Getting Accustomed to Parenthood

Birth to One Month:
Life phases are fun and maybe someday Nathan will thank me for tracking his. I am starting archiving his life a couple of days before he turns 4 months old so the memories will have to suffice at first. We got to bring Nathan home from the hospital on Thursday the 17th and both of us admitted to feeling like the doctors were insane letting us walk out of there with this fragile little boy and surely some security guard was going to run up to us, as we strapped our little guy in his car seat and drove away, and say “just kidding, you don’t know what you are doing, we aren’t going to let you take him home.” I tore north and south when he was born so after Scott picked his mother up from the airport I sent him to the pharmacy for my prescriptions and . . . a donut. He had no idea what I was asking for, and I had no idea why the hospital didn’t issue me one, don’t they usually come standard after giving birth? So I was left alone, at home, with my son. OK, so he slept most of the time, but he had finally come, and I was taking care of him all by myself. I was so glad that he came early and Scott was able to spend time getting to know him and helping me out. Scott’s mom was with us for 6 days and made us breakfast in bed every morning when she came and relieved us of baby duty for a while. Nathan gave us a few potentially non-gas motivated smiles, and seemed to chuckle in his sleep and dream often of nursing, his most favorite thing in life. He was slightly jaundiced when he was born so we let him get a little sun, through the window, in the morning to get rid of his cute orange tan.
We had a few weeks by ourselves, to figure out family life before Scott went back to school. On Christmas morning one of his dental school friends needed a ride to the airport at 5am. Nathan and I slept in while Scott drove them to the airport; we wanted to open presents while using Skype with our families so with the time difference between Philly and . . . everywhere else we went back to bed. Scott and I tried and failed to take family pictures with our first family Christmas stockings and our wonderful little boy. I made breakfast burritos which we ate after opening our stockings and started a family tradition of attempting to drag out the Christmas morning wonder by breaking up present opening with food in the middle. It also gave us time for our families to wake and ready themselves for the exciting joy of watching us open our presents. We called Scott’s family and they watched us open all the presents they sent us, and some of the presents we gave each other. I got to see the hats and scarves that I made during my “lying in,” (kidding) and then we called my parents and watched them open up all the Peterson family stuff. Nathan slept through most of it, except when I was feeding him which is fun to do on camera, especially when you are new to it and don’t usually use a nursing cover, quite an adventure for both Nathan and myself.
Scott went back to school on January 4th and I was left alone to my mothering devices. Mostly we ate and slept. I remembered the good old days when I was pregnant and able to get up every morning with Scott and eat breakfast with him and send him off to school with a lunch packed in his bag, and then Nathan came and sleep time was precious and he always seemed to be either eating, or just having fallen asleep after eating when Scott was getting up, so no more morning routine.
Nathan’s first trip to church was exciting. He slept most of Sacrament Meeting and Scott and I were horrified the whole time that he was going to . . . start working on filling his pampers. I’ve never seen someone put soo much effort into it and for such a little guy, he packs a walloping loud toot. Luckily he saved us the embarrassment of denying blame for a sound that others couldn’t possibly believe came from our angelic little one, and actually took a pacifier and slept. He then proceeded to eat almost the whole remaining 2 hours and I got to spend a horrifyingly long time in the extremely smelly mother’s lounge that doesn’t need to be connected to the bathroom, really!
Aside from the almost clockwork regular diaper change/getting peed on every time, routine I can’t remember too many other moments of note other than the all famous “Scott, I warned you about putting your face down there while changing the baby” one. Let’s just say, Nathan can get distance with number ones AND number twos and Scott has since sanitized his glasses!