one month

You could write the story of the past month of my life using only Google queries that have been pecked into my iPhone in the wee hours of morning:

“When do newborns sleep through the night?”

“When do newborns have growth spurts?”

“Is it okay for a three-week old baby to have a cold?”

“What should newborn poop look like?”

“How long is a baby a ‘newborn’?”

I didn’t like the answer to the last question.  Actually, Google’s collected wisdom varied–a number of sources informed me that a baby is a newborn until 3 months old.  Then Google dredged up Dr. Sears, who is rather adamant that a newborn is a newborn until a mere one month old.

Little One is one month old.

Hey Google, “How can I slow down time?”

I think I’ve Rumpelstiltskined the last four weeks of life.  I went to sleep in the hospital next to a four-hour old Little One and woke up the next morning, not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed but awake nonetheless, to find a Little One who had doubled in size and a brand new month already skipped away on the calendar.  Somewhere in between, meals had been delivered, visitors had oohed and ahhhed, Little Friend had perfected her big-sister bedtime tantrums, and Little One had grown into a new size of diapers.

It’s not supposed to go this quickly.

In the midst of the blurry days and nights of the past four weeks, the wonder has been getting to know Little One as a person unique from the belly-bulge that twisted, turned, kicked, and hiccupped through our lives during the months and weeks previous.  This Little One is a person of great intensity who feels the need to narrate every twinge, emotion, movement, and poop with grunts, chortles, groans, gags, gulps, and coos.  She is not a quiet child, this Little One.  She lives large.  All one month, ten pounds, and 21 1/2 inches of her.

Oh, and she’s got a great male-pattern baldness thing going on.  She’s totally chill with it.  Google?  “Where can I buy newborn Rogaine?”

We can’t help but love our poop-squirting bald bundle of vocal energy.  In the rare moments that she cries, we’ve discovered that she quiets immediately when we lean close, brush cheeks, and murmur in her ear.  It makes for much quieter diaper changes.  And all of us, Big Friend, Little Friend, and I, would walk to Timbuktu and back barefoot and cross-eyed for this Little One.

Little Friend has assumed some important duties in the past month.  She has unearthed three or four pacifiers from forgotten, dusty locations and offered the crud-crusted artifacts to her sister.  She has learned the difference between burp cloths and muslin swaddle blankets and responds eagerly to the command, “Fetch!”  She’s acquired an admirable ability to keep watching Kipper the Dog through Little One’s ear-piercing siren of a cry.  And she’s determined, with all the unadulterated certainty of three-and-a-half years old, that she’s bigger.

I’m a bit puffed and swollen.  With pride, that is.  Pride and love and some squishy version of all-day-long joy over watching Little Friend love on Little One.  When she sings “Rock-a-bye-baby” to Little One, I tear up a bit, press pause on the day, and soak it in quickly before the Rumpelstiltskin syndrome fast forwards all over again.  “Awwww, she’s so cute!” Little Friend pronounces.

She’s a model big sister.  She even shares her toys.  She even shares Thumkin.

That’s the story of a month.  Days measured in diapers and nursing sessions and outfit changes and joys and frustrations and moments so sunny and heartbreaking and precious that they have to slip by quickly or else threaten to overwhelm this mama.

But really, Google, “Where did the last month go?!”