Zzzzzzzzzz

My husband started his new job this week and with it, we have a new schedule. For now.  The husband does the drop-off while I get to work early, and then I leave at 4 to pick up the baby.

Things I like about this schedule:

• Getting to pick up Henry from day care and being able to talk to the day care provider/see the log for myself as to what he did all day (versus a vague, “um, I think he slept a lot. I remember seeing a bunch of naps” from my husband)
• Being home by 5:30pm and having time to straighten up/get the house organized and then go for a walk and have some fun together before the evening cluster feed (I call it a clusterfuck in my head because sometimes Oh My God) begins
• Getting to work before everyone else so that I can get organized and get a few things done before the day really gets going

Things I do not like about this schedule:

• I am SO TIRED. To make it work, I moved my wake up time up by 20 minutes to 5:15am (this plus showering at night plus not spending time getting Henry situated in the day care gets me to work about an hour earlier). Now, 5:15am is certainly an unreasonably early hour, yes. But it is only TWENTY MINUTES different than my old 5:35am, wherein I felt just fine. And! AND! I shifted my bed time forward THIRTY MINUTES. But still, I feel like I am moving through a fog. All day. Will I get used to this?
• This doesn’t really fall under “do not like,” but it does present a complication. The baby has slept through the night (7:45pm-5:15am) for the last three nights. (Before, he would generally wake up and need to eat around 4 or 4:30, and then would eat next at daycare.) I have to wake him up at 5:15am because I have to feed him while I pump – there is no other time to do it before I hightail it out of the house. I don’t like this because a) I feel bad waking him when he’s not done sleeping and b) this means he is going to be on a schedule of waking at 5:15 every day. Waking up at 5:15am on weekdays is ridiculous. On WEEKENDS? OH HELL NO. 

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I just finished the Ferber book, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, and I decided that my child does not currently have any sleep problems. I figured that I was doing something wrong, because rather than doing the bedtime routine I always hear about, the baby just falls asleep at the bottle during the clusterfuck. I move him upstairs and he sleeps. But according to Ferber, this is fine because then when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he goes back to sleep on his own.

Naps are another issue (they are 20 minutes at most, unless we’re in the car or stroller). But I’m too tired to think about that right now.

I have to say, in reference to this book, it seems like people have such strong feelings regarding it/the ”cry it out” method. Having actually read through his process and his examples, I think, eh. I do not think that his method is cruel (and selfish, on the parent’s part), like some people make it out to be. The way he explains it is that it is a way of teaching the child to fall asleep on his own, not teaching him that nobody is going to respond to him. (Because the parent does come in at regular intervals.)  It makes sense to me that it is to the child’s benefit to be able to go to sleep on his own, because wouldn’t it being annoying and frustrating if everytime you woke up, you had to cry to get someone to help you get back to sleep?

Though, personally, I have a really hard time listening to Henry cry. Once I was pumping and couldn’t get to him right away, and it was a really long 3 minutes of crying before I could get there. It FEELS cruel, even when I’m trying to get to him. So I think doing this method would be really difficult.

I am too tired to think of a good way to end this blog post. The End.

Old Habits

Oh, you guys. I just re-read this post and wanted to cry for how badly my 38-week-pregnant self thought of herself.

(Also, I wanted to tell her to effing relax! The baby’s fine and that’s all that matters!)

I have been lucky enough to lose the pregnancy weight, plus about five pounds.  I have worked at it by doing the Weight Watchers thing, but really it’s luck. In the past, I’ve worked a lot harder at various stages of my life to lose weight, and generally made much, much slower progress. I am lucky that my body produces a lot of breast milk and that it has helped me lose the fat I accumulated over my pregnancy.

The bad thing is that I can feel myself starting to get hooked on the weight loss. There are the compliments, which are of course a nice ego boost.  But it’s more insidious than that, really. When I worry about Henry, like when he was hospitalized the second time, I would weigh myself and think, “well, at least THAT’S going well.” It’s like this one thing I have control over. One thing that I am currently consistently and objectively successful at, when I have no idea if I am being a good mother or really accomplishing anything of value at work.

I read Nico’s post yesterday and realized that I cannot go back to the hypothalamic amenorrhea mentality. I used to eat and exercise on a strict schedule. I would never fall of the wagon, and I had such tight control over myself. Any social event involving food or disrupting my schedule was a difficultly to be gotten past, not something fun to do with my friends. All my brain power went to counting calories.

I cannot do that to myself, and to my husband and baby, again. My life deserves my full attention.

(Plus there is the fact that I had a period at six weeks post-partum, and haven’t had once since.  Is this a breastfeeding this or an undereating thing? I’m worried about it, a little.)

I am trying to wean myself off of Weight Watchers tracking. (I already went on their maintenance plan a few weeks ago, which helped a little because it was more food, but still required me to enter everything and plan my eating a bit obsessively.) It’s hard, though. It always feels like I’m eating “too much” (because I need a lot of food what with pumping 45 oz a day), so I still will stop and count up points in my head to see what is “okay” for me to eat.

Anyway, hopefully I will get there.

Randoms

I love Henry’s pediatrician. Seriously, they are great. Its a huge office with like 20 doctors, of which we have already met at least 10, what with the all the weight checks early on, the two hospitalizations and subsequent re-checks, routine well-baby appointments, and the ear infection. (Did I mention the ear infection? Henry got an ear infection from the bronciolitis. It sucked for everyone involved, but now it’s better.) They have office hours on Saturday and Sunday, and I can talk to to a doctor or nurse whenever I want (though they charge $25 for paging the on-call doctor).

Anyway, my point is that I really have liked and respected every doctor and have felt, in turn, respected by every doctor. The only thing is, of the 10 I’ve met, the one that I’m not 100% sure about is the one that in my genius I chose as his regular doctor. At his four month appointment, she kept talking about how we needed to start introducing solids. I mentioned that I had thought the recommendation was six months, but she insisted on getting started now. And when my husband mentioned that we wanted to make it ourselves (we have a baby cookbook, we both like to cook, it seems extremely easy to do, whatever), she said that we can’t do that until six months because of nitrates or something. Instead we have to buy jarred food from the store.

I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a big baby (17 lbs) or what.  But I’m inclined to wait at least a month or so. So if I want to switch doctors, how do I break up with her? Just cancel the next appointment with her and make it with another doctor? And then will things be awkward the next time he has a random sick appointment or whatever and we end up with her? I worry about these things.

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Those of you who live in Chicago might have heard of this violent “flash mob” thing that we’ve got going on? Basically, seven teenage boys will hold up a person (usually with a gun) who is innocently going about their business, and this happens in broad daylight with a shit ton of people around. This week one of them happened across the street from my office – during commuting hours! – which is somewhat concerning.  I am nervous that I will get mugged and my pump will get stolen. I cannot imagine what the young thugs would do with my Freestyle (or breast milk, ew), but that thing is not cheap. Plus, since I pump exclusively, my boobs might explode before I can get to a Babies R Us to get a new one.

Again, I worry about these things.

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My husband has a new job and a lot of possibilities are in the air for our daily schedule, but nothing has so far been decided. Before, he had to schlep out to the suburbs every day, and now he will be working downtown, same as me. Right now Henry’s daycare is right by our house, and we split the drop-off and pick-up – I drop off when they open at 7am and work until 5pm, my husband gets in early and leaves work at 4pm to be able to pick him up before they close at 5:30pm.

We’ve been tossing around a couple of ideas – driving to work together (the parking wouldn’t be so bad if you don’t have two CTA monthly passes to buy) and possibly switching Henry to a downtown daycare, or taking the train and continuing to split the drop-off and pick-up at our current place.  We’ll just have to try some different things and see what works.

Pee on a stick

I peed on an (expired) OPK last night. You see, I am really bloated. And I have been having really bad gas. (You’re welcome.) And then I remembered about how when I was in the hospital, the day after I gave birth, I was still feeling what I had thought were “kicks,” but were obviously instead “the burrito I ate,” and how knowing that would really have effed with my head if I was still kick counting to assess my fetus/baby’s well being instead of just glancing over at his bassinet.

My point?  I am evidently not good at telling the difference being fetus kicks and gas. And I had a period at six weeks postpartum and then haven’t had one since. And with the bloat I look slightly pregnant and the gas kicks and I just really started to get concerned that I might end up giving birth on the toilet and then reenacting it on I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.

But taking a pregnancy test seemed kind of psycho, given that my phantom baby would certainly not old enough to cause showing and/or phantom kicks. Still, I decided I would really feel better KNOWING, so I took an OPK knowing that it would turn positive if I was pregnant. That way I could think, “Haha, nothing to see here! Just seeing if I’m ovulating!” when really I was making sure I could have a glass of wine after pumping that night.

It was negative. Of course. This is probably the first time I ever have been just fine with seeing that result. In the past it has made me either enormously relieved or devastated. And I’m sure it will again soon, so I should enjoy this time.

Things I don’t want to forget

Henry is four months old. February 4th seems like an eternity ago (in a good way). It is crazy to me how much this baby has changed, and how many little things that he did are gone forever. Some things (such as the nightly 8-9:30pm screamfests) I will not miss. Others make me so sad and nostalgic for Ye Olde Two Months Ago.

Things I don’t want to forget about the newborn stage:

• How Henry would open his mouth and shake his head back and forth when he was hungry.
• How my husband started doing the same thing to let me know that he wanted to order food or go get something to eat.
• The loud-ass newborn sleeping. The constant grunting. I actually kind of liked this because that way I didn’t have to get up to make sure he was still breathing, as I was wont to do. (Did I say “was”? Okay maybe I still am.) 
• The crazy mixture of emotions with nursing. How I felt like a failure when he wasn’t gaining weight, how proud I was when he was, how much it could hurt, how much I leaked, how comforting and close it could feel. I remember laughing at Henry’s antics a lot, though I don’t remember specifically what was so funny. How tired I was of nursing after three straight hours at 4am.
• The colicky screamfests that you could set your watch by. I think I have already blocked this horror out of my mind, and was so happy to have discovered The Happiest Baby on Block. I still use the techniques when we have a major fussfest on our hands, and it always works.
• How (unreasonably) upset and sort of hurt I was that he didn’t smile at me from weeks 6-8. My hormonal, sleep-deprived brain decided that he didn’t like me.
• How lucky I was (am) to have a baby who sleeps as long as there is food in his belly. (Knock on wood knock on wood)
• How much I liked maternity leave and being home. Beforehand, I worried it might be isolating and boring, but I really loved it. I also don’t want to forget that it made certain parts of my marriage seem unequal, though this has largely leveled out with me back at work.
• How weird it felt to love someone that I didn’t know very well.

Dear Henry, at four months

Dear Henry,

So. In the last month I’ve gone back to work and we’ve started you in day care. I hated leaving you there at first, mostly because I was sure that no one would take care of you the way I did. Not that I think that I am particularly great at child care, it’s just that I love you SO MUCH that I can’t believe anyone would care about your well-being and happiness as much as I do. If that makes any sense. You seem fairly oblivious to being left there, however – you smile at Miss Ericka when I drop you off, and you sit in your swing checking things out when I leave. Your dad says that you are happy and usually either sleeping or sitting in Miss Luz’s lap when he picks you up. (Not that he knows Miss Luz’s name. He refers to your teachers as “the nice teenager,” “the surly Middle Eastern lady,” and “the older woman with the hair.”) I still hate leaving you there, and I get really sad when I think about how much I want to stay home with you. But it’s just not an option right now so I try not to think about it.

You have become so much fun. I remember when you were 6-7 weeks old, and not smiling yet, I would sit on the couch grinning idiotically at you to try to coax a smile back. You would usually stare back at me and then either start crying or go to sleep, which sort of hurt my feelings a little, as ridiculous as that sounds. When you were about two months old, I was changing your diaper and you smiled at me for the first time. I hope I always remember how happy that made me. Anyway, my point is that you are currently a smiling machine. You are so cute and your smile makes my day. You’ve also juuuuust started to interact with toys. I put one in your hand this weekend and you held it and looked at it for a full 30 seconds before dropping it on the floor. It’s so fun to see what you can do every day.

Right now, you love:

1. Eating
2. Your pacifier
3. Sleeping (just like daddy!)
4. Sitting upright, either being propped up by a person or in a Bumbo seat. You have even started to try to pull yourself upright using your tummy muscles.
5. Being held up  and “standing”
6. Watching TV (also just like daddy), which we are trying to nip in the bud
7. Your play gym. You’ve started really trying to play with the toys instead of staring at them and randomly punching the air.
8. Diaper changes. All of a sudden, you are a smiley little dude when you get your pants changed.
9. Being carried in the Baby Bjorn. You can hold your head well enough to face outward now.
10. Baths. Overnight massive improvement here – from nonstop screaming to smiling and leg kicking!

And you hate:

1. Being taken out of the tub. Once I realized that you just hated being cold (duh), I made some changes to warm the room we bathe you in, and that has helped a little.
2. Being put into your car seat
3. Being hungry (just like mommy!)

I love you so much, Henry.

Love, Mommy