Well, the pregnancy is over. I’m not the only person to be anxious in the countdown to birth. For nearly all of my life labour was a mystery. If I considered childbirth at all in my minds eye, it would have been a montage of television births, mostly consisting of “my water broke” moments with a healthy addition of screaming and “you did this to me” accusations. So I was anxious about the forthcoming childbirth – but I am no longer anxious about that, since it is over. Instead, I’m anxious about a thousand other things.
Atticus Sleeping
For instance: my son is sleeping peacefully right now in his bassinet. So peacefully, in fact, that I cannot even see his chest moving, or hear his breathing. And that scares the hell outta me.
He is breathing, of course, reacting quickly (and acting a little annoyed) to my touching his ear.
And so far – knock on wood – he is sleeping and eating very well. I think of these two activities as being intricately linked. Eat well, sleep well. Could be a slogan for a hotel chain that serves an excellent steak.
I could go into nearly endless details about breastfeeding technique. I won’t. Suffice it to say that it isn’t as easy as you might think. Breastfeeding is both completely natural and not natural at all. It takes time and practice to get right. But putting in that time and effort will net great rewards for mother and child. Aside from J’s persistence and research, we owe gratitude to one of our nurses from the Royal University Hospital – thanks Anita.
We do of course have a long list of other people to thank. I’ll mention them in future posts!
Oh, by the way, his name is Atticus. Atticus Henry Hutchinson Mowat. It’ll be awhile for that to roll off his tongue. Ours too.
