We apologize for the break in programming. FJ has been eating for a week straight. At least, that's what it feels like to me. Luckily, I had that cloth diaper blog all queued up, or there would have been nothing the past few days. Nothing at all.

cloth-ing

It's the mountain of clean diapers and clean flannel wipes, ready to go. Finn is a cloth diaper baby, and I don't know how he feels about it, but I am loving it. I had no choice in the hospital--he was in Pampers for two and a half months, and it made me crazy. It was just one more thing that was entirely out of our control, and we were reminded of it every three hours when his cares rolled around. It took us a few days to get into a system here at home with the cloth, but once we did, it's been pretty smooth sailing.

We're using prefolds and covers, and I am washing a diaper load about once every two days or so. I have learned to start that load before I only have two diapers left because you have to run two wash cycles and then a dry cycle. If you only have two diapers when you start, you will be scrambling, and baby (if he's Finn) will not be happy. The new washing machine and dryer have been fabulous.

This is what the preemie prefolds look like on, then covered (and hungry):

Once they are wet and off him, they go into the diaper pail which is, appropriately, a used kitty litter bin. The other nifty thing is the sprayer that is hooked up to the toilet. We spray poop right into the bowl. Though breast milk poop is more like a gourmet sandwich condiment both in color and consistency, so it's not quite as imperative that it all be rinsed out before the wash.

He just graduated into the newborn prefolds, and I don't think that the preemies will really work anymore. They are just too small. At 7 pounds, he's sized like a real baby. He's also out of most of his preemie clothes; they are going into a little bin. I'll figure out what we keep and what we take back to the NICU for them to use. The preemie prefolds will come in handy later as doublers.

The diapers arrive flat and hard, not looking like diapers at all. You have to wash them two or three times to prime them for use.

The newborn size:
I have also knitted him some covers. This is my favorite:

This is excitement these days. New diapers and new appliances.

perfection

Our baby is pretty great. We think he's adorable and sweet, strong and wonderful. But he's no better and no worse than anyone else's baby. In the grand scheme of things, he's just a baby. Because he is ours, we are in awe, impressed, and completely in love, and we are thankful that he is healthy so far, but he's one out of half a million premature babies born in the United States each year, and all of those parents think they have the best baby in the world. They are right. They do have the best baby in the world. So do we. They, because their baby is theirs, and we because our baby is ours. This baby, who is finally asleep in the sling after fussing for an hour, has made our lives richer, sleepier, busier, and more interesting. But he's not perfect. Neither are we walking around in a faerietale cloud of domestic bliss.

This experience is complicated and frustrating. We are facing financial, personal, relationship, and employment challenges and changes. I am home all day, sometimes unable to leave the couch for more than a minute. I'm ungroomed and tired, and I am running out of movies to watch. Today, he barfed twice directly down my cleavage. (Most boys only get away with that once.) He also peed on me, he's not interested in napping unless it's on me, and he generally does not want to be put down. So I type with one hand and periodically rest my cheek on his soft head and hug his swaddled baby body. It's no different from any other mother's situation, and it's really nothing to complain about.

It's also natural and lovely. I am finding out a lot about myself, things like "Wow, I can do this," and "I am more patient than I ever imagined I could be." I try to accept whatever is happening because it can't be helped. He's a baby; he's reacting purely in stimulus-response mode. If I want to be able to cope with it, I have to remember that.

We will do our best to bring up a child who has an even-keeled view of himself and the world, and we will do our best not to overprotect him or give him a complex about being a "miracle," or a complex about having been a "preemie." I don't really think of him as a preemie, anyway. He's Finn. He's not really a three-monther, and he's not really a newborn. He's who he is, and it's just fine. As with all things, we'll see what happens.

Being in the NICU for two and a half months gave me perspective. We are not alone, and we are not special. Finn is not perfect, and perfection should neither be expected nor imposed. He's a baby; he's our baby, and we love him.

Even when he does this:

Full Term

This is Finn's birth week.
He's 19 inches, 6 pounds 15 ounces, and due any day!

The Buzz

I have been cutting Pete's hair for almost four years now. This tradition started after he came home with yet another unsatisfying professional haircut. He asked me if I would do it next time. The idea of this struck fear into my heart because he's oddly particular about his haircuts, and it's so curly, I had no idea how one would approach the actual cutting. So the last time he went to get a professional cut, I sent him to my guy, and I went along to watch the process. After that, I cut it. He has never complained once about any of our home haircuts. He's gone twice, that I can think of, to get his hair cut professionally since I started cutting it, and he has been unhappy with the results each time.

See, he says I am smart, but then he doesn't listen to me.

I told him to go back to my guy, if he was frustrated that I did not have time to do it, but he tried out someone else. The cut was wrong, and you could not even see the color. Again, I told him to go back to my guy. He didn't. And he came back looking like he was either ready to go under cover over at the RNC or join the marines:

He even took along a picture of himself with a short haircut to show the girl, but maybe he accidentally showed her a picture of his infant son, because now they really look alike (aside from the pacifier). He says he will listen to me next time this conundrum comes up.

I'll believe it when it happens.

Home Alone, 3D

The Boy and I had our first overnight alone this past weekend. Rockstar Dad had a gig on Friday night and an out-of-town gig on Saturday night, leaving Finn and I to fend for ourselves for the better part of a weekend. Before he came home from the hospital, I had been thinking that I would need someone to come and stay with us for the night, and the two people who came to mind were my best friend, Kira, and my mom. Kira works the Renaissance Festival, so she was busy, and my mom was heading out to a miniature convention in Denver (That's not a very small convention, it's a convention for dollhouse enthusiasts, but I love making jokes about smallness. Never gets old for me. I am simple in many ways).

But by the time the weekend rolled around, I was fine with the idea of being alone with Finn. I am not worried about those uncomfortable silences when we don't have much to say to each other, and I don't think he's going to judge my poor grooming skills. I am pretty sure by now that I am not going to accidentally harm him through ineptitude, and he has been doing very well on his own, breathing and heart-rate wise. I was a bit concerned about sleep, as when Pete is home, I get almost three unbroken hours, but there was nothing to be done about it. I just had to ride the wave and hope for the best.

We did very well, thankyouverymuch. We slept in the bedroom together overnight, and he woke up (or I did) every three hours or so for a diaper change and some boob. As we are only talking about the period of time from about midnight to 7 or 9:00 a.m., it works out to two or three times up for about a hour with a little bit of light napping in between for me. It goes by pretty quickly, and then we are back out in the living room, in the light of day.

The concepts of Day and Night have very little relevance to me anymore, anyway. Night is something to be gotten through with as much "sleep" as possible, and Day follows night. I try to get a few things done when he consents to sleep in his basket and not on me, and it's working out pretty well. I did finally have to give up the ghost of working from home at the moment, as the solid blocks of time are not long enough to accomplish much of anything aside from making and (hopefully) eating a sandwich, pumping once or twice a day, and doing a dish here and there. (I don't bother with napping.) Admitting that I am not a superhero is difficult; I so wanted to believe that I could do it all, but I can't. This maternity leave will have to be a real maternity leave, and I am just fine with that, now that I have realized my limitations. I only get one chance to be the mother to a newborn/infant once (most likely), and it's important to get it right.

After all, I doubt that as my life draws to a close, I will be wishing I had spent more time at the office. I'm not that type of gal.

The Leash

Over a month ago, one of Finn's doctors made the decision to keep him on the caffeine for his apnea spells. This meant that he would have to come home on an apnea monitor and on the caffeine, but it meant that he could come home sooner.

The monitor is a blessing and a curse, as so many things are. It tells us when he has apnea, bradycardia, or a fast heart rate, so we have the security of being able to see that he's still breathing and his heart is still beating. But he's on a seven foot leash, and we have to drag the thing around with us when we want to move him from room to room. It means that I am tied to that seven foot area when I am home alone, and he needs to be held.

Tomorrow, we are going to do our first download of information, which means we have to find a land line to use as we got rid of ours months ago. The nurses at the apnea program at Children's will then evaluate the data and decide if he needs to stay on the caffeine. My guess is that he won't need it anymore. In that case, they will want him to stay on the monitor for a couple of weeks to see how he does off the caffeine.

(Fritz likes to lay directly in front of it, so we can't see the lights.)

It will be odd not to have it. I am used to glancing at it periodically to see those green lights flashing, but I'll just have to get used to life without the crutch. I'm sure I'll be checking on him more and more, and waking up often to make sure he's still alive, which is probably not much different from any other first-time mother.