Life with Squidge...

...is hectic, to say the least. Right now I am going to let what is very probably, by the sounds of it anyway, a diarrhea-stuffed diaper go for just a few minutes in order to get a little post up. That is, unless Squidget (my nickname for her, Scarlett + widget, after all she's not even six pounds!) has other plans. Am I a bad mom?

So, my daughter has now been on the planet for seven days. They have been seven days filled wtih joy and love and laughter, and let's be honest, more than a few tears (both on her part and on mine! Although Mario, rock that he is, has managed not to cry. I think he might, however, when he has to start working full time again next week! He is VERY in love with her and will use any excuse he can get to spend more time with her.) I feel great, now that my cold has mostly subsided, and feel pretty much 100% recovered. School started this week and I left my little Squidge for the first time yesterday for two hours for a meeting. I had to do it again this morning, and then my first class is this afternoon. My classes are four-hour seminars and I am not going to attempt more than half of each class this week. Maybe by next week, I will be ready to leave my baby for four hours....maybe now. I can managed two hours by feeding right before I leave and right when I come home, but four hours will necessitate a bottle feeding (I've already started pumping and building up my stock), so I'm a little nervous. Leaving's not as bad as I thought it would be, though, mostly because I get the thrill of showing off her pictures around my department.

(Booo-yah! My mom just came over and I've assigned her dirty diaper duty. Now I can post guilt-free!)

There's so much to say that I can't even think about how to focus, and what to write, so I'm just going to write about the status of two of my biggest post-baby fears, two fears that are not actually about the baby, but about my life. One is going pretty much as I expected: fear of loving my dogs less. I knew, because I'd been conditioned to know, that things would change for my poor little doglets after the baby arrived. They have been our children for so long, everyone told me, but suddenly they will be demoted to dog status. I made a vow that that would not happen, that I would not love them any less. And, I don't think I do. But it is definitely a challenge to make sure they get enough from me right now, and it's complicated by my fears of what their intense curiousity about/desperate fear of her could result in...right now Xiao mostly ignores her, but Nika tries to sniff her pretty aggressively, and even though I want to give them their space to get used to her, I can't help being protective, shoving them away. Yet as hard as it is to balance them and the baby, the other night I had a moment of profound gratitude for them. Squidge was screaming her little eyes out (evening and night are her favorite time for fits, surprise surprise!) and Mario was taking his turn trying to calm her. Xiao and Nika were laying on their beds, bewildered by the screams but behaving well, and I just laid down and snuggled them and thought, "Thank goodness for dogs...their love and their needs are so straightforward. Thank you for letting me love on you, silently!"

The other fear was my body. I have never had a "great" figure, so this fear was probably less than for many women who start from better positions! But, I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I would still look pregnant for a long time and might never be cute again. I don't know if I built it up so much that nothing could be as bad, but guess what...it's not as bad as I thought. It's not great by any means...I'm sure I'd be embarrassed if I had to wear a bikini...but, surprisingly, I already like my body again! This morning I was strutting around in front of the mirror and thinking, "I can deal with this!" So that's good news.

Okay, time to feed and get to class. More focused posts and more pictures, hopefully, soon...