February 4th, 2010
Ever since Sophie had her first meal, some time following me being brought back to life after the surgery and her being shoved onto my breast by random medical strangers, we wrote it all down. We wrote down the time, the amount she took in, the type it was (breast milk or formula {another story for another time}) and if she offered up pee-pee or poop, or both. It seems a little bit much to the outsider and I wouldn’t have thought it was really a bit much before having a baby. But when you sleep maybe an hour at a time or sometimes four hours at a time and it is light out but you don’t remember it being dark ever or the other way around then writing these things down is a very smart idea. It’s amazing how a ten minute shut down on the couch with a baby in your arms can feel like ten hours and you jerk awake after your head has been mimicking a bobble head and you run to get a bottle because you’ve lost all grasp on the concept of time, or space, or reality.
And when your little one has gone almost four days without a poop, knowing that in writing is good too because really two sleep deprived people really can’t conceptualize a 24 hour period either. And worse case, you have all of this information written down in case you need to share any of this information with your kid’s pediatrician. Try remembering the times and amounts of food you’ve eaten in the last month… good luck.
With all of that said, it was decided that writing all of this down was no longer necessary. I say it was “decided” because I’m not one for letting things go. Mike kind of stopped doing it because really Sophie got into a rhythm of eating, peeing and pooping. It does become clock work and your memory of it does too. You write it down to make sure she’s eating enough and making sure that the bodily functions are functioning. I was still trying to write it all down because I thought I needed it. I am so routine driven that it’s hard for me to break a habit. Somehow I think that if I let something go, or stop doing something, that it’ll all turn to hell and won’t work anymore. Somehow Sophie would just fall off her very lose schedule or just stop functioning if I didn’t write it down.
Of course this didn’t happen. The cycle has continued without fail. Such is life. Maybe I’ll learn a lesson from this. Be a little less regimented and a little more care free when it comes to future challenges. We’ll see. You can’t reinvent the wheel. No, that’s not it. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Something like that.
