These are the easy days
My mom called the other day, wanting to know what on earth I was blathering about in my last post, when I said that I would be in this house for a long time, while in the very next breath I was talking about househunting.
I'm confusing, I know. That's what comes of writing while sleep-deprived and slightly delirious. You'll notice that I was rambling about lice, too. Ha ha. Who has lice? Not us!
Well, we do. Or we did. Hopefully. But enough about that.
What I meant about being in the house for a long time was that I'm in a sense in confinement. There is a custom that a woman doesn't leave the house for four weeks or more after birth, here in India, in China, and in who knows how many other countries. As soon as I moved here, I understood. Because if I leave, the baby comes with me, and really, Little Solo needs to be home, where it's safe and clean and (fairly, well okay, not all that) quiet.
So I'll be here for a few more weeks, and even after that, I don't think we'll be doing huge marketing trips in Solo's newborn stage of life. There simply aren't family rooms at the mall where we can sit and nurse. There isn't even a mall. I tend to be a girl who likes to be out and about, at least a little. I like the conquest of the market, the breeze rushing by me when I'm on the scooter. My creativity is fueled by motion, usually driving, sometimes walking.
That said, I'm looking forward to these next few months or weeks. It is a far cry from Kid A's infanthood, otherwise known as the time I stood in bank queues with him in the sling at eight days old, feeling like my uterus was about to fall out.
Now we're more likely to be doing this:
Little Solo is all shiny from the coconut oil of his first massage. I have to say that one of my favorite things about the birthing center here is their postnatal care. During the first week, one of the midwives has come to the house every day; to help take care of the cord, (good in this climate- it took longer to fall off, and I would probably have worried over it without them) just to talk, and to demonstrate the massage and bath. Of course I have massaged my babies before, but it is still nice to have a refresher.
So, yes, we'll be massaging and bathing and feeding and doing laundry and checking out the insect life and reading and doing math pages and workbook stuff and drawing and writing stories and Solo and I will be home together while the others run around doing their run around things. I will sink into "home".
By the way, Chinua uploaded his incredible photos from the day of Solo's birth to Flickr here.
I'm confusing, I know. That's what comes of writing while sleep-deprived and slightly delirious. You'll notice that I was rambling about lice, too. Ha ha. Who has lice? Not us!
Well, we do. Or we did. Hopefully. But enough about that.
What I meant about being in the house for a long time was that I'm in a sense in confinement. There is a custom that a woman doesn't leave the house for four weeks or more after birth, here in India, in China, and in who knows how many other countries. As soon as I moved here, I understood. Because if I leave, the baby comes with me, and really, Little Solo needs to be home, where it's safe and clean and (fairly, well okay, not all that) quiet.
So I'll be here for a few more weeks, and even after that, I don't think we'll be doing huge marketing trips in Solo's newborn stage of life. There simply aren't family rooms at the mall where we can sit and nurse. There isn't even a mall. I tend to be a girl who likes to be out and about, at least a little. I like the conquest of the market, the breeze rushing by me when I'm on the scooter. My creativity is fueled by motion, usually driving, sometimes walking.
That said, I'm looking forward to these next few months or weeks. It is a far cry from Kid A's infanthood, otherwise known as the time I stood in bank queues with him in the sling at eight days old, feeling like my uterus was about to fall out.
Now we're more likely to be doing this:
Little Solo is all shiny from the coconut oil of his first massage. I have to say that one of my favorite things about the birthing center here is their postnatal care. During the first week, one of the midwives has come to the house every day; to help take care of the cord, (good in this climate- it took longer to fall off, and I would probably have worried over it without them) just to talk, and to demonstrate the massage and bath. Of course I have massaged my babies before, but it is still nice to have a refresher.
So, yes, we'll be massaging and bathing and feeding and doing laundry and checking out the insect life and reading and doing math pages and workbook stuff and drawing and writing stories and Solo and I will be home together while the others run around doing their run around things. I will sink into "home".
By the way, Chinua uploaded his incredible photos from the day of Solo's birth to Flickr here.