One Month with Clive
What this first month has really been like, and the version of our family I'm watching take shape...
A month in with Clive, and the thing that keeps surprising me is how settled it all feels. After my home birth and my healing I wrote about in Two Weeks Postpartum and Three Weeks Postpartum I went into this one bracing for the chaos of three littles, that pulled-in-every-direction feeling I remember so well from before, and it hasn't come. These first weeks have been calmer than any postpartum I've had, and it's taken me a while to figure out why, because it isn't that three littles is somehow easier than two. I think it's that I'm so much more go-with-the-flow this time, I'm not stressing over the little things I would have with the others. I heard a mom say once that the more kids you have the easier it gets, and I never thought that made much sense, but I'm starting to understand it now.
We took Clive’s one month photo with this little milestone marker the same way I did for all the other kids, and he’s just lying there so still. We have videos of Elliott from right after he learned to roll where I’d lay him down for his monthly photo and he’d immediately flip over and start scooting out of the frame, and you can hear me laughing because there was no getting him to stay, and I know that’s coming for Clive too.
Our days move around him the way they do when they’re this small. I’m still nursing pretty constantly and he loves to be snug in the baby wrap for his naps, which I loveee because it means I’m hands free and can get around the house with him close. At night he nurses even more before he’s down around nine, then he’s up again around two, and again around six, and some nights a little more depending on how he’s feeling, but the thing I love most about nursing is that it soothes every situation, it doesn’t matter what he’s crying about or where we are, nursing solves it and that has made everything so much easier. I took him to an event the other night for Divi and he did so great, slept through most of it, and the second he started to fuss I sat down on the couch and nursed him and he was happy again, it was really sweet.
I'm also nursing what feels like every two hours all day, and now that I'm moving out of that early resting mindset and trying to get back into a routine, it can feel all consuming. I'll get him down for a nap in the wrap planning to get something done, and then he's up and ready to eat again and the list I made in my head just doesn't happen, and I'm learning to let the to-do list be slower than the old version of me wants it to be. But all that feeding is doing exactly what it's supposed to, he's a total chunk, he went from the 74th percentile up to the 96th, and he's 12 pounds now at his one month check.
Although I keep calling Clive, Elliott. I’ll be talking to him, or asking one of the kids to grab me something for him, and Elliott’s name comes out, and Jadyn does the same thing, we keep catching each other doing it and laughing, like how do we keep doing this out of habit, I think some part of me is still catching up to there being a new little boy in the house.
Poppy and Elliott couldn’t be more different about him. Poppy will hold him, but only when she’s sure it’ll be quick and he won’t fuss, and the second he makes the smallest noise she’s handing him right back…”Mom, he needs you, I think he’s hungry”, she takes it so seriously and can’t relax until he’s back with me. Elliott is the complete opposite, he wants to hold Clive all the time and be near him constantly, and it’s the sweetest thing how smitten he is even though he still has no idea how strong he is. I lay Clive out flat on a blanket by the window in the playroom so he can stretch out and look outside, which he loves, but the second Elliott’s up from his nap…that’s over, because he’ll come straight for him to try to poke at him or scoop him up himself.
We pulled our first real harvest out of the garden this week too, and I made a ground beef pesto pasta with steamed greens from it, and there was something about sitting down to a dinner knowing most of it came from right outside our door. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of moment we were hoping for when we moved here, and I don't take it for granted.
And then there are nights like this week where all six of us somehow ended up piled on my bed together. Poppy and Elliott had their little figurine horses out doing all the voices, “Hi, my name is horse” .., and Jadyn had Clive resting on her, and I just sat there in the middle of all of it trying to take a mental picture of it, because I know what this is, everyone still little, everyone still here under one roof (while Jadyn is home for the summer from college), and it won’t stay this way.
We were over with Anthony's family the other night, and his sister asked us, do you guys want another baby?…