Three Months

... that's how long it's been since the Z-Baby was born. I thought by now we might have a schedule. I thought by now, I would be writing again. I thought.... Well, in the spirit of the Mama Zen book given to me by Mary, I think I thought too much. Motherhood seems to be about letting go of any conception you have, besides the conception that is the baby.

Not a complaint, just an observation. I'm a lucky woman with a privileged life. I have a baby who is bright and smiley and sleeps between 4 and 6 hours depending on the night. For a little one as young as she, that's a full night's sleep.

I usually get between 3 and 5 of those hours myself, plus another 1 or 2 when she goes down at 2:30 to 5:30 a.m. I'm not a morning person, but by 6:30 most mornings, I'm feeding Z again.

In case the sleep portion leads you to think I have a miracle perfect child, I should mention the 30-minute crying session that happens every morning around 8 a.m., right before she sleeps. Norman the cat now joins in, as he sees it as a possible route to attention.

And then there's the daytime naps themselves, which are either almost nonexistent (20 minutes or less), or only last longer if the Z-Baby is sleeping on mama. I have seen so much closed captioned Food Channel while she sleeps that I have their schedule almost memorized. Next week I'm going to try to help her out of this habit. This week, we set the bedtime routine (which so far she is totally OK with).

I never thought I'd be making choices like: should I take a shower tonight or face not getting one tomorrow or should I try to take time to write my blog post or go straight to bed at 10 p.m.? I haven't really taken an afternoon off from Z yet, though I did make a doctor's appointment and a trip to the farmer's market without her last week. This weekend, we're committed to giving me at least a few hours. To be honest, I know all I'll want to do is sleep.

In two weeks, the darling husband is free to watch the baby a few days a week. Then I will be back to writing. At least that's the plan.