100 days

Pete thinks a lot about what Finn will be like one day. He imagines taking him camping, playing baseball, teaching him the fiddle. He wonders what he will enjoy doing and pictures him when he is older.

Not me. It's day to day. I'm in the middle of it, and I am focused on what is happening in each moment. I am the center of his immediate needs, after all.

Plus, the 78 days he spent in the hospital, the circumstances of his birth, the uncertainty we experienced, and the bald-faced evidence of the fact that some things are just out of our control taught me to try to live in the now.

Back when I was in pre-term labor, the neonatalogist was talking to me, trying to fit her information into the two minutes she had in between contractions, and I heard "average of 100 days" in the hospital, I could not even think about it. First things first, I did not even believe that there was going to be a baby. I did not know what I believed. I was floating through the whole experience; it was out of my control. I had done all I could to ensure that this very thing did not happen, and it happened anyway. Nothing I could do now. Once Finn was born, and they said he was stable, I still did not put any stock in "the future." Everything was day by day. When I did think about 100 days, it seemed like an ocean of time away.

It soared by. At the same time, it was exhausting, nerve wracking, and frenzied, and every night we would come home and miss our baby more than we did the day before. We were at the hospital one, two, sometimes three times a day, I was pumping, we were working, we were trying to remember to eat and make time to clean the house.

Now, we have this big baby, getting bigger every day. Every day begins for me between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. when Pete brings him to me, and every day is pretty much like the one before. It's change by incremental degrees. One day, I notice that he looks a little different. That change has been happening slowly, but I don't notice it until one moment on the changing table when I look down on him, and my brain flips through other pictures it retains of my son, and sees that they don't quite match. Is it his eyes? The shape of his head? I don't know. I just sense a difference.

He's smiling responsively now, quite a lot, especially in the morning, which is usually his happy, wakey baby time. He'll gurgle and coo at the little animals that live on the side of his co-sleeper, and he's starting to get the idea that he can touch things with his hands, which means he is starting to realize that he has hands. He has figured out that he can squeal, so he does it. Quite often. His fussy time is usually from 7-11 in the evening, give or take an hour. During that time, he eats for a few minutes then gets upset, flailing his arms and crying on the boob. He likes to be walked around the house so he can look at things. He farts and strains, cries, and farts some more. Of course, he farts pretty much all day, and it does not bother him until evening. It's like being in a bad mood when you get home from work. The hours go by, the events of your day accumulate, and it gets to be too much. Grown-ups have a beer, smoke a cigarette, or go to therapy. Babies cry. It's how they communicate need and how they release stress.

By the end of the day, in fact, both of us are frustrated. My day is like his. When Pete does not get home until 6:30, we are both tired. It has been just me and him, all day together, and maybe he's tired of me and needs someone new. Maybe my milk production is low in the evening, and it frustrates him. Whatever it is, after 18 hours of pretty much Just Mama, we've both had it.

He's fussing on the bottle right now, and farting and burping. Pete has taken over, so I know it's not just me. In a couple of hours, I will have to go to bed, and it starts all over again. I suppose it's just a different kind of monotony, different from get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. It's monotony with a little baby who needs constant attention and love, who pays us back with smiles and cuddles, finger holding and the promise of little new things every day.