Life is getting more structured and I am just really starting to realize it.  E has pretty much established his schedule though I feel like it varies through out the month.  We definitely seem to be on a monthly rotation that is most identifiable by E's sleep patterns.  We'll have about a week where E will sleep more than anything else and then over the next three weeks after that he slowly starts sleeping less and less and less until he has a few days where he sleeps at night and can only do half hour naps in arms during the day.  Those days are hard because I can't sleep while he is napping if I need to.  And, when I do get the chance to lay down it really doesn't last longer than fifteen minutes and I wake up to E crying.  I think that is the worst part of having a baby- you don't really get to wake up in silence or peace.

The days of bad sleeping make for a cranky little boy so that time is difficult.  Then, the cycle starts over.  In the week where E is sleeping a lot I am too, so the housework isn't getting done as much.  Plus I just spent the previous days with a baby I felt like I couldn't make happy and so my confidence is blown a bit.  This past group of "bad sleep days" are the first I have handled well without a crying meltdown or irrational behavior towards Marc.

I haven't really had time to myself since E was born.  Partially that is because we are living in a new place so I don't have established friends to hang out with or regular activities to continue doing.  In Toronto I played water polo twice a week and I miss it so much now.  Joining the Toronto Triggerfish was something I did kind of on a whim just because I felt like it.  And joining a water polo team is not the only whim I just acted on.  I think about my last few years in Toronto almost as a past life now.... having a baby kills selfish parts of you that you didn't even realize were selfish.

This past weekend I did the first thing "for me" in Denmark.  I went to a gospel choir workshop in Aarhus with a group of ladies from church.  A new friend, Ida, invited me in front of my mother to come along back before E was born.  My mother encouraged me and in the end I think God really pushed me to agree to go.  I was afraid to go because I knew E would have to come along since he needs to be fed during the day.  And, I had to decide whether or not to go when E was about a month old so I had a really bad "worst case scenario" in my head.  The workshop ended up going really well.  I think E loved being wrapped to me all day as I sang and danced.  Any time he got fussy, he was happy to take my hand and munch on a finger of his choosing.  He actually removed the finger he was sucking on and inserted another into his mouth a few times.  I was very impressed with how he behaved and I was able to learn all the music.  On Saturday we are performing a concert.  Obviously, Marc will have E for the concert and hopefully for the hours beforehand.  I am just hoping E behaves as well for Marc as he did for me.

Life in Denmark, as hard as it has been to relocate, is getting more busy and I am starting to see what "normal" will hopefully be like.  I will be able to learn Danish.  I will have good friends with children of similar ages.  We know more people our age here who are having babies, newly married or about to get married than we did in Canada.  I will have too many activities to go to.  I may even work a full time job before I know it.  But, it's all going to take time to coalesce.  I have recently accepted the fact that I can't make any of the adjusting happen faster then it is going to happen and in doing so have found an overall peace that I didn't have before.  I really feel like I want to stay here and build a permanent life.  I feel like in a Danish life I will be able to raise E and any of his future siblings in the ways that before were just the ideals in my head.  So many aspects of raising children you don't have control over and in Denmark, the parts I can't control are done the way I would do them if I could control them.  It does suck that our family is far away, but I can see a Danish surrogate family being put together around us- God is great.  I am overwhelmed with how great everything is and I want now what I see can be in the future.  But, the lesson that nothing great comes easy is being reinforced in me these days over and over again.  It would be easier if everyone in the world spoke one single language, but human brains would not be as dynamic.  It would be easier if I bottle fed my baby, but I want to be all he needs.  It would be easier if I lived near family and old friends, but I would not be in a community where my ideal expectations are realities; where my children can grow up in as close to perfection as I can imagine there being.  Possibility feels so good.

Moving to Denmark has not been the easiest transition.  We don't speak Danish yet, and although everyone speaks English, it is not the default language choice for communicating.  English is a second (or third or fourth) language for probably 95% of the people we have met so far.  We have had people roll their eyes at us when we tell them we can't speak Danish yet.  Maybe having a small child makes people think we have been here longer than we have, but strangers just seem to assume we should be able to speak to them.  For the people who know us, it is different.  We have been blessed to have met people who care about our well-being and have gone out of their way to include us in their lives.  We have not had the ex-patriot experience you read about normally on the internet in regard to Danes and I don't know if it is because we live in Jutland, or because we have met most of the people we can call friends right now through the church we attend.  The Danish families we have met are incredibly friendly and they have gone out of their way to incorporate us in their lives.

Specifically, one family has truly blessed us.  Jørgen and Jytte are a wonderful couple who have really taken us under their wing.  They were missionaries in Africa for ten years so, as they always say, they know what it is like to be outsiders in a new country.  We are extra lucky that their children are having their first babies right now too.  Their oldest daughter has a little girl who is only six weeks younger than E, and their son's wife is due to have a baby next spring.  Their niece lives in the same town as we do and also had a baby girl three weeks after E was born.  So, it seems like E wont be at a loss for friends his age at church.  Jytte is in the picture with E at Lea's house (Lea is the oldest daughter).  We went for a visit a few weeks after Lea's daughter was born.  E is almost two months old in the photo.  He really enjoys his reflection and so Jytte is showing him a mirror.  Lea has a mesh disc swing type thing for her baby suspended in their living room which E is laying on.  The swing is really cool, though I don't know how useful it would be after the baby starts rolling over itself ...  I also don't know how much weight it holds.

E was in a good mood for the start of the visit, but then he started to get fussy.  E is loud about the things in life that make him unhappy.  Actually, he's pretty loud about the things that make him happy too, but when he is unhappy it is not easy to have a conversation around him.  When we visit people, I find that I spend a fair amount of time in adjacent rooms with him as he loudly protests whatever is bothering him or loudly enjoys a meal.  Since E was really only settling if I was walking him around and I was trying to talk with Lea, Jytte offered to take E for a walk outside.  She returned ten minutes later saying she thought he was hungry because he started crying while they were walking.  It didn't matter if E was hungry or not, he was definitely at the point where boob was the easiest solution to settling him down and he fell asleep pretty quickly after that.  After a short nap in my arms E woke up and had been sitting quietly in my lap facing outward (a position he was newly content to be in) for about ten minutes when Lea's daughter woke up.

Danes have interesting customs when it comes to raising children and I "get" all of them so maybe if we had arrived in Denmark sooner I would be doing more than observing them.  A very Danish element to child rearing that we have yet to try is using their huge prams to transport children.  I do think the prams are monstrous and would be burdensome for getting on and off the train, or walking a crowded city street.  If we had a car to transport it and a yard to push it around in, I would be more interested in getting one.  The Danes don't bring the prams inside really, so they don't get in the way in that form.  The babies sleep in lifts that can be carried in and out easily.  The prams are really like small cribs on wheels and using it allows a baby to sleep outside- something Danes seem to swear by.  Take the baby for a walk in the pram, it falls asleep and the parents just leave the baby outside in the pram with a baby monitor until it wakes up.  I would do it with E if we had a pram..and a place outside to leave the pram; it seems like the more outside air he breathes in a day, the better he sleeps.

In any case, E was sitting nicely on my lap when Lea's daughter woke up in her pram on the porch. Lea brought her into the living room- she was crying as any three week old baby would be after a long nap.  E got very quiet and just watched Lea's baby.  Lea handed her daughter off to Dad as she prepared to breastfeed, E watching intently the entire time.  Once the feeding started it took E about five seconds before he yelled "Neh! Neh!" -the sound he makes when he wants boob.  He then turned around and looked into my eyes and started wailing as if to say "I want to do that too!"  So, I had to bite Lea's styles and start feeding E as well.  It was the first time I had really heard E separate his "talking" and his "crying."  I felt really proud of us because I want him to be able to express himself and I want to be able to understand that expression.  Plus, it was just totally cute.

Six weeks on Monday since I had my baby...

Breastfeeding just started getting really awesome in the past week or so.  We learned quickly and E's latch was good from the start.  I did enough research to know exactly how I wanted him latched on and wouldn't accept anything less because I didn't want him to learn wrong.  I got a crack in one of my nipples because I fell asleep while breastfeeding in the first few days and E's latch slipped.  I was asleep so I didn't correct it and I woke up to him munching only on the nipple itself, no aureole.  One of the perils of narcoleptic breastfeeding I guess.  The other issue I have had with narcolepsy and breastfeeding is that when I'm extremely tired my cataplexy acts up so every time E sucks I lose my muscle tone for that fraction of a second over and over and over, it's really just irritating more than anything else.  I breast feed lying down to help me transition from asleep to awake which is a necessity for me to have.  I had to figure out how to breastfeed lying down because I got mastitis and my fever was so high I couldn't sit up to feed.  I wanted to try different positions sooner but I was waiting for my nipples to not hurt so much.  That was apparently a bad idea as using only the one position (cross-cradle) may have encouraged the infection- along with the crack in the nipple and using nipple shields to not leak all over everywhere.  I am really starting to enjoy breastfeeding now, but in the first weeks I understood why the bottle was invented.

I let E breastfeed whenever he wants it.  Babies use boobs to eat and also to sooth themselves.  Initially, E was eating too much and throwing up when my milk came in because he wanted to sooth himself so often.  He wouldn't take anything besides boob, but eventually he accepted a pinky finger.  I still have to put him to sleep with my finger pretty frequently, though it's dropped off a lot recently.  The sucking reflex is a force to be reckoned with, but I feel like if I didn't allow E to use me as his soother in addition to his meals, my milk wouldn't be so plentiful.  It is a bit of a nuisance when we're around other people to have to pull a lady out to calm E down (even though Danes are very accepting of public breastfeeding), but we're learning how to feed in the wrap which makes things much easier.  We also found a pacifier that is shaped to sit on the roof of E's mouth.  E really hasn't taken well to any pacifiers, but this one he will keep in his mouth long enough to calm down.  We really only use it when we're out.

Baby wearing is really nice.  I love to do it even though it is not the most convenient thing.  It's good once baby is in the wrap, but there can be a lot of effort needed to get to that point.  E isn't fond of being restrained so it takes him a few minutes of screaming to calm down and accept that he is in the wrap.  He then, promptly, falls asleep (usually).  I think my biggest problem with the wrap is that I thought I would be able to put one on around the house and pop the baby in and out as necessary.  I have found that in reality the wrap gets so twisted around when wearing it without the baby in it that by the time I want to pop him back in, I have to put the wrap back on.  For out of the house it is great.  Well it's great for in the house too, I just need more time to get patient with it or I need to sew myself a sling.  I am focusing on completing both.  I really dont put E down very much.  If he is awake and alert he is happy to sit in his rocker or on a blanket for almost ten minutes before wanting to be held again.  If he is sleeping in arms it's a crap shoot whether he will wake up after being put down or not.  In any case I have very small amounts of time spent with two hands and a not exhausted body capable of using both of those hands, but Marc and I are working on increasing that amount time for me.