minute by minute

1/20/22

the crib situation/him sleeping apart from me is not going as well as I initially thought. The first night, he – for some reason – DID stay in his crib and sleep pretty well there, not complaining each time I put him down. But the following nights, I tried the same thing, and it wasn’t as clear-cut good. Once in his crib he rolled towards the bed (where I was), all the way up against the bars, whimpering and stretching his little arm out to me through the crib bars, his mouth pressed against one of the bars, and of course I broke. Other times, he just was fussing a lot about it and wouldn’t fall asleep easily in the crib; he wanted to be next to me touching me in the bed, because the times I would relent and bring him in bed with me like usual, he would stop fussing and sleep, or nurse until he was asleep. So I don’t know what to do. I just put him in the crib to sleep whenever I can, but if he cries too much, I take him out and bring him back to bed with me. I was thinking maybe when he gets old enough to sleep through the night (I think it should happen any month now?) then I can put him in the crib to really sleep the night, because he won’t be waking up so much? At least I know he CAN sleep in there by himself, because sometimes he does. I’ll just keep trying.

1/21/22

instead of day by day, I’m taking it minute by minute. it’s all i can do.

12 am

two things I think parents get really good at, or at least are really concerned about: 1) doing things one-handed and 2) how to do things as quietly as possible (when baby’s sleeping).

3 am

all the things the baby puts me through, i sometimes feel like i’m being hazed..into some strange fraternity. The torturous aspect of being kept up all hours of the night, getting shit on and peed  on and barfed on, it’s like pushing you to your limit in the same way.

4:38 am

I feel like a lot of newborn parenting is spent just being scared he’s gonna wake up. and revolves around the sleeping and waking of the baby.

1/22/22

so many things I loved are now buried underground.

today was popo’s funeral. my family said she was around 90, but no one knew her exact age. It was also one of the best days I’ve had in a long time. But not because it was her funeral, it just happened on the same day I guess. Rodrigo helped carry the casket to the hearse. we held hands all the time in the funeral home, I felt a little sad and scared during the service, but it helped a lot that he was there, and he watched the pictures with me that dad had gathered that were playing on the screen.  he told me I looked fat in one of the old pics and we laughed because I did, and I’m usually not. we did the car procession to the cemetery and put roses on her casket.  during the procession drive, the sun was so strong today that when we were passing under a lot of trees, rodrigo said he liked the strobelight-like effect that was happening, I thought that was nice, I didn’t notice that. we all went to lunch afterwards at P.F. Chang’s, and I didn’t like any of the food except for the spicy tuna sushi. Uncle George, aunt Betty, cousin Arnold and vickie, and Arnold’s son Andrew, and a bunch of other people from I think New York were there, who I didn’t know. It was nice to see family again, as always. I sat between rodrigo and mom, and felt nice sharing a meal with them, and we left Hunter with R’s sister, who sent us really cute pictures of him and everyone said how cute he was lol. I felt a little anxious the whole time because I needed to pump my boobs and they were getting harder and harder; I didn’t have time to pump since the time I woke up around 6 or 7 until the time we were at P.F. Chang’s, around 1 pm or so. I missed Hunter a lot during the lunch, I kept thinking everything looked like him, even the tiger on the PF Chang app. then we left, we were the first ones to leave the lunch, and while driving, rodrigo was like “want to go to that motel we went to on our honeymoon?” And I just laughed, but I saw him programming somewhere into the GPS and I just shook my head, i was too tired to ask. I wanted to get home to Hunter and pump the most, but again, too tired to care much. He pulled into this parking lot that looked like for an apartment building, and faced the front windshield of the car towards a fence and it looked like no one could see us. He was being kind of crazy, and he told me later it was because we hadn’t had sex in so long and he kept watching our sex tape recently so he was really horny lol. he climbed in the back with me where I was trying to get my breast pumps on since we left the restaurant, and he helped me and then we just got into it and had sex in the back while my breast pumps were pumping away lol. afterwards, rodrigo said he felt like 2 pounds of weight were lifted off of his balls. And during, it was beautiful, the sun was still really strong coming through the windows and hitting me all over my body, my face, as my husband pumped away on me- that was my best moment today I think, and what made my day: just relaxing and losing myself on top of him, under him, closing my eyes in the strong sun while he drank, in a way, from my body. I pumped during sex and also while we drove home after, and got like 8 ounces of milk total which is really good – maybe it was the sex oxytocin, maybe it was from missing Hunter or a combination, I don’t know. when we got home, all I was wearing were my breast pumps in my bra, my tights, and overcoat, because my dress was too tight to put back on with the pumps on. and it was freezing out.

  I keep looking at all the people around me and thinking, “they were babies once who kept their mothers up all night, and now they don’t” To give myself hope, bc sometimes it seems lk it will never end.

1/23/22

went to bed feeling ok, but this morning, I’m falling apart emotionally for some reason. I think mostly because of physical, bodily reasons: hunter woke up a lot to eat last night, and when I wanted to sleep the most (around 7 am) he was active and awake, and I could hardly function. I notice myself frequently staring into the distance/at one spot during the day and night (I think my brain is trying to rest or something).  also little things throughout the night added up: he peed in our bed (it came out the diaper), and spit up a whole breastmilk meal – once in our bed and once in his crib. 2 out of these 3 times before I cleaned it up, my body was screaming for sleep and I had to force myself up. I ran out of towels and burp cloths and needed more so that the last thing I used was literally the shirt off my back: I took it off and wiped up his milk barf – that was around 11 am this morning, and I emerged from the bedroom totally exhausted and now naked (and thus cold), to pass the baby off to R.