by Cassidy Nunn | photo by Nunn Other Photography –
I’d been up every two hours in the night to feed my new baby. I was sore, tired and everything – me, my bed, my baby, the carpet – smelled faintly of sour milk. I yawned. “This is just the not sleeping time of our lives,” my best friend said on our video chat, as she cradled her six-month-old and her toddler son played trains in the background. I sipped my second coffee of the morning and peered bleary eyed at my newborn baby girl who was asleep in my arms. My three-year-old toddler daughter ran circles around me singing at the top of her lungs and I sighed, grateful we were still in the “sleep through anything” newborn stage, but also wondering what I was going to do when this phase was over and her naps were going to be easily interrupted.
Now, at three months postpartum, we’re reaching the end of the fourth trimester – a term I’d never heard of until pregnant with my first. The fourth trimester is considered the first three months of a newborn’s earthside days: that time when baby is settling into life outside the womb and mom is adjusting physically and emotionally after birth. I’ve found it to be both an enormously challenging and rewarding time. In some ways, with my second baby, certain aspects of these newborn days have been easier the second time around; others have been far harder with trying to meet the baby’s needs as well as those of my toddler. There have been tears and frustrations, profound exhaustion, but also lots of laughter and moments of joy and delight. I’ve learned, once again, to appreciate the littlest of comforts: the glorious feeling of a hot shower on my sore, sticky body; the soothing (and caffeinating) effect of a cup of hot coffee; and the satisfaction of both kids sleeping at the same time.
I find myself wondering yet again where the time has gone. In some ways I can’t imagine life before our youngest was a part of our family, and at other times, I feel like it was just yesterday that she was born. I feel the newborn daze lifting slightly. My energy levels during the day have come back marginally and I’m not collapsing into bed with the same sheer exhaustion each night. Instead, I sit in bed at the end of the day, immersed in nostalgia already as I scroll through baby photos on my phone and reminisce.
I’ve started a list of the Things I’ll Miss from the Newborn Daze:
- The newborn scrunch – that adorable position when I pick her up and she scrunches her little legs up tightly and arches her back.
- Newborn snuggles – especially the ones where she curls up in child’s pose and clings with her tiny hands to the sides of my shirt, clutching like a baby koala, her tiny chest rising and falling against mine.
- Her tiny head fitting in the palm of my hands; her ears the size of my thumb.
- The pterodactyl noises when sleeping – before we had our first daughter, I’d never known just how noisy newborns can be and that yes, in fact, they can and do often sound like how I imagine dinosaurs would sound with the various grumbles, grunts, moans and groans they express.
- The smiles, giggles and coos in her sleep – hinting at her expressions to come.
- The startle reflex – that sudden splay of all her extremities in a giant starfish pose.
- Watching her come alive to the world around her as her eyes open wider each day, taking it all in with her big blue eyes.
- And all the newborn hiccups, sneezes, yawns, and gassy smiles.
Of course when I take off my rose-coloured glasses there’s also a list of things I won’t miss from being in the newborn daze – there have been many a difficult day – but today, as I fold up the newborn insert from her car seat because she’s outgrown it already, I choose to pack it away in the closet, not quite ready to pass it along to a new home yet. I’ll keep the glasses on a little longer as I say goodbye to the daze this time around.
