Part 27: First weeks II
Our premature baby thrived diligently and steadily. Even though it took some time from 1490g to discharge, eventually our big day came too. From the microcosm with hand disinfection and sorting into the pecking order hospital into the big wide world it should go without traffic jam in the evening and in the dark. The car filled to the brim with all the lovely presents, the baby put in the Maxi Cosi and up onto the highway. An eerie feeling. Where cables had just been stuck to Milla’s skin, recording the heartbeat, there was now my hand, wanting to know whether the chest was rising and falling. Breastfed once on the way. No grumbling or grumbling.Unpacked at home, said welcome to your home in the stairwell, turned all the heaters up to five and then put straight into the side bed. The good 2 kg child immediately rowed with his arms. At first we thought it was cute. But when it didn’t stop, we finally took it in our arms. For about four months.
With the baby, the father also moved in with me. That was a good thing and a problem at the same time. First single and suddenly two people more and a total of three different day/night/rhythms, piles of clothes, shower gels, comforters, winter jackets, pairs of gloves. I tried to counter the chaos with external order and the vacuum cleaner. It wasn’t easy with all the baby paraphernalia, three people and sixty square feet, already the infamous fly on the wall was bothering. And I had enough sleep. A luxury mother, so to speak, with a baby that initially only drank every 5 hours and slept 12 hours at night. Gianni on top of it in the living room, in whose arm the Milla wandered in the morning, so that I could sleep on without her still something undisturbed. The child, on the other hand, did not do much yet. I pushed it through the deer hills, whether fog, sun or snow, dragged it up and down stairs, to friends, to cafes, to physical therapy, to the pediatrician, to the great-grandmother’s funeral. And yet it dominated my life almost completely. It cried punctually at 20h at dinnertime, it slept from midnight and in between I sang, rocked, chatted, blow-dried incessantly, so that the child and I had something from the day, so that a child would become of the child, who could articulate his needs at some point, walked, talked and to whom everyone no longer said: but there is still someone very small.
At some point, I also gradually reappeared. One evening I discovered myself in the swimming pool. One morning in the stroller cinema. One night at the disco. Date. A little smooching and being drunk. Dance carefree like a teenager until early in the morning. The baby, which gradually grew larger, also became smaller again at the same time and eventually shrank to baby normal size. From then on, Gianni visibly inhabited his own apartment.
