Things That Are True - Overthinking

Since one of our dearest friends had a baby six weeks ago, The Imp has been playing, and talking, a lot about babies in tummies, babies being born, and about being a mommy. He's insisted at different times that he's a baby, that he's a big boy, that he wants to be in my tummy, that he's not a baby because babies can't walk, or talk, or do much of anything. He also tells me daily that he's a mommy*. Specifically, George's mommy.

Should I tell him putting George in the fridge isn't going to win him any parenting awards?

He arranges all his stuffies in a row, and tells me he's their mommy and that he's reading them stories and putting them to bed. I hear him, playing in his room, threatening various toys with the dreaded Naughty Corner. (Oh dear.)

This past weekend, visiting with friends, The Imp was playing with a big kangaroo stuffie they had. I explained pouches and joeys and hopping and Australia, and didn't give it another thought. This morning before daycare, The Imp was quite adamant that he was a kangaroo mommy, and that George was a joey. Sure, why not?

But then he was using his kangaroo-mommyhood as an excuse to not get dressed and go to daycare. Time for a little chat, clearly.

Me: You're a kangaroo mommy?
The Imp: Yeah. George is a joey and I'm his mommy.
Me: Well, it's time to put on some pants, kangaroo mommy.
The Imp: (looking at me like I was an idiot) Kangaroo don't wear pants, Mommy.

Damn. He kind of had me there.

Me: (Trying a new tack) Are you a kangaroo at school?
The Imp: No. I'm a kangaroo mommy at home.
Me: You're just a mommy at home? Not at school?
The Imp: Just at home. Not at school.

In a split second, my mind was racing with fears that I'd somehow managed to give The Imp a skewed view of motherhood. "Oh no!" I thought. "I've somehow imparted to him that motherhood belongs at home. I've inadvertently taught him that femininity and masculinity belong in entirely separate spheres. I've indicated through my words and actions that women do not belong at school or work. Oh jebus,  have I messed up the gender roles already? Or is there pressure from the other kids at daycare to be more masculine there? I'm a horrible mother for putting him in daycare when I work from home. Oh fuck. What have I done?!?" As showers of mama-guilt rained down upon my head, I managed to keep my game face on and ask:

Me: If you're a mommy at home, what are you at school?
The Imp: (without missing a beat) A light bulb.


Yeah. Maybe I was overthinking the whole gender-roles thing a little, there.



*I'm not worried about the gender discussion around who's a mommy and who's a daddy at this point. If The Imp says he's a mommy, he's a mommy. He'll sort out the gender stuff in the fullness of time, and be whoever he is.

Things That Are Surprising - Friday Confession: Dishes

A couple of days ago, The Imp was being most helpful in the kitchen when we got home, taking groceries one by one out of the bags and handing them to me to put away. When that was done, we moved on to other tasks. He was very excited to carefully take each dish out of the dishwasher and put it on the counter for Mommy to put away. I was in a blissful state, enjoying this quiet, cooperative time with my little boy, and feeling more than a little mama pride at how happy he was to be so helpful. It's possible I wasn't paying quite as much attention as I should have been to what was happening to each dish between dishwasher and countertop. With ninety percent of the dishes out of the dishwasher and the job almost complete, I noticed that The Imp was carefully, so carefully, licking each dish before he put it on the counter.

Confession?

I put them away anyway. I just couldn't face the job of remembering which dishes would need rewashing. And then rewashing them. And then rewashing everything else too because I wouldn't want to miss one. So I just sang "Lalalalalalalalala" to myself and firmly closed the cupboard doors, and went and read stories to The Imp before dinner.

Don't tell HWSNBN.

Wanna come for dinner?

Things I've Learned - The Big Boy Bed

The past two weeks of parenting have been the most challenging since The Imp was newborn, fresh out of the womb, and I was completely overwhelmed with the not-knowing newness of it all.

I blame the Big Boy Bed.

Looks fairly innocuous, doesn't it? His crib mattress on the floor, the same blankets and bedtime pals...

NOT SO.

And we thought the electrical outlet would be our biggest headache... such optimism! We safetied it beyond all reasonable measures; not only is there a child-proof cover on it, beneath the cover is electrical tape covering the outlets as well. All our work notwithstanding, this corner of The Imp's bedroom is a lurking pit of evil.

It has turned my complacent crib-sleeping toddler into the most magnificently maleficent perpetrator of angst-causing, sleep-depriving NAUGHTY LITTLE BOY behaviour, including but not limited to: bedtime escape attempts by the dozen nightly, jumping on the bed instead of sleeping, attempting to climb the pulled-out dresser drawers, thereby dragging the entire dresser and all its contents down on himself, dumping out his giant container of mega-blocks in the middle of the night leaving parental foot arch slaying land mines in our path, slamming doors at 3am just for fun, and running to the kitchen to open the fridge, spill the milk, and eat unwashed strawberries (stems and all) at 5am.

Two weeks ago, on Good Friday (good! ha!) The Imp managed to climb out of his crib for the first time and blew his dismount, falling on his head. Being the fearless little daredevil that he is, he is not one to view a mere bruise in the middle of his forehead as any kind of deterrent.

No.

No, The Imp of the Perverse views anything less than losing a limb as a challenge.

We dismantled the crib immediately to forestall the concussion/brain injury that was sure to follow. Little did we know that our little monkey was only a "good sleeper" because he'd been held CAPTIVE in his crib all this time.

The lure of freedom has proven to be too much for him. He cannot avoid its siren call.

I am exhausted.

And apparently it's not appropriate to put your child in a dog cage, no matter how large or lavishly appointed. I asked on twitter and the response was not positive.

I have a lovely sheepskin deal we could put in there...

No?

Damn.

Any hints or suggestions on how to ease this transition? Or even just an I've-been-there-too story from the trenches?

Halp!

Things That Are Surprising - My Own Reactions, Also: Link Love

Alas, the Bumbo seat is no longer an adequate means of restraint. I knew this day would come, but I'm not really ready for it, in the same way that I'm not really prepared to see The Boy's grin now full of teeth. He looks less like a baby and more like a little boy every day. And when I first realized that, I died a little bit inside.

Don't get me wrong, I celebrate the milestones - my heart cheers every time he masters a new skill: the crawling, pulling himself up, self-feeding... It's just that he's one of one. We're not planning on having any more children. So this is it.

One child has always been the plan, so it's shocking to me that I'm reacting so viscerally to this, and I'm not expressing myself very well. Fortunately, Jessica Gottlieb has been here before me.

Here's her post on the subject.

And here's some link love for more writing that has knocked me on my ass in the last few weeks:

Sharon's take on why we never throw rocks.

Her Bad Mother's contribution to the adoption/abortion discussion.

And something a little lighter for this sunny Tuesday.

Things That Are True - You Know You're a Mom When...

You know you're a mom when you are breastfeeding your baby, enjoying a laid back morning, and the sun is streaming in through the window. As its rays catch the fine blond hairs on your son's upper lip just so, your first thought is:

"Oh God, in about 13 years I'm going to have to hide my laughter when he is sincerely trying to turn that into a mustache."

Things That Are True - Crying

The Boy crying at 9 days old

If you are anything like me, in the first weeks of your baby’s life, you will find the following to be true:

Your baby’s crying will turn you instantly into a deranged lunatic.

Blame the DNA: millions of years of evolution have fine tuned the new mother to respond immediately to the sound of her baby crying. And that’s a good thing – for the survival of the species. For your ability to deal rationally with your disconcerted precarious emotional situation (thank you Tom Waits), not so much. In the first few weeks of The Boy’s life, I became completely irrational every time he cried. If his crying went on for more than 15 seconds, I went completely around the bend. My need to make it stop was buried deep down in Lizard Brain territory; intellect played no part in my decisions. The sound of it put me so on edge that I simply could not deal with anything else until I made. the. crying. STOP. I became frantic – by the time he’d been crying for 30 seconds I was seriously unhinged. Nothing else mattered.

My husband started to quietly worry about my long term sanity.

When The Boy wasn’t crying, I was able to recognize, on an intellectual level, that my behaviour didn’t make sense; that no harm would come to The Boy, and I wasn't the worst mother in the world, if he cried for a minute or two. But the very second I heard that little sound (and when they’re newborns, it is, mercifully, a little sound) Lizard Brain took over again.

So I went in search of expert help: I asked my friend Sarah, who had two kids already, if she had experienced anything similar. She told me of a time when her firstborn was just a couple of weeks old, and she was driving on the freeway, husband in the passenger seat, baby safely ensconced in his car seat in the back. All was well until he started to cry. Sarah became so frantic that only her husband’s firm hand gripping her own prevented her from undoing her seatbelt and leaping into the back seat to comfort her son. While traveling in the driver’s seat down the freeway at 100 kilometres an hour…

The Takeaway:

1. This is normal behaviour, as outlandish as it may seem. Show your partner this part, so he or she knows not to have you committed immediately.
2. You are not alone. Every woman I’ve asked about this, regardless of their pre-pregnancy career and competency, has behaved in the same way.
3. This too shall pass. You eventually learn what crying sound means hunger, which means gas pain, which is the result of overstimulation or tiredness. Your confidence as a new mom grows, and you begin the long trek back to sanity - which from what I'm told, doesn't end until your child has their first child...
   

Things I've Learned - Breastfeeding and Formula

Before my son was born, I was absolutely, completely, without question, 100% committed to breastfeeding. I was so NOT interested in anything else that I skipped the sections in all the books about bottles and formula. Didn't even read them. "I'm not going to need that," I thought smugly to myself. I couldn't even wrap my head around why someone who could breastfeed would choose not to.*

I was so intent on breastfeeding that I wasn't even going to buy a pump to use for the occasional evening out. I was planning on being happily tethered to my child for at least a year, ready to sacrifice all to do the right thing.

The Boy was born on a Monday evening by emergency c-section (another part of the books I had skipped, so confident was I that I would be able to handle whatever childbirth threw at me). I was in post-op recovery for almost an hour before I was wheeled back to our hospital room to make our first attempt at breastfeeding. The Boy was a champion eater - although it was all new and a little scary for me, he latched on immediately like he knew exactly what he was doing. The nurse who helped us was satisfied that all was well and left us to it. I fed him from both breasts and he settled down for a sleep. I felt exhilarated, despite the pain from the c-section incision, the discomfort of the catheter (yeah, not so much with the fun there...), the exhaustion of 30 hours of labour (had I known it would end in a c-section, I might have skipped some of those 30 hours)... I had breastfed my child and that was a good thing. I continued to feed him on demand through the night and all the next day. He latched on well, and although it was painful it didn't hurt too much. In the last few weeks of my pregnancy, I'd been leaking colostrum from both breasts like crazy, so I was feeling pretty confident about the whole thing.

I tell you this just to help illustrate how absolutely crushed I was when on Wednesday my milk hadn't come in yet. At all. And the colostrum I was producing wasn't cutting it. The Boy was losing too much weight and the doctor was concerned about his low blood sugar levels. He was, essentially, starving.

It was awful. A technician came in every six hours to poke his tiny little heels to draw blood for tests, which made him shriek in pain, and made me cringe in anguish. The Boy got so that if you put him in his bassinet at all, he would start to cry, anticipating the pricks on his feet. The nurses insisted that he had to drink some supplemental formula just to get enough nourishment to thrive.

The sense of guilt I felt was extreme. I wept. I sobbed. I felt helpless. I felt like the worst mother in the world. I was incompetent. I was terrified my milk would never come in. I thought, "There must be something wrong with me. I can't believe that two weeks ago I was running a multi-million dollar company, and now I can't even nourish my own child." I worried about the cost of formula and how that hadn't been part of the plan, budget-wise. I couldn't sleep; my mind reeled with fear, anxiety, and self-recriminations (none of which, by the way, are helpful in producing breast milk).

I was devastated.

The hospital was completely on board with my continued efforts to breast feed. Nurses helped me get physically comfortable and showed me various holds and techniques. They helped me work out a feeding plan, track feedings, and supplied supplemental formula to The Boy only after he had emptied both breasts, not as a substitute for breast milk. The Boy's blood sugar was so low that he kept falling asleep before he got a decent feed in, and they helped me wake him up to continue. They were really amazingly helpful. I can't say for sure, given my mental/hormonal state at the time, that I wouldn't have given up without this army of incredibly knowledgeable and supportive people mustering to my side to make it all happen.

They also did whatever was necessary to stimulate my body to increase milk production, putting me on domperidone (which sounds like champagne but isn't), a prescription drug that stimulates lactation.



Then they brought in a breast pump that was truly terrifying in appearance. It was a big, heavy, industrial-strength, shiny with chrome and metal thing from a 1950's science fiction pulp magazine that rolled in on its own wheels. (It looked a little like the big bullying older brother of the pump in the photo below.)

I was to use this scary piece of equipment to pump after every feeding, 5 minutes at a time, alternating breasts, for a total of 20 minutes each. It was completely overwhelming.

And my husband, through all this, felt even more helpless than I did.

They let us leave the hospital the next afternoon - with the formula, The Boy's blood sugar had stabilized. We had to rent a hospital-grade pump to use at home, and continue with the domperidone and the supplemental formula. I kept hoping to feel the engorgement of my milk coming in. I would gladly have traded the guilt of failure for the ache of too-full breasts.

My doctor referred me to the BC Breastfeeding Centre, and we went to see them on Friday morning. I'd had such hope for the appointment; after the amazing support at the hospital, I expected it to be a La Leche League type of experience. In fact it was a very clinical medical environment, and while I do not in any way doubt the vastness of their medical knowledge, the style of their practice did not suit me at all. I left the appointment in tears, feeling like I never wanted to breastfeed again. Once home I watched The Boy sleep, dreading the moment he would wake up and want to feed. Fortunately the public health nurse (who was totally. awesome.) was scheduled to visit that afternoon, and she talked me off the ledge. She told me,

"No matter what happens, the most important thing to remember is that your baby will be fed. He will not starve. Whether it's formula or breastmilk, he'll get adequate nutrition and thrive."

That simple statement allowed me to let go of the guilt I'd been beating myself up with, and to move on to practical matters and focus on doing what I needed to do to feed my child. Three days later, to my eternal joy, my milk came in, and I've happily breast fed since. I visited a lactation consultant who recommended a great nursing pillow (Things I Love review coming soon) and helped us achieve an optimal latch. Now, when I'm cranky and tired, feeding The Boy in the middle of the night, I just have to remember how hard those first few days were and everything shifts into perspective!

Eventually, many weeks later, I recovered from the trauma enough to buy a small, cute, quiet breast pump (a conscious choice that was as far from the hospital pump as possible) for the occasional evening out or morning when my husband, a prince among men, watches The Boy and I go out and do my own thing for a couple of hours. I love it. (Proper review in Things I Love coming soon...)


The Take-away:

1. Don't be rigid in your expectations. I didn't expect a c-section, and it never occurred to me I'd have trouble breast feeding. Much heartache could have been avoided if I'd been more accepting of circumstances earlier than I was.
2. Guilt is not useful. It paralyzes you and stops you from being able to see beyond your own failings. It makes it impossible to be pro-active.
   
3. The hospital staff is on your side. They want you to succeed.
4. Contrary to what I somewhat foolishly and naively believed, formula is not evil.
5. Pumping breast milk is not abandoning your child.
6. And breastfeeding is not as easy as it should be. How did the human race survive all those millenia?

*I'm in Canada, which has a very generous government-sponsored maternity and parental leave program. Having that full year of paid leave makes breastfeeding a lot easier. If I'd had to go back to work right away, I don't know how easy it would have been to pump several times a day...

Things I've Learned - Fingernails

The Boy's fingernails at 8 days old

My boy was born with an impressive set of fingernails. After all, they'd been developing and growing for about 28 weeks. Within an hour of his birth, he looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a feral cat; babies will scratch the hell out of themselves without even being aware of it. We dug around in the go-to-hospital bag for the tiny mittens that had come as a set with a hat and booties. It never would have occurred to me to buy them on their own... We put them on him. This immediately stopped him from ripping his face to shreds, but looked kind of goofy. Actually, really goofy.

The nurse who came into our room to give him a bath the morning after he was born seemed like a friendly sort, so I asked her if the hospital had a set of infant nail clippers I could borrow to cut his nails. She matter-of-factly said, "Oh, those clippers are more trouble than they're worth. The easiest and safest thing to do is to just bite his nails off yourself."

I stalled. I honestly didn't know what to say. Bite them? Seriously? I'm supposed to chew on the ends of my baby's fingers? In the modern world, in a fully equipped hospital, this was the best science and technology had to offer? Really?

"Yes," she said. "Just bite them off while he's sleeping."

Huh.

I couldn't do it.

Each time that I looked at my baby boy and saw how silly those little cream coloured mittens looked on him, every time I thought about biting his nails - which was often as he would really gouge at his face given half a chance - I just couldn't do it. It was too... weird.

At one point I managed to remove one of his mittens, gently take his little perfect hand in mine, and... quickly put his mitten back on and tuck his hand back under his blanket. I just couldn't do it. I don't know why. I wasn't afraid of hurting him - I knew I wouldn't bite the end of his finger off or anything like that. There was just something so... feral about the whole thing. So animal. I felt like next I'd be picking bugs out of his hair and eating them.

I'm not saying I was rational.

On the second day, I started a campaign to get my husband to do it. I wheedled. I pleaded. I even tried to order him to do it. (Yeah, that went over really well...) He didn't want to do it either, and all the while, The Boy's nails kept growing. His face would just recover from one set of scratches and we'd forget to put mittens back on and he'd claw at himself again.

In almost all our photos from the first few days of his life, he's got those ridiculous mitts on. We left the hospital three days after he was born, still needing a manicure. I just couldn't chew his nails. I was getting almost frantic about it. I couldn't bite his nails, yet I couldn't just let them grow and keep him in mittens for the rest of his life. Those mittens were starting to take on a significance all out of proportion; they were becoming a symbol of my epic fail. I was clearly the worst mother in the world.

Two days after we came home from the hospital, I just couldn't take the accusation of those mittens any more. My husband and I were sitting on the couch, exhausted. The day's visitors had all gone home, so it was just the three of us, The Boy sweetly sleeping in Daddy's arms.

So I did it. I took those damned mitts off his hands, and started to chew off his tiny nails.

And it was truly weird - a very Animal Planet moment. There's nothing like sitting in your fabulous apartment in the sky crouched over your sleeping infant grooming him with your teeth to really remind you that it doesn't matter if you read The Economist every week, you are really just a monkey deep down. His nails were so small that I couldn't even feel the bits I'd chewed off in my mouth. The Boy, of course, slept blissfully through the whole event.

A few days later, a friend gave us a care package that included some infant nail clippers. I have yet to use them... It really is easier to just bite them off.

Take-away:

1. Baby fingernails grow ridiculously fast. I have to trim The Boy's nails every two to three days. Toenails, not so much. Maybe every two to three weeks. (I don't bite his toenails. That would really be too weird.)
   
2. Take baby nail clippers with you to the hospital if you think you might prefer to use them instead of embracing your inner monkey.
3. Be prepared to do things that never ever occurred to you.