We have arrived.

First of all, I have to send a HUGE shout out to my wonderful sister (with 2 lovely children of her own) who just hopped on a plane the day after Zoe’s birth and spent the past 12 days giving us a crash course on what to do with a newborn. Classes, schmasses – we could have taken 22 more classes without the actual baby and been just as dumb as we were when Zoe arrived. There’s just no substitute for on-the-job training – or an awesome sister ;)

We’ve spent the past 13 days feeding, burping and changing diapers on a round-the-clock, every-3-hours schedule, with a clear separation of duties. My role = feed, feed, feed, feed – Bart/Shawn = diapers, burping, bring whatever I left on the other side of the room to me while I’m feeding & feed the milk factory (that’s me). A few of our mission critical classes: “How to bathe a wriggling baby animal”, “The Art of the Swaddle” and “Why burping is so important”. Let’s just say we’re well below our 4.0 GPA goal, but we are definitely learning.

The real test happened after we dropped my sister off at the airport today…

We had our 2-week wellness appointment set for tomorrow with our pediatrician, but Zoe had some “goop” (technical term) show up in her eye overnight, so we called today to see what to do about it. They suggested we go ahead and bring her in today, as they had an opening at 11:10 (we called at 10:30), and we were on our way home from the airport.

Important Notes:

• it would be time to feed Zoe at 11 am…
• when she eats, she poops… (without fail, as it turns out)
• it was super HOT in the Valley today
• we’re new at this “packing the diaper bag” thing
• we have had little sleep for 13 days straight

Also turned out that we were starving (having no sense of time really messes with an eating schedule). Anyway, we arrive at the doctor’s office with 17 minutes to spare, which sounds like plenty of time, right? Bart went to find food for us, and I hopped in the back seat to feed our hungry child. If you’ve breastfed (or watched it happen), you know that there are good & not-as-good arrangements for this. Good = pillow, cool/comfortable baby, burp cloth, relaxed mom. Instead, we had back seat of hot car, no pillow, sweating baby+mom, and super awkward watching-the-clock mom who ended up with milk all over her… oops?

When dad returned with food, we were a mess – and we had 4 minutes to spare. That’s when we realized we had nothing cooler to dress our child in (poor diaper bag prep) and were going to have to rapid-fire change her in the front seat (see above), then squeeze her back into the car seat, squeeze THAT into the stroller frame, and rush to be on time.

We were only 2 minutes late, which I consider a victory.

Reading this now, it all seems pretty silly, but I assure you, sleep deprivation is a REAL issue when it comes to perspective and decision-making ;)

So we’re surviving – in fact, we have an incredible sleeping, eating, pooping baby who only cries when we’re too dumb to know what to do next, and we can’t blame her for that. Thanks for all the checkins – we’re getting our bearings as fast as we can, and as soon as we are somewhat adept at this parenting thing, we’ll be better at the “send pictures to our friends” thing. We promise! Here’s a bad iPhone pic to tide you over: