Over That Particular Hump

I've come to terms with the fact that life is all about this baby for the next little while.  He's a feisty one, seemingly unlike the mellow baby sidekicks of creative blogging moms out there like Janine.  Robert's feedings are very, very frequent, especially during the night, and peppered here and there with bouts of acid reflux.  I spend one hour sleeping, one hour feeding him and trying to get him comfortably back to sleep, an hour sleeping, an hour feeding, and so on.  Of course, all of this is normal, healthy new baby stuff.  It's not as though we have a sickly or colicky baby.  In fact, he seems to be a sort of super-preemie.  But when you throw in the additional (and somehow unforeseen) necessity of feeding and taking care of myself, it's enough to put my productive artistic life on hold for a bit.  Another reason that I haven't been posting much is that I've been struggling emotionally with absolutely ridiculous, nearly crippling amounts of post-NICU anxiety.  And, ugh, who wants to read about that?  But I'm beginning to feel like a rational human being again.  And I'm ready to start looking around the wide world again too.  Because I trust (without having to check every five seconds) that he's still breathing.

Proof of Life:)

On October 8th I spent the day at the fair.  I LOVE the fair.  And I meant to post all of these photos later that night, but things came up--like my premature water breakage and whatnot.  You can read a nice, concise version of my birth story here if you'd like. 

In any case, October and half of November have flown by virtually unrecorded on Birdwoman.  So to catch up a bit, I spent most of October visiting my brand new, shiny baby in his fancy river view suite at Mass. General.  And when I wasn't there, I was on my way there.  Or on my way home from there.  Or I was home and chained to my fancy hospital-grade breast pump.  Which, despite its fanciness, is not hands-free.  And so I spent most of October unable to type.  And I've spent the first part of November adjusting to life at home with a new baby, which has been hard.  Sleep-deprived is not a good look for me.  

And so here we are.  And here are some animal friends I met at the fair a few hours before all of the shennanigans went down: