Welcome to all my new readers! The visitors on this page went up by 100% in the past week, mostly because of a few grumpy posts about four or five days ago.
If you’ve subscribed to the site, or check back on it often, this is a space where I write a short post daily. I decided to do this at the beginning of the year, mainly as a writing exercise to get the juices flowing. It keeps the pipes from getting backed up, so to speak, and it’s teaching me (slowly) to write longer and longer form pieces every single day.
Writing is a muscle, that’s what they say anyway, and I think that’s true down to the base mechanics of the thing. It’s about moving your fingers over the keyboard as fast as you can, pausing to think, then starting up again, filling up that white space line by line. Then you go back and tune it up a little bit (I still manage to let a bunch of typos through) and send it out into the world.
Since my son was born…a few days ago? What day is it, exactly?, I’ve been exclusively learning how to care for a small creature. Here are some conclusions that I’ve come to over that time. I’m still very new at this!
- Babies don’t lie. He’s two days old. If he’s crying…something is wrong. I wondered to myself “does that suckling thing he does always mean he needs food?” Turns out, yes it does. Tiny babies will just stop eating if they’re full. Who knew?
- The screams can be pretty alarming! But I try and keep my cool. It’s difficult for Rios because those screams induce contractions, so she’s literally in pain when she hears him cry. I’ve got to hold it down!
- The swaddle is something I should have practiced, but I’m a “pack the night before the flight” type of dude. I tried over and over again until I got the snugness right. The kid wasn’t happy during the trial runs, but now he’s snug and chill.
- Having my son fall asleep on my chest is an experience I didn’t know I needed in my life, but man…makes me emotional just thinking about it. All of his grunts and kicks hit me right in the chest (literally and figuratively).
- I’m completely unbothered by poop and pee. It just doesn’t bother me. I’ve been picking up dog mess for 14 years. It is what it is. I just change the diaper, toss the clothes in the wash, wash my hands, and keep it moving.
- White noise sounds on YouTube put him out last night. It came to me when I was whispering shhh to calm him down. I thought, the internet has to have baby playlists, and sure enough they do. “Ten Hour White Noise Baby Sleep” is a banger. I just turned it on real low and set the speaker up near the bassinet and that was a wrap.
That’s it for now, but it’s early yet. There are many experiences to come, but I’m transitioning out of the “what the fuck do I do?” phase and into the “I got this” phase.
It’s a wild ride!
Broken River Blog 