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26/09/2005 Birthing ChoicesSomeone asked in a comment if we had a doula. This triggered a thought process about my thought process around our birthing plan. It may be obvious, but how you would like to give birth is extremely dependent on your personality and what you believe will make you (and your partner) most comfortable. Essentially you need to determine what will raise your chances to relax and your ability to keep calm. That is different for everyone. I never even considered a home birth because I am a Class A "what if" Worrier. Having medical equipment and knowledge on-hand for the worst case scenarios was more comforting to me than being in my home. My preference was not to have any painkillers but I knew I had no idea of how I would cope with pain since my worse experience to date was a root canal, hardly a comparison to hours of labor and then delivery (though at the time it seemed pretty nasty and I certainly would not have done that without anesthesia!). I briefly considered a doula, but it never was a real option for us because we are very private people and although I could deal mentally with labor nurses and doctors being there on an official capacity, it seemed weird to have a person who didn't really know me that well helping me out with the birth. Simply put, it comes down to trust. Could I have gotten to know a doula well enough through pre-meetings to be comfortable having her there and representing my needs? The answer is, yes, if the doula was good it would have been great. After all, my husband and I had no experience with this! But to wonder whether it would work out or not was actually an added potential point of stress. We were lucky that our hospital provides a dedicated nurse for labor/delivery and thus we didn't have to share a nurse with anyone else. Also, I had a good relationship with our OB which is immensely helpful. So while a well-matched doula would have definitely helped, I went in knowing I had prepared for what I believed would be the most helpful plans for my state of mind. Ultimately, your comfort level is the most important criteria in your birthing choices.
A friend told me that she is considering hiring a post-partum doula for her next baby. This is a woman that helps after you are home, taking care of the baby, light chores, wrangling the relatives, etc. For first-time parents I can imagine this is especially helpful. Being home with a newborn baby who is completely trusting you to fulfill its needs is overwhelming and it could be very handy having someone on-hand that knows what is normal and what is not and can demonstrate for the millionth time how to swaddle the baby correctly. 25/08/2005 Pregnant Tummies Don't SquishSometime in my third trimester I drove my husband's new car to work. He was away on business, which means this was early in the third trimester because he was not allowed to leave town after a certain point. I parked in the parking garage at work, perfectly centered in the spot. When I left in the evening, the car was boxed in. There was a generic Japanese compact on the passenger side and a gas-sucking SUV on the driver side. The SUV had no business parking in the compact spot. The compact had no business parking off-center in the spot.
No problem, my brain thought, I'll just squeeze in. I pushed through the narrow space between my car and the SUV and opened the driver door. I started to get in the car.
There's a difference between having a fat belly and a pregnant belly. Fat can be moved around, mushed in, and you can suck in your gut to get by things. Pregnant bellies stay the shape they are. There's no way to get them smaller, they just grow bigger. And sucking in your gut does nothing except make you realize that your lung capacity has shrunk along with your ability to take full advantage of all-you-can-eat Indian lunch buffets.
I did not fit through the door opening. I backed myself up (beep beep beep) and out. I tried the passenger side. Nope. I opened the rear hatch and contemplated dragging my pregnant body over the backseat and up through to the front. I decided against it. I was royally pissed at the other drivers. I looked at my watch. 8pm. Who the heck would still be at work? Could I find the SUV or compact car owners? I went back in the office building to troll the halls.
Luckily the first person I came across was the skinniest guy in the place. I told him my sad story and he came out to the garage with me. I handed him the keys and he got in the car and started the engine. The alarm went off.
ARGH.
Some fumbling with the keys and remote and we finally had it off, but of course I felt awful that I had scared the bejeezus out of this poor guy who had been nice enough to help me out. He backed the car out and I thanked him profusely, apologized for the millionth time about the alarm, and drove home.
For the remainder of my pregnancy I avoided compact parking spots like the plague. 24/08/2005 Good Eats for BabiesHere's the "stage 1" baby food report (approx 6-8 months):
I remember reading or perhaps hearing at a book signing event that Alton Brown really wanted to do a baby food show for Good Eats, but the Food Network nixed the idea saying it wouldn't have enough mass appeal. Are they nuts or what? Or do they just not want Gerber (part of the Novartis conglomerate) to put them on an advertising blacklist when Alton shows everyone how simple making baby food really is?
People are often amazed that I make our own baby food, especially since I'm a working mom. But it's so freakin' easy! Buy something, cut it up, steam it, and run it through our little mini food processor (or just use a fork to mash it up). Add a little of the steam water if it's too dry. You can then put it into ice cube trays to freeze it for later, but I couldn't find our trays (our freezer has an ice maker), so I just put tablespoon blobs of puree on a parchment paper lined sheet pan and put that in the freezer. Then you pop the cubes/blobs into bags and defrost as needed. This is much easier than big people food.
For fruit we started with pears and bananas (no need to cook those, just mash). We do buy applesauce (organic from Trader Joe's, without that sour Vitamin C added) since it is so readily available and not expensive. He gets that for breakfast along with his infant cereal and bananas.
For veggies we started with yams, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower and butternut squash. Green beans and spinach came a little later. I did buy jarred peas because I found they were very sweet and tasty.
I did usually wait 3-4 days before introducing new foods. I found that if something wasn't sweet (ie most veggies) he would reject it at first but then if I tried again the next day or later, he would accept it just fine. So it's worthwhile to keep trying to find out if he really does hate it or not. Sometimes mixing it with a dollop of infant cereal the first time helped him get adjusted to it.
Speaking of infant cereals, we started with the ever-popular Gerber varieties, but when we were trying to track down his allergies we switched (they contain Soy Lecithin). Now we use Healthy Times and Earth's Best who have identical boxes (different graphics). Infant cereal is supposed to be important at this stage because it provides iron and other nutrients. Although these two organic brands are almost identical, their multi-grain cereal ingredients are different. If you're concerned about potential gluten (wheat) allergies, you may want to look into millet versus barley in the mixed varieties. Barley has less gluten than wheat but millet doesn't have any. Earth's Best uses millet and Healthy Choice uses barley (and they also sell a barley single-grain cereal, though I couldn't find any stores that carried it).
OK, so back to the veggies... once we had introduced a number of them I started mixing two or three together or feeding him two different kinds at a sitting. Later on I added meat also, but that, as Alton Brown says, is another show. 13/08/2005 Eating on the GoIn the "not a necessity but so nice to have" category of baby gear our Fisher-Price Healthy Care Booster Seat  has come out as a big win. We don't eat out much, but we do take the baby to eat at his grandparents' and friends houses often. I think he enjoys sitting in this seat more than his regular high chair; he is happy to sit in it after he's been fed, looking around at the sights while noshing on his starch selection (cheerios, bread, rice cakes, wheat puffs). For the price ($24.99 but we had a coupon so we paid closer to $20) it has given us tremendous value. The design is wonderful as it folds nicely up for transport with the belts becoming a shoulder strap. It isn't flat, but it is light and easy to manage while carrying a baby. It attaches securely to all the dining chairs we've met; I think you'd only have a problem if you were in a booth with bench seats. There aren't any annoying crevices for food to get stuck in. The tray distance and seat height are adjustable. And I love that the baby has his own tray so I don't have to worry about what he can reach on the table top. When we do want him seated right at the table, we can remove the tray and even the back too. This one is a real winner, highly recommended once your baby can sit up.Tag, You're It!Our baby loves tags. Hand him a soft toy or blankie or anything with a tag and he'll find it and play with that instead of whatever else he's supposed to be doing with the thing. It's cute to see his motor control: tiny fingers manipulating the "Made In China." If he's in the mood the tag then goes in the mouth for a good chew. His Whoozit is good for tag-like playing, but he's definitely happy just flipping any ol' tag.
Of course I thought about creating a toy that was all tags. Of course our baby isn't unique, so someone else has done this already. It's even patented ("a plurality of spaced-apart fabric loops each comprising a length of ribbon having first and second ends and turned back over on themselves such that the first and second ends lie proximate one another...etc etc"). 06/08/2005 Breastfeeding 101As the days fly by those first early weeks of parenting are blurrier than ever. I've realized I need to continue writing important experiences down before they are lost to the ages. My first babysitting job when I was in my teens was for a 3 month old. The parents would be gone from dinnertime to pretty late. This means that at some earlier point in my life I knew how to change a diaper, feed a 3 month old, and put it to sleep. I could not remember any details of that experience when I faced my own baby some 20 years later but there was some retention backing up my motherly intuition.
Breastfeeding, however, isn't something you can get experience with while babysitting. There may be some instinct helping you out and you can read books, take classes, and attend La Leche League meetings, but really you go into breastfeeding with no hands-on training. It should be simple and easy or the human race would not have survived. At least that's what I kept telling myself.
Because of the c-section we were in the hospital a few extra days. Plenty of time to get lots of breastfeeding experience with the help of our friendly nurses. They checked our baby's latch frequently and smiled and nodded. They approved of the amount of time he was spending getting his colustrom. And when I told them it was "kind of painful" they were sympathetic, brought me lanolin samples, and said that was all normal and it would go away. So I ignored the pain and carried on. By the time we returned home my nipples were bleeding, scabbed, and in constant pain. Every time the baby was about to latch I took a deep breath and prepared for excrutiating pain -- which I thought was normal. We had a follow-up visit at the Overlake Women's Clinic a couple days after we returned home and the nurse took one look at my breasts and said "I rarely recommend this, but you need to stop breastfeeding right now." She couldn't believe I had been soldiering on in my condition. Well, I had never done this before -- I didn't know how much it was supposed to hurt.
She immediately issued me Soothies and a Medela Symphony rental pump. She told me the breast pump was going to be my new best friend. I looked at our hungry baby and wanted to burst into tears.
I was to pump on schedule with when the baby needed to eat. That worked out to about every three hours and about seven times a day. We would bottle feed the baby while my nipples healed and gradually get him back on. The nurse also gave us some formula since we would likely have to supplement. We scheduled an appointment with a lactation consultant and went home.
My husband and I tried to cope with our new routine, newer than our already new routine. In addition to fatherly duties of diaper changing and swaddling he was now in charge of preparing bottles and washing bottles and pump equipment. In addition to recovering from major abdominal surgery I now had to get my nipples to heal and learn how to express milk. Having your baby latched on to nurse is an incredibly natural thing (if all goes well). But having a machine hooked up to your breasts, sucking the life out of them, makes you feel like a dairy cow.
Luckily you get used to it pretty quickly. It's dull and frustrating, but you do get used to it. And while the breast pump never became my best friend it was certainly a constant companion.
We settled into a feeding routine that was tolerable, though not ideal. My husband would feed the baby while I pumped. The baby chowed down the expressed milk quickly and would cry for more, then we'd give him some formula to top off. We constantly worried at first that we were overfeeding him, but my husband would do the math every day and find that we were generally on track with the high average recommendation.
The lactation consultant referred us to an oral therapist. Our son's tongue was the culprit. Instead of resting on the underside of the breast while feeding his tongue was loose and flapping over me, causing all the damage. The oral therapist gave us exercises to do to his mouth and tongue and recommended a different bottle nipple to train his tongue to the correct position. Since he was finishing his bottles so quickly she called up a former client to find out the name of the bottle system that had caused them so much trouble because their baby took forever to finish a feeding.
I slowly started adding breast feedings and removing pumpings. My nipples had healed but as soon as he would start nursing, the pain and damange would eventually return. We tried to stick with the training exercises. With the continued pumping and lack of progress my mood was often dismal and there were many times when I wanted to throw that blasted breast pump out the window. But for some reason I was determined to stick it out. I guess I couldn't believe that it just could not work out. It had to work. Breastfeeding is how babies eat...how could it not work?
At some point I realized: it takes two people to make breastfeeding work. One of them doesn't take orders very well, if at all. We continued gradually adding feedings and sometimes we'd have to scale back when I was wounded again. The oral therapist was wonderful about taking my phone calls and calling me to check on progress. She demonstrated the patience that I did not have. My husband had his bottle washing system worked out to a T. Our son was eating more each feeding and I was pumping more each time. Most importantly, my nipples were starting to cope better with the situation. I wonder that since modern breasts live "inside" all the time and they don't get the exposure that they would in "au naturel" times if that makes toughening up to breastfeeding more difficult. But maybe it really was just our son that needed adjusting.
I don't clearly recall the day that we went full time but I remember looking at the book where we wrote all his feedings (and what came out the other end) down and thinking how nice it would be when that second column of pumping times would be gone. I saw it gradually diminish and then one day it finally vanished.
At the time it seemed that this ordeal would never end. It seemed like months were going by, when it was really weeks. I think the overall time was about a month and a half. From then until I went back to work five months later it was all breastfeeding for our little guy. That wasn't a smart thing as it turned out since he refused to take a bottle when it was time to prepare for daycare. But by the time we were down to only one bottle feeding per day, he started refusing the bottle and would only take the real deal. I had fought so hard to reach that point that his refusal was to me an indication of a pure victory. 09/07/2005 Learning to SleepBabies have so much to learn. They arrive equipped with basic survival skills but to get the most out of life they immediately need to acquire many more abilities. Grabbing, crawling, walking, talking, we all know the common milestones. Sitting is a much celebrated one that finally frees the parents from constant bolstering duties. Scattered among the big milestones are skills that you assumed came standard with the base model human being. For instance, babies don't know how to go to sleep. They may sleep a lot in their first weeks, but many parents soon discover that their babies need help nodding off. So you spend time figuring out what help to give and fretting that you're giving the wrong help or creating a lifelong crutch. You worry that he'll never figure out the difference between day and night. Or that you'll spend years paying off expensive orthodontia for your binkie addict. Or that you'll have to install a swing in his college dorm room so he can sleep there. Then, miraculously, the baby starts sleeping longer and returning to sleep on his own if he wakes up. After that initial shock when you wake up, look at the clock in disbelief and shake your spouse awake screaming "the baby is dead!" you sigh in relief as your tired eyes droop into the dark circles underneath. You settle into a nice, new routine.
Then something happens. Teething. Or maybe an ear infection. Your slumbering angel is waking up screaming, often inconsolable. And you feel you've hopped backwards again in your slow quest for a full night's sleep because after the pain is over the routine is lost. It may feel that you're starting over, but it's a little easier this time. You and the baby adjust and a new routine settles in. Now it's time to start solids and despite all the warnings that you should never start solids just to get your baby to sleep longer, bam, he's actually "sleeping through the night" by some loose definition of the word. It's another new routine, but a welcome one.
Then your baby learns how to crawl.
And decides to practice in the wee hours.
You put him down for bed, he rolls over. He crawls around the crib, happy to be mobile. Or he scoots unhappily around, resisting your pleas to fall asleep. You maintain the routine, you sing lullabies. He finally falls asleep. He rolls over a couple hours later and is up again, crawling around, whining because he's tired, and testing your patience. Exhausted, he falls asleep on his tummy. He wakes up again a few hours later and repeats the process. You think about designing a baby straightjacket. But this is all part of the learning process. Finally, he learns how to calmly roll over and not wake himself up. You go in to check on him and he's mushed up in a corner of the crib or pretzeled in an odd configuration but he didn't wake up! And so you sleep again. For a few days.
Then he starts pulling up.
We're still working through that one.
Sleeping isn't really a milestone so much as it is a victim of other milestones. 01/06/2005 Baby StarbucksOpening in July in Bellevue, the Child's Play Cafe, a concept that may have some moms wondering why it took so long to arrive. While mom (and dad!) relax over their favorite beverage, their tiny offspring can climb around vinyl play equipment, chew on sanitized plastic toys, spin in exersaucers, and jump in jumperoos. Older kids have their own toys and activities too. They promise restrooms with heated wipes, lotion, breast pads and diapers! There's WiFi as well and food for all ages. Add gliders & rockers (not mentioned) and they'll have moms camping out there for weeks. They don't mention pricing though; will they charge for everything (one heated wipe, 5 cents please!), just food and drink, WiFi? We shall have to see. 14/05/2005 Maternity ClothesI thought it was difficult finding pants that fit when I wasn't pregnant, but the pregnancy perspective was worse. When you're not pregnant you have vast hopes that somewhere out there amongst the hundreds of styles there has to be one, just one will do, that works with your shape. When you're pregnant you're faced instead with a severely limited selection and an unpredictable shape. I tried all the pants at Mimi Maternity, Motherhood Maternity, JC Penney, the Gap, Target, and Old Navy. By the time I was done, Mimi and Motherhood (which are owned by the same company that also owns Peapod, so they basically span the entire economic range of maternity clothes) had merged into the same store at our mall. Eddie Bauer, where I used to buy all of my clothing (I am not kidding, check the tags), does not have a maternity section. And many of the prominent department stores don't have one either. Although I had never bought anything there before, I had the best luck with Old Navy's maternity line. I dress casually, so their basic shirts and jeans had the best match for my usual style. They stock simple cotton t-shirts of a good weight fabric with round or v-necks, nice buttoned shirts in stretchy-cotton fabric, denim skirts, jeans, and shorts with different types of panels. And the prices were good. I did also buy a few beige pants at JC Penney with expand-o-waistlines and one of them fit through most of the pregnancy. I found the Gap styles too fussy or expensive, but I did buy one embroidered shirt and a couple of dresses on sale there so I had something for special events such as our baby shower and anniversary dinner. My regular shirts worked for about half the pregnancy; it depended on how much tummy coverage I wanted. Towards the very end, it was a tight squeeze for any pants except the full paneled ones. I didn't bother buying special maternity bras; I found a comfortable regular bra in a larger size. However, Bravado bras were highly recommended by a few friends. The first pair of pregnancy pants I found and wore before I discovered Old Navy were a pair of ripstop beige capris. They elicited the comment "where's the flood?" from a certain person. I threatened to take him maternity clothes shopping with me. 06/05/2005 Bottle BrushesWe have three, count' em, 3 bottle brushes. The first one broke, and then hubby didn't want to risk being without cleaning equipment in the middle of a long night, so he bought three more. Our first purchase was the red Munchkin bottle brush. It has a pad sponge on the top end of the bristles and a nipple brush that pulls out of the handle. It worked great, but unfortunately it was the one that broke. The metal rusted through and failed not long after we got it (I can't say we stored it in a dry environment). Because we liked it we bought another one, but we also got the Avent brush and a rather generic brush for backup. The Avent is blue and brushlike with soft bristles only on one side. The handle end functions as the nipple cleaner, with a textured surface instead of bristles. Although it probably worked fine, I felt we were getting better cleaning from the Munchkin with its combo sponge and bristles. The generic brush was the flimsiest, of course. I'd recommend getting the Munchkin and keeping it dry between uses. Our replacement is still going strong. 03/05/2005 Baby BurritosAmong our hospital parting gifts was a blanket folded in a flat plastic package that didn't look interesting on casual inspection. It was "free" and flat, how good could it be? Well when we finally examined it more closely, it turned out to be an Ultimate Swaddling Blanket and our new best friend. I'm a big fan of cotton flannel. And our baby is big. The blankets we already had were either too small or too bulky for swaddling. But this freebie was perfect for the job. Alas, when I looked into buying another one or three, the price ($25) made my cheapskate tendencies rear up and I instead took some measurements and sent my mom off to the fabric store. Now we have a couple of hemmed 42" x 42" squares of flannel in cute baby-styled prints and they were cheap cheap cheap (kinda like me). Other swaddling aids recommended by moms & dads: The Amazing Miracle Blanket, duct tape (don't worry, it doesn't touch the baby it just keeps the blanket on), SwaddleMe, Glenn Fleishman's swaddling demo video. 28/04/2005 Avent Natural Feeding BottleThird and last (so far!) in our bottle review series. The Avent bottles are the bottle of choice for the lactation consultants I've run across. Or, strictly speaking, the "Avent Anti-Colic Nipple" is the nipple of choice. The bottles themselves are straight and tubby and come in 4 and 9 ounce sizes. If you use these I'd recommend just getting the 9 ounce size to begin with -- there's no point in wasting money on both sizes since the baby's stomach will most definitely get roomier. The nipples are advertised as being designed to facilitate switching between breast and bottle feeding which is why lactation consultants love them. However, when we first tried these with our baby he just would not take them. We don't know what he didn't like about the nipple, and whether it was just a one-day/hour idiosyncracy for him. The nipples appeared to be similar to the VentAire ones we were using, but he just cried and refused to latch on. Weird. The oral therapist predicted that our kid will grow up to be the sort who will only use one specific kind of lined paper and pencils, refusing to use anything else...and I responded that he wouldn't be the first one in the family...he's certainly got the genes for it. A helpful note: Avent has two disposable systems as they just introduced the Via system which looks like a heckuva waste of heavy plastic to me. The Via uses the same nipples as the reusable bottles. However, be aware that their original disposable nurser uses different nipples. That's right! They originally created two different systems with incompatible nipples just to confuse all the tired parents. The disposable nurser nipples are blue-tinted. Don't say I didn't warn you. UPDATE: After a few months of exclusive breastfeeding we put baby back on the bottle during daycare hours. I'll write more about that exhausting experience later, but the upshot was he ended up on the Avent bottles after all... probably because he wanted to be contrary to his previous dislike and also because it's one of the most expensive systems. What can I say? He's got personality. 26/04/2005 Evenflo Elite Sensitive Response BottlesHere's number two of our bottle reviews. These Evenflos were our first bottles, sent to us early on as a very welcome gift. Thank goodness we had them on hand or we'd have been scrambling as the bottlefeeding necessity came on suddenly. These bottles have a large bend in them and are the most aesthetically pleasing bottles we have (hey, it counts for something!). I found them the easiest to hold and babies can get a great latch around the larger end of the nipple. Unfortunately, even with the slowest flow rate, our baby finished eating in no time and looked around for more. And the oral therapist we worked with was concerned with the short nipple shape since we needed to get our baby's tongue positioned the right way for breastfeeding. We ended up switching to the Playtex VentAire. But I still really like this bottle system and would go back to it with our initial breastfeeding problems solved. 24/04/2005 Playtex VentAire Natural Shape BottlesWe had to bottlefeed for a few weeks early on, so I'll be posting a few bottle reviews. We ended up trying three brands for two reasons: nipple shape and flow rate. Our baby would suck down his recommended ounces out of our first bottle brand in no time (and then ask for more -- we were forever worrying about overfeeding him), so the oral therapist we were working with recommended the PlayText VentAire Natural Shape because another one of her clients was taking eons to finish feeding with it. So those "stage n" flow ratings are not equivalent between bottle brands. This bottle has a funky bubble reducing system which involves screwed on bottom disks that vent air (thus the name). There's a bend to the bottle for easier maneuvering and two oval side bumps for a better grip. Sometimes milk would get stick in the inside reverse-bumps and was difficult to scrub off (stay tuned for bottle brush reviews!). The top and bottom screwrings come in pastel colors. If you're obsessive about matching colors up this can drive you batty if you wash a bunch of them together and need to make sure you've got the right ones matched up. But mixing 'em is just fine of course and they don't really clash (Hubby's colorblind anyway and I was too tired to care). Two side advantages to the bottoms screwing out: it's easier to clean the bottle insides (but then you have the bottom parts to clean too), and, as one blogger discovered (I can't remember who), if you're stuck on an airplane and the kid is going to cry when the bottle runs out, you can twist off the bottom and refill it without removing it from his mouth. 05/12/2004 Learning from the Big EventDespite the large amount of research I did to prepare for giving birth, I lacked knowledge of some important details. I had studied the possible tangents of labor and delivery, but to back up the informed decisions I wanted to make I should've read more in depth. Without Internet access on hand at the hospital, I felt trapped in an advanced technological society without a guidebook. We had wonderful nurses and doctors, but without the ability to do my own research I had to learn to take a deep breath and trust everyone else's judgement. Here's what I wish I had studied prior to the Big Event:
Yet Another Baby BlogThe web is teeming with baby-centric weblogs already, many more amusing and candid than this one will strive to be. So why bother adding to the abundance? Not to record my kid's existence in the universe or to use up non-existent copious free time. The goal is to inform. Every baby and every parent is different, but all those differences taken together make for enlightening material. My Google search history is nothing like it was a few months ago. Permutations of "baby" "infant" "nap" "poop" "frequency" "sleep" "breastfeeding" "diaper" and so on, abound. Beyond the education, reading other baby stories fulfills in two ways: either you're uplifted because someone else's kid is much worse than yours (e.g. you call that a diaper rash?) or you're comforted by finding problems just like yours (e.g. he naps only 20 minutes at a time!). It's a global playgroup. We can all share our experiences and let the search engines filter us together. |
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