A trip to the park

We met my friend D and her little boy Z at the park. There was climbing and sliding and swinging–you know, the usual. There were two teenagers canoodling at the top of out of the play structures, lying indolently on the platform and blocking it off from children. Pissed (I just started my period; that’s my excuse) I climbed up there with Baby on my hip and gave them an earful. I said things like “you aren’t between the ages of 2 and 5 at all, and that’s what the sign says this playground is for!” and used the word “inappropriate” an unaccountably large number of times and I think I once paired it with “behavior.” I’m surprised I didn’t conjecture anything about what their mothers would think. After they skadoodled, one little girl told me plaintively, “they were here for an hour!” That’s me, a crazy and apparently quite aged lady who enjoys yelling at innocent teenagers just looking for a shady place to flirt.

This park is also frequented by a chubby, red-haired little boy about eight years old. He always wears black shoes, black pants, a black Batman T-shirt, and, oh yes, a black cape and mask. He talks a lot about bad guys and carefully selects various sticks to pretend they are some kind of weaponry associated with his craft. He would be a lot scarier if he weren’t constantly nibbling on a drooping corner of his mask like a little bunny. My friend’s kid thinks this kid is amazingly awesome (he calls him “The Man”) and follows him around. And of course Baby follows him around, so they formed this little duckling-like parade today while Batman brandished assorted bits of tree detritus and ate his costume.

Next to the park is a library where we later went to get new books and return old ones. As we were walking out, I ran into the woman (with her kids) who was the leader of my local La Leche League back when Baby was a newborn. I said hello, she didn’t recognize me, I didn’t expect her to. I told her it had been a while, I asked her was she still leading, she responded, we bade each other farewell, and that was that. I didn’t feel the need to regale her with tales of all my insane pumping (though if she could have placed me, I’m sure she would have wondered what happened with that) or justify my stopping or anything like that. Refreshing to consider how far I’ve come on that.

And nice to feel like a member of a community–involved, familiar, cantankerous.

Neighborly

At least twice a month the ten-year-old girl who lives next door comes knocking on my door, having somehow been locked out of her house upon her arrival home from school. She uses my phone, some relative zips home and opens the house up for her, and that is that. Sometimes I give her a snack while she waits.

When Baby was very young, these intrusions used to drive me batty (especially if I was pumping), and I spoke with her mother about leaving a key with us (she never brought one over). But they don’t bother me now, especially since we have gotten to be friends with this girl and Baby loves to see her. Invariably when we are out in the front yard reading the mail or doing yardwork she will pop by to play with Baby, and sometimes when we’re in the backyard, too. She once helped me immensely while I was picking up downed branches by keeping Baby busy doing the same with small sticks. Sometimes we’ll chat about topics like the inadvisability of kissing boys. I think she does all this because she wants me to ask her to babysit, but judging from her inability to keep herself from being locked out of her house I don’t think she’s quite responsible enough.

So I wasn’t surprised to hear pounding on my door around three thirty this afternoon. I asked her and the buddy she had with her if she needed to use the phone, but she surprised me by saying no.

“Because I’m wearing pants.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m only supposed to wear skirts.”
“Skirts? It’s cold outside! Why can’t you wear pants?”
“Because I’m a Christian” she said with exasperation, flapping one hand dismissively.

Apparently, her mother doesn’t want her to wear pants (which I see her in all the time, which made this exchange even more confusing) because of their religion (they’re members of some group that spends Saturday night at church and doesn’t celebrate Halloween). After she explained that if she called her mother, her mother would see her wearing pants, which she said she wore for PE (I told her she didn’t have to justify her pants usage to me), I offered her the use of my phone and a skirt. I dug up a size 4T skirt I had gotten secondhand for Baby a few months back, and the skinny little thing managed to put it on.

“Won’t your mother wonder where you got this new skirt?”
“Oh, I’ll just tell her she bought it for me and if she forgot it’s because she’s old.”

And just think–one day Baby will probably lie to me just like that! So much to look forward to. Shit, I hope I don’t have a neighbor like me who helps her, though. But I didn’t want her to get in trouble for wanting to wear pants to PE on a cold day!

What do you think I should have done?

Privacy

Recently, a Real Life friend of mine discovered my blog (hi B!). When I realized this had transpired, I had a little freak out, and then I wondered why. I’m really basically the same on this blog as I am in Real Life; it’s not like I, in actuality, am a 66-year-old ranch hand who likes to skeet shoot and speculate about government conspiracies. Those of you who have met me (hi C!) or talked to me on the phone (hi a different C!) or emailed with me (assorted) and so forth can attest to that. Though I don’t use our names, I do (uh, obviously: see below) post pictures with no compunction, and so haven’t made this blog especially anonymous.

And yet I enjoyed the pleasant division between blogging life and Real Life (why I insist upon capitalizing that phrase I don’t quite know) that I had cultivated. Husband does know I have a blog, but (claims) he doesn’t read it since he’s “sure [I'd] tell him anything important, and besides, it’s not like [I] share my innermost feelings on the internet.” I don’t know about that, but at any rate, no one else knows about it; most notably, my friends are/were ignorant. In fact, I originally went public with this blog in an effort to have an outlet for my endless need, at the time, to ruminate about pumping and breastfeeding issues, so as to reduce the burden of my friends who otherwise kept having to hear about it, so it was explicitly intended to be a separate, supplemental part of my social life. And so it continued until recently.

It’s been a few weeks now since B may or may not have started reading (I know she knows the address and has visited, but I don’t know how much reading she has done, and we haven’t really talked about it yet). Before posting about this development, I gave myself some time to see if my blogging would change in some qualitative or quantitative regard, and it hasn’t. My interest in blogging has not been affected, and I’m glad. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to start telling all my other friends about this space (and I swore B to secrecy as though we were still in the sixth grade). Sometimes a person needs some kind of private life, I suppose. Though I guess it’s rather ironic to think of a public journal as a form of private life. How very modern.

What’s the status of your blog with regard to friends and family readership? How do you feel about it?

Does this child look too skinny to you?

The answer is no, no she doesn’t. She looks perfectly fine.

Unfortunately, Baby’s pediatrician does not agree with you. She wants us to fatten her up significantly. The pediatrician argued at Tuesday’s 18-month well-check that since Baby, at 21.5 lbs., is in the 15th percentile for weight (75th percentile for height), while at 6 months she was in the 50th percentile for weight, that therefore she is not gaining enough (she nonetheless gained one pound and one inch in the last three months, and stayed in the same percentiles from last visit).

I ask you: do 6-month-olds move around as much as toddlers? Why, no. In fact, toddlers are quite active whereas six-month-olds can barely SIT effectively. Particularly mine, who spends hours a day outside throwing balls and dumping sand and rearranging rawhide dog bones and whatnot.

The pediatrician further argued that Baby really needs to drink more formula (she has some issues with regular milk so we spend a huge amount of money on toddler formula). The pediatrician suggested she drink at least 18 ounces a day. Well, doctor, I don’t see how she will drink that much, since she barely took that much when she was eating nothing BUT milk, which I know since I was exclusively pumping and kept obsessive records, but why don’t you talk to Baby and see if you can convince her to drink more? Hm, what? You can’t force toddlers to do anything, like drink more milk than they want? Surprising.

Look, I feed her every 2-3 hours during the day. Usually real meals, too; even snacks are normally more than cereal or fruit. She is offered milk (formula) throughout the day and takes a bottle at bedtime (and on the occasions she wants some in the night); she also drinks water (rather a lot of it on the nights she bathes). Most of her fat intake comes from avocado and dairy and nuts and seeds (i.e. almond butter and tahini) and some oils used in cooking. She eats pretty much any damn thing–e.g. raw spinach and broccoli, bok choy and carrots, sweet potatoes and peppers, lots of beans and lentils, all manner of fruit, any and every cheese, whatever grain we come up with, really, a vast variety of cuisines. People who witness her eating are invariably amazed by her delight in it, the breadth and depth of her gustatory enjoyment.

Here is videographic evidence:

She eats just what we eat, and we are the kind of people who take three types of cookbooks to the grocery store with us to figure out dinners for the next few days and then wander around buttonholing confused stockboys to ask where the soba noodles are. And she eats her fill and when she’s done, she’s done; I don’t argue with the bowl she proffers for me to take to the sink. Often I’ll then bring her subsequent courses until she is clearly uninterested.

Personally, I think she’s fine. Plus, what more could I do? Besides feed her deep fried lard with peanut butter and honey?

Analogous

As you might expect, Husband pees standing up. Not surprisingly, at least I hope, I pee sitting down. I am encouraging Baby to pee sitting down–further, to pee sitting down on the potty. Under the theory that she might be further persuaded to do this if there is more uniformity in the house on this issue of standing versus sitting to pee, I suggested to Husband that he sit to pee and let Baby see him. He refused! Upon further questioning, I was informed that men can also “take hormones to produce breastmilk” but that he’s “not going to do that either,” that indeed, “it’s just not going to happen, so close the bathroom door already.” How many other husbands would know it most apt to get a point across by drawing analogies to medicinally-supported lactation?

Motherhood and fatherhood

In apparent anticipation of reading this fine post, I had a dream last night that I had a baby. There was nothing in the dream about said baby. Instead, my big obsession was shopping for baby bottles not 24 hours after he/she/it was born (yes, I was out wandering around the day after having what was surely a c-section). As I asked worker after worker in the Target of my dreams where the bottles were (you know it was a dream if I could even find someone who worked there to ask) I suddenly realized I hadn’t pumped in a WHOLE DAY and was quite stressed about it.

So, to summarize, my unconscious’s big concerns with regard to having a baby are BOTTLES and PUMPING. For that matter, those are my conscious concerns on the topic. Ick.

+++

My husband can go weeks without telling me anything substantive about his work life and emotions pertaining thereto, and then suddenly, like yesterday evening, he’ll suddenly have all kinds of shit to say, usually when I am trying to do something else, like be miserable from one of the many headaches I’ve been suffering lately. It seems this guy assigned to work with him, but who never does anything, has suddenly quit. Husband had lots of diagnoses about what is wrong with this guy–he’s having a midlife crisis; he’s forty and has no family; he’s depressed; he’s self-destructive. I don’t care about this fellow, but what interests me is my husband’s view on how horrid it must be for this guy not to have a (nuclear) family, not to have the purpose of supporting them, no children to enjoy. I wonder what kind of man my husband would be if he’d stayed with his first wife who didn’t want children. Loving him as I do, I’m glad he did get to be a father, even though he didn’t really, truly care as I did during our struggles to conceive. Sometimes I’ll say to him, “Now you see why I wanted a baby so much.” He’s really wonderful at fatherhood and enjoys it to no end. He and Baby have a relationship, not just as a threesome with me, but together, just the two of them, with elements that don’t include me. Husband was always a particularly kind and responsible person, and I can’t tell you how delighted I am that Baby gets a father like that. She certainly deserves it.

I wouldn’t wish a newborn on my worst enemy…

…unless they really wanted one.

That said, I am very pleased that two of my best friends had their babies yesterday. A funny coincidence! The babies (both born via c-section, one planned, one after a failed induction) are healthy and perfect, and the mothers are doing as well as can be expected. It’s wonderful.

Whenever I see newborn pictures, though, especially the kind taken in the hospital, I mostly feel acutely sympathetic to the exhausted people holding these tiny, swaddled, and red-faced confusing beasts. I have too many bad memories from those first weeks, and I react viscerally and start to tense up. Yes, I love to hold tiny babies, which I do at every opportunity, but only if I can give them back at the first signs of trouble or after ten minutes, whichever comes first. If someone wanted to give me a very nice four-month-old with a schedule who does not require me to try to breastfeed it, that would be fine. But a newborn? I am not up for that. I think my husband might be, but nobody’s asking him to try to nurse anybody or spend all day alone with a mound of crying need. I really think I might have something like a post-traumatic breastfeeding disorder. Seriously, if I’m ever to become pregnant again, I honestly think I’ll have to go into therapy. I get a little panicky still, more than half a year after weaning, just thinking about breastfeeding and I’m not even expecting; can you imagine what would happen were a due date looming? Ack. No babies for me, no thanks.

Anyway: Congratulations to my buddies M and Christy on your fabulous new babies!

PS: I loved Baby as a newborn, of course, immensely. But I like her, and caring for her, a lot more now. At the very least now I know what the hell I am doing–and how to keep her contented and fed.

It doesn’t really seem like it’s been that long.

Today I celebrate (or would celebrate if I wanted to dwell on it, which I don’t) six months of having weaned. Since I was exclusively pumping this had nothing to do with Baby’s wishes, and the fact that the decision to cease pumping was all mine made it especially guilt-racking. I recall the deliberating about weaning to be much more unpleasant than the process of doing so. It was hellish, really. I hadn’t cried that much since Baby was born and breastfeeding wasn’t going well. And come to think of it, I haven’t cried since.

Life is better since having weaned. Exclusively pumping with low supply really sucked. I have no regrets about stopping because I was becoming miserable. I could only do so much and almost nine months was pretty good. I do regret that we never had a nursing relationship and more than that, that Baby hasn’t been able to have more human milk, but I did my best. You can’t win ‘em all.

None for me, thanks! I’m all set.

Five of my good friends are now pregnant with (a current total of) six babies. There’s Christy, of course, and my friend M. My best friend D is about seven weeks along with her second now, as is my friend B.Then of course there’s my old friend E, my husband’s kitchen wife, the one who had a miscarriage a few months back. She just hit the second trimester mark with TWINS.

I know all too well from my own several years’ worth of infertility how obnoxious and even hurtful this litany is to anyone reading who may themselves wish they were expecting. I’m very sorry for that. Two years ago I would have felt the same way, would have muttered rude things and went to hunt for chocolate, when I was in the heart of my infertility, no end in sight, and I knew nine pregnant ladies. It was a miserable time and I went into therapy. Things kept happening like my immediate superior at work’s going on maternity leave and my interim supervisor’s following suit a few months later. Enough of that kind of thing and you want to go live in a cave, you know?

So it continues to surprise me that in the face of all this obscene fertility I am steadfastly not jealous. Each time another person tells me they have “news” I ask myself if I want to follow suit and I indeed do not. When I saw that four-week-old in the library last week I felt nothing but pity for the exhausted, confused mommy. When Baby and I visited the newborns in the maternity section of the hospital while waiting for my grandfather to get out of surgery I marveled at the teeny tininess, sure, but I assuredly did not want to trade my 2006 model in for a newer one. When I consider all the itsy bitsy little socks my friends will be carefully fitting onto wrinkly little feet my thoughts turn instead to the fantastic new classic white walking shoes I just bought Baby today (not that she’s walking, but I anticipate).

Certainly a large part of why I don’t want to emulate this parade of ladies is because I have no desire to have make a go of breastfeeding again. The mental energy I expend just on trying to figure out what went wrong and how to improve it next time is exhausting, and is nothing to compared to the actual work it would take to get the process going. Also, the worry of pregnancy and the trial of trying to battle the system and my own body’s problematic tendencies to create the kind of birth experience I’d like both sound totally undesirable. No, the baby itself wouldn’t be so bad, sure, at least not once it turned four months old, but I’m just not ready for all that other stuff yet. And I like focusing on my jewel of a kidlet.

Life is fantastic now. I don’t want to mess with that. I finally got my wonderful little child. I can’t wait to hold all these babies, absolutely, to pass on baby accessories and tips and tricks and throw baby showers and recommend my lactation consultant and talk to sobbing postpartum women on the phone and watch the new baby while the new mother rests or take the older child to the park, because then I get to go home to my stable little household of three and watch my angel grow.

Bon anniversaire

• This is a big month for us. My husband’s birthday, Father’s Day, our anniversary, going to Sweden (if Baby’s passport ever arrives; we applied for it MONTHS ago but the stupid government is so behind [everybody is getting passports now for Canada and cruises, and most wait till the last minute and use expedited services, so that people who apply the regular way, like us, get put off] so I’m not sure when or even IF we’ll get it, very stressful), Baby’s first professional pictures, a trip to the beach, doing my final project for class, finishing the raised bed, restaining the deck (since my mother, in her zeal for Cloroxing, accidentally removed the stain).

• We’re coming up on the one-month anniversary of weaning! I have loved not pumping. I adore my new bra; I delight in not constantly being concerned with the states of relative fullness of my breasts, of the ebb and flow of milk production; I enjoy not having to wash the pump parts. And I love not actually pumping–no hormonal rushes, no sticky milky hands, no timing concerns.

• The pet sitter came by to make arrangements for while we’re in Sweden and to get the key. I am justifying the insane cost by rationalizing that we’ve always had volunteer help from friends and family in the past, so it’s only fair we should pay sometimes.

• I’ve let Baby have some less-than-healthy food. She had a little French toast, and some refried beans. What I’m thinking is that she can learn that treats exist and they are nice, but they are not for every day. And mostly we eat pretty healthily.

• Baby can FEED HERSELF and (sometimes) DRINK FROM HER SIPPY CUP ON HER OWN! What a big girl! Horray for the pincer grasp! Still no interest in holding her bottle, which is absolutely fine by me–I love cuddling and feeding her–but she has started wanting to hold and play with it after she eats in the morning.

• Baby used to be crazy for waving, but now she is totally over it. These days it’s all about throwing things to the floor.

• The other night my husband came upstairs and I was reading in the master bedroom. He said when he comes up at night, he still expects to hear the pump, and it’s so strange to him not to.

• If you hold her hands, she wants walk very, very fast when she is motivated (say, if there are puppies in view).

• Husband wants to cuddle more. We haven’t slept in the same room since I got pregnant, and now, after sex, he’s all about cuddling and in general keeps asking for hugs. Poor thing. He even volunteered to nap with the baby “because she’s so warm” this morning. I guess I am neglecting him! Got to work on that. I keep thinking about moving back into the master bedroom (I sleep on a twin in the nursery that was originally put there for nursing, per my mother’s suggestion, but of course never used it for that), but when I’ve tried, I just feel so far away from Baby. I love hearing her sigh in her sleep, knowing the second she awakens, her knowing I’m right there for her, giggling at me through the crib slats. At one point I said I’d move out when I stopped pumping, and then we had some rough sleeping, so I said when she is sleeping through the night again, and now I guess we’re on that track again, but I’m not ready, so maybe when Baby is a year old?

• Baby has enough hair now that she gets bedhead! I’ll have to post a picture.

• So it turns out this guy in my class I thought was flirting with me is, instead, gay. I have basically no gaydar, and at any rate, I was enjoying what I thought was flirtation. Oh well. Still fun bantering with him. And I continue to have a humongous crush on my professor (which I’m pretty sure he knows about). He’s so tall, with this deep deep voice, and pays such intense attention to you when you talk. Ahhh.

Important news about my reproductive tract!

(No, not that.)

I got my period! First time since October 2005. About 3 weeks after I stopped breastfeeding.

Sunday morning I got this weird tummy ache and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. This morning when it became clear, I was shocked. About as surprised and even confused as when I got my first period at (I think) 12, almost 13.

Now I feel like total crap. Had forgotten how much this sucks, the mess, the cramps. Scared to try a tampon.

I’m pretty surprised to have gotten it this soon after weaning. On its own, without prodding from medication, I have a period every three months or even less often. I wonder if having lost weight and had a baby and everything has gotten my body on track with this. I guess we’ll just see when the next one comes.

Perhaps I should be more diligent with my contraceptive efforts. We “only” have sex about once a week, and I use a diaphragm (without spermicide). Plus I’m, you know, infertile. But since I did get pregnant spontaneously, magically, with Baby (after 2.5 years, and directly after having temped for six months with no ovulation the entire freaking time, and just a month or two after having been told by the reproductive endocrinologist that our outlook was bleak, so we were taking a break to gather our thoughts), and now I got my period back in a timely fashion, so I really don’t know how fertile I might be.

I really, truly do not want to become pregnant again–for years, if ever. There are a lot of only children in my family and I have no issue with that (I know many people think having an only child abuse is tantamount to abuse/neglect, which I don’t understand). I love the idea of focusing all my efforts and resources on the little lady. And if we do have another, I think four years from now sounds quite reasonable.

So maybe I’ll buy some spermicide. IUDs freak me out, so I don’t think I would do that. I was on the pill for many years before, but it ended up raising my blood pressure, and since I also had preeclampsia with Baby, I’m not sure I want to go that route. Condoms suck. So I’m not sure what else I could consider. I’ve never really spent that much effort on avoiding pregnancy, between the pill and my knowledge of my basic infertility. And I spent so many years wanting to get pregnant, so that now, vehemently not wanting that, feels quite odd.

Home to home

We’re back from my mother’s, where we had a very nice time. I took Baby around to see lots of family friends, like my piano teacher, my grandparents’ friends, my high school friends’ parents, our ancient neighbors. Baby’s big grin was a gift that cheered a lot of souls. I was so proud we could do that for them.

While we were there, our 99-year-old next-door neighbor’s youngest daughter (of four) died from breast cancer, so we sat with our neighbor a good deal. My mother looks after Mrs. S. more than any of her daughters. The situation always seems like a refutation to me to those that talk about how you should have more than one child so you’ll have plenty of help when you’re old. There are no guarantees.

The new carpet is great–it’s like living in a new house. Reassembly of the rooms is quite the challenge. We’re trying to a) babyproof and b) sort the books at the same time. I’m also trying to get the yard in order. Our deadline for all this is Monday, when my mother comes to town. I’m trying to put a lot of things away; so far we have The Closet of Unwanted Furniture and the Attic of Outgrown Baby Crap. Now that our upstairs is looking clean and uncluttered (we are aggressively keeping the animals downstairs), the bottom floor is looking like hell. You can never win.

But our deck is fantastic, finally. After 1.5 years of my husband’s working on it, it is finally usable (not done, mind you). I have boxes of herbs, trellises of ivy, a little baby pool that Baby totally adores with or without water, a vast umbrella, and cushy chairs and ottomans. We are spending most of our waking ours on the deck right now and it’s heaven. Soon it’ll be almost too hot, though, to be outside. That’s Georgia.

Baby is having lots of sleeping difficulty. I don’t know if it’s the learning to crawl, a growth spurt, that 37-week developmental thing, or teething, or all of the above, but she is up many times a night to eat, fuss, chit chat, rock on all fours. Also, apparently her afternoon nap is completely unnecessary. She is wearing me out. I am out of practice for this; it’s like having a newborn in the house.

While in my hometown, I went to a lingerie shop and got this amazing bra (the woman that fitted me didn’t even measure to get the right size–she just eyeballed my rack! That’s skill) that has relocated my breasts at least two inches north. I had no idea my chest could be that high anymore–the engineering on that apparatus is very impressive. Unfortunately over the course of the day it’s increasingly uncomfortable to wear so it’s only the public that gets to see my fancy new boobies; my husband has to see only the regular deflated kind.

Another note on the bosom front: since I accidentally (really accidentally? I don’t know) left my pumping collection kit at my mom’s in her fridge, I am officially done pumping. I wasn’t really sure I was going to pump again anyway, but this is a nice, definitive turn of events. Yay, I guess. It’s not that I’m not enthused by all my new free time, I guess I just got used to the idea of weaning and now that the end of lactation is here, I am at peace.

Guess who just starting crying? Hasta.