Four Months

Matthew is four months old today. As I write this, he's sitting in my lap leaving me only one (sometimes none) hand free to type. In four months I've gotten pretty good at one handed typing, with typos and misspellings occurring less frequently.

Last night Matthew went to sleep at 6:15, after an hour and a half of solid crying. He woke up to breastfeed around 7:30, and took some of a bottle around 8:45 without fully waking up. He slept straight through until I woke him at 7:15 this morning. I didn't sleep well last night; I was constantly turning over to listen for his quiet breathing. I think the prolonged crying episode followed by such deep sleep had me freaked out.

It's amazing that I've been a mom for 4 months already. I still feel so unprepared for this some days. Some days I can tell I'm doing a good job, but I really haven't ever felt like I get it completely right.

He's really the most amazing thing I've ever done. Sometimes the feeling of loving him so much makes my eyes fill up with tears. Nobody in the world can understand how this feels. (Except maybe every other mother?) He's so beautiful, so snuggly, so perfect. Every single thing about him is sweet and amazing.

He's changing so fast. It's hard to remember how things were just last week let alone 4 months ago. Everything passes in a blur, and it's all too easy to picture him starting school, making friends, growing up and away... Some days I just snuggle him and breathe in his sweet baby smell.

At 4 months, Matthew is intent on trying to talk, cooing and gurgling. He knows that "talking" will bring me to his crib, and he'll smile when he sees me coming to him. He and I have very serious in-depth conversations which involve his coos and my agreement. He's laughing out loud, a special funny kind of giggle that could cheer me out of my grumpiest bad mood (at least for a minute). He still sleeps in his car seat due to reflux... I'm too afraid to lay him flat to sleep. He smiles at me every time I say the word "beautiful", even if I'm not looking at him when I say it. He wants to stand on my lap pretty much non-stop. He naps everyday around 9:30 and 3:00 for about a half hour each. He loves his bath, but hates the drying off/getting dressed again part. He fusses in the stroller when he's been in it for more than 20 minutes, and he refuses to ride in it in any kind of store or mall.

The hardest part of being a new mom has been the amount of time I'm alone with the baby. Alone with no help, no one to talk to, no ability to just take 5 minutes for myself all day. I shower no more than 3 times a week... usually just twice a week. I don't believe, will NEVER believe that Mark has a single bit of understanding of what this feels like; I am absolutely certain he could never do this. I'm also fairly sure that he's thought to himself on more than one occasion "well, what did you expect when you wanted to have a baby?" I know I'm holding a lot of bitterness and mistrust towards Mark, which I will either have to get over or it will end our marriage.

All three of us are living in my mom's dining room, with a fake wall partitioning us off from the living room. We're living with 6 disgusting cats who throw up and poop in places where they shouldn't. I spend a lot of time in the make-shift bedroom with the baby, because I feel like things aren't nearly as clean as I'd like them and I do not have the time to clean them myself. I'm just waiting to move, waiting to get away from this messy house and all the cats. Waiting to have my own things out of storage, to have a nursery for Matthew. (My heart still breaks over having to leave his nursery in NC.)

This is what my life is like with 4 month old Matthew.