- RT @wilw: I made a Mitt Romney Venn Diagram: http://t.co/esspoq7p
- RT @wired: 33 Geeky Insults You Can Use Almost Anywhere http://t.co/FXzvcq18
- God I am so totally okay with that man.
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.
10 things I love about breastfeeding
Published August 1, 2009 | It’s World Breastfeeding Week! Not like, you know, breastfeed the world, but let’s celebrate the beauty of breastfeeding. To celebrate, each day this week I’m going to have a breastfeeding-related post.
10 things I love about breastfeeding
1) I feel empowered knowing that my body provides all the nutrition that our baby needs.
2) It is our special time together.
3) The way she turns her head, mouth wide open, and practically attacks my breast when she’s particularly hungry. It reminds me of how very much she needs me.
4) Being so aware of her: the focus in her eyes as she drinks, the puffs of breath from her nostrils against my skin. I can study the curve of her ear and the fall of her hair. I feel the weight of her in my arms.
5) Watching her try not to smile when I make silly faces at her. There are times she loosens her latch to give me a little giggle, and times when she lets go and just laughs at me.
6) The primal connection to millions of years of mammalian history strikes me as I feed her. There are times I look at her and think, “I am a mommy animal, and you are my baby animal,” and I am filled with pride.
7) It often settles her into sleep and I watch her eyes roll back into her head as they flutter shut, her long lashes coming to rest on her plump little cheeks.
8 ) It often settles me into sleep, particularly in the mornings. I pull her into bed, lay on my side, latch her on, and we fall asleep together as she suckles.
9) It is convenient, cheap, and natural. As long as I’m around, she can be fed.
10) Milk breath. When she has finished eating and is still awake, her breath smells milky and sweet for awhile.
What do you love about breastfeeding?
Disney, daddies, and dumb decisions
Published July 6, 2009 | When I was 17 years old, I ran away from home.
It was the summer before my senior year of high school. I bought a bus ticket to Michigan, where “the man of my dreams” — we’ll call him Leon — lived. We had met online several months earlier, and he had come out to visit me in Connecticut for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. We didn’t get to spend New Year’s Eve together; I spent the transition from 1999 to 2000 in my bedroom, grounded and furious. Leon’s the person who bought me the Hot Damn that I got drunk off for my 17th birthday.
What he hadn’t told me, and what I discovered soon after arriving in Michigan, is that he, at 24, lived in his parent’s basement. He also hadn’t told his parents that I was visiting, never mind planning to move in. This was not the first of his deceptions, and certainly not the last.
My dad and I
As I’ve written before, if I have any “relationship” with my father at all, it’s a frail, tempestuous one. And while I take personal responsibility for my actions, I also can’t deny that I — that any person — is shaped by their life experiences, and that includes what he’s done to me. So when I say that I felt adrift, confused, and completely abandoned by him, and when I say that those feelings are part of what contributed to me seeking out some man to love me, some man to fill that void in my heart left by him, I know that I have every right to it. And Leon happened to be the first man that came along.
However, something else contributed to me seeking out a man to save me: Disney. I grew up in the Golden Age of Disney movies, when they were all still musicals featuring beautiful, spirited princesses who somehow nonetheless were incomplete until they found their man. I remember seeing The Little Mermaid in the theatres with my mom, and both of us crying at the end when Ariel gets married, hugs her father, and whispers, “I love you, Daddy“. I remember watching Belle finding true love as she kissed The Beast. I remember Jasmine crying out, “I am not a prize to be won!” and then, dressed in fiery red scraps, being rescued from the evil Jafar by a daring Aladdin.
I grew up — so many women grow up — with the concept that someday my prince will come and rescue me pounded into their heads. This isn’t even a subtle message. It’s the plot line of our youth. I just looked through this list of Disney animated movies and the number of them I loved where that storyline is implemented is staggering. There is no denying that I believed my prince was out there, searching for me as I searched for him.
Again, let me say that I take responsibility for what I did. I’m not writing that I ran away because of my father and Disney, but I am writing that having those two influences in my life has shaped me as a person. The person, the teenager, I was, was not a wise enough girl to look inside herself, find the strength nurtured by all the positive influences on her life, and abandon the idea that she needed to be rescued.
Now, as a mother, clearly I worry about my daughter. I look at her in Chris’ arms and think, “You are the first man she’s in love with. Don’t break her heart.“ I hold her in my own arms, nursing her, our bodies two separate entities now and yet still so completely dependent on each other, and think, “Make your own mistakes. Don’t make mine.“ She will make mistakes. She will have her heart broken. She will break mine. But I can’t stomach the thought of her doing the same things I did. When I imagine her being as weak as I was, nausea rises in my throat. I think of someone treating her the way Leon treated me and a primal, irrational fury consumes me, the need to protect her burning so strongly at the very core of my being that I would face anything, anything, to keep her from that anguish.
So when I saw this feature in JPG Magazine called “Fallen Princesses”, where a photographer took the stories of Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood, then looked at them in a modern, post-fairy tale light, it really resonated with me. Now that I’m more than a decade removed from Disney’s target audience, and I’ve come into my own, I look at those images and nod.
Cinderella in a bar, despondent, staring at a shot glass and being eyed askance by a pair of rough-and-tumble men, the type you expect to see hanging out in a place like that during the day.
Snow White, barefoot and surrounded by her own little dwarves, her mask of resignation unable to hide the desperate look in her eyes that cries, “Yes, this is my fairy tale ending — is it yours?”
Belle, lying with eyes closed, hands clasped, on a surgery table, bloody stitches crowning her hairline, a needle penetrating her grotesque lips and a scalpel carving her face.
On and on.
Yet at the end of Disney movies comes a happily ever after, doesn’t it?
When you find your prince, you find meaning in life, don’t you?
It’d be nice if those things were true. They aren’t. I thought they were. I made ignorant decisions and I hurt my family. I did these things because I genuinely believed that love conquers all, that love is easy and, if I just pursued my prince, everything else in my life would fall into place. I don’t want to tell Maia she can’t watch Disney movies. I love the thought of her dressing up as a princess and inventing her own fairy tales.
I just hope she comes to understand that there’s a reason they’re called “fairy tales” sooner than I did.
New Mommy Disease
Published May 5, 2009 | I can’t stand still anymore. I stand and sway my hips from side to side, as if rocking Maia; I did the same in early February, trying to bring on my labour (it didn’t help).
I don’t even think of my breasts as sexual things. They’re purely functional; they feed my daughter, they don’t entertain my husband. I’m not sure he’s too happy with this, but oh well. They have stretch marks, the girls are constantly standing at attention, and the only time I see them anymore is when they’re about to be used for someone’s snack.
I’ve given up on keeping the living room uncluttered. Fuck it, we have a baby, there are going to be burp cloths and toys and discarded pieces of clothing hanging out of the laundry basket sitting in the corner. At least there’s a basket!
I thought that Maia smelled like a muffin yesterday. Turns out, the wrapper from the muffin I ate for lunch (cause I can eat it with one hand!) was on the table behind where we were nursing. But for awhile there, I thought I had the most delicious smelling baby in the entire world.
I’ve sung the Worms song at least seventeen times in the past twenty-four hours, because Maia was so cranky that it seemed terribly apropos:
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
Gonna go eat some wooooooorms!
Big fat juicy worms! Slip-slop slimy worms!
Fuzzy wuzzy wuzzy wooooooorms!
First you bite their heads off
Then you suck their guts out
Then you throw the skins away
BIG FAT JUICY worms! SLIP-SLOP SLIMY worms!
Fuzzy wuzzy wuzzy wooooooorms!
Seriously? I love that song.
PS: As you can see, I’ve added a few features to the individual posts on the blog (they don’t show on the main page), such as quick links to social bookmarking sites if you’re using them, and a ‘related posts’ list in case you care to explore some archived posts. Hopefully these add value to this site rather than detract — please let me know what you think!
Yeah, I know how that goes.
Published April 24, 2009 | 
This evening Maia fell asleep while I was holding her. Not only did my arm totally fall asleep, but when Chris took her from me, I had the impression from the buttons of her onesie on my forearm.
The stuff you don’t think of until it’s in your face
Published April 21, 2009 | Motherhood is so unpredictable, and rewarding, and frustrating. If I could go back to my pregnant self and tell her one thing, it’d be to talk to my husband more about our parenting style. Oh, we talked about it vaguely: “”You’ll help me out, right?” “Of course! I want to be involved in our daughter’s life.” But that doesn’t even brush the surface of the number of parenting decisions we have to make each day.
The biggest one we should have talked about: “cry it out” or not? I say not. I say that an infant has no concept of how to manipulate people; if she’s crying and we pick her up and soothe her, we’re fulfilling her basic, primal need for love and social interaction. Sure, this results in me carrying her around the house a lot, but to me, it’s a hell of a lot better than listening to her cry. I can’t even fathom how I could decide “I’m tired of taking care of my baby” and go put the baby in another room, close the door, and go about my daily life without her. It’s just not who I am. Yes, there have been times when she’s been crying so long and loud that all I want is for her to shut the hell up and go to sleep, but I also feel like, as her mother, it’s my responsibility to at least let her know that she’s being heard, and I’m not going to abandon her just because she’s upset. I know it works for some people, and that’s fine, that’s their thing. I know not everyone can handle listening to a baby cry. I know it can pierce your brain and make you think of doing things that you’d never actually do. And I know that in an apartment, where there’s not a lot of space and you can’t really have a quiet area to “escape” to for a break from the crying, it can be even worse. But this is something we should have talked about and hashed out a lot more, because it’s lead to some resentment on both of our parts.
Another big thing to talk about: co-sleeping. I’m okay with Maia not being in bed with us all night; it wasn’t something that I’d planned on doing anyhow, and when Chris and I discussed how having her in the bed was impacting our sleep (which was already impacted enough with the sheer fact that we have a newborn), I was alright with compromising and putting her in the bassinet for most of the night. I still am. And I still pull her into bed whenever she wakes up for the first time after 5am, so when I wake up for the day, she’s right there. I like to sleep with a comforter on no matter what the temperature is, and I like my comforter all the way up around my neck, so it can be a little scary for me because I worry about accidentally covering her with it. But honestly, waking up and having her right there is so, so perfect. I wonder what we’re going to do when she outgrows the bassinet (and at the rate she’s growing, it’s going to be sooner than expected). I hate the idea of her sleeping in another room. Maybe I’ll live in the nursery until she is sleeping through the night or only waking for one nighttime feeding.
Which leads me to a third thing: nighttime feedings. On weeks when Chris is off work, since we’re all in the same room together, I just feed her while sitting up next to him, but I feel kind of funny if she goes into loud suck mode because it could be disturbing his sleep. There’s been at least one time where he’s gotten up out of bed and went into the nursery to sleep because she was just too damned slurpy. Now, I’ve also pumped a few times and stored some milk in the freezer, but how on earth anyone feeds their baby that way is beyond me. By the time the milk has warmed to the proper temperature (even if it’s just been in the fridge), Maia’s so wound up about the fact that she isn’t being fed that there is no way she’ll take the bottle. I have to put her on my breast, let her calm down, then de-latch her and give her the bottle. And frankly, if she’s already nursing, I don’t really see a reason to de-latch, but then the milk in the bottle is being wasted (everything I’ve read suggests NOT reheating milk more than twice). But when I leave her with family to be watched, I have to leave a bottle; are they supposed to randomly heat it and try to feed her? She feeds on-demand.
Then there are the little decisions: how often to bathe her? who bathes her? how often to change her onesie? should she be wearing long sleeves or short? what about pants? socks? how full do we let the baby laundry get before we do it? do you powder her rump every time you change her or just randomly? should we hold her over our shoulder or in front of our chests? when she falls asleep being carried, do we set her in the swing, on the couch, in the crib, in the bassinet, or just continue to hold her? do we swaddle her? do we put a blanket over her? do we turn on the music on the swing? will she stay calm enough for me to do some dishes if I put her in her bouncy chair? should I turn on the music and lights display on the bouncy chair right away, or save it for when she gets a little fussy in the hopes that it’ll calm her down?
Gahhh. Ten thousand questions, and you can never have one set answer to them, you have to adapt on the spot. It’s exhausting!
Month Two
Published April 13, 2009 | Dear Maia,
Today you turn two months old and, just like last month, I’m stuck between amazement at how time has flown by and disbelief that it’s only been that long. This morning as we laid in bed together, I rested my hand on my stomach and remembered being pregnant, feeling you kicking and pushing — but I couldn’t think of what it was that I did all day without you around. Then I tried to remember life before the pregnancy, and it came to me in bits and pieces: a vacation to Florida, a trip to Connecticut, taking pictures with Daddy in Montreal, or bringing home the puppies. These memories seemed more like remnants of a dream than anything that ever happened to me, as if I only drew breath when you did.
Despite our love for you, there’s no denying that this month has been difficult. You’ve grown more aware and responsive, but at the same time, you’re very demanding. I’m surprised there’s not a path worn in our flooring from how many hours Daddy and I have spent carrying you back and forth around the apartment, shushing you, trying to make you happy. There was one night where you cried for four hours straight — and of course this was quite late, when Daddy had to work the next day. But you know what? As soon as he came out to help us, you fell asleep in his arms.
This month, you two have become something like best friends. We joke that you’re Queen Maia, he’s Prince Daddy, and I’m Mommy the Milkmaid. There have literally been times when you two are together, I’ve walked over to say hello, you’ve taken one look at me, and started to wail. Fortunately, I have a sense of humour about this, or else you might just hurt my feelings. Although that said, he did scare you the other day. He was raising you up in the air, over his head, and you loved this, so he thought that maybe you’d like to be lowered as well; he pretended to drop you from his waist to his knees and you screamed, this frightened, high-pitched, endless wail. You were terrified. We felt horrible, and Daddy cuddled you close until you calmed down.
If there’s only one memory I could hold on to from this month, it would be seeing you smile for the first time. It was 5am and you decided that was a perfectly good time to wake up for awhile, so we went out into the living room together. I laid you down on the couch and played with you — and then, you beamed. Your mouth opened wide, the corners of it curled up, your dimple appeared, and your eyes wrinkled up with joy. Maia, you could wake me up every hour of the night, as long as you smile at me. I went and woke your Daddy up to let him know, but it took another week before you started smiling at him. Now, every morning, you are in a happy mood and you smile at us while “talking”. It makes starting the day so much easier!
For the last few days, you’ve been trying to laugh. This is hilarious, since it means you draw a big breath and then you squeal or yell, very loudly, while smiling. I know that within the next week or two you’ll start giving us those giggles that you so desperately are trying to find, and of course I’m more than willing to help you, and I’ve probably tickled you more in these few days than I have in the rest of your life.
You’re also “standing” a lot. Sometimes when we’re holding you, you stretch out your legs (we refer to this as “Legs of Steel”) and push off us. We’ll swing you backwards and pull you back up, but that’s not always enough, and you want to be held straight up so you can put all your weight on your feet. Then you straighten your back, hold your head up, and talk to us. You’re only eight weeks old, Maia! Stop trying to grow up so fast.
Every day with you is different from the one before. Sometimes you’ll nap all day, sometimes you’ll be awake for ten hours in a row. Sometimes you are incredibly happy, sometimes you cry no matter what we do. Sometimes you’re interested in us, sometimes you want to look at toys instead. We can’t predict you, and as frustrating as it can be to have to think outside of the box, I love that you expand our horizons. People say they start to think differently when they have a child, and I understand that now. It’s not just that I have to think about how to take care of someone else, or how the world will impact you, but I have to find new ways of looking at situations. I have to try and think like a baby, and that’s difficult with twenty-six years of life experience. But it’s amazing.
We are so in love with you, baby girl. Even when you wear us out.
Love,
Mama.
A little sugar, a little spice
Published April 2, 2009 | Sometimes it just hits me square in the chest how much I love my little girl. Today it was as she nursed and laid there gazing up at me with her huge, dark eyes, and I sat watching her. Her eyes closed, slowly, and she drifted into sleep, still sucking now and then; when she released the latch, her lips were bright pink and still pursed, slightly parted, and it was all I could do not to lean down and smooch them, so I brushed her hair back from her ear instead… and she smiled.
Moments like that are so precious.
I made the decision to start pumping… sometime soon. Not that I want to switch to bottle-feeding exclusively, but Chris would like to be able to feed her (as would I), and I’d like to feel as though we can leave her with family for a few hours without worrying about a feeding crisis. Also, since we’re going to be travelling to Connecticut in the summer, being able to bottle feed may let us avoid some crying fits between rest stations.
I love the idea of my girl lying in my family’s arms, feeding from the bottle, giving them that same bright-eyed, adoring look that I am so blessed to receive daily.
And then they might just be privileged enough to receive the ear-piercing scream she gives off just when you think she’s actually going to sleep this time. HAH!
6 Weeks
Published March 28, 2009 | It’s all supposed to get easier after 6 weeks, right? I’m pretty sure that’s because after 6 weeks, your life has been so utterly consumed by the here-and-now of having a new baby that you’ve completely forgotten what it’s like to live any other way, and it only seems “easier” because of that. My mom laughed at the concept of 6 weeks and said “It gets easier after two years!”
Something that makes me sad is the fact that if I were in the US, my maternity leave would be ending. I can’t imagine leaving Maia with a sitter right now — hell, I miss her when she’s just in the other room with her daddy.
Chris talked to MJ, his mother, the other day about how Maia is sleeping in the bed, and now is on a mission to get her back in the bassinet. I told him I’m willing to compromise — we’ll put her down in the bassinet at the beginning of the night, but if she wakes up at some ungodly hour and refuses to sleep again in the bassinet, I’m putting her in the bed. He said she needed to stay in the bassinet. I said “Then you get to take care of her if she won’t lie down, and I’m going to sleep.”
So that night, we lay her in the bassinet for the night and she sleeps, then she’s up at 2:30 for a feeding. I feed her, she falls asleep easily, I put her in the bassinet and she sleeps. She’s up at 4:30, but after nursing and changing, she’s wide awake and doesn’t want to go back to sleep. For an hour, I stay up with her in the dark and calm her down; she starts settling, closes her eyes, and her limbs go limp against me. I try to set her down in the bassinet — she cries. Another ten minutes of soothing, she sleeps; I put her down, she fusses. Another ten minutes. Same thing. So I wake Chris up and say “Guess what, it’s your turn, she won’t sleep in the bassinet for me.”
Now, I could easily have solved this by putting her in the bed with us and letting her sleep there, but the point of this was to make him understand that when it comes to Maia, right now, I KNOW BETTER THAN HE DOES. “She’s not crying,” he says. “She will,” I say, “and so you should grab her and calm her now before she upsets herself too much.” “No, she’ll soothe herself back to sleep,” he says.
A few minutes of fussing later, she starts crying (and I smile). Chris takes her and walks out of the bedroom, and I see a light go on. Whatever, I fall back asleep. I wake up when I hear her cry again, and I decide to go check on them. Chris has all the lights on and is watching television. When I ask him what he’s doing, he gets pissed off and says he’s obviously taking care of her. I said he should obviously be trying to soothe her back into sleep instead of stimulating her with all these lights and sounds. He replies something very nasty that I won’t type here, but it makes me decide that he deserves whatever the fuck he’s doing to himself, and I go back to bed.
Two hours later (I’m impressed at this length of time) he comes into the bedroom and wakes me up. “She’s been awake the whole time,” he says, “you need to feed her, I’m done.”
So I laid her down between us in the bed and nursed her. It was 7:45am at that time. When we woke up, it was 11:30am.
And when she woke up in the middle of the night last night to feed, I took her out of the bassinet, laid her between us, nursed her, and we slept like that. He hasn’t said a word about it.
Because, yes, I know best.
When I see you smile…
Published March 23, 2009 | Every baby develops at their own rate.
Maia hasn’t smiled at me (or anything) yet and it’s driving me crazy waiting on it to happen. I just want to feel rewarded for all this. I want to know she recognizes me socially. I want to see her dimple.
But she does sometimes respond vocally when we talk to her, which always thrills me!
PS: I so love her hair.
