Jo and Alex: Four Weeks

Today marks the four week anniversary of Aaron's birth. We can't believe it's already been four weeks!

On the other hand...has it really only been four weeks? Time seems to move very differently when there's a baby around (for one thing, the day seems a lot longer when you get up at 6 am instead of 10 am, ha). It started even before he was born. While I was pregnant, the weeks seemed to fly by--until I was 37 weeks along. Then suddenly it screeched nearly to a halt. It was as if the universe were making up for the previous temporal celerity, smushing months worth of lost time into just a few weeks, making every day feel more like two or three.

After that eternally long three weeks and four days, when labor finally started, the progression of time only got stranger. Alex and I both agree that was the longest day of our lives; however, it passed differently for me than for him. I remember that the hours went by very quickly; several times I said something like, "wow, it's 10:00 already?" or "is it really 2:00?" Yet the labor seemed infinitely long. It was almost as if the hours were shorter than usual, but there were many, many more than in a normal day.

Then came the epidural. Once those wonderful drugs were in my system after 18 hours of painful labor, and about four hours of not-so-bad labor before that, things changed. For the first little while--and I really have no idea how long it actually was--I was in a state of endorphic euphoria where time didn't matter or even seem to exist (and Aaron was nearly named Rick after the anesthesiologist). Then when that had worn off, I was still comfortable and happy and suddenly I was pushing out an unexpectedly large and hairy baby.

I wonder if time will ever return to normal, although I'm beginning to suspect that there isn't really a "normal" anyway. Perhaps time isn't as absolute or constant as we think it is, or think it should be. I think it may be affected by our perception in a very real way, sort of the way sound frequencies can be precisely measured but in some ranges become warped as they are processed by our minds...

Anyway, in the interest of keeping the geekiness of this post to a minimum, I present: BABY PICTURES!