Tuesday 24 November 2009

Free Time


It is impossible to relax while in the same room as Alex.  He can be as happy as a lamb, fast asleep or being entertained by someone else, it doesn't matter.  If he's there, then you're on duty.  The sense of responsibility is so strong that even being in the same house as him make it nearly impossible to relax.  It's pretty wearing for me.  For Nicola, it's a thousand times worse.

I can (with permission, of course) get out of the house.  Work is sort of relaxing.  (At least it isn't quite so oppressively constant.  My PhD doesn't cry if I leave it in a different room for a couple of minutes.)  Nicola is tied to Alex all day, every day.  She could leave him with me and a bottle of milk, but even then her body will conspire to remind her of her motherly duties.  Stopping to express breast milk is not the sort of thing that makes for a great evening in the pub.  Not expressing leads to leakage, which is just as bad.

The practical upshot of this is that Nic hasn't had an evening out on her own since Alex was born.  She's had the grand total of one evening off duty when I took Alex to Leith.  Otherwise, she gets an hour or two free time in the house of an evening while I look after Alex.  It's not really enough.  It means that by the end of the day she's totally spent.  But she can't just have an early night.  Oh no.  Alex needs his final snack before bed.  And if I bottle fed him that, Nic would end up with rocks for tits.  Rocks that oozed milk.  (I have woken up in a puddle of breast milk recently.  It's not pleasant.)

As Alex gets older and goes to sleep earlier, I suppose this will get better.  Not quite sure when that will be though.  Until then, free time is, for Nic at least, just a distant memory.

EDIT:  A comment from Nic.

"It’s not as bad as all that – Alex is such a super cutie and it wasn’t as if I was a wild party kid before getting pregnant anyway!

"Is it particularly mad to admit that I really like the middle of the night feeds – Alex is such a funny snoozy chops when he’s all full of milk! N x"

1 comment:

  1. How excited am I to have found your little space?

    Very. ;)

    xo

    ReplyDelete