On Readjustment

Newborns, disruptions, sleep debt; sketch poetry.

I certainly forgot how poorly a newborn can sleep. Between the crying, the grunting, the snorting, and a general asynchronization with normal circadian patterns, our newest gremlin kept Mrs. CWD and I sufficiently awake for most the of the first night we brought him home, continuing the pattern he set in vitro — and as I sit here typing, we’re coming off almost a full week of disrupted sleep.¹

I remind myself that we signed up for this.

Still, excuse my brevity in this week’s dispatch: you can chalk it up to a readjustment to parenting a newborn. Expecting this child to come sooner, I had last week’s Plowman’s Lunch queued up; this week, I’m left with nothing but a few disjointed thoughts and a poem I sketched earlier this week, somewhere between night and morning.²

We thought that you would never come —
your mother laboring with ferocity
(labor being aptly named) —
but still, you did
at 2:26am
gradually and then suddenly
with pushes through four contractions
(and then, one more, after) —
a head,
a shoulder,
blue and purple,
coughing —

And we laughed once we knew
that you would be okay.

Back at home, now, life still goes on. The kids still get up, dressed, fed. The coffee still gets made, the dishwasher emptied, dinner made.³ A semblance of routine to fill the day. All of this continues, never-ending, the same as before.

But different, too. It’s not an ending, but there is a beginning. Something new, something additive — something we can only embrace, accepting as it unfolds.

We’ll see you back here next week, hopefully with something more substantive.

1. Three nights by labor, two nights by near constant interruptions at the hospital, and another from the quirks of a newborn. The night nursery at the hospital remains the most valuable perk of what otherwise is a fairly lackluster hospitality experience.

2. Shout out to

Matt Smythe

for the inspiration to do this.

3. Thank you to Gma CWD for your assistance in making sure these things do happen!