This post is brought to you by Endorphins

Y'all, I just worked out! Wheeee! I feel so self righteously accomplished right now, it's amazing. I feel like maybe I will really not spend the rest of the year in a lumpen sleep-deprived stupor on the couch. Man, it that workout was hard, too, after not working out at all - not even a little - for seven weeks. I had intended to start back at the beginning of this week, but it just didn't happen. Even this morning I was feeling discouraged because I put the Little down for her morning nap and got my weights and stuff all situated and of course she woke up and it took me another hour to get her down for good. It was like she knew I wanted to do something. It took me over an hour to run through the workout because I had to keep stopping in order to not puke a lung up onto the carpet.
Did I tell you guys I was in pain for the better part of six weeks? I don't think I did. I mean, I think I mentioned the infection thing and the pain that nearly surpassed the birthing of a seven pound human, but I don't think I told you how much of a rollercoaster my recovery was. I mention this only because I am really only JUST feeling capable of exercising. I had fully intended on taking six whole weeks off from formal exercise anyway, but I thought it would have been nice to get some long walks in or maybe a hike or something before then (see how naively ambitious I was?!).

The recovery from the birth itself was really not that bad. I was sore for the first few days and then felt fairly good. By the end of week 2, I felt pretty well healed. And then that infection reared its ugly head and oh my lord the pain. DID I MENTION THE PAIN??? Anyway, you all know that landed me a 10 day course of antibiotics, which of course led to a yeast infection and horrifyingly painful constipation, and let me just say that when you spend nearly $30 on various hemorrhoid treatments and then have to send your husband back to the mini-mart at 10 pm to buy an enema, you know you've hit the "worse" in "for better or worse". Until that moment I had been maintaining with Adam that girls don't poop or fart, it just doesn't happen for us. Let us never speak of it again.

After all that, I had to go back to the emergency clinic and have the stitches removed because they didn't fall out on their own (yeowch!) and then developed another inflamed and painful cyst probably caused by my body having a reaction to the internal stitches and an unrelated but weirdly coincidental ingrown hair that the doc actually wanted to do another course of antibiotics for! I told her if they were going to do that, they might as well take me out back and put me out of my misery because I didn't think I could survive it again. See how one thing led to another in a vicious cycle of pain? But I'm finally starting to feel like myself again... um, down there.

Aaaaannd... now you know more about me than you ever wanted to! But seriously, I don't think people talk about postpartum enough. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's gone through wonky recovery hell, but no one talks about it because who wants to admit they had to buy rectal suppositories? Anyone? Anyone?
On a completely different tangent, yesterday I pumped a bottle** and Adam was going to attempt to give it to Avery for her first nighttime feeding so I could get some extra sleep. Would you believe that when I got into bed, I actually felt sad that I wouldn't see the baby for her next feeding? How insane is that?! I get an opportunity to sleep for 6 hours and I almost say no because I will miss her. Even though I would be sleeping and probably not even notice. This does not bode well for my return to work in 5 weeks (*sob*). I am already feeling like I want to cast myself off a rooftop when I think about leaving my Little Biddle and not knowing if she's crying for me and I'm not there. I think Adam wants me to quit my job. I'm still somewhat on the fence about it, but that's a whole 'nother blog post.

**Speaking of pumping, is it supposed to be a little painful? Is it supposed to take a long time? I have a Medela Pump In Style and it kind of hurts and my nipples turn purple or white after using it. And it took me about 30 minutes to get 3 oz out of one boob yesterday. Normal? Suck it up? Or am I doing something wrong?

Under Pressure

The Little is taking her third nap of the day (on her tummy) next to me on the couch, and while she still requires patting every 20 minutes or so lest she rouse from her peaceful slumber, I am very grateful she is napping instead of fretfully "ehh, ehh-ing" and needing to be carried around. Especially after the past two nights we have had where she decided that instead of going down for the night around 8, she preferred to nurse and get bounced around until 1 am, thereby reducing my already blighted sleep time to four hours.

She woke up from her last nap and wanted to eat right! this! minute! or I'm gonna eat my hand! So we nursed and she fell asleep again, and I put her down even though her diaper was a little (ok, REALLY) wet. Relatedly, why is it that she is perfectly happy to suck on her hand, the carseat strap, or my shoulder, but if you put a pacifier in her mouth she looks at you like you just took a big crap on her shoe?! Why, why, WHY?! I really want her to take a faffy because of the carseat thing (you know, the one where she wails pitifully to be released from her bondage and my heart melts into my ankles), but she has refused three different kinds now. Although, she did suck on one for nearly an hour the other night, but only because she was asleep when I put it in her mouth. Also relatedly (to the diaper, not the faffy): when we were on nurse/fuss repeat mode last night, the Little managed to puke on three pillows, five burp cloths, my hair & shirt, the bed, and pee out an outfit because someone (ADAM) put her diaper on askew and one of her little butt cheeks was hanging completely out of the dipe. Diapering fail. I woke up this morning and my room looked like the linen closet exploded.

Isn't it kind of hilarious when you're burping the baby on your shoulder and you hear an urp come up so you look and find barf all over her face and your shoulder and your hair, and you get all that cleaned up and go to fluff up the pillows you're leaning on and you find MORE urp, like a lot more, all over the pillows, because she barfed OVER your shoulder as well as on it? Or when your mom is carrying the baby and you hear a burp and a splat and you don't even have to be told that she just propulsion urp'ed on the floor? Hahahaha, right? Right! I almost can't remember what we entertained ourselves with before the Little came along and started vomiting and pooping on everything!

I feel so much pressure during naptime to get something done! Yet somehow I have only managed so far to wander around the house uselessly flapping my hands. And write this blog post. It's the small things. Tomorrow a workout?? Stay tuned for these exciting developments!

Alone

I dropped my mom off at the airport this morning. I cried as I hugged her goodbye, and on the drive home I permitted myself a brief fantasy about turning onto the highway and heading downtown to have lunch and a pedicure and maybe see a movie all by myself. Instead I pulled into the driveway and came inside to face my first day alone. Well, technically I am being melodramatic, as I am hardly alone in the strict sense of the word. Adam was upstairs sleeping, the lucky SOB. However, for all practical purposes, STILL ALONE.

I suppose I have known all along that eventually I would have to fend for myself in this motherhood business. That somehow I would have to figure out how to pee, get some lunch, do laundry, and keep up a modicum of neatness in the house while keeping the baby alive. That the duty of walking the baby around for several hours every evening during her fussy time would fall on me. I am shocked that this moment is upon me already. It's been nearly seven weeks since Avery was born. That was fast. And, weirdly, slooooow. At any given moment, it feels like I'm stuck in an infinite do-loop of rocking and bouncing and patting and soothing and shushing and changing diapers and getting barfed on and nursing and not-sleeping. It's a weird baby time warp where the hours seem to simultaneously drag on and fly by.

I'm sure one day in the future, perhaps when she's crawling all over trying to stick her fingers in the light sockets, I'm going to look back on this time nostalgically and wonder what on earth I thought was so hard about THAT. However. I would very much like to exercise once in a while, or spend a few uninterrupted hours mindlessly watching tv or surfing something on the internet other than "nipple pain pumping" or "normal infant poop", or take a shower or get a pedicure or sleep for more than 3 hours. I try not to wish her babyness away because she's so precious and it's such a fleeting moment in time. But I'd be lying if I said I don't often wish she was a bit more settled, developed and routined, and less unpredictable and just, well, needy. I feel bad even having these thoughts. I love her so much it's impossible to explain! And yet...

My particular baby...

... does not like to be put down. We have a house full of various baby gadgets - a swing that makes womb noises, plays music, and has a light show, a cradle that rocks, a bouncy seat that vibrates, a pack and play that also vibrates and plays music or nature sounds, the dreaded car seat & stroller - and she doesn't seem to really like any of them. If you put her down in them, she will sit for a few minutes before she starts grunting and getting frustrated like why am I in this thing and not in your arms?! Much of the time, the preferred method of holding also involves walking, bouncing and butt-patting around the house.

I had planned on doing some "babywearing" around the house and when we are out, so I was prepared with a sling and an Ergo baby carrier before she was born. I now have five (5) different baby carriers, and she has to be in the right mood to be happy in any of them.

The sling is great because it's easy and she seems to sleep well in it since she is all cuddled up in a ball, but it's uncomfortable for me to wear for too long since the weight is only over one shoulder and one of my arms is confined. Plus, she seems to get frustrated in it if she's awake and not sleepy. Maybe it's too confining or something, I have no idea.
The Ergo is technically for an older baby unless you buy this ridiculous infant insert that is like a huge quilt - totally impractical for a tropical climate. I have had her in it with a blanket folded up under her bum and that seems to work just fine. It's the most comfortable carrier I have for me to wear because the weight is distributed on my hips instead of shoulders. But it is HOT, even without the infant insert! The material is heavy canvas, and the lumbar support is super-padded, and once you get two warm bodies pressed together with all that canvas wrapped around us, it's just a big sweat-fest. So I don't know... it doesn't seem like it would be all that comfortable on hikes. It's so humid here you end up soaked within an hour of outdoor activity even if you're not hugging a tiny radiator.


I also have a Moby wrap, a Snugli and a Baby Bjorn. The Moby wrap I haven't quite figured out how to use yet. And it is a huge piece of heavy fabric that you wrap around yourself five or six times with the baby snuggled somewhere in the folds: also seems hellishly hot. The Snugli seems nice, but it is also padded and seems like it will be really hot to sit in. The Baby Bjorn I have is made of mesh and is nice and cool, but it doesn't have any lumbar support, only shoulder straps. It's like wearing a backpack backwards. The baby is only about 10 lbs now and even at that weight I feel the stress in my upper back. Plus that thing is $90 (holy cow).


In the Bjorn.

I hope over time she will grow to like being in the sling or one of the carriers pretty well, because my arms feel like they are going to fall off from carrying the baby around all the time! Plus it's hard to get anything done, like getting something to eat, with only one hand.
The large humans have displeased her.

My particular baby also does not like to sleep on her own either. She can be sound asleep in my arms, and the moment I lay her down, her eyes pop open and she starts making her dragon noises. This situation is also not conducive to getting anything done. I have spent entire days holding the sleeping baby! At night when Adam is home, he holds her all night. When he is working, she sleeps with me, which is fine for her, although admittedly I do not sleep very well mainly because she makes quite a lot of noise in her sleep especially if she is on her back. Even when swaddled, she squirms and grunts and hisses most of the night. Obviously life cannot go on like this forever, and though I realize one day she will grow out of it and sleep famously on her own, I would prefer to find a solution sooner rather than waiting indefinitely.
It seems some people on the internet who have this same problem find that when they put their babies on their tummies, they sleep just fine on their own. My own cousin now sleeps her baby on his tummy after three months of no sleeping, and now he sleeps like a champ. I am beginning to suspect there is an underground movement of people who go ahead and sleep their babies on their tummies despite all the expert advice that babies should sleep on their backs. I wonder, do those experts have any practical experience with actual babies? Because my experience is that babies do not like being all exposed on their backs while they sleep very much. I can understand this since I myself do no like to sleep on my back either.

So. Yesterday was Avery's six week birthday and we marked the occasion by putting her down for her naps on her tummy. We put her on the couch and then sat right next to her watching the rise and fall of her breathing through the blanket. She slept great. In fact, she is napping on her tummy on the couch right next to me as I type, quite happily like a little roast turkey, for over an hour now. Does this make me a bad mommy? I sure feel guilty enough about it even though 15 years ago everyone put their babies on their tummies. I am worried about SIDS, obviously, and I don't know if I could put her down like that at night when I'm not checking on her fifty bazillion times. However, I have noticed that though the experts say SIDS rates have declined significantly since they started the "back to sleep" campaign, if you look at the statistics, the rates have been declining since long before that. I don't know, I don't know. Surely I am not the only one who has done this?
You probably noticed that I keep saying "we" are doing this or that. By that I mean my mother and I. Yep, mom is still here! You guys, my mother is a saint. She has been mothering both me AND Avery for the last six weeks. And while I am so grateful for her help for my own selfish reasons, it also makes me so glad to see her and the baby spending so much time together. I know I have told you this already, but did you know that baby girls are born with all the eggs they will have already in their ovaries? That means that the egg that became Avery was made by my mother's body when she was pregnant with me! This blows my mind! And I think is the reason there is a special connection between generations of women. Avery LOVES my mom. She smiles so much when my mom talks to her. Mom has such a sweet, soothing energy, Avery calms right down when she holds her. When I see my mom's gentle hands patting Avery's back, I feel so much love in my heart. I think, those are the hands that patted me when I was this tiny. And it is so hard to believe! I was that tiny! But it's true, and when I watch my mom loving on Avery and taking care of her, I get a glimpse of what my own infancy and childhood were like and I feel so, so lucky that she was my mom. I hope I can be as good to Avery.

Avery's Birth Story Part Three

Adam and I decided before the birth that we wanted to let the umbilical cord stop pulsing before we cut it because we had read that it's like a big infusion of vitamins, minerals, blood, etc for the baby. The midwife told us that can sometimes lead to jaundice because the baby gets too many red blood cells, and also that I would not deliver the placenta until we cut the cord and it could take 30 or 45 minutes before it stops pulsing. I was in a complete daze and everything apart from the baby on my chest was a blur. I hadn't done enough research on it to know whether jaundice was a concern, but I was pretty much ready to be done with the whole ordeal of the birth and Adam seemed to think it was a good idea, so after about 1o minutes, we cut the cord and thus began Avery's life as a person separate from me! A couple more contractioins and the placenta came out a few minutes later. I felt about 20 pounds lighter once that and the baby were no longer inside me!

Then the fun of getting stitched up began. I had a second degree tear, which the midwife said was not bad and would probably heal on its own without stitches, but she wanted to put some in anyway. She numbed the area with a lidocain injection, but I could still feel pretty much every stitch. It was uncomfortable, I'm not gonna lie. After all I had been through, I was really ready to be done with the pain! It took about 20 minutes for her to finish the job. I'm not sure how many stitches she put in but it felt like a lot! Finally, finally it was over and they left us alone for a bit to enjoy the baby.

I'm not sure how long we lay there - an hour? Eventually the nurse came back and asked if they could take the baby to weigh her and check her out. I didn't really want to let her go, but I figured I might as well not delay the inevitable so I let her go. She was only with the pediatrician for a few minutes, but she cried and cried.



Poor baby. This is one of the things about giving birth in a hospital. Of course, the point is to make sure mom and baby are ok and there aren't any problems, but it seemed so torturous to both of us all the poking and prodding we endured during our stay at the hospital. Modern medicine is miraculous and I'm grateful for it. But it does seem so unnatural taking a newborn baby away from its mommy to be prodded and poked like that. They finished with the baby, swaddled her and gave her to Adam - his first time to hold his daughter!

Proud papa!

Then the nurse came and helped us get positioned to breastfeed. Avery nursed for about 45 minutes right off the bat!


We got to hang out in the delivery room for a couple hours. The nurse came in after a while and told me I had to get up and go to the bathroom before they could transfer us to the mother-baby floor. I was pretty nervous about using the bathroom after all that trauma to the area. Adam helped me get up and I was able to go with no problem. Then the nurse prepared what was basically a big diaper for me - a pair of the infamous mesh undies they give you in the hospital, a gigantic pad, an ice pack, and a bunch of tucks pads lined along the whole deal, covered with this foam stuff that numbs you. Good times. I really didn't feel too bad, considering! Then we got our room in mother-baby.
Little Elf!
Doing skin to skin time... look how teeny tiny she was!
We spent the whole day hanging out and admiring the baby. We both really wanted to go home, but ended up having to stay for 36 hours - until 10 pm the next day.



So, am I glad I did it naturally? Yes. In retrospect. Because it is true that the baby was really alert as soon as she got up on my chest, and she was looking around at all of us, and we were able to nurse right away. Plus, I felt like myself immediately. I didn't have to wait for pain meds to wear off, or deal with a catheter or any of that. I got up and walked to the bathroom within hours of giving birth, and I was up walking around our room in mother-baby.

Would I do it again? Um... maybe? I don't know... I mean, probably. Probably I would. Because I do believe there are so many benefits for both mom and baby. But I didn't experience a huge emotional high (aside from the intense adrenaline rush that lasted several days), or any sense of a big accomplishment or empowerment. Right after the birth, my main sense was one of being shell-shocked. I was thinking - wow, that was really kind of traumatic. And why was I not one of those serenely birthing women I had so wanted to be? I remember asking my mom - who birthed both me and my sister without pain medication back in the 80s when they actually made you lie on your back the whole time! - while we were still in labor and delivery, "how on earth did you do this TWICE?!" In the aftermath, I could not honestly fathom how anyone would want to get pregnant again or endure a natural birth more than once!

Of course, it is true what they say - that you forget the pain. I suppose it must be that way otherwise the human race would have died out long ago. I keep wondering how those African bush-women manage? I have heard that birth is a non-issue in more traditional societies. Weston Price wrote in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration about women who would go into the bushes alone in the middle of the night and give birth and when their husbands awoke in the morning they would have a new baby.

I keep wondering how much of my experience was colored by being in a hospital and all that entailed. Our Bradley class talked about how animals need dim lights, quiet and solitude when they give birth (think of a cat finding a corner in the closet) and humans are no different. Is it just a coincidence that my labor seemed to intensify and become unmanageable as soon as we got into the hospital under the neon lights with multiple strangers poking on me, talking to me, and forcing me into uncomfortable positions?

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against hospitals - thank goodness they are there for situations that need them. I was very lucky to have a completely normal and "easy" birth with no complications. I just have to wonder, in my case, would my perception of labor have been different if I'd been in a different setting? At home, or in one of those crunchy-granola birthing centers, would it not have seemed so completely overwhelming and traumatic?

It's not that the birth was a negative experience. Nor was it positive, though. It just was what it was: something I somehow got through. Neither was our hospital stay an overall positive experience. The endless march of various nurses and doctors coming through to check both me and the baby was exhausting and invasive. Seriously, sometimes the pediatrician would come in to check on the baby - take her temperature and listen to her heart - and 15 minutes later, the nurse would come in and insist she needed to do the same thing. We just really wanted to go home and be in the comfort of our own bed, our own space, and it seemed silly with both of us doing so well that we had to stay. The morning after the birth, they told us that they had to keep the baby another 12 hours to make sure she didn't develop jaundice. Which made no sense to me because she was nursing well and had zero signs of elevated bilirubin levels. AND we had to come back the next day to have her checked anyway.

Ok, so that's my rant! I hardly have room to complain given the outcome:
Happy threesome.

Hopefully the cute photos make up for the lack of wit

Avery surprised us all by sleeping for seven hours a couple nights ago! I woke at 3 am after going to bed at 9:30 and was like, what the heck, where is the baby?! I had to get up and come downstairs to see... sure enough, still sleeping. She woke soon after that to be fed and thank goodness because my chest felt like boulders for needing to be drained. Of course, I'm not daft enough to think we would get a repeat performance. She was back to her 2-3 hour routine the next night. Can growth spurts last for two weeks? Because I think she's been on one for over a week now!

She even outgrew her newborn size diapers! It seemed like it happened in a matter of hours. We put one on her and the next change she needed a bigger size because her little tushie was hanging out the back. We've got her in her cloth dipes now - they finally fit! She looks like a q-tip because there's still a lot of extra padding since these are one-size diapers for up to 35 lbs. But I think it will be just fine and as she grows they will fit better.
We took her out day before yesterday because I had to go to the clinic, and then we went out for breakfast and to browse around the mall. Note to self: bring more diapers and changes of clothes than you think you will need! She blew out a diaper and outfit in the hospital, and then when we were at the restaurant, she blew out another one! We cleaned her up as best we could, and then went to the Baby Gap in the mall and got a cheap onesie on sale to put on her.
Of course she cried again in the carseat on the way home. This is the face she made after she resigned herself... isn't it the saddest thing you've ever seen?! It breaks my heart! We had to pull over in Chinatown so we could nurse because she was crying so much.
This was her second outfit of the day, in the hospital. That onesie was just supposed to be a BACKUP!
This little pink sleeper doesn't even fit her anymore! Especially not since her bum is so fluffy in her Fuzzi Bunz.
Little Angel Baby.

Life with baby

Little Avery decided yesterday evening that the preferred feeding interval was 30 minutes or less. She is frequently a little fussy and wanting to nurse a lot during the evening hours - a time we call Happy Hour because it's all about keeping Avery happy. She doesn't cry, she just grunts and acts like she's uncomfortable or disgruntled about something. And she wants to nurse frequently. She will nurse for a few minutes and then pop off and grunt and act annoyed until I put her back on the boob. Rinse and repeat. Last night was the biggest marathon session yet, though. From about 6 through 10 pm she would nurse, fall asleep, wake and start grunting and fussing, back on the boob to nurse again, over and over! She finally gave it up around 10 and Adam took her downstairs so I could get some much-needed sleep. She must be going through a growth spurt because I swear she looks and feels bigger every day and she is nursing so much the last few days.

She was up again at 2 to eat, and then she fell asleep. I was sitting in bed with her and she needed her diaper changed, so I told Adam to bring me a diaper and wipe so I could try to do it without waking her up. Well, I'm sure you can guess that situation unraveled quickly. It was just a pee diaper so I thought we could do a quick switch and be done with little disturbance, but I should have known better! We got her cleaned off and got the fresh diaper under her, and just as I closed the hatch - before I even fastened it up - her eyes popped open and she unloaded a huge poo! Thankfully I had gotten the diaper in place before she did that on my lap. Then we discovered her little footed sleeper was partially INSIDE the diaper in the back, and was therefore covered in poo. Sigh. I carried her into the nursery still holding the dipe around her bum and got her cleaned up and into a new outfit.

Then, of course, she was wide awake and thought it would be a good time to get carried around so she could Check Things Out and practice holding her head up. I tried to get her to sleep, then Adam tried - at which point she started smiling at him and just generally hamming it up, the little booger - and then I tried again, but she was having none of it. She was alert and wide-eyed. After about an hour I told Adam to take her back downstairs and walk around with her and see if she'd fall asleep. I guess he spent another hour bouncing around the downstairs with her until she finally went back down and slept until almost 7 this morning. I had gone back to sleep at 3, so I actually woke up before Adam came back upstairs because my boobs felt like boulders for needing to be emptied after the nursing frenzy yesterday.

She got her second bath today. Her first real bath was at the two week point, and she didn't like it much. We bathed her in her tub in the kitchen, and she wailed when we first put her in the water so I pulled her out and wrapped her in a towel. We tried again a few minutes later and discovered she had poo'd all over the towel - Mom said, jeez ya scared the poo out of her!! When we put her in again she did ok, though she looked very suspicious, and she cried again when we pulled her out. Today we bathed her in her tub in the bathroom - less drafty? - and she actually seemed to like it! Phew. I was worried we were going to have a fussy bather on our hands!

She is sleeping next to me on the couch right now. Cute, cute!

Adventures with the Little

We had a big day yesterday. Of course, any day that we leave the house is a Big Day. We took the Little on her first trip to Target. The store is only a couple miles away from our new house. I put her in the sling and she went right to sleep before we even got from the parking lot into the sore! I went to get her a pacifier to use in the car. At first I said I was not going to give her a pacifier, but she cries so piteously in her carseat sometimes... and I don't know what I'm going to do when I have to be the one driving and she's alone in the back seat. I'm going to have a nervous breakdown if she starts wailing I think! Well, hopefully not because I can give her the paci and hope that keeps her calm. The internet recommended a Soothies pacifier for breastfeeding babies because it's shaped most like a nipple. When I first stuck it in her mouth she made a face like what the heck is that?! It took her a little while to get the hang of sucking on it, and she still can't keep it in her mouth. But we're going to keep working on it.

After that we drove across town to go to the Whole Foods and see that Babies documentary. Here is the trailer:



I put the babe in the sling again and she slept through Whole Foods and our lunch from the hot food bar there. Some guy came up to me in Whole Foods and asked me whether I'd heard about the baby sling recall. I've heard about it, but it's only for a couple of duffel bag style slings where the baby can't get air and some babies suffocated. My sling allows the baby's head to be out so she can breathe. I would never put the Little in a sling where you couldn't see her face! But I felt like that guy was kind of judging me for having her in a sling.

Anyway, after that we went to the theater and Avery nursed and slept through the whole movie. It was pretty cute (the movie, not the baby). There is no dialogue, just video footage of the four babies during their first year of life. The baby is still too little really to take her out and about... she's just so tiny still and bewildered by everything, and needs to nurse so frequently. Maybe in a few weeks it will be easier!

Doesn't she look like a little doll in this picture?! So precious.



And she's started smiling at us now! It's tough to get a smile out of her, but when she does her whole face lights up. It's so adorable. I can't wait to see more of her personality develop.