The First Two Weeks

I was lucky enough to be able to take 2 weeks off work when Barney was born. It was, I suspect, the best two weeks of my life. I say “suspect” because although I remember saying that soon after, I can’t really remember much else about it. Not specifically. Just vague impressions: Waking up through the night to find Rach is already awake, feeding the boy. Staring at Barney while he sleeps (more or less all the time at first), not quite believing we made him. Changing his sleepsuits – so, so often as the newborn-size nappies leak around his scrawny little legs. Rach feeding him every couple of hours, or trying to as Barney is too sleepy to feed very well at first and falls asleep after a few sucks. And trying everything to keep him awake long enough to fill his belly – like all babies, Barney lost weight after his birth and he took a while to put it back on. The health visitor told us that he was too chilled because we were so laid back (easy to mistake zombified lack of sleep for laidbackness, I imagine) and telling us to never let him sleep for more than 4 hours, as though it was the worst thing anyone could do (we were delighted when he had a good 5 hours or so on one of his first nights). I was the first to leave the house after a couple of days, Rach even later, although it didn’t help, and somehow added to the cocooned life we were leading that the weather was terrible, raining almost non-stop. The health visitor grabbing Rach’s breasts and mashing them about, ostensibly to be helpful and demonstrate breast-feeding but it took us both by surprise. Hours rocking and shushing Barney to help him sleep, at all hours of the night (it became my special talent, partly because it was something I could actually do). Reading baby books in the middle of the night because “I was awake anyway”…. The whole thing was an exhausting blur and it’s only afterwards, when we’ve caught up on some sleep that we realised what a strange time it was. Simultaneously shapeless and yet utterly focussed on one thing. Absolutely exhausting. Absolutely magical, it was also the first time we have ever spent together as a family. Even popping to the shops to get milk felt like doing something for the family, no doubt a primitive hunter-gatherer neuron bundle which filled me with fatherly pride when I got something painted or attached a part to the shower head. It felt right.

Unfortunately those caveman instincts weren't much use when the boiler packed in, on our second day back from the hospital, and a shame it was so cold for the next few weeks until we could get a new one fitted but what do you expect, cavemen didn't even have central-heating! And I need hardly add that the pelts of wooly mammoths are thin on the ground these days. My natural layers of insulation were all I could offer at that point, as well as getting up to boil the pans of water for Rach's bath, and I can report that we all survived - luckily newborn babies don't need a lot of washing.

Oddly, for all the advice we received beforehand, none of our friends or family ever actually said how tough the first few weeks would be (although the boiler night have been hard to predict, I suppose). It’s only afterwards, when we shared our experiences that people would tell us “oh yes, the first few weeks - that was awful”. My brother did it, so did Rach’s sister. To give the benefit of the doubt it’s just possible that, as we are gradually doing, they completely forgot. Even now that the truth is out though, no-one can get their stories straight - does it last 6 weeks, two months, three months, four months until things settle down? Longer? I suspect the answer is 18 years from now.

Sadly, I'm now back at work and only get to see the boy in the morning and briefly before he goes to bed soon after I get home. More on that another day but for now I'm just glad I had that initial 2 weeks of delirium. I wouldn't swap it for anything.

If I could remember it, that is.