- We are both still awake, and there are birds chirping outside and What. The. Fuck.
- Way, way too many skinny, pale, almost-vaguely-ethnic, blonde chicks up in my fashion editorials right now. Diversity, PLEASE.
August 6th post
Published September 22, 2009 | 
For the most part, my pregnancy has been a pleasant experience. While digging around some old stuff I’d typed up, I came across this little rant and since it made me smile, I thought I’d share it with you. This is from Week 14.
———–
Around 7:30 last night, an earth-shattering craving struck me. Not for pickles, which rest conveniently in my fridge, nor saltines, which I wisely keep near my desk; not even for the grapes and oranges in my fruit bin, nor the Pop-Tarts snuggled into a dark corner of a cabinet.
Not for those, but for Cheetos. Nasty, neon-orange, CRUNCHY SALTY NOMNOMNOM Cheetos.
I begged my husband to get me some, but he was playing Diablo2, which means he was completely oblivious to my pleas, as there were monsters that needed to be struck down. Clearly I have been too pleasant of a pregnant woman, because I feel like he should have feared the wrath of God smiting him when his wife falls at his feet, rests her head on his knee, and cries about needing Cheetos (no, I am not too proud to beg). I will say that he dug $1.52 out of his pocket, gave it to me, and said, “Then go buy some, hun.”
This, unfortunately, meant I needed to get dressed, which is a trial when all the sudden none of your pants will button at the waist yet you’re hardly showing except for the constant thrill of OH MY GOD MY UTERUS IS GROWING that makes you stand in front of the mirror at least three times a day to see if it’s poking out any further (note: last week, when I pulled my belly chub up, there was a slight curve; now, when I don’t pull it up, there is a pronounced one; this is a source of constant joy, as are my massive, beautiful, and SO FKING TENDER IT HURTS boobies).
Anyhow, I got dressed and went to the store. Cheetos were on sale — for $2.49, goddammit — and so I agonized over which bag of 88 cent potato chips I would buy (sour cream and onion means my husband may steal from me, salt and vinegar means I may end up with a numb tongue, bbq means no numb tongue and no stealing but also no satisfaction). I settled for s&v, which were opened as soon as I arrived home and plopped down on the couch to watch So You Think You Can Dance, which is one of my favourite shows right now (I can’t help it). And then the chihuahua army came; between yelling at them to get away and listening to my husband roast monsters, I had to turn the TV up louder than I like. And then I commenced eating.
Now, at this point, let me just mention that other than a few delicious bags of Gardetto’s that got in my way while I was in the US, and a drunken handful or two of Cheetos at a friend’s birthday party, I have (happily) abstained from the “potato chip aisle” category of junk food for approximately eight months. But this was a craving that refused to be ignored (unlike yesterday’s craving for banana bread which conveniently disappeared when the sky opened up and decided to piss on our town).
At some point between dances, I looked down at the bag and realized I had consumed half of its contents. It also struck me that baby is not yet satisfied with the amount my body had taken in, and so I kept eating. Then I looked down again and thought, you know, not only is this unhealthy and disgusting and utterly AMERICAN of me to be shovelling potato chips down my gullet while watching competition-based reality TV, but maybe I’ll want some tomorrow with an egg salad sandwich and a pickle for lunch, so I should stop.
Thank God I didn’t eat any more. Thank. God. Because half an hour later I felt so sick it was like someone had taken my intestines, tied them in knots, and let their chihuahuas fight over them. I couldn’t sit up. Watching TV became an exercise in patience, waiting for the commercials so I could race to the washroom. All I have to say is this:
MOMMY’S BELLY DOES NOT LIKE POTATO CHIPS and I will not be fooled into this manipulation again. If baby wants vinegar, I’ll eat a pickle. If baby wants salt, I’ll eat saltines. If baby wants something crispy and salty, I’ll eat homemade hash browns, or maybe I’ll get really saucy and just have a granola bar instead (how do you like THAT?) Or maybe I’ll buy sunflower seeds.
What I will NOT do, though, is consume any more potato chips, nor will I fall for the “I want Cheetos” craving. Because I am an unhappy mommy that just wants to go snuggle with daddy, but is too bloated and keeps burping up a disturbing vinegary potato taste to possibly be a good sleeping companion.
Nursing Strike, day three.
Published September 18, 2009 | Well, she’s still striking.
I feel miserable and rejected. The fact that she won’t nurse is constantly on my mind when I interact with her. I’m trying so hard not to let my frustration with it change the way I feel about myself as a mother, but failing.
Failing.
Worse than that, this stress, this ball of guilt and anger in my chest, is impacting my milk production. I sit in the nursery with her with that fucking pump attached to my chest and I WAIT, WAIT to see the bottle fill with my milk, WAIT to make a meal for her because she won’t just take it fresh from the source.
But I’m not making “enough”. I’ve pumped out only eleven ounces today. I’ve divided it up — three, four, two, two. Three for breakfast, with a bowl of cereal. Four for lunch. Two in the late afternoon, with some bread and green bell pepper.
Two for bed.
Not enough.
I mixed that last two ounces with formula to total five ounces, after trying desperately for half an hour to pump out more. I feel like a failure. What am I supposed to do? Put her to bed hungry? Watch her cry and whine and sob, refusing my breast? I’m not going to starve her in the hopes that she’ll decide to come back to me.
I stood there over the crib, watching her drink from the bottle, her eyes fluttering shut. When she fell asleep I took the bottle. I wanted to throw it across the room and scream.
How can my body be failing HER?
What did I do to deserve a nursing strike?
Published September 16, 2009 | This afternoon, around 1pm, Maia started getting a little fussy. The first thing I did was try to get her to nurse, but no luck. Awhile later, we figured that maybe her teeth were aching (we think she may be getting one of her top teeth in, as well as both of her bottom one) so I tried applying some Orajel, which resulted in me tweeting the following (at 1:43): “bad news: it’s hard to apply orajel to a squirmy, angry baby. good news: if Maia’s lips were hurting? THEY AREN’T ANY MORE!“
Yeah. No one told me how hard it is to apply Orajel. Holy shit.
So anyhow, after I numb her entire face, she ends up falling asleep against me, having not eaten in several hours. Whatever. She’ll nurse when she wakes up from her nap, right? She only naps 30-45 minutes at a time these days, I can deal with that. Turns out, she sleeps until 4pm. AND DOESN’T WANT TO NURSE.
But oh. my. God. She is throwing a MASSIVE fit every time I try to feed her. I’m starting to get engorged. Then I get angry, pass her off to Chris, and we decide to all go for a walk.
The walk is great, she’s lovely and happy the whole way, and when we get home, I try to feed her again.
CATS. SLEEPING. WITH. DOGS.
She freaks out.
I pass her off to Chris and open my copy of “The Mother of all Baby Books”, read the section on Nursing Strikes, don’t like what it says, and call my mom, babbling and most likely nearly incoherent. She tells me that maybe Maia wants some real food and isn’t really all that interested in nursing. Of course, my response is “But what’s wrong with my boobs?!”
Anyhow, Chris gives Maia some food and she starts to dig in, happier than a pig in shit. Which when you think about it, is not the most apt metaphor when referring to someone eating, but the point is… I felt horrible. I felt rejected. She greeted my boob with screams, but Real People Food with adulation?
When she lost interest in her food, I tried nursing her again. Still no luck. Again, she started throwing a fit.
By 8pm she still hadn’t nursed and still had no interest. We’d started her bedtime routine at 7, like usual, but she wasn’t falling asleep. By 8:30pm I’d managed to hand-express 1.5oz of milk into a bottle.
There are no words for how absolutely rejected and worthless I felt as I held her, watching her hold onto the bottle and drink from it, feeding herself. She didn’t need me. It could have been anything in that bottle. It could have been Chris holding her, or she could just have been laying on the bed, and nothing would have been different.
Since she enjoyed that milk so much, I went into the washroom and studiously expressed another 1.5oz, which she gobbled down just as gleefully.
Honestly, though, what really matters here, why I really need to write this post, is this:
I am so angry. At her.
It’s like a switch flipped and my mommy empathy turned off. When I tried to nurse her and she rejected me, screaming with a pitch and fervor that showed her absolute displeasure, I set her down on the bed and laid down alongside her… I watched her cry. I could NOT bring myself to hold her against my aching, engorged breasts. I felt no sympathy for her. Nothing was wrong with her. If she wanted to eat, I waited; if she wanted to sleep, she could curl up against me. There was no reason for this screaming. No reason to reject me.
I think that’s the crux of it: I feel like she rejected me.
And it hurts.
I don’t want her to suffer, but I don’t understand why she’s suffering. Yet… she’s only “suffering” when I try to feed her. Other than that, once I set her down and she realized I was no longer trying to shove my boob in her mouth, she returned to being happy. I don’t know if I kept trying to feed her because I hurt (physically and emotionally), because I thought she needed it (clearly she didn’t), or because that’s just what I do, I feed her, that’s a big part of my job. I guess she wasn’t hungry. Tonight, it seems like I needed the connection more than she did.
Chris stepped up to the plate BIG TIME. He told me he’d watch Maia while I went and tried to hand express. He tried to comfort me as I sat there aching, fighting tears, feeling my heart crumbling in my chest. He reminded me “it’s not about you, it’s not personal” as I stared at Maia holding the bottle in her mouth. He held her close and sang to her when she got sleepy but wouldn’t sleep for me. She fell asleep in his arms. When she woke up a few minutes later, he told me to stay put, and went to her, rocking her to sleep again.
That’s the one good thing that came from tonight: she wanted him, and he wanted her.
But I feel lost.
An unexpected side effect of breastfeeding
Published August 5, 2009 | 
It’s World Breastfeeding Week! To celebrate, each day this week I’m going to have a breastfeeding-related post.
When Maia first arrived, I wore a hair elastic on my wrist to indicate which side she had last nursed from. During each nursing session, whenever she delatched for one reason or another, I studiously swapped her to the other breast.
After a week, I stopped paying as much attention to which side she had last nursed from. I’d forget to switch my elastic to the other wrist, or take it off for a shower and never put it back on. To figure out which breast to feed her from, I’d just choose whichever one felt heavier. I was too damned exhausted, physically and mentally, to worry excessively about which boob to put her on. Also, at about the one month mark or so, we swapped to doing “cluster feedings”, which is when I nurse her on one side only for a certain amount of time — ie, any time within a two hour timeframe that she wants to eat, I put her on the same boob, and then for the next two hours, I put her on the other — because it helped quite a bit with her gassiness.
Well, now, twenty four? twenty five? weeks later… I have one BIG boob and one smaller one. Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to show a preference for one or the other all the time, although there are some feedings where she will simply refuse to nurse from one side — but I think that’s just her being picky.
I’m totally thrilled with the size of the big one… now if only the other one would catch up.
How we established breastfeeding
Published August 3, 2009 | It’s World Breastfeeding Week! To celebrate, each day this week I’m going to have a breastfeeding-related post.
I’ve written in detail about my birth experience, but I haven’t really mentioned anything about establishing breastfeeding. I felt like my nursing relationship with Maia was just as easy as everything I read during my pregnancy led me to believe it would be, and that it didn’t really warrant writing about; yet now, I realize that establishing breastfeeding is not necessarily easy, and that a lot of women struggle with it.
After I held Maia for the first time, my midwives said that they needed to evaluate my tearing. So I passed her to Chris and, feeling like a superwoman, walked into the bedroom to be checked out. It turned out that I needed to go to the hospital at some point, but of course I immediately said, “I need to breastfeed my baby first.” My midwives smiled and agreed.
So they helped me hobble out into the living room again, where I settled into a corner of the couch and held my daughter. The midwives beckoned Chris over as I clumsily pressed Maia to my breast, trying to put her round little mouth around my nipple. She grunted and whined, making a motion that I later recognized as rooting. I felt a momentary panic — why isn’t she latching on? doesn’t she love me? can’t I feed her? am I broken? – before the midwife showed me how to do it: put Maia’s nose level with my nipple, hold her close, and stroke down her nose and over her lips with it until she tilts her head back, opens her mouth, and latches on. But she didn’t, not right away, and she rooted against my breast furiously, her little cries growing more and more angry.
“You might need to help her with this, Daddy,” said the midwife, as she and Chris bent their heads together over me. With the tip of a finger, she stroked Maia’s cheek gently, then as Maia turned her head in that direction, the midwife pushed her against my breast. Maia latched on.
I can’t describe to you how I felt, nursing my baby for the first time. Confused, proud, amazed, scared… the cocktail of newly post-partum hormones surfing through my body, the thunderous rhythm of my heartbeat echoing in my ears, and the completely unfamiliar feeling of this amazing, new little creature feeding from me all combined to leave me overwhelmed and humbled. I remember my hair kept falling in my face, and Chris kept pushing it back, watching. He asked, “How can Maia breathe?” because she was so squished against my breast, and the midwife explained that Maia breathed through her nose, then went over the signs to show that we had a good latch.
I have smallish areola, so they don’t show if Maia is latched on properly. As a newborn, her chubby, squished cheeks pressed against my skin. We could see her jaw moving, working as she drank, and hear her swallow.
For twenty or thirty minutes, the midwife sat beside me and watched Maia nurse, talking with me about how I felt and making sure that I recognized a proper latch. When Maia delatched, as she did frequently, I learned how to help her latch on again. When she stopped suckling and looked sleepy, I learned that by stroking under her jaw I can stimulate her to continue. I credit that time with being the main reason our nursing relationship has been so easy and remains strong.
Every time the midwives visited over the next week — they came on day one, two, four, and seven after her birth — we talked about nursing. They made sure we were doing alright, and helped Maia and I take to the side-latch to get more sleep.
Of course, for the first week or so, my nipples hurt. Badly. I’d rub lanolin wax on them and that helped, but it seemed like as soon as I applied it Maia wanted to eat again, so I’d clench my jaw and put her to my breast. I found that I might be in pain for half a minute but after that my body simply acclimated itself to her, accepting that this was its work. At times, I’d intentionally put her on the breast that hurt the most, to remind myself that any amount of pain is bearable for her. Fortunately, I never bled (it would have really disturbed me) nor peeled, just ached and ached.
Although we’ve begun experimenting with solid foods around here, they’re really just for amusement (and all three of us have fun!) Breastfeeding remains the primary way Maia receives nutrition, and I’m aiming for it to be that way for at least a year. I’m planning to let her wean when she’s ready. Even if she’s eating solids by day and only nurses to sleep at night, I’d be fine with that — whatever she wants!
Please share your story about establishing breastfeeding.
Maia on the move
Published July 24, 2009 | On the night of July 21st, I took this picture:
She had been rolling around and playing with her toys, being, as I thought, “so big”.
This morning, I took this picture:
You see, two days ago, Maia decided that laying down is for BABIES, and she’s no longer a baby. Literally in the space of a moment, she started sitting up, and now she doesn’t remain lying down for long if she’s awake. Today, she has yet to fall over and bonk her head on the floor, although for the past two days she’d done it numerous times (to the point where I gave her some baby tylenol because I knew that if I’d hit MY head that many times, I’d have a headache).
I laugh and tell people this is “scary”. Scary that she’s moving. Scary that she’s growing. But honestly?
I am incredibly, perhaps even inordinately, proud. I see her sitting up and playing with her toys, or watch her crooked semi-crawling across the floor and my heart threatens to swell right out of my chest. She looks so grown up.
For the first three months of Maia’s life, I carried her in my arms almost constantly. Even when she’d cry in my ear, I still couldn’t imagine setting her down and leaving her alone when she was so upset. There were times she would fall asleep against my shoulder and I’d just cradle her there, my cheek pressed to her downy head, feeling the heat of her breath soft against my neck.
And at times in those three months, I admit, I thought that I might not be doing her any favours. There were moments I thought she might develop her motor skills slower than the books say is “normal”, because I held her so much. Because I didn’t give her tummy time. Because I didn’t leave her to wiggle around on the floor unless she was happy to do so. I accepted, in my mind and in my heart, that maybe, just maybe, this was the one time that mainstream North American parenting style might have an advantage over my way of attachment parenting. Maybe someone else’s baby would be moving around far sooner than Maia. Maybe Maia would be slow to learn to move. I didn’t mind that too much, because obviously she’d learn to move when she was good and ready to, but maybe, maybe, maybe…
Those thoughts seem laughable now, because our daughter is ON THE MOVE. She is ready to go, and for now, I am celebrating her independence.
Remind me of that the first time I catch her eating dog food.
Also, I have a guest post up over at Mamikaze.com today: Milk in bags and other weird things about Canada. Please drop by & say hello!
Babies of 2009 Blog Carnival
Published July 1, 2009 | Welcome to the Babies of 2009 Blog Carnival! I am so happy to be hosting this and dearly hope that all of us 2009 (or near 2009!) moms can meet a few new people through this. Since BlogCarnival.com is a waste of internet space, just add a link to your post in the comments and I will edit this post to include it.
Enjoy, and remember to drop by the posts of other participants!
(I can hardly believe the year is halfway over… crazy.)
01. Me: The Highs and the Lows (or, accepting that it ain’t all roses)
02. Nicole @ Grudge Mom: A Lighter Side of the Recession: Having a Baby in 2009
03. Emma @ Baby Log: 12 Little Things I Want to Remember About My Baby
04. Mamie @ The Life I Now Live: I Can Wait
05. Inconvenient Body: L’art Pour L’art: It’s Child’s Play
06. My Field of Paper Flowers: Babies of 2009 Carnival
07. Rebecca @ A Little Bit of Momsense: An Ode to My Sweetie
08. Myg @ Wiser Mom: Babies of 2009 Born to a Baby of 1969
09. Jinxy @ Jinxyisms: Baby oh baby
The Highs and the Lows (or, accepting that it ain’t all roses)
Published July 1, 2009 | 
I’ve documented a lot about my little girl here. I’ve shared some of the highest highs, but I’ve avoided many of the lowest lows. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about them; I do. There are times I’ve felt so overwhelmed at how much work this motherhood thing requires that I’ve sobbed while holding my crying baby, times I’ve been so resentful towards her that I just wanted to pass her to someone else and walk away to regain my senses, times I’ve called Chris at work and hardly been able to speak through my tears. I don’t write about these things because I don’t want to relive them. I want to reread this blog in ten years as Maia does her homework on the kitchen table behind me and find myself smiling at the fond memories, wishing I could again experience the feverish, all-consuming need for one another we have right now.
I love my daughter. I love my husband. Those are immutable facts. I might as well say that I need air to live and water to thrive. But it’s also undeniable that my relationships with them change day-to-day, for better and for worse. Chris and I have argued and snapped at each other more in these past four and a half (!!) months than we have in the six years (as of today!) we’ve been together. It’s difficult. It’s really, really difficult. I hope that every pregnant woman out there understands one thing, though: YOU are the mother. YOU know best. You must listen to and consider other people, but never, ever go against what your heart and gut are telling you when it comes to your baby. Parenting is demanding enough without making it harder on yourself because of what a book, or your parents, or your frustrated partner suggest.
Truly, the struggle to accept that, since I set the basic parenting rules, I am responsible for maintaining them is the greatest frustration I’ve experienced so far. It puts a strain on my self-esteem, my marriage, and even at times my emotional stability. There is no way to explain to someone who hasn’t been here how absolutely low the lows can be. We all read about post-partum depression while we’re reading our pregnancy books, and I have to say that while I don’t believe I suffer from PPD, I do believe I’ve had some depressive episodes in the past four months. I think that’s an important distinction: for the vast majority of the time, I am delighted to be a wife and mother, I am confident in my ability to be fantastic at both, and I want nothing more than to be near my daughter and husband forever.
Yet there have been times that I think I’m a horrible wife and mother, that I’ll never make both of them and myself happy, or that if I could just get away from them for half an hour, the world would make sense again.
I know this isn’t the happiest blog post. But I tell you — you know what makes me feel better, when I feel low? Knowing that other women have been here.
So remember — when you are feeling despondent, when you doubt yourself, when you want to bury your face in a pillow and scream with frustration — you’re not alone. I know you feel like you are. But you’re not. We’ve all been there.
And fortunately, the highs outnumber the lows.
Upcoming Babies of 2009 Carnival!
Published June 18, 2009 | As of July 1st, the year 2009 will be halfway over. ALREADY! It feels like New Year’s was just yesterday. For those of us who have been taking care of babies this year, time has flown by (although on those long, sleepless nights, it sure didn’t feel like it!)
In the spirit of celebration, I’m hosting a “Babies of 2009″ Carnival on this blog on July 1st. All I want you to do is write a post about a frustrating or joyful experience in your life as a mother to a newborn, or as an expectant mother. My hope is that I can help a few new moms connect with one another. Although the carnival is focused on parents whose children were born (or will be born) in 2009, I will also have a category for babies born before 2009 — you are more than welcome to participate as well!
Please sign up with your post at the Babies of 2009 Carnival page on BlogCarnival.com. If you are having problems with that, just come here on July 1st and leave a link to your post in the comments (or send me an email, or a tweet…)
My Baby’s Mind Monday 03
Published May 25, 2009 | Welcome to My Baby’s Mind Mondays! If you’d like to participate, please copy and paste the HTML code below to grab the button, which will link back here. Leave a comment letting me know you’ve posted, and I’ll add a list of participants to the end of each weekly post.
Here’s the picture that inspired me this week:
Hey Mom,
So there I was at the graduation reception, hanging out with Becky and Uncle Jared, when you came wandering out of the cabin with a Smirnoff Ice in one hand and that camera in the other (like always; do you ever put that thing down?). See the face I’m making in this picture? It’s because I suspect you’re about to steal me from Becky’s lap, but really, I’m perfectly happy here. Uncle Jared put little white flowers in my hair! He even checked them for ketchup bugs, and I learned what a ketchup bug is.
It’s pretty amazing, you know, what a great day we had on Sunday, even if some of it was terrifying. I made sure to wake up nice and early so you and Daddy could make it down to Hartford for Aunt Katie’s graduation in time, even though you tried to pull the blankets over your head and ignore us. Then, once we got there, I sat in Daddy’s lap all quietly, looking at all the people and lights.
But then…. THAT SOUND started, and it scared me. What are “bagpipes” and how does anyone listen to them?! I tried to let everyone in the stadium know how much I hate the “bagpipes”, but they were so loud that only you and Daddy and Babcia noticed me crying.
You know what, though? All the clapping and cheering during the rest of the thing didn’t bother me, and I got to take a nice nap wrapped up in a blanket in your arms. Of course, then everyone around me started to scream and holler when Aunt Katie was called, and I didn’t like that any better than the bagpipes. What is wrong with you people? Don’t you ever think about me? There’s so much new stuff being put in front of me all the time, you’re always taking me new places and showing me new people. I really really try to be good.
And, going back to how cool it was to hang out with Becky and Jared, you were good too. You left me there with them until I was ready to leave. Maybe you’re not so terrible after all.
Love,
Maia.