Get a Grippe

Last night around 3am I thought up a fantastic opening sentence for this entry. Last night around 4am I forgot said sentence. So suffice it to say that we have had the flu.

If mucus was a dependable financial commodity, like gold, we would be in the money.

I feel like the past five days have been a lesson to me, and to a lesser extent to Tom, to relax. There's a reason everyone tells you to "sleep when the baby's sleeping;" having a newborn is exhausting! But once I'm up, it's really seductive to just tidy up the living room, and then clean that pile of dishes, and oh, while I'm at it I might as well do a load or two of laundry, wipe down the bathroom and bake cookies. In other words, by the time I've cleaned and cooked and nursed and snuggled the sun is setting and another night of light sleep is descending.

Getting sick has made me rethink the logic of productivity (for the moment, anyway). I don't really like to nap, but starting yesterday I make an effort to share Halle's afternoon nap, or at least spend the time supine, resting. And starting this past weekend, I leave a bottle of breast milk in the fridge so that Tom can do the last nighttime feeding around 4 or 5 am. In some ways it's hard to relinquish my quiet time for afternoon walks or chores, and it's surprisingly emotional to let someone else feed Halle, but these little changes are important. First of all, I want to beat this terrible cold and that means grabbing a little sleep when I can. And secondly, I need to look my type A face in the mirror and admit that a little disorder isn't the end of the world. Besides, if I get a little more rest maybe I won't be quite so mean to the cats when they climb into the crib for the umpteenth time or somehow drag litter all over the house. But those dirty bastards are fodder for another post.

Who Needs Sleep? (Well, You're Never Gonna Get It.)

Forgive the fact that I just quoted from a Barenaked Ladies song. It's been running through my head since about 4am this morning when I finally woke my husband to take our angelically sleeping babe from my aching arms.

It was a dark and stormy night. I listened to the rain and wind lashing against the nursery windows while I gazed into my daughter's slumbering face, half entranced by her cuteness and half terrified by her almost supernatural ability to go from deep sleep to fussy wakefulness the moment I put her down. Because the minute you put a deeply asleep but secretly fussy baby down, she will wake up, need a diaper change (again), by that time be fully awake (again), and then need to be fed (again), burped, and coaxed back into sleep, in your arms, in the nursery chair, in the dead of night much to your bleary-eyed distress. While your generally much beloved but temporarily reviled husband snores the night away in the next room.

In general Halle is a wonderful baby. She rarely cries, even at night. She is not terribly fussy, and during the day I can put her in the Boppy bouncer or the Moses basket and she'll snooze for an hour or two between feedings. But something happens at night, some sort of dark baby voodoo that turns our mellow babe who will sleep anywhere into a persnickety infant who can not only stay awake for several hours, but can also nurse for several hours and refuse to sleep on her back anywhere but in Mommy's arms. And as the Mommy in question, part of me is delighted to cradle her because she's so beautiful. But the part of me that needs sleep spends most nights close to tears in the nursery chair, dozing on and off and developing one hell of a neck crick.

Now, it's easy to relegate all of my comments to the "Mommy is Kvetching, What Did She Expect" folder (he would never admit to it, but I bet that's exactly what my husband was thinking at 4am this morning when I shoved him until he sat up), but moms need sleep. First of all, we need to rest in order to produce breast milk, and secondly there are links between fatigue and postpartum depression. I asked our pediatrician for help and he suggested a vibrating chair, so we're off to Toys R Us today to add to the growing pile of baby paraphernalia in the apartment. We now have a Moby wrap, an ergo baby carrier, a Boppy manual bouncer, a Moses basket, a co-sleeper (ha ha ha) and a handful of different swaddling blankets. It's a little ridiculous, but I think normal for new parents. You think each new product will make life easy...but the truth of it is, and this is starting to sink in, that we just need to get to know Halle's needs and likes, and then most of our baby gear will be irrelevant. Still, I have hopes for the vibrating chair. Perhaps tonight I will sleep between feedings while Halle, Mommy and Daddy snooze against a soundscape of light buzzing and soothing music.

Well, it's important to dream...waking or sleeping.

When It Gets Stressful

So, Halle is 3-weeks old as of last night and already we need to worry about daycare waiting lists. I had hoped this kind of scrambling was isolated to places like Manhattan, where your child's preschool dictates her elementary, middle and high school placement and toddlers are forced to interview for positions, but alas, even Portland has its upper and lower echelons of daycare quality. And what kind of parent doesn't want the best for her child? That's the rub. Admit to wanting the best, and you sound like a Tiger Mother. Do anything less, and feel like a real jerk.

There are two major impediments to high quality daycare: cost and availability. A well-regarded, certified Montessori program (our favorite, for educational and philosophical reasons) runs around $15,000/year for a day that ends at 2:45pm. Even of you can afford that kind of tuition (and I'm really not sure we can), the waiting lists are miles long. But before you object to the price tag, it's worth knowing that every recommended facility I've looked into costs over $1000/month for infant care. Then there are the mock Montessori programs, ones that use the label but aren't certified (the educational equivalent of "all natural" food items). I interviewed at some of those places after graduate school and turned down the jobs because the teaching was so abysmal. In one place, I watched a teacher pass around photos of her son in Iraq, holding a machine gun, to a class of preschoolers, all the while explaining that the dark people in the photos were our enemies and her son was keeping us all safe. Jesus H. Christ. And finally you have the family daycare in people's houses and the corporate daycare facilities. I don't like either of those options. I'm really frustrated that I have to work full-time but instead of making and saving money, I'll be spending pretty much everything I earn so that other people can raise my child. It might be time to look for a better job...

 Well, the babe is waking so I have to sign off. It's almost lunch time and I haven't showered or brushed my teeth or done laundry or even gone the three blocks to Les Schwab to have my tire pressure checked out. I'm so sleepy it hurts...but man, I can't complain too much; this beats my day job. I mean, whenever Tom or I get frustrated we look at this face:

How could we resist such kisses?

The Foundation Myth

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012. 7:22pm. Enter Halle Rose.

My water broke at work four weeks before Halle's due date. Soaked in amniotic fluid, I breathlessly went through all of the bureaucratic procedures to leave work early; texted my husband ("Emergency. Don't panic, but call me."); and drove myself to the hospital.

I wasn't having any labor pains yet, so the idea of driving myself to the hospital wasn't as obscene as it sounds. I was able to calmly squish myself up to the fifth floor Women's Pavilion and check in for delivery. I was almost giddy with the unreality of the situation. Who has a first baby four weeks early?

By the time my goggle-eyed husband arrived at the hospital a half hour later, I was gowned and being monitored, still deliciously without any major pain, and thinking, "This is kind of fun." Thirty minutes after that I was having the worst cramps of my life and rethinking my natural childbirth fantasies. Ten minutes after that I was fully dilated and pushing. For two hours.

Halle wanted to be born early. She wanted to be born quickly. She was just a little hesitant about actually leaving the womb.

Because my labor progressed so quickly, there was no time for pain medication. (This is a fact I mused over quite a lot during the quieter moments of the pushing stage.) According to my mother, I was pretty stoic but kept repeating, "I want this baby OUT of me!" And it's true: you really do want that baby out of the goddamned birth canal and into your arms. Pushing is the hardest physical feat I have ever accomplished and the only thing that got me through it was the knowledge that it (a) had to happen, and (b) ended in a baby. The nicest thing I can say about labor pain is that it has a definitive purpose and a definitive end. As soon as that baby pops into the doctors arms, the cramping ends and your world changes. You have a sticky, exhausted infant in your arms, a terrified new dad by your side, and about ten people bustling around your gaping vagina. The nurses bare your breasts to the world (and any visitors--my dad rushed in as soon as the baby appeared, which is something I am truly grateful to have been too exhausted to notice, especially since I wasn't just topless but bottomless, being stitched up after an episiotomy), and they put your naked newborn onto your chest.

Which is miraculous. Did you know that the mother's body thermo-regulates the baby's temperature? Your little baby gets as much warmth from you as she needs, and the two of you can lie there together stunned by the magnitude of birth. I barely remember it, but I know in my bones that it was the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I had Halle three weeks ago today, and each day has been a sleepy wonder. I've been peed and pooped on, spit up on, and I find none of it disgusting. I'm running on 3-5 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period, but I'm not crazy yet. I nurse an average of every 2 hours and feel like a dairy cow (my daughter can't really focus on my face yet, but she can smell my boobs from a foot away), and the minute I think about nursing my milk leaks everywhere. I've never done so much laundry in my life (we don't own a washer-dryer) and we've gone through something like 180 diapers. At night I peer over the bassinet watching her breathe, making sure she's breathing, holding my own breath in a ridiculous, unconscious attempt to give her as much oxygen as possible.

Being a mom, and being a wife to a dad, are two new jobs that are hard to describe, and I'm going to use this blog as a place to parse out my feelings, both when they're joyous and when they're fearful, or fearsome. I'm not writing this for an audience, but if you stumble upon my blog and take some comfort in it, or laugh with (at) me as I fumble through motherhood, I'll appreciate the company.

And of course, I'll post pictures.