The Fourth Week

In my vast experience with childcare and newborns, I’ve concluded that the hardest week to get through when you have a new baby is Week 4.
The first couple of weeks you have people dropping off food, visiting to help around the house, phoning to see if you need anything and just generally babying you and your baby.
Then some time between week 3 and week 4 everyone thinks its life as usual. It’s starting to become expected of you to have a clean house, to start picking up what you did pre-baby in terms of chores, even do some work outside your cosy home (ask my volunteer group!) and just generally be “back to normal”.
Yet this early in the game there is still no schedule, you’re still feeding on demand, and you’re only getting a total of 1.5 – 4 hours a sleep at any given time, if you’re lucky.
This week Callum has suddenly made his displeasure at not being the centre of attention known with wisely placed full-out tantrums. They are few and far between, but that doesn’t make them any less dramatic, or hard on the ears. And we all have runny noses and sore throats (Claire too, poor baby!) so that just makes us all happy and chipper.
Steve spent last night sleeping in the trailer because when I get up to feed he “wakes up”. I don’t feel sorry for him at all, his “waking up” is nothing to the hour or more I am fully awake dealing with a newborn, and he probably wouldn’t wake up at all if he had dealt with those items I had asked him to deal with pre-birth because the rocker would be beside the cradle and I wouldn’t be feeding in our bed. But I’m also not opposed to him sleeping in the trailer, either. A tired Steve is an unpleasant Steve. On the flip side, though, being the only care-giver IN the house to all the creatures and children all night is a bit stressful. Of course, most nights the only one who needs attention is Claire, but there is still those moments when the dog, or Callum, is up in the middle of the night and I’m not entirely sure what I will do about it when it happens – maybe yell out the window? Don’t get the wrong impression, Steve will willing deal with the situation, to give the man his credit, he’s been amazing all round with the chores and the kids and totally deserves a good night’s sleep, its the making him aware of the situation that I worry about.
This is also the time when you start to think your pre-baby body should be back, and at least for me, it isn’t, and that’s depressing. I’m really close to my pre-pregnancy weight but my body? No where near being back to normal. It makes me want to go to the gym, or at least do some of my at-home dvds except of course, my TV is on the floor and the dvd player in a pile of crap in the garage and not hooked up to said TV. Even if it was I don’t have a unit to place it on so it, too, would be on the floor becoming a new toy for my son.
So I’m going on strike. I’m not going to do any of the chores that are quietly and sneakily making their way back onto my list. Vacuum? Vacuum what? Grocery shop? ARE YOU MAD? The bathroom is disgusting? huh. You need what for the webpage? That’s nice, I’m a volunteer and I’ll get to it when I get to it and that will likely be July.
I will, however, make muffins and banana bread and experiment with the no-knead bread dough again. And I’ll happily go to the beach.
Its all about priorities.
This weekend is all about tackling the “annoying” list (like no dvd player, or rocker next to the cradle) so I won’t just be lazying around expecting to be waited on hand and foot. I did put in a demand today that I want a NICE mother’s day present this year with a lot of thought put into it. And I mean NICE. Jewelery or a spa-day or something equally amazing and all about me.