Back When APL Was Young

Things have settled down sufficiently here (the 6-week mrk) for me to actually write about what was happening early on:

Lots and lots of crying.

I'm not referring to our son. Karin was, over the first few weeks, crying constantly. They were not tears of joy, unfortunately. I would defer to her in terms of describing what was behind the tears, but I don't think she really knows precisely and I don't think she wants to write about it.

Karin had been preparing for the birth for months. We had been taking hypnobirthing classes. She had been doing physical and intellectual exercises religiously. And we had hired a Doula, who was going to be with us for the entire process.

When if finally did happen, Karin went trough 60 hours of intense, sleepless, draining labor. At about the 48 hour mark, a mistake was made by a nurse, which set Karin's labor back so significantly that the birth she had envisioned was essentially relegated to the impossible. And, at the very end of those 60 hours, our baby's birth turned from a process and environment that reflected everything that Karin had trained for, to medicalized mayhem... suction, epesiotomy, the baby whisked away from us immediately - likely all due to the nurse's blunder.

That's not what made Karin cry.

That first night following the birth, we remained in the hospital. Notwithstanding her total exhaustion, Karin did not get much sleep, as nurses and hospital staff kept coming in to do tests and to get information. The following day we went home.

It was nice to be home but things were suddenly very different. Karin had to feed the baby constantly. Day and night. Breastfeeding was tough. Karin had intense nipple pain to add to her intense perineum pain. And our baby seemed never to be satiated. He cried a lot.

Here is what we were facing: Picture someone that needs a huge amount of sleep. Now, deprive that person of sleep for three consecutive days. During those days, put that person through the most grueling and painful, physical and emotional marathon that you can dream up. Then send that person home with a task that requires almost 24 hour-a-day attention to a tiny, fragile, living being that screams most of the time that he is awake. Now, deprive the person of any way of actually understanding why the little, fragile being is screaming at the top of his lungs. Add in severe nipple and perineal pain. And then, to top it all off, completely remix the chemical/hormonal balances in our subject's brain.

Result: Extreme exhaustion that is never-ending. Tremendous and constant gnawing physical pain. Feelings of inadequacy, as the baby seems never to be happy and has no way to articulate why, if there is a reason, he is screaming. Complete self-sacrifice in terms of time, energy, intellect, attention... with practically no reward. And the feeling, and fear, that it may never get better.

There were a lot of tears - multiple times each day and night. It was awful. It was sad. It took its toll.

What I describe above lasted for the entire first month. At the one month mark, things changed significantly. Karin is still tired most of the time but APL is not crying as much. And when he does cry, we are better equipped to deal with it. And there is now some reward: He smiles. He plays with us. He seems to possibly even like us. And we get to see him growing and developing, which is fun, interesting, and, on occasion, exciting.