus I'm a little possessive about the people I love and wanted Miles all to myself. However, though that may have been true for the first week or so, after that the opposite thing occurred. I am, to my own surprise, really craving human companionship these days.
The fact is that a newborn is very demanding - when he's awake. But that's not all that much of the time (as much as it seems to be so in the middle of the night). So while baby is napping I've gotten into a somewhat monotonous routine of chatting online interspersed with uploading baby photos and doing a little housework. This was fun for a little while, but the nesting phase seems to have evaporated with the disappearance of my giant belly.
I didn't even realize quite how deprived of social interaction I was until yesterday when I got to the Group and after just one hour of being around other people - other moms - I felt amazing. Truthfully I had been struggling with some negative feelings (inadequacy, loneliness, a little baby blues) that I was chalking up to hormones, but I think also just being so cut off from the world and stuck in the house alone was a part of my problem. It's not even like I talked that much in the group yesterday, but the company and a little bit of attention felt awesome.
I'm contemplating going on Mondays too. It's really just a place for moms to get together and hang out, although the LC who runs it tries to move conversation along when it's quiet by giving us tips about breastfeeding and such things. There were two babies there who were exactly Miles's age, born on the two days before and after him (oddly enough, there were 8 moms and every baby was a boy, including a set of twins!).
Oh, and I was very proud of myself because I nursed Miles right there in the room and somehow managed to do it really smoothly. I think I just got lucky or something because he was making the booby face but not fussing yet (that never happens at home - he wakes up and just starts squawking for food!) and I somehow managed to discreetly get the boob into his mouth and nurse him right there on my lap, no Boppy, no indecent exposure. I don't even know how I did it. I don't have one of those hooter hider thingies because I wanted to learn to nurse in public without it - I'm a real minimalist with stuff in general - and I just kind of jumped in with both feet since Mom & Baby Group is a good place to give a try. Success! I'm sure it won't be that easy every time.
And I got to weigh Miles - he was 8 lbs 4 oz. I know that's about as fascinating as the contents of his diaper, but it does give a breastfeeding mom a really great feeling to see weight gain like that - proof that you're doing something right! He's supposed to be gaining around 4-7 oz a week at this age and he gained 10 oz since last Tuesday... I guess that growth spurt was for real!
I'm also going to try to make it to Le Leche, finally, on Tuesday evening. I don't relish the idea of taking Miles out at night by myself, but I really would like to get there and maybe have them check our latch and talk about the pain factor and whether we're doing this right.
1 comment:
I wish there were groups like that in my area! I'm so in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn't know where to look.
I'm glad you're having such a good time!
Post a Comment