Sweet Yet Sour

I’m not ready for the minivan yet

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | Mom Stuff | 4 Comments

A long time ago my sister and I made a deal with each other that if we ever even considered buying a minivan, the other sister would make every attempt, including maiming, to dissuade the insane minivan buying sister. The minivan seemed like such a horrid expression of motherhood that it made us cringe.

I’ve been a mother for a year now and thankfully, I’m not ready for the minivan yet.

When I was around seven I filled out a “My Book About Me” that included some very important information.  Among other things, I apparently took a count and decided I had “about 100″ freckles (a VAST underestimate in reality), loved the color green (still do) and that I wanted to be a “gold miner” when I grew up.  I have no recollection of what drove me to say “gold miner”.

I do remember wanting to be a marine biologist or a zoologist.  I was never a little girl who played much with dolls and don’t ever remember wanting to be a mom.  It’s not that I didn’t like kids, I babysat often and generally liked babies, it just never was a particular goal of mine to be a mom.  I had other things I wanted to do like go to Africa and see elephants.  But as time went on it seemed to be more of a natural thing that I would get married, have kids and do that wife/mom thing.

I am in awe of women who seem to be excited to be mothers from the time they are little girls.  Those are the women who are so giddy and excited to get pregnant and have kids.  These are the women who say things like, “I fell in love from the first moment I looked at the ultrasound picture.”

I am not one of those women and I can’t change that even if I try.  I was excited to be pregnant, but not the giddy kind of excited.  I was also worried about what lay ahead of me.  Friends would say that I didn’t seem excited or that I wasn’t smiling as much as they expected a pregnant woman to smile.  All I could do was shrug and say that I was excited, but in my own, worry wart way.

When Anna was born I was excited to see her, but I don’t remember thinking that I was in love with her from the first moment I saw her.  It was a few weeks before I really felt like I loved her and thought she was a neat little girl.  For the first few weeks she just cried, slept, ate and pooped and frankly, if I had a boyfriend like that I would dump him…

Around 2 months Anna became more interactive, would look in my direction, even try to smile and began to develop into an actual personality.  It was then that I began to really love her.  Today as write this I absolutely adore Anna and I love being her mom.

It’s been hard though, this mom thing.  For me it meant giving up (for the moment) a career that I loved and felt I was good at and staying at home.  It meant at times being lonely, angry, frustrated and depressed.  But it was a choice that I made because I did not want to miss Anna developing into a little girl.  I have been here for a lot of firsts and I’m glad of that.

Let me go briefly onto a tangent here.  It really makes me angry that the most rich, powerful country in the world, full of people who say that they have “family values” makes it so hard to be working mom.  Out of all of the developed nations we offer the least amount of time off for parents and none of that is required to be paid. Most other countries offer 1 year (at least) – in contrast to the stupid 12 weeks the U.S. offers, and in most countries that is paid.  We also breastfeed for a shorter time, breastfeed less and bottle feed more and use the breast pump more.  In order not to miss Anna’s 1st year I had to quit my job and I don’t think that’s fair.  This doesn’t say “family values” to me as much as it says, “the dollar is king – get back to work ladies.”

A year into motherhood I do feel better and calmer about being a mom.  I’ve learned a lot and frankly, I did not heed a whole bunch of advice that I should have, but I think I’m better for having learned it the hard way.  I still make mistakes and still have a lot to learn, but if and when we have another child I’ll be a little more excited and a little less worried about what lies ahead.

Every day I get to do silly things with Anna, like tickle her, make faces at her and practice making silly sounds. I spend a lot of time on my hands and knees saying things like, “Mama’s going to get you Anna!” while she screams with delight and crawls away as fast as she can.  When I take her places, even to the store or the backyard I get to experience her learning about things for the first time.  No one bats an eye when I point and say, “See the tree Anna? or “See the pretty yellow mustard bottle Anna?” And teaching someone about the world is intoxicating – it makes you realize what an awesome world it really is.

There are a few things I learned the hard way this year and that I need to keep in mind for the next time:

1. After childbirth, take the stool softener that they offer you in the hospital.  Enough said.

2. Nap when the baby naps.  Do not do laundry or clean the kitchen you OCD freak. Get some sleep!

3. Baby clothes sizes are not the same across all manufacturers, nor are they logical… When Anna was born I thought she would fit into the “0-3″ size.  This is wrong.  She was “newborn” size and didn’t fit into the “0-3″ until she was 3 months old. Now that she’s 12 months old she only fits into certain 12 months sizes, while others she’s still wearing 9 months and others she’s wearing the next size up after 12 months.  Insanity!

4. DO repeat these words and practice them often, “Will you be bringing food or helping with the dishes/laundry?”  These are words that must be said to each and every visitor that comes to see the new baby. I had two friends who helped with dishes and laundry, and my sister and another friend brought food and this was all very helpful.  However, there were plenty of visitors who came and did nothing but hold the baby, even some who would ask, “Can I have a glass of water? I’m holding the baby.”  For these people I will be practicing, “Kiss my overtired, unshowered, up four times a night ass and get your own damn water.”

5. Ask for help.  I have never been good at asking for help – I think I learned this from parents who for some reason think asking for help is shameful.  I can’t even answer when people come over for dinner and ask, “What can we bring?”  I did not ask for help in those first few really trying months, even when I was out of my mind with need for it, even from Mike.  Instead, I took everything on myself and was in general pretty pissy about the whole thing.  There is a reason that “mother” and “martyr” sound so similar; it wouldn’t surprise me if they were originally the same word.

6. Find your self worth somewhere other than motherhood.  This one has been particularly hard for me and I’m still working on this issue.  Before Anna was born I gained a lot of my self worth from my job, doing well at work and the compliments I received from my superiors.  When I became a full time mom I had no way of feeling good about myself – no one compliments you about how well you are doing and the baby certainly never says, “Nice job on that diaper!” And honestly, most people ignore parents entirely when there’s a baby around – you start to feel like back drop at the baby play. I’m sure this is why I took everything on myself and never asked for help – because I wanted to at least feel like I was doing it all; I felt better if I could say to myself that I had done it all without help.

7. Spend time with other mothers. I’m doing much better at this now that I did at the beginning. All moms have different things that they do that you can learn from and it’s really nice to have some one that you can talk to about whatever is going on.  I tried joining “Mothers and More” for a playgroup – only to have that flop – but I have successfully formed a playgroup with other parents/mothers from our childbirth class and the friendships I have made with them are invaluable.

8. Let go and let the dad take the kid.  Poor Mike – he has offered help and told me to get out of the house so much and I never take him up on it.  I am getting better about this though – a few weeks ago I took off and spent two heavenly hours at a local bookstore reading and sipping an almond steamer.  And I’ve started (thrice) going out for “mommies night” with my sister.  Other than that and leaving for the cupcake tour with Laura I haven’t really gotten out of the house by myself for more than an hour this whole year and that’s just wrong.  I promise to do better about this from now on!

Motherhood is an awesome learning experience – you learn something, then you need to roll with the next change and learn something new.  This first year at least every two weeks Anna was doing something new and different.  This week she started to hold the phone (both the real phone and her play phones) up to her head and babble.  Last week she started to try to go down the stairs by standing and scooching her little butt of the stairs.  The week before that she decided that the laundry basket was best used as a walking toy…

My point is, I’ve learned to roll with the changes, be calm about what’s ahead and watch with wonder because there is always something new and interesting about to happen…

The Halloween Caterpillar

Sunday, November 9th, 2008 | Mom Stuff | 2 Comments

For Halloween we dressed Anna up in a sweet little pink caterpillar costume.  We liked the fact that the costume would be warm, since Halloween is generally our first snow in Colorado.  Thanks to global warming it was instead 78 degrees on Halloween, but I digress.

Mike took a bunch of pictures of Anna in her Halloween costume and here is one of my favorites.

It was getting close to her bedtime by the time we put her in the costume, so we couldn’t get her to smile…  There are more pictures of her in her costume on Mike’s Flickr photostream, just click on “Anna’s Dad’s Pictures”

Anna is 7 months old now! Wow! She’s sitting up now; if we put her in a sitting position she’ll stay there on her own for quite a while unless something distracts her and then down she goes… She keeps doing tummy tucks to try to sit up on her own, but she hasn’t gotten there yet.

I took some cute pictures of her the other day after I put her in a snuggly little brown and pink outfit.  There’s plenty more of those on my photostream too, just click on “Anna’s Mom’s Pictures”.

7 months old and sitting up!

Messy Girl

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | Mom Stuff | No Comments

I don’t think that it’s possible to be a neat-freak and be a parent.  You will simply have to let go having everything neat and tidy, especially the baby and you.  Everyone is going to get messy in this process.

For example:

Messy Girl

What you are not able to see in this picture is that not only is her entire face covered in rice cereal, but there’s a lot under her chin, and more on her hands and on her legs.

We decided it wasn’t prudent to feed Anna in the high chair, since she looks like a dwarf princess on a giant’s throne in it, and she wasn’t really liking sitting up.  So, we opted to feed Anna her rice cereal in the bouncy chair.

The problem is that the chair is well, bouncy, so while Anna eats she kicks and bounces in the chair.  This means that while we are trying to feed her she is a moving target.  That, plus the fact that Anna spits out about half of what I put in her mouth, and she keeps trying to take the spoon from me and feed herself, makes this a very messy endeavor.

My father aptly calls rice cereal “library paste” and he’s quite right.  Trying to get this stuff off Anna is like trying to get dried Elmer’s glue off her face.  And since she is again, a moving target during the face wash, I have often thought I got it all off, only to go in for a kiss and find that there are still rice cereal chunks all over her face.

Fortunately, while I was once sort of a neat freak, I let that go when Anna was probably two weeks old when I had to live with spit-up in my hair on a daily basis.  Parenting forces you to evolve…

How Not to Change A Diaper

Monday, July 14th, 2008 | Mom Stuff | 4 Comments

Parenting is a 24/7 job with no breaks and barely any sleep.  Thankfully it also has some moments of hilarity.

Even if you have experience changing diapers, the whole process is different when it’s your own child and you have not had a lot of sleep.  For the first few weeks we were both amazed at the sheer size and weight of the things we would see in Anna’s diaper, considering what a small child it was all coming from.  And we began to learn to be quick with the changing or we would regret it and have to do more clean up.

Newborn poop, just as an FYI, does not look like adult poop.  For the first few days it’s like black sticky tar, while the baby gets the stuff out that they digested in the womb.  After that, if the baby is breastfed, the diapers begin to fill with pee and this strange yellow, liquidy, seedy stuff.  Apparently breastmilk is so nutritious that the baby absorbs most of what they eat so the yellow liquid is all that’s left.

Unfortunately this liquidy stuff is an easy projectile, especially when combined with the jet fuel that is baby gas.  I think it was the second week that Anna was home when I was changing her diaper at about 5 a.m. and I felt the full brunt of this lesson.

I had just gotten the dirty diaper off when all of a sudden the poop launched out of my sweet little daughter and all over the changing pad and all over the wall.  It was as if Jackson Pollock had been in Anna’s room.  But don’t worry, it didn’t miss me either.  My pajama bottoms and my top were splattered in a 10 inch wide swath of yellow spray.  I had to laugh!  I started to clean all of this up when I realized that Mike would really want to see the damage as well.  He laughed when he saw the room and me and it was good to share the laughter with him.

It was then that we decided that we needed more than 2 changing pad covers, just in case this ever happened again.

Since then, I have generally been more speedy about changing her diapers to avoid these type of messes, but every once in a while I slip.The other night at 2:30 a.m. was the worst diaper change I have had since the wall painting incident.  I generally change Anna’s diaper in the middle of her feedings to keep her awake (breastmilk is pretty soporific so if you don’t wake the baby during the feeding the baby will be hungry again soon).

So halfway through the 2 a.m. feeding I began my usual diaper change.  I took the dirty diaper off and wondered why there was so little in the diaper since Anna had been asleep for 5 hours.  I was just opening up the new diaper when the yellow poo was launched from the launch pad.  Fortunately, there was not that much, so it stayed within the confines of the changing pad and didn’t get on Anna’s outfit.

I lifted the baby up, wiped her off, put her into her crib, changed the changing pad cover and put the baby back on the changing pad.  Some of the poop had gotten on the first new diaper, so I had to get a new one out.  I had the diaper open and my hand under her bottom when Anna decided that it was time to pee.  On me.  On the new diaper.  On the new changing pad cover.  On her outfit…

Now I have to take Anna’s outfit off, wipe her down, and put her back into the crib and it’s on to the next changing pad cover.  (We now own 5 changing pad covers and even then the next day I had to do laundry and resort to using a towel on the pad while the wash was going.) With the new changing pad cover on, I put the baby back on the pad, and get out a new diaper and a new outfit.  By now, the baby is fully awake and I know that I will now have a hard time getting her to back to sleep.

Anna, in the meantime, smiles all the way through this whole process.  She smiled when she projectile pooped, she smiled when she peed and she continues to smile and make sweet little gurgles at me every time I change her.

I was finally able to get a diaper and a new outfit on Anna without getting peed on or sprayed with baby mustard.  I took her back to the rocking chair and began the second half of the feeding.Here’s the problem, suckling gets a baby’s intestines going so they generally poop either during or after they eat.  Yep, you guessed it.  During the second half of the feeding, Anna had some more poop to get out.  This time it leaked out the side of the diaper (since she is laying on her side) and on to the blanket that I have placed on my lap for just such an occasion.  (During the first week I went through three pairs of pajama pants before I learned this trick.)

Is anyone else laughing at this point?  I was, even if it was 2:30 a.m.  This was definitely a lesson in how NOT to get through a diaper change!

Breastmilk is Free, Sort Of…

Monday, July 7th, 2008 | Mom Stuff | 7 Comments

It was a foregone conclusion for me that I would breastfeed Anna upon her arrival.  I never understood why people would opt for formula.  Breastmilk is free, always available and it looked easy.  Whoa Nelly was I wrong about the “easy” and “always available” part!  Now I know that breastmilk, while free, comes with a price.

During my eighth month of pregnancy Mike and I took a “Breastfeeding Preparation” class one Monday evening.  That day, I went to my boss and told her I needed to leave the office early to make it to the class.  Her response was, “Babies don’t suck like men, they suck hard.” Okay, thanks for the info…  (And they say that “kids” say the darnest things!  What about adults?)

My sister kept telling me that next to riding a bicycle, breastfeeding was the hardest thing she’s ever had to learn.  So I decided to take a class.  The class should prepare me, right?

In class we discussed why breastfeeding is good for both mom and baby and the physical process of when the milk comes (hormones, etc.), what it contains, etc.  We were given fake boobs (see Mike’s picture of ours here) to put into our baby doll’s mouth and we learned how to hold the baby while nursing.

After class, I felt prepared and ready for what was to come.  I knew how to hold the baby and direct it towards the boob and what breastfeeding was going to be like.

Here’s the first problem – the babies in class were fake.  They don’t move, they don’t scream and they don’t wave their little arms and legs around all while bopping their heads around like baby birds.

The second problem with class was that the fake boob and the nipple thereupon was not attached to me and my nerve cells, unlike my real boob.  The dula who taught the class kept saying “Breastfeeding should not hurt.”  This is cute, but it’s a lie.  It will hurt, at least for the first few weeks.  Anyone who tells you different has either not breastfed, does not have nerves in their nipples, or is lying to bring you into the breast feeding fold; I call these last people “breastfeeding Nazi’s” (BNs).

There’s a whole bunch of things that the BNs do not tell you.  I’m here, my fellow women, to give you the truth, because I know you can handle the truth and I know that you want the truth.These truths about breastfeeding are as follows:

1. Breastfeeding will hurt.  There’s just no way around it.  There’s a lot of nerves in those nipples and my boss was right, babies suck as if you are the thickest milkshake on the planet and there’s a chunk of strawberry stuck in the straw.  For weeks, I would literally cry myself when the baby began to cry for her feeding, and would then curse from the pain when she finally got latched on and started eating.  This will make you want to stop breastfeeding altogether and go the formula route.  If you hang in there though, it gets better.  Fortunately, once you and the baby get the hang of things, it stops hurting and in the meantime, there’s cooling pads, lanolin and drugs (Ibuprofin is your friend).

2.  The baby, who will be desperately hungry, moves, a lot.  This, along with the fact that both you and the baby are not versed in the correct manner of how to do things will make this whole process frustrating for everyone.  The poor baby is trying it’s best to get some food, but it’s not sure how to get the milk that it can smell somewhere near it’s nose.  In order to get the milk in the baby you need to somehow wrestle the baby so that you can pin the arms and legs that are flailing wildly, while trying to control the baby’s bobbling head, and if you have been taught correctly, you also have to somehow grab and hold your boob at the same time.

During this you are also supposed to be holding the baby correctly, and if you listen to the BN that was my in-hospital lactation consultant, you can’t use a pillow to support you or the baby.  Apparently no one is supposed to be comfortable during this process.  Trust me ladies, screw that crap, use a pillow, and if possible the hands of anyone in the room to get that baby to stop moving and into a semi head lock onto your boob.

3. You will need to buy lanolin for yourself and you will need to use it often – your nipples will thank you.  This stuff works to keep those poor tender nipples from becoming too painful.  Although I am frankly a little puzzled as to how someone figured out that lanolin works on this area. Did the thought process go something like this: “Hmm, my nipples really hurt.  Perhaps I should go over there and rub myself on that there greasy sheep…”?  And if this is true, were the Scottish the only ones who breastfeed comfortably until this information spread?

4. There is not one, but many holes in your nipple for the expressing of milk.  Until I saw this for myself, I was under the impression that the milk just came out in a huge stream like water out of a fire hose.  Wrong! There are multiple holes, and sometimes they all go at once (which looks like something like a sprinkler head) or they’ll switch off and on.  Some squirt up, some squirt down and some squirt straight out.  I have no idea what the biological advantage is to this set up, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.  It does however make you briefly feel like a circus freak until you hear from other women that this is normal.

5.  You will need an entirely new set of shirts to accommodate your new status as a breastfeeding mom.  The purpose of this new wardrobe will be to optimize the time it takes to get ready for a feeding, while having enough pattern and texture to hide the milk that you leak and conceal your constantly perky nipples.  I myself spent a trip to Ross with my sister pulling down on the V-necks of shirts, saying things like “I don’t think I can my boobs out quick enough in this one.”  Imagine that!  I spent almost my entire life trying to keep the boobs in my shirt (although with my size this wasn’t a huge problem), only to come to a point where I can think of nothing but whether or not they will be easily accessible.

You will leak milk all over yourself.  Accept this and simply buy shirts in patterns and dark colors where the wetness will not be so visible.  I myself took Anna and the dog out on a walk once and had a lovely conversation with a neighbor only to discover that I had spent the entire conversation with a huge (and very obvious) circular stain on each boob.  Nursing pads help, but sometimes when there’s a lot of milk, they are no use at all.

6. The milk is not always available.  It takes a little coaxing and then the milk will start to flow.  This is called “let-down”.  Sometimes, I can get let-down as soon as I hear the baby cry, when I hear other babies cry, and sometimes when I even just think about the baby.  Once let-down does it’s thing, the milk starts flowing whether there is a baby there to drink it or not.  Just last night I was getting out of the shower, thought about Anna briefly and then had to rush back into the shower and stand there until the milk stopped squirting out.  And then I had to take another shower to get all the milk washed off.  And then there was the other day when I was in a movie theater listening to the “Don’t make your own soundtrack” message before the movie and there was a baby crying in amidst the noise…

7. You will at times feel like a milk cow.  During the first few weeks when all the baby does is pee, poop and eat, you will feel like you are Bessy the cow with no other purpose than to express milk.  Thankfully, once the baby starts to smile at you and interact, your cow feeling will go away.

Unless you are like me and you watch “Dirty Jobs” frequently.  There was an episode a few weeks ago where the host, Mike Rowe, went to a dairy farm and into the “milking room”.  The farmer started talking about how they get the cows to achieve “let-down” and I started to really feel for the cows.  The worst part was when they showed Mike how to get the hair off of the cows’ nipples.  Apparently it’s for hygienic reasons; they need to get all the hair off the cow nipples since the hair gets dirty and could contaminate the milk.  Anyway, the process to get the hair off is to fire up a torch and pass it quickly and closely to the cow nipples to singe the hair off.

Great! Now I have to go find a lighter…

Mom Hair

Monday, July 7th, 2008 | Mom Stuff | 3 Comments

Now that I am a mom, I had to drag my hair kicking and screaming with me.

For a long time I have had long hair.  It’s been nice, but I can’t deal with it anymore.  My hair, although fine, is heavy.  With the summer heat and the fact that somedays I don’t have time to shower and thus, my hair gets oily, I made the decision to kick the long hair to the curb.

I went to see my lovely hair dresser, whom I hadn’t seen since I was 8 months pregnant.  I showed her lots of pictures of Anna and then we got down to the business of cutting my hair.  She gave me a lovely short little bob, with layers, and at the end pronounced, “Now you have Mom hair.”

Crap.  I didn’t really want my hair to say ” I am a mom”.  Does this mean that when I go out in public people will look at me and say, “She must be a mom, she has Mom Hair”?

Oh well, I guess I’ll deal with Mom Hair.  It’s short and off my neck, which is cooler during the summer.   Here’s a picture, which was taken the day of the cut.

This is probably the last time it will look this nice, since it involves a round brush and dryer to get to this stage.  If I don’t have time to shower, when I am going to have time to dry and primp my hair?