My clothes are starting to smell like baby formula. There are diapers in my trash bin. And out on the clothes line hang miniature felt blankets and baby blue socks and tiny t-shirts with snaps along the bottom.
A complicated assembly line for producing a bottle of milk is set up along the kitchen counter: boiled but cooled water in sealed containers, infant formula powder, various measuring cups and scoops, extra bottles and rubber nipples.
There is a newborn baby boy sleeping in a basket in my bedroom, a baby with delicate eyelashes, soft red ears, and a pouty mouth. He’s three days old today. I have spent the last 48 hours being his surrogate mother, and exploring what it feels like to be responsible for a teeny tiny human being.
It’s a lot of work. This little guy is a good eater and ensures that my milk assembly line stays in use. He likes to sleep a lot—as long as he is sleeping during my daytime hours. At night, he turns into a cranky, wriggling alien who refuses to be coaxed into quiet.
At 2:00 am this morning I was changing the munchkin’s diaper and basically had to bathe him as the explosive bout of tarry meconium had squished all the way down to his toes. He screamed as the cold water touched his skin, and even after the washing and drying and re-dressing was finished, he refused to be comforted. So I held him in the crook of my arm and walked up and down the tiny hallway in my house, cringing with every wail, wanting to soothe his anxiety but not knowing how.
The two of us were up every hour through the night. Do new moms ever sleep? I wondered to myself.
His mother is a teenager who delivered him at the Gimbie hospital last week. She told the charge nurse, Tolessa, that she was planning to kill her new baby. There was no father involvement. The women here actually have places where they leave their unwanted babies in cardboard boxes out on the hills for the hyenas.
Tolessa sent for me, and Monica, another volunteer, to sort the situation out.
And the baby came to my house that evening. Just for a few days.
I have a new appreciation of what my parents went through when I arrived, a pink urchin who spent my first weeks sleeping in their clothes closet. I can begin to understand their exhaustion, and also their wonder.
This little baby is responsible for a great deficit in my sleep habits. He is also to blame for a lot of joy that has found its way into the little house. He is so cute when he yawns that I can hardly stand it. Be careful, Ansley, I tell myself, don't get attached.
He may not be here for long--I'm trying to give him as much attentive care and cuddling as I can. Pouring the love in.