24/7

The thing that perhaps I had forgotten, from last time, perhaps had been blocked from memory, is the constancy of life with a newborn. Not the sameness of it, the constant-ness, the being at the beck and call of another human twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, for weeks on end. There is no "I will just run to the garbage (outside)" or "I will just run to the store" or even "I'll go to the bathroom in peace for five minutes" without at least making provision for the health and well-being of another person.

The Boy is at an age now where I can exit a room and pee, or take out the garbage, and I tell him where I am going and he is fine for five minutes. He can stay home with his father or my mother or his grandparents or at daycare with his teachers for hours. We are separated, living our own lives.

Contrasted to that, I cannot even leave a room now for a second without thinking about my daughter.

Oh, it's not that she cries each time I leave; some times she's content as ever to sit on her own. The thing is that she might NOT be, and I have to be prepared to run back and do something about it. And forget running out to the store on my own, even when her father is home. I am the only one with boobs.

And it's not that I mind. I'm not complaining. It's just ... constantly there, and it's one of those things that makes being a mother of a newborn baby exhausting.

But then some days, I lean over her, and she looks me in the eye and smiles.