Food for thought

Something about motherhood that surprised me is the extent to which nursing has changed my life. DJ and I seem to be getting the hang of it, but there are always questions -- is he getting enough to eat? Is he getting enough hindmilk? Why did he suddenly start spitting up?

Besides the doubts, nursing is difficult work. Babies eat more frequently than their bottle-fed counterparts, as often as every two to three hours. That clock starts, though, when a feeding begins. So if DJ starts eating at 2 p.m., he'll need to start his next meal by 5 p.m. In the early weeks, nursing could take 45 minutes and doing anything else was tough. Now his feedings go faster. That schedule, thankfully, doesn't apply at night anymore. Now we're on demand, so if he sleeps seven hours straight (which he did two nights last week), we just wait until he wants to eat.

A nursing cover has also made life easier. Armed with it, DJ has eaten in diners, at Ikea, in his Dad's office, in his Mom's office, and even on a bus. That's the nice thing about nursing -- when he gets hungry, I just have to slip the cover over my head. We don't worry about preparing a bottle or making sure we have enough formula when we go out.

Clothing has also been a struggle. At first I stuck to button-down shirts, thinking they would make nursing easier, but they really didn't. And as nursing progressed, many shirts stopped fitting altogether. That was really frustrating, since the remaining baby weight already limited my clothing selection.

Trying to find something in my closet to wear to a recent baby shower was impossible. The only dresses that fit wouldn't have been suitable for nursing. I actually had to go buy a new outfit, which was a pain.

Speaking of pain, nursing isn't supposed to hurt, and doesn't, for the most part. In the beginning, as we were both figuring it out, there was pain. Even today there are occasional minor pains when he doesn't latch properly and we have to start over again, or if we've gone too long between feedings. I have been really lucky, though. Some friends and family who nursed endured quite a bit of pain to do so.

Even with these inconveniences, I'm glad I have been able to nurse, as it's a tremendous benefit to him and helps me feel more bonded. I hope we don't encounter any problems down the road that would make me have to stop doing it.

The chaos is beginning to diminish

This week marked a few milestones for us. We moved into our house, and Tim, whose company has an extremely generous family leave policy, went back to work. Last week, we painted most of the interior and learned how little else gets done when watching a baby is the top priority. Family members helped us by coming to the house while we worked, which we really appreciated.

When they weren’t around, we took turns hanging out with him, but most of it fell to me, since I’m primarily responsible for feeding. I felt guilty about not helping with the house more, but Tim understood. Unpacking has been an extremely slow process, but we’re getting there.

Watching DJ all day is fun but tiring, and there are serious gaps in my childcare knowledge. I can't recall, for example, the words to the song "Pattycake." I also need to remember more children's songs to sing to him. I think he's getting tired of hearing "Old MacDonald" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." I bet there's a site online that could help me, and it's got me thinking about new guides that findingDulcinea could create for such a situation.

DJ is showing more interest in his surroundings, and if wet diapers didn’t bother him so much, he could probably spend hours on end looking at a window, the mobile on his bouncy seat, or the animals hanging from his play mat.

Besides cooing and making all sorts of noises, he's starting to smile, too. At first it was tentative, as his muscles weren’t sure what to do, but it's getting stronger. I hope to capture it on film soon.

This week, we also started acting like grown-ups. After months of talking about buying the Nintendo Wii and unsuccessfully searching for it, we ordered it on Father's Day, along with two games and extra controllers.

Once the ensemble arrived, though, Tim said he thought the money we spent could be used better elsewhere (he's absolutely right, but I, the less responsible one, didn't really think about that), so we returned it without opening any of the packages. He said the people at Circuit City were puzzled by the return.

Settling in

I meant to say this last week, but my apologies to those who have emailed or called that I haven’t responded to yet. I’m really behind when it comes to being social. I still have unwritten thank-you notes hanging over my head.

DJ is going to be a month this week, which amazes me. Here’s something I didn’t know about babies: some don’t sleep quietly. In the middle of the night, DJ coos, makes loud noises, and flings his arms out, hitting the sides of the bassinet. He cries out, but doesn’t cry, and does it all without waking up.

His bassinet is about an inch from my side of the bed, so I notice all these sounds. Earlier this week I mistakenly thought he was awake, so I got up with him when he started these little episodes. We were up every hour, and it was awful.

I talked to a friend about it, and she said some babies were noisy sleepers. The same day, I saw a question about it in a baby book, followed the advice, and things have been better.

A whole new world

I can’t believe two weeks have passed since DJ, as I’ll call him here, arrived. Our sense of time has dissolved so much that we didn’t even realize Memorial Day was here.

It amazes me that things we thought were important a few weeks ago, like checking email every day, just aren’t now. Our days have become a continuous cycle of feeding, changing diapers, changing his clothes once he’s soiled them, holding him, smiling and having staring contests with him. He usually wins.

He’s thrown us a few curveballs already. First, he inherited his father’s blood type, not mine, so there was a danger of jaundice. DJ’s pediatrician thought he should spend time under special lights in the hospital nursery. The lights are designed to help his body process the chemicals that cause jaundice. We planned to have him in the room with us the whole time, so that was disappointing. DJ didn’t seem to mind. In his diaper with cloth “sunglasses” over his eyes under the lights, he looked like he was at the beach.

We minded, though, especially when they had to test his blood every six hours.

And then there’s the nursing. In the hospital, my ob/gyn said his wife called nursing “the second hardest thing you’ll ever do.” She was absolutely right. At this point, nursing takes two hands. The books I read when I was pregnant didn’t discuss what to do when his little arms are flailing between him and me, or how to get him to open his mouth wide enough to latch properly.

It’s important to feed babies every tow or three hours, even if it means waking them up. At night, thankfully, we can let him go four to five hours between feedings.

I now know it’s nearly impossible to intentionally wake a sleeping baby, though there are a million ways to do it accidentally.

The waiting game …

It’s hard to know that your life is going to completely change, but not know when. Will it be an hour? Tomorrow? Three days? A week?

To describe us as feeling antsy is an understatement. We've got lots of restless, nervous energy, but can't focus much.

I still hold onto the fear that I may not realize when labor begins. I know you’re thinking: How could you not notice? It’s supposed to be the worst pain ever. Well, during pregnancy you spend a great deal of time in pain. Your back hurts, pains shoot through your abdomen, bones separate and ache, and then there are the fake contractions (like the real ones, but irregular). The real contractions the doctors told me I have occasionally experienced don't seem to match the descriptions I've read in the baby books.

Here’s what I've been thinking every 20 minutes or so for the last week: is that a shooting pain or a contraction? How long ago was that last shooting pain? Should I write that down?

And now you’re probably thinking, ‘but you’ll know when your water breaks.’ That’s true, but labor starts with a water break in a small percentage of pregnancies.

Every conversation with our families starts with “I’m not in labor,” and I can only imagine how they feel every time the phone rings.

Today we had unexpected entertainment at the doctor’s office. Our highly energetic nurse pantomimed me experiencing my first real contraction and her encounter with other parts of labor’s early stages (I won’t gross you out by elaborating but trust me, it was bad). She also described her problems with yeast and generally had the attitude of a motivational speaker who had just gotten in the employee lounge doughnuts.

The consultation was encouraging and moderately alarming at once.

Luckily, I don’t think we have too much longer to wait. I took a quiz I found in the findingDulcinea Pregnancy Web Guide, called “Am I in labor?” And of course I’m not in labor, as I write this, but the results were encouraging. Of course, the quiz could be completely wrong, and my enthusiasm just wishful thinking.

On a spring Saturday...

What should you do when you’re nine months-plus pregnant and planning a move in the near future?

a. Indulge in the nesting instinct by decorating the baby’s room.
b. Pack.
c. Nap as much as you can.
d. Clean the apartment.

They are all good choices, but we spent Saturday at New York’s Comicon wandering around the exhibit hall, watching panels and marveling (and sometimes cringing) at the costumes.

We were there to see Doc Hammer, Jackson Publick, James Urbaniak and Michael Sinterniklaas talk about the Venture Brothers, one of our favorite shows. The third season starts June 1, so we saw a preview and listened to some occasionally very dumb audience questions. The panelists were quick to mock dumb questions.

We met some nice people involved with a fan site called the People’s Republic of Venture (they gave us stickers). I was surprised at the hundreds of people who showed up to see the discussion, but that’s good, because it helps assure a long life for the show.

The Venture Brothers are two teenagers, Hank and Dean. Their father Rusty grew up in the shadow of a super-scientist and adventurer, and he has spent his life trying to follow in his father’s footsteps (as one character described it, “20 years of amphetamines and failure”). The family also has a government-issued bodyguard with a license to kill, Brock Sampson. He’s on a mission is called “Operation Rusty’s Blanket,” and he likes to make grilled cheese sandwiches and perform monthly lice checks on the boys when he’s not killing henchmen.

They often clash with villains from the Guild of Calamitous Intent, and Venture’s arch nemesis is the Monarch, a man who dresses like a butterfly, has dozens of henchmen and a trust fund.

It’s a show that’s funny and wrong all at the same time. It’s also well-written, smart, outlandish, and you get the sense there’s a huge back story that will eventually be revealed, though that may not be the case. I’m willing to wait and see, though.

The comicon also had a panel of actors from Battlestar Galactica, another great show, (yes, we watch too much television) so we saw that, too. Though the program had listed a couple of actors who were supposed to appear, there were three others who showed up, which was a nice surprise.

A little compassion never hurt anyone

Today I’ll share something I actually wrote with you, about blind people who are concerned about hybrid cars. Why? The cars are so quiet that they can’t hear them. Blind pedestrians use car engines as cues when walking around their towns.

The video in the piece illustrates the matter pretty well, but what has kept me thinking about it all day are the comments responding to blog posts about the issue.

Apparently some people can be compassionate for the atmosphere but not their fellow man. People actually asked whether any blind person had been run over by a hybrid car yet. I guess that’s the only way for anyone to know there’s a problem, when someone loses their life. Other people suggested the whole thing is part of a conspiracy by car companies, the government and others to keep the hybrid down and gas-guzzling cars thriving.

Those reactions reminded me of my time working in a county whose most vocal residents were unabashedly left-wing. They equated their left-wing status with being progressive, tolerant, and compassionate, and spent a great deal of time patting each other on the back about it.

For the most part they were compassionate, until it came to something they didn’t like, such as homeless people who had the nerve to panhandle in the shopping district or the idea of merging their glowing schools with another district that didn’t teach students Mandarin Chinese.

I've always been careful with my political leanings, given my past career, but I'll say now that I empathized with the left more than the right. The hypocrisy I witnessed in this liberal bastion, though, was stunning and it routinely drove up my blood pressure. When we moved, I was relieved I didn't have to deal with that anymore. Until today, that was the case.