Friday, October 16, 2015

The Mommening at Midnight: And Other Sleepless Soggy Sagas

As the Princess Papaya rounded out her second month of madness and merriment, a formula for sweet sticky success stoked little baby's belly, while mommy mourned the passing of her EBF fantasies and learned to embrace the Paci Chaymanum ... for the several seconds that it lasted. 

Bridging 2 whole months old, Chaya faces horrors unspeakable just in time for Halloween happenings. Legs are stabbed while mommy's coldly stand by in pink pajamas. Our femme fatale dates and dallies with an old (young) beau and his fabulous toys. And raise the dom perignon as mommy's milk moseys back into semi-relevance for a good old fashion booby juice jamboree. Sleep is lost. Work is sloppy and thumbs are found where they're least expected... 





Boogie Woogie Booby Babe and the Onrush to Double month and Double-Digits
Still have the baby. Might have cut into my posting time a bit, since  Chaya is so beautiful and wonderful and... a little tyrant. But love makes any bit of what is technically torture (sleep, what's sleep?) feel like a big hug. 


Always eating. Somehow.Boob, bottle... no matter. But by god there shall be nipple! Or a big thumb/finger for gnawing. Possibly her hands. Covered in drool. I know she won't likely be teething yet, but seriously, she's acting like it. Fussing, drooling, gnawing. Darn thing is part St. Bernard. 

But that eating... it almost got simple. But then it didn't. Not yet anyways. Despite being inches from hanging up the strange fetish pump bra and embracing the formula wholeheartedly, I was encouraged to try the domperidone that was already on its way to me. Yes, I call it dom perignon in my head, although the teeny tablets far more resembler extra strength breath mints. Which is how the wannabe lactator must pop them since they're actually pills for stomach problems.


But ... they work. Or so far seem to have caused a bit of a booby rebound. My supply had continued to decline until I was pumping about 3 ounces of milk total a day. The highest I managed was just under 5. Within three to four days, I am now pumping closer to 7-8 ounces. Yesterday I hit a high mark of 9. Naturally, when things went back down a little this morning, I assumed the worst. And I could be right. They might not last. But at least I've still just pumped as much in a morning as I was doing in an entire day.

And the li'l goblin is clearly having a more productive nursing session before the pumping even begins. Lots of baby smacking. We're not anywhere near cutting out the "supplementation" but during the morning, the wee thing can subside almost entirely on a combination of fresh and expressed booby juice. By the time she gets to the formula, she may smack at it, but then drift off and lose interest in baby binging. In the evening, the formula becomes a big part again, since my production decreases and her demand increases. Just in time for daddy to come home!

Work continues to "benefit" from this fixation of course. Mommy is super "productive" in all kinds of ways. Mostly with the slightly increased milk supply. Days go something like "we got up. We fed for an hour. Chaya wanted to scream at the babies on the poster by her changing table. Chaya wanted to hear itsy bitsy spider and kick her legs. Mommy finally realized it was past nine and tricked a babbling babe into the boba. Several tons of camping gear packed and loaded later, mommy got baby into a carseat. Repeat the unpacking at work... 

Add a half hour of unpacking baby gear. Then maybe an hour of working at the treadmill desk with baby in the boba. And there was feeding and cute baby and a urine "blow out" finishing off the newborn diapers at the office and in my diaper bag. Then there was some fussing unless mommy walked around hte office in just a particular way while baby gnawed on mommy's thumb. GNAWED. While drooling rivers. Then there was sleepiness and mommy tricked baby back into the boba so she could finally get back to work several hours later


WOrld's most productive employee here!

But I'm surviving and optimistic that my baby is becoming more and more baby like every day. She coos. She laughs, she smiles. She responds to music! It's magical. 

And not just because I'm sleep deprived and hallucinating. Not just





Super Scheduled Sweetie and the Gerber Gam Assualt

Well my baby is fast at work creating her own immunities. I've sent her into the world with all sorts of placenta-prompted goodies and passive immunities, but life is hard and it's time she learned the real cost of ... not getting horribly ill. That's right, my baby is two months old and just had her first immunizations! I have to say I'm impressed (1) with the celerity of the nurse who administered them. Before Chaya could even break out her new woeful wail, the shots were over, (2) my coldheartedly calm manner as I sanguinely cooed to the poor little luv that it was "ok" while some strange lady STABBED HER IN THE LEG!! 

Mommy is mean. Tough love doesn't cover it. 

Chaya will express her disappointment over the next 24 hours no doubt. So far with bouts of deep sleep, wailing wakefulness, an hour of fairly intent breastfeeding, a disturbingly reproachful shrieking session of attempted bottle topping off with the milk she seemed to be after with full rooting and hand-chomping hunger cues, some pain-filled sobbing sessions, and another nap to gather strength for future raging vengeance. But I deserve it. I let it happen, the leg stabbing.

 I didn't just passively allow it to happen, I rushed feverishly around the house in fuzzy polka dot pajamas and two month bed head to ensure arrival at this appointment with betrayal. 

I let the nurse measure and weigh her, for which she preemptively projectile peed on both me and the entirety of the doctor's office. Twenty-three inches long and 10 pounds 1 ounce! That's basically the size I was when I was born. My poor, poor mother. 

Aside from the happy-faced bandaid betrayal, all is well. Chaya is hitting her milestones. She looks and sounds loverly. And whatever odd behavior I attempted to describe to the doctor was head-patted with platitudes that mommy had already read fifty times on several parenting sites and parenting class handouts. Great to know that reflux and gas are natural and not a problem unless she's losing weight, even if, say, it makes her scream and fuss and cry and thus is kind of still a problem in terms of unhappy babyosity wearing away at the last shred of milk-poor mommy's nerves (who also wants to cry over the spilt milk of a good spit up considering the lengths she goes to to get that stuff to her). But here, have your six thousandth handout on "what to do with a crying baby" (spoiler alert: don't hit or shake them, and probably don't leave them alone on the roof or take them on a ride on your dirt bike)

Of course in addition to having been assaulted (without an iota of consent, informed or otherwise), Miss Chaya's schedule has been thrown completely out of whack. Her morning feed was rushed. Her morning nap was interrupted. Her lunchtime feeding was - of course - stymied by being overtired and raging. Meaning this nap should be truncated by her being hangry from not having eaten enough. And on and on into the future. 

Miss Chaya takes a bit after her mommy in that regard. She does not like these interruptions to her finely tuned baby schedule. 

For instance, she's not sure about this Baby and Me class that mommy's got going on. Mommy's not 100% sure about it either. It sounded like a good idea while mommy was parturient. But now she's realizing that it involves several other crying babies and an ebullient instructor who keeps saying "oh it's ok that so and so is crying. Stay!! Let's sing and sign!!" All of which is great, except my concern about my baby crying in public is not whether others find it fine as much as I physiologically do not like my baby crying and when she's already upset the unfamiliarity of public exacerbates it. Aaaand crying babies are like dominos of course - they fall down if you stack them up in a row with each other. Yeah. Although Chaya so far has coped by sleeping through the class or breasting up through the entire two hours of songs and active development discussions. Then being a huge pot o' fuss in the evening for having had a disruption to her routine.

Still, I figure it's good for her to get used to being around other babies, and I like being around other new moms. Plus this week there were cookies!

Having been thoroughly stymied in my attempts at power pumping while bottle feeding (long story), I am now walking on the treadmill, typing one-handedly and supporting my fussy sleepy baby's bobbing boba head with the other. Did I mention this may well not be a super productive work day again? But hey I'm technically at my desk!





Insipidly bittersweet moments: 

When your baby nurses so well that she doesn't need the supplement or even the bottle of expressed milk, BUT she nursed so well that when she's done there is hardly any left to pump with your fancy hospital grade rental pump. Parenting is rife with these moments. And with creative ways to bring in modern technology and modern parenting to the feeding equation (see Mr. Wright's adaptation of the classic texting while bottling technique, e.g. ... we are clearly attentive parents, and the coffee stains on my baby's head certainly confirms this). But back to the magical Medela Moment at hand. 

Given her affair with the bottle at an early age, Chaya doesn't seem on her way to being a dedicated boob-baby. The breast is an odd thing. Milk blurps out in series of letdowns instead of the steady trickles of a bottle. Baby has to open wide and maintain a certain ballet of oral machinations to yield her quarry. She can't tug at the tip or toss her head like she can with a bottle - well she can, but mommy discourages it vociferously. The bottle is relentlessly forgiving in a way the boob and/or the boob's owner is not.

Some times of the day she is simply too restless or fussy to be breast fed even discounting supply issues. The boob also is shockingly soporific, stymieing attempts to create a hearty feed.

And I have to admit I've grown a bit impatient since the enfamil intifada. Especially when I have help, it's convenient to pass the baby to the bottle holder and have time to pump/clean bottles/set up for the next feed. When I had no direct milk to speak of, this bottle ritual took quite some time and gave me some extra time to run around the house knowing I wasn't missing too much of adorababy wonderment. So when I knew there wasn't much to give, I had a far lower threshold for passing her off. A cursory touch of lips to nipple to have checked it off the list and off to bottle at the first sign of disharmony.

Now I make sure there's some good latching. I wait. I compress. I help her stay on when a rumble in her belly ripples out through her limbs and neck. And it's easier for her to stay on, because there's more to have. At twilight times she has a shockingly efficient feed and I have the patience and plentitude to wait the ten to fifteen minutes a side to nurse like we mean it.

So when her overnight snacks are bottle free, I say bully! Or "wow of your appetite still suppressed because of the immunizations. This is just weird." I suspect she is also evolving into longer sleep periods and these little nip-snacks at midnight and four a.m. are dwindling out into one larger mid-sleep feed. Still, the fact that I can then pump a little and have enough to get Chaya all the way to her lunch feed exclusively with booby juice is a huge victory in my world. 

Oh yes pump pump pum. Pumping is still vital. It helps build up some supplies for the part of the day where ironically my supply is lower and her appetite is voraciouser. It signals my prolactin-prodded-pituitary to make more milk in the grand supply and demand disco.

And it means others can still take over when the babe to boob thing just isn't as awesomely magical and efficient (say during her hungry and fussy periods)

And maybe I'm weird but it's kind of mesmerizing to watch and hear the flurrying Dance of the Milkdrops over the lulling purr of my Medela Symphony.

Oh yes I have access to a hospital grade pump as of Friday. All courtesy of Premera Blue Cross and (more importantly) The Bellingham Center For Healthy Motherhood. They serendipitously started renting them the day I called asking for a prescription for one. I am their first rental customer in fact. 

After some fearful dalliance,  I can attest that the hospital pumps are indeed better. Given they cost about 1,700 retail, I should hope so. At least they are thousands of times more comfortable, and seem more reliable. My personal use Medela seems to vary in and lose suction. I also suspect that it is not as efficient about extracting all those flurries of milk, but the variables predicting yield for any given linking session are myriad and pullulating. Medication still coming to full effect? Time of day? Time between pumping? Calories. Stress. Number of cookies and beer scarfed down in a frenzy of "well some swear it works and any excuse for an oatmeal double feature"! Relative degree of baby thrashing and extraction... 

At any rate, there's an inverse ratio of baby productivity to pumping productivity, of course. Although not always the one you'd expect. I admit to sometimes only really nursing on one side so I can compare. I am so darned curious how much she is getting from nursing now. I don't think it's astronomically higher but it sounds higher. 

In categories other than "Captain Ahab's Big White Boob-Juice" life with Chaya goes quite well. She is starting to really react to us. Smiling when I say "Hiya Chaya" and dancing and laughing when I sing to her. Already have broken into the Disney song book to add to the random jazz standards, the painfully memorable children's songs we learned at Baby and Me, and the myriad songs mommy has made up to tunes of the Star Wars soundtrack and various rock operas of The Who. I am totally patenting "Mommy's gonna kiss Chaya on the __ (fill in the blank of body part mommy is going to kiss and add a whole new level of anatomy once Chaya hits her teen years)" Because she loves that one. And has yet to spit up on my face when I go in for a cheek kiss. That's high praise from a baby Chaya. 

She is also learning slowly but surely to self sooth. This mostly manifests in her shoving her entire fist into her hand, drooling a small river and whimpering while staring bug eyed into the nearest light.




 Our baby is deranged, but it seems to work for her. She's also better at and desirous of entertaining herself. Laying down on the changing table and talking to the poster I put up there, or practicing her faces while sitting in the chair. We're really not supposed to infringe. They are clearly private Chaya times. She'll look at us and make dove or squealing noises if she'd like us around. Which is kind of a relief, because it means I actually have time to do a few things that don't involve trying to figure out how to bend down and lift awkward objects in a boba-limited squat. She doesn't really like to sleep on her own at all yet, though we can get her to do so in the carseat at least. 

Andrew and I are doing ok as well. Gramma Lisa says that Chaya looks healthy and well fed and we look tired and skinny. About right, but we at least are madly in love with the baby and even each other. Something we were able to recollect with our very first post-baby Date! It involved taking a long nap and drinking some Starbucks with a Frappucino Cookie Straw. Andrew had a chocolate croissant as well. We are wild and crazy kids. Our first real spooning and cuddling post pregnancy. Not having a belly or a baby in between us really is a different thing. Sure the next night we staggered into an inadvertent conversation about the possibility of moving closer to Andrew's work the next night, and sure that prompted an immediate thought of "well, if that's how it might be I guess we should just get divorced and we can live where we want to and Chaya can have her time according to the parenting plan," before the other thought of "no, no, actually no. NOT AT ALL! That's my haven't-slept-in-months voice!!" And maybe a tearful crying session at the very prospect of parting ways with the dream of raising my baby just-so in the best darned place ever to raise children (B'ham, our condo, in our community). But we agreed to keep talking. So ... that. 

Thank goodness for date night or that next night might have been tainted with exhausted parental amnesia about our love for each other. 

Gramma Pam (the coolest) watched her, and returned an adorable, recently bathed baby who had been fairly good the entire evening. She naturally spat up several times and had a magnificent blow out all over her adorable little onesie within a few moments of returning home .That's how much she loves and missed us. 




And before that, Chaya had her own date with Claudia's baby Sebastian. He spent the entire time eating and she spent most of the time playing in his swing. Young love. She's already learning how to borrow daddy's phone so she can text him various hearts and smiley faces and inscrutable internet acronyms that only the "kids these days" know. 


And I'm heading towards a nap. Or maybe Chaya wants to eat again. And maybe she'll feel a disturbance in the force as I close my eyes, prompting her to cry just loudly enough for me to hear. I cannot sleep when the baby is crying. It is completely against every little iota of my DNA. I can insist on staying in the bedroom and rocking myself softly, but I cannot sleep not matter how much I know daddy's got it. I suspect this is why he often takes her down to the basement when I'm nappy. For which I'm grateful. 

At any rate, happy Sunday! May it be mellow and sweet with only a little bitter to the coffee and the chocolate!





The Mommening Part Babyteen

So of course, the mommening has several stages (and levels of fabulousness to the unwashed rat-tat-tat ponytail that accompanies it)

 There's the idealistic prenatal desire to be a better person. The attempts to clean out all the dross and drudge of nasty screen-time addictions and the cultivation of gratitudes and mindfulnesses that last roughly five minutes into the actual existence of baby.

There's the onset of heavy duty and implacable guilt and/or the suspicion that everything you are doing is wrong or not enough. There's the paranoia at each little mew and cry that your baby is dying/damaged/about to meltdown. The full amnesia about concepts like "sleep" "showering" "floss" and "personal time." The paralyzing fear of being in a public space when baby is upset. The complete inability to sleep or function when the faintest hint of her baby's cry is heard. The baby radar for any and all other baby cries and coos. The hallucination of baby noises should baby be out of range for even seconds. The panic when baby finally settles down and is still that SIDS has afflicted the home, and the irresistible urge to stir baby just enough to make sure she's still breathing. 

The quotidian obsession with ounces of any and all bodily substances, but particularly those you store in teeny tiny sterilized (sort of) bottles. And there's the gradual relaxation of standards regarding said sterility. Hey baby girl got her damned shots. Mommy boosted her breast milk supply. Antibodies, baby! Out the wazoo. Licking that pacifier is totally sterilizing. Little known fact: my saliva is entirely antiseptic wash.

Yes all those above are new-mom panicky mommenings I suspect. I do keep channeling the "what would second-borns do" when thinking about Chaya. May not always take effect, but it reminds me that it's ok to set her down and let her fuss a little when I need a few minutes to grab a meal or hit the bathroom. 

And then there's the more empowering mommening. 

I'm gradually realizing (and/or adopting the foolhardy conceit) that I actually have some hard earned parenting skillz at two months. While the early weeks were characterized by the boob-to-mouth panacea, Chaya is a more complicated entity now, and I am more able to respond and react to a series of subtle baby cues. All of which make me feel far more like a mom than a mammary machine.

This may grow old, but there are times now where I am the only one that can soothe her. Perhaps because I've grown accustomed to her rituals and patterns. Perhaps because rockin with me in my idiosyncrasies of movement is reminiscent of her peaceful in utero existence. Perhaps merely because I'm just that awesome.

 Or I just observe, experiment, and learn quickly when it comes to the fulcrum of my current existence (which is a relief considering she is that fulcrum). We have little baby cycles, in which every three to four hour period constitutes a day. It begins usually with hunger, although the transition from drowsy to ravenous can have pit stops by the changing table for some smiley singing baby time as well. But it's all leading to hunger. Which leads to feeding. If we're lucky there will be a happy playful time afterwards. Which evolves into overtiredness and fussiness.

Which leads to a certain degree of soothing during which she is resistant to all blatantly soporific measures. No boba, no pacifier, no no no... until she's had a good run drooling on her hand and whimpering on mommy's chest. Practicing to be a toddler already. In these cycles, she has little windows of receptivity that you have to catch or forfeit forever. The boba is perfect when she's ready to nod off. The activity center is fantastic if she's just at the bored/awake phase, but a hellish nightmare if she's already overtired. She likes being set down between the post-feed stupor and the pre-zonk fuss.

But do not do it too soon or too late. Even certain kinds of talking, faces, and walking have their windows and they are narrow ones at that. A matter of minute and a slight shift in grin or timbre to her little coos can be the difference between an explosion of sweet giggles, a big poo, or a total meltdown. 

Poor Andrew is just getting his first taste of what it's like to be daddy instead of typically gender-neutral coparent in the post-EBF (exclusively breast funning) period of our parenting. There's major bonuses to being daddy - he'll be the cool one; he'll the one who gets to do all the playing with baby while mommy sleeps or rushes around the house trying to get anything done that can't be done one handed while bouncing a baby just so; and he'll be the one who can sleep through baby cries and leave the baby world for the (semi-) adult one.

But sometimes, he'll also be the very frustrated parent who cannot seem to placate the inconsolable beastie baby who goes from quietly staring to screaming bloody murder whenever he takes her from mommy (who has learned a very particular way of wandering around the kitchen talking to baby that is apparently impossible or at least burdensomely arduous to imitate).

He was home early yesterday, so we tried daddy-daughter time several times through two feeding cycles. Daddy daughter time has been a mommy godsend, as well as a nice bonding experience. If she's ready to do so, he can get her in a post-feed snuggly period and wear her in a wrap while catching up on his computer stuff. She naps. I nap. He unwinds. It's a win-win. But it's been a little more of a struggle recently. This weekend had a lot of crying before she settled down. I know because - again - the mommening means I spend the entire time upstairs with my skin tingling at each little baby cry, but refusing to come back out because daddy really does got this.

But yesterday was a little more weekday than weekend in terms of her little cycles. And we attempted the transition a bit early I think for her particular windows. She was already a little fussy due to some tummy troubles. It got worse. I suggested the ergo (it doesn't fit, but he can sit and play video games alright with it and prefers it to the boba). Bloody murder screaming within minutes. I suggested walking, rocking, moving, holding her upright, letting her suck her thumb, holding the pacifier in just such a way... all would work for a few seconds before things escalated to levels of upset screaming I haven't seen since we had that accidental experiment in starving her. 

 Forget my suggestions. Daddy has his own checklist that he's worked from since post-EBF days. He checked her diaper. He checked several thousand times to see if she was hungry, stopping short of shoving his finger in her mouth to confirm the hope I think we both sometimes hope that a bottle really could calm her down (it used to be able to, which prompted my mommening worries about her becoming some kind of crazy emotional eater from an early age, but she's growing out of that receptivity recently, or maybe just finally putting on enough weight to not always be a little hungry).

He sat her on his knee and tried to have a sincere dialog with her about her needs with such emotional openness that I was a wee bit jealous! He tried the play mat, the swing, the diaper table, the rocking chair, the boba, singing, swaying shushing, bouncing... I was trying not to interfere, but would occasionally give in my raging mommy-instincts (hearing my baby cry is like having somebody dig their nails into delicate areas with increasing pressure and traction) and ask if we could try "the kitchen," which is code for her preference du semaine of being held upright and walked in the kitchen with her left hand in her mouth and drool pooling down mommy's arm while mommy babbles nonsense at her nonstop. She wasn't suddenly sunshine and rainbows, but she stopped sobbing and glazed into her calming routine... until daddy offered to take her again. After a while of an unsuccessful attempt of Daddy with boba, I calmed her back down and got her into my boba, and we finally took the mid-afternoon walk I usually take to get her into her afternoon nap. Of course the same cycle before her next two feeds to varying degrees. 

Total truce while daddy was bottle feeding and burping her of course. And they had a nice little five minute play time on the mat before she decompensated again mid-afternoon. 

I asked him if he was ready to be a stay-at-home dad yet! He demurred. But, well, the point is, there's kind of a skill here I think that goes beyond having boobs. And I'm kind of marveling that I've somehow built that up. Because if she'd thrown this stuff at me a few weeks ago, I'd have been lost at a sea of baby tears. But I really am starting to have this feel of her different cries and her daily rhythms. Meaning it's time for them to all mix up and throw us into chaos. 

And yes, I know that kids go back and forth on their preference for various parents. I don't even think we've actually hit attachment per se, as much as a preference for a couple of subtle tricks I've learned and can't quite pass on. So I won't get too cocky. But after a few weeks of "well, maybe I could just try... I mean, it probably won't work, but hey..." and "want me to take a shift? Sure it won't make a difference but..." I'm just going to go ahead and pat myself on the back a bit and feel a little more ownership over the term MOMMY. 

Her daddy is such a trooper, though. Just keeps trying new things and selectively taking direction (he still wants to figure out his way, and that's fair) and wanting her back, despite the obvious frustration. Ok, either that's love or his famously bad memory. But I'm going with love..

 She's a lucky baby. And mommy knows it enough to dig her nails into the couch and let them figure it as long as she can stand it. Although she may still feel a little ambivalent about the fact that daddy will still wind up with the cute playful moments, because mommy really feels compelled to rush into the breech of an unmade home and accomplish anything (like, say, eating) in the few quiet moments. But that is kind of her call. 

And while she's a lucky baby, I'll tempt the fates and say she's also pretty lucky to have me in my full scale mommening. I'd pat myself on the back, but that is really hard when she's passed out in the boba, head thrown back and bobbing like it is. 

No comments: