So far, mommy, baby, and daddy are doing well.

I am not nearly as tired as I expected to be. That’s partly because we have a reasonably quiet baby. It’s also because a whole lot of the burden has been falling on Clancy despite my best efforts.

I can get up at three in the morning, and I can change her diapers, wipe the gunk out of her eyes, and give her to mommy, but I can’t feed her yet. Breastfeeding has been something of a challenge thus far. At first a real challenge - more on that and my more critical view of “lactivists” in a later post, perhaps - but now that the milk is coming and the baby knows how to extract it, we’re still having a bit of trouble adding some efficiency to the process (c’mon, Lain, it’s feeding time, stop falling asleep!). We haven’t gotten to the point where she accepts any alternate vehicle for the milk (we’re not supposed to use a bottle yet, and the syringe stopped working), so there’s only so much I can do.

Adding to the pressure on Clancy’s end is that she is under some intense pressure to get current on her paperwork for the office. She was planning to knock that out in the weekend prior to Lain’s scheduled c-section (the last thing she wanted to do was spend her first two weeks of maternity leave completing paperwork), but Lain did not abide by this plan. Her plan was sleep, feed, eat, sleep, feed, eat, and so on, but the tasks seem to bleed into one another and it’s been really difficult for her to take time out of her day and do that. I’ve driven her too and from the office, but obviously there’s not much more I can do to help her than that.

Adding to my more marginal pressure is that the landlord’s informed us that we need to vacate the garage so that they can tear it down. We’re sure Lain is going to love all of the demolition and construction noise. So I’ve been spending my spare time cleaning out the garage and moving everything to the basement.

Though I had a heads-up about the tiredness of parenting, one of the things I hadn’t counted on was the extent to which you would be busy all day and yet have comparatively little to show for it. Usually when I have been busy all day, there are things I can point to and say “these are the things I’ve done today!” but so far it’s been busy but with the feeling of treading water rather than actually being productive.

My brother Mitch was in town over the weekend. He wanted to be a part of the event. It was really, really nice having him here. We’re trying to sell him on the prospect of having children (note: he’s not averse in the same way that averse)

My mother-in-law also came up, and is still here, and her help has proven to be invaluable. Both in helping us take care of the baby and in getting the house in more working order.

Aside from all that, there have been a few other stresses. The first was an emergency trip to Umatilla due to concerns about her pulse and circulation. So I learned what a “pediatric cardiologist” is. Everything turned up aces on that, thank heavens. The second trip taught me what a “pediatric orthopaedist” is. She has a bit of a loose hip. Lain is in a harness now (think of it like a cast to re-set a broken arm). It’s entirely curable, but nobody likes to see their newborn in a harness. The last thing is that she has unresponsive tearducts. This typically resolves itself, but it means that we end up wiping a lot of goop from her eyes.