Reinforcements have arrived

I am slowly exiting the cave of baby exhaustion. I think this has actually been a much easier transition than it could have been. At the same time, the cycle of

get Sam readyàgo to hospitalà return from hospitalà get Sam à return to hospital (do some work sometime)àgo home and get Sam to sleep

was getting old quickly. The two were in the NICU for ~ 10 days. Things were relatively smooth, but navigating a hospital in a foreign language is a pain. The good thing is I can now say words like: wheelchair, injector, ultrasound, surgery, and anesthesia.

The babies are amazingly cute. Eli looks liked a cloned Sam, but smaller. Eva reminds me a bit of one of her cousins. They are both now sleeping in Emily’s snugglenest, which sits in the bed next to her. Sam and I share a room, and he is mostly a good sleeper. Emily will probably repeat the pattern of last time, where she gets twelve hours of really bad sleep every night. Emily is producing a prodigious amount of milk and rapidly shrinking to her former svelte self. (Me, not so much.)

The grandparents are here, which is a big help. They are great during gap times (getting Sam off, arriving home) and help tremendously with all manner of household problems (changing lightbulbs, cleaning dishes, etc.). Surprisingly, I’ve cooked dinner the last two nights. They are enjoying this cool, green, and sunny city.

OK, but I’ve gotten just a bit of backtalk from people about the sleep complaints, linking to the articles on paternal postpartum, etc. At this point, I want to clarify that this is that rare breed of a blog, written by a quasi-at-home, but really should be working a lot, dad, and that as the de facto translator, transporter, and baby diarist, I will be doing a lot of complaining. Emily had her own blog post once, and she wrote six basically six mini-novellas over a year and then stopped. If you want regular updates, it’s got to be, mostly complaining about sleeplessness and how hard I am working.