Before and After: Discovering parenthood

Where does the time go?  Somehow, now that days are divided into 3-4 hourly feeds, interspersed with naps, snuggles and various incidents in the diaper region, days fly by and I suddenly realise how very long its been since my last post.  How very long its been since a lot of things, actually.  Long showers, painting fingernails, drinking a cup of tea when it's hot.  Surprisingly to me - someone who loves hot showers, nice nails and loathes cold tea - these differences only occur to me as I sit here now and purposefully reflect on the the before-and-after of my life.

Before, I might have imagined these changes as a problem.  I know that friends and readers without children could find it hard to believe that the ways you change as a parent provide reasons for joy, laughter and general amazement that life could have ever been any other way.

For instance, this morning, I attempted to give Thom a hair cut.  Before, a quick mohawk shave for Thom was part of the weekend routine, situated in between pieces of toast or croissants and strong, Sunday morning coffees.  Today, we had to employ precision timing to get this simple, everyday task done-and-dusted between Wriggly Man's feeds and naps.  After 10 minutes of silence through the baby monitor, we thought it a safe window to get the clippers out.  But Wriggly, who must be a little psychic, woke up screaming just as Thom's head was half shaved.  We hurried through (and I'm afraid this week's mohawk might be a little crooked) so I could quickly get to Ethan and comfort him.  Covered in hair clippings is no way to snuggle a baby, so I stripped down and legged it up to little man in the old birthday suit.  Ah, the big adventures that come with such a little person.

Here's a few other odd things I've noticed in parenthood:
1. Fascination with Faeces
      Baby poo is gross.  Unless it's your baby's poo, and then it's an event.  We look to it like tea leaves, saying to each other, So that's why he's been so fussy, look at that poo! It's a suitable conversation topic at any time of the day.  It's colour, consistency, timing, smell are all very, VERY interesting.  It's difficult to say what changes as a parent.  The poo still stinks.  It's still poo, and we still recoil and wash it off clothes and hands with appropriate disgust.  But it also like a little window into baby's world.  A small way we begin to understand and identify with him.  By analysing his poo, we can say to him and each other, Yes, I would also feel happy/upset/content after a poo like that.

2. Sleep is optional
      Everyone asks, Are you sleeping?  I would say, yes, except that what counts as sleep now is totally different than before.  A few stolen moments of closed eyes, when you fall instantly into a dream about doing the thing you are about to do in a minute when you wake - that counts as sleep.  So when I get an hour between 2 and 3 am, I feel practically refreshed.  Thom said to me last night that he noticed a new forehead wrinkle on his face.  I'm hardly surprised.  We look really old as we get up in the morning.  Pre-coffee, bed-head, under-eye-baggage zombie-looking people.  It would be easy for us at this point to snap and snarl at each other's ugly faces.  But once Ethan is fed and playing on his sheepskin in the morning light, we are again restored and ready to face the day on mere minutes of sleep.

3. Enjoying giving up things you enjoy
     Before you have a baby, people say to you that you'll never have a hot meal/night out/a cent to your name again.  All of this is true.  And so many more minor things go out the window as baby enters the front door.  What these negative-ninnies don't mention is that you won't mind.  Baby's happiness and calm means more than all these worldly treasures and you'll find that you'll willingly sacrifice most things in exchange for a peaceful little person.  Just the other day I found myself pillaging AAA batteries from all available devices to get Ethan's Slumber Buddy working again.  This frog-shaped nightlight, complete with lullabies and heart-beat sounds is intended to send baby off to dreamland.  And for that I thought we could survive without a TV remote, wireless mouse or any other gizmo that previously would have been sorely missed.

4. You go a little bit insane, but it's all good
      For one thing, we have become obsessive.  I wonder what Thom and I ever talked about before Wriggly Man.  Whether we are debating the meaning of a particular tone of cry, laughing a his funny little ways or day-dreaming about his future all we seem to talk about is Ethan.  Even when we aren't talking about him, the subject matter is tangentially related to him.  What's for dinner?  Well, what can be cooked in time before he wakes up for a feed?
     We have lost our minds in other ways, too.  The things that seem normal, or even desirable now would be inconceivable to a person in their right mind.  Basic baby-tending behaviour sounds insane sometimes and even more so for the fact that these crazy things we do for baby feel ok.  If baby's nose is stuffed up, sucking the snot out of it seems like the best thing to do.  Sucking the snot out of somebody else's nose is normal.  Who'd have imagined? If baby is gnawing and pulling at my breast, I wonder if he doesn't like the taste today.  Sounds crazy.   There is no doubt that we have lost our minds, but it feels alright.

5. Baby crying is less annoying than you might imagine
      It's not annoying at all.  It is, however, heart-breaking.  Before baby, when you hear a baby cry in on an airplane or in the supermarket it is a difficult sound to tolerate.  But since Ethan, the crying is nothing like those times.  If we can divine what the crying might  be about - hungry, sleepy, cold - it isn't so bad because we can do something.  We spring into action with the calm assurance that crying will soon be comforted with whatever it is he needs.  But Ethan has no other way of communicating with us and sometimes we don't get it.  The sound of him crying is utterly tragic to us when we can't fix it.  Minutes feel like hours when he cries, but not because of annoyance.  It's because we want to cry with him.  I take it as all part of us gelling as a little emerging family.  When one cries, we are all sad.  But also when one is happy, we all smile.