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Housewivery
2005-07-29, 12:36 p.m.

Tomorrow Jack will be one month old; I can hardly believe it. It also kind of amazes me that I've been running on half-sleep for that amount of time as well. There's got to be something in the hormones that makes that possible, because most of the time, even still, I really don't notice. Jeff, on the other hand, he gets twice as much sleep as I do on most days, and he's not fairing as well. I really hope that this is because he's also working 5-6 days per week, most of them are double shifts of 12-15 hours. Otherwise, if it's just the sleep, I'm starting to wonder if he's going to be able to hack it as the stay-at-home parent once I go back to work. Normally, he functions on less sleep way better than me.
Speaking of going back to work, as I figure it, the end of this week marks the halfway point in my maternity leave. I got the release from the doctor on Wednesday saying that I'm good to go back on 8/29 (which reminds me that I need to contact my supervisor), but then I'm taking another week of vacation on top of that. As luck would have it, the following Monday is Labor Day, so that's a paid holiday which means I'll go back on that Tuesday for a grand total of over 10 weeks off with pay. Very nice how it worked out that way...
All of this time off has made me think of whether I'd be able to be a homemaker, if I had that option (which, thanks to my kick-ass benefits, it wouldn't matter if Jeff made 10X more money than I do--I'd still have to keep my job just for the insurance). Right now, it's turning me into a bit of a hermit because I'm putting off having to take the baby out by myself for as long as possible. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've left the apartment since we came home from the hospital and only 2 of which have been all by myself (and they've both been in the last 3 days). Once I get over going out in public with him, I think doing this full-time might be possible for me. With the exception of the junk mail piling up again because I don't want to fire up the loud shredder while he's asleep, the apartment has been way cleaner now that I've been home. I'd say I accomplish more in one day at home than I ever do at work--and that's even when I don't do any extra cleaning. I really hope that Jeff also feels this way when he's home.
Well, before I sat down here, I had about 3 or 4 things I wanted to write about and this was only one. Now, somehow I got distracted... Oh, cripes, yeah... Another one was my swelling/baby weight. When the home visit nurse came a couple of weeks ago to check out me and the baby and see how we were doing, she told me that my little residual belly that I've got going on here was still swelling from the surgery and would go down in a few weeks. I had no problem believing that because a.) it was still pretty tender to pressure and b.) it was pretty solid--not flabby like it was fat. Now, this isn't counting the stretched skin--I know perfectly well what that is and that it's still working on getting better and I'm okay with that. You can't be as all-belly as I was with such a large baby and expect your skin to just shrink right back. It's better than it was, but still have a ways to go. Anyway, when I was at the doctor's on Wednesday, he said (this is the doctor who did the C-section, not my regular OB/GYN), that nothing down there should still be swollen, so no, that's not what it was. I said, "Well, but it doesn't feel like fat and I can't just exercise away swelling--I'd have to wait for it to go down on it's own, so what is it and what am is supposed to do about it?" The thing I miss about my doctor is that she would just give it to me straight. Not this guy; he looks pretty young and is probably still scared to death of malpractices suites so doesn't want to say anything for sure. All he said was that having been pregnant that my ab muscles can't be expected to be as tight anymore. Well, yeah... I understand that, but I also understand that there are people who've had kids that have flat stomachs after the fact too, so what can I do to be as close to one of those people as I can? I said, "Oh, so it's just the muscles that are still stretched out, so I can exercise those to tighten them up a bit?" He looked at me like I was speaking Japanese. Oh for chrissakes... Just tell me something I can work with already. As it is, I'm only about 6-11 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight (given my 5 pound fluctuation from that time), and seems to be about 1 pants-size too big (because of this gut that isn't swelling and isn't fat and isn't saggy muscle tissue--perhaps it isn't really there at all and is just my imagination. So why don't my pants fit then?). I'm allowed to try Pilates again in 2 more weeks, so we'll see then if things don't firm up.
I've officially crossed over into the world of child-related entries that probably mean nothing to anyone but me. Another joy of motherhood.

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