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.