| blogging our children into being |
|
motor functions |
|
The Dads |
|
extended blogfamily |
|
what is it? BlogSprogs is homeplace of The Crucial Three: the babies Turner, Matrullo and O'Connor Clarke. |
Fast Month
So Ruairi was a whole month old just yesterday. Sausage corrected me on this. I'd commented elsewhere that he was a month old on the 15th, when he was really only 4 weeks, if you see what I mean. Anyway.
Like Gary, I've been feeling a tad guilty about the lack of updates to this blog. Yet we've all been busy doing the right thing with the r/t version of these BlogSprogs, so I think it's understandable. Feels to me like we've got our priorities right.
I know when Charlie was born I was back at work way too fast. I still kick myself for not spending enough time at home in those first incredibly important few weeks. Think I was a very different person back then, and working for a completely different kind of company. Looking back, I guess one of my main reasons for moving out of insane software companies into PR was the desire to bring a little more balance to my life. Long story there...
This time around I was able to completely and utterly disconnect from just about anything even remotely resembling work (big thanks to the caring and wonderful Weber Shandwick organization, btw).
Tried it both ways now, and I think checking out of the everyday world, if you can swing it, is definitely the right thing to do (that's my Platitude of the Month Award sorted, right there).
Spent over three weeks at home, gazing into Ruairi's eyes, trying to decode the stream of little signals in his ever-changing expressions. As a reward, Ruairi, like Cameron, has just started treating us with his first hesitant smiles:
Doesn't look like much - but that really is the beginnings of a smile. Trust me on this. He's fighting fit now, as you can see (TG), but the little mite had a bit of a dodgy first few weeks of life. Nothing major, compared to some of the desperately sad stories you hear - but enough to scare the bejeezus out of us all the same.
From his birth weight of 9lb 9oz, he dropped more than a pound in week one. Sure, all newborns lose some weight – but that’s a big drop. That, plus a sniffly nose, infected navel and the laziest bowel in the Western hemisphere – kept Sausage and I on edge for a while. All seems a bit daft now, in perspective - but we were really, really worried. He just wasn't eating enough - neither of us was prepared for the incredible appetite this boy has. Man! he likes to eat.
Charlie & Lily were relatively straightforward, I guess. And while Ruairi really only had a few bog standard newborn baby complications, they still threw us for a loop. We'd somehow lulled ourselves with "been there, done that" over-confidence. I'm assigning at least part of the blame to the parents' favourite standby - that wonderful one-size-fits-all, million-and-one-uses excuse: sleep deprivation.
Lack of sleep helps heighten your emotional sensitivity to the point that you end up doing stupidly stupid things like waking your infant son at 3am because you want to check he's only asleep. The very intensity of the emotions is exhausting. So much so that you really need to sleep. Which you don't get to do much of. Which makes you more emotional. Which is really tiring.
Zzzzzzzzz.......