How to make lunch with a newborn?
(Second attempt)
1. Have your mum come over to take care of the kids
2. Get very excited about making the food as a finishing touch.
3. Put some paprika powder in your soup
4. That was not paprika powder. It was chilli powder.
5. Do your best to make the soup less spicy by adding: milk, yoghurt, peanut butter, lemon juice, sugar and… more stuff.
6. Go take a shower
7. Realise you forgot to turn the gas off
8. Clean the soup-covered kitchen
9. Serve the soup
10. Make your kids cry because the soup’s way too spicy and their mouths burn
11. Try not to cry yourself
12. Throw the soup away
13. Have your mum make scrambled eggs for everyone
1. Start preparing food when you feel hungry, around noon
2. Peel a few potatoes
3. Feed, carry and cuddle a crying baby
4. Put the baby down
5. Feed, carry and cuddle the baby
6. Put him down
7. Feed, carry and cuddle the baby
8. Put him down
9. Warm up a can of beans around 15:30
10. Feed, carry and cuddle the baby
11. Eat cold beans
Learning from my mistakes, I’m going to do some things differently in this recovery period. I’ll ask for help, I won’t overdo it and I’ll sleep when the baby sleeps. Which means from 02:09 till 02:38.
Jay posted on Facebook, for all of our friends (and people we randomly added as friends on Facebook) to read:
Our daughter Molly was born at 03:55 this morning (3,190 g / 52 cm). Iva and Molly are both doing well and are currently catching up on some much-needed sleep after an exciting night. Iva and I are extremely proud and happy, and of course still a little bit confused. Thanks to you all for your love and best wishes.
What he didn’t post on Facebook were the following interesting facts:
-Molly’s expected date of birth was on the 20th of September and we both expected me to give birth exactly then. After that uneventful day passed, we basically just sat around and waited for something (anything!) to happen. We did that for full 7 days.
-at 9 a.m. on the 27th I was woken up by a strong urge to poo. I repeatedly went to the toilet in vain every half an hour until Jay suggested that a need to poo doesn’t usually come at regular intervals and most of the time it actually results in pooing. He cleverly suggested that I might be feeling contractions which was a lot more exciting thought (and way scarier!) than just common pooing.
-I had weak contractions every half an hour until about 6 p.m. We had a wonderful day: went on a long walk, installed a contractions app (or four, on each phone) and cuddled in bed, feeling very relaxed and calm and happy and excited and relieved that something was finally happening.
– around 6 p.m. we went for another walk with Klara and that’s when the contractions started getting so strong that I had to hold on to Jay every time I felt one and breathe through them. That didn’t stop us from going to the supermarket to stock up on snacks and drinks for the hospital. While Jay was getting everything we needed (and more), I held onto a shelf and was breathing through my contractions, very aware of the shocked looks other shoppers were giving me.
-we dropped Klara off at the neighbours’, got into the car and drove to the hospital where they were about to send us home because my contractions stopped and nothing was happening. After I begged them to stay and almost started crying with frustration, they told us to return two hours later but not to leave the hospital. Which we interpreted as: “Leave the hospital and go out to dinner”. So we chose a nice Italian nearby.
– I couldn’t finish my pumpkin soup because my contractions were too painful. So Jay had to eat both of our meals.
The rest is either a blur or too graphic to be described publicly. A lot of… pain / drugs / shouting / cuddles with the best husband in the world / directions in German from the nurses which my drugged up brain couldn’t understand… later and I was holding a strange looking, soft little baby in my arms. Jay cried and smiled and laughed, Molly was falling in and out of sleep and I believe I was in a state of shock and complete confusion. She was inside me for nine months and I was already used to her being a part of me and all of a sudden she was on my chest – a tiny human, capable of surviving outside me, but completely incapable of living without me.
So complicated to comprehend and yet so simple, all at once.
I had just given birth to the most precious creature in the world.
No birth goes unannounced these days.