Steel City Experiment

New Digs

2010-09-15T19:39:00.000-05:00

Just a reminder: I'm blogging at my new online headquarters. Find me at www.katyranklev.com and the blog specifically at www.katyranklev.com/blog.

PI

2010-06-22T11:33:00.000-05:00

So Miles and I were driving along Baum the other day and I noticed that there is a detective agency in Pittsburgh! Right there, in a ratty old building near the Shell station! It got me thinking about a number of things, including The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency series and google.

Sometimes I feel like I could have a very nice career as a private detective. A PI? A Dick? (Where does that term come from, anyway?) It also reminded me of the time I had jury duty and was seated next to a former PI all day. He had great stories. I probably blogged about them on here...this was back before my life revolved around poop and breastmilk.

But are PI's really useful in the age of internet stalking? Could this agency be running a viable business? If yes, why the ratty exterior? Just to fit into the ambiance, the stereotype of such a profession?

I would love it if someone had something that needed investigation and they hired this agency and then told me about the experience. I mean, does it smell like cigars inside? Does the PI wear a trench coat? Do they have free Wi-Fi? Your thoughts?

Oak Ridge Boys

2010-05-19T07:07:00.000-05:00

Lately, I am obsessed with the Oak Ridge Boys. It all started when my mom began singing Elvira to Miles and my friend KK showed me the video on YouTube. Now I can't stop watching their videos and wondering what in the hell is wrong with people.

For example, they'll show an ORB thrust his hips, big old beard swaying in the breeze from his tambourine shaking, and then pan to the audience swooning. Or the deep voiced one will point his finger to the sky and then wink and ladies clutch their bosoms. And then the one with the teeth will grab the lapels of his orange leather jacket or run his fingers through his curly afro...

I have watched almost all of the videos from YouTube. I've seen them on Johnny Carson and on gospel shows and TNN. I watch all of it. I sing the songs. And then Miles and I dance along and I try to wink at him, maybe point my finger suggestively as I say, "Mmm poppa mmmm poppa mmmm poppa mow-wow," but he doesn't swoon! It must be my hair. It's either not gray enough, not big enough or else my pants are too loose.

Anyway, I'll be spending the rest of the week singing folksy songs from the 70s, watching some grainy YouTube videos. I'll be taking careful notes on how I should dress if I want to be a superstar or crazy fangirl. I might emerge a different person. No promises

Shower Curtain

2010-05-04T09:00:00.001-05:00

Does this happen to anyone else? I have a plastic shower curtain liner, and this part goes inside the tub. When I am in the shower, it billows and blows and sticks to my legs. I hate it! This morning, I became so enraged I actually screamed and yelled at the shower curtain.

I don't know what else I can do to this thing. It has suckers on the ends that I affix to the wall at either end of the shower. It has weights in the bottom that theoretically hold it down. But nothing works! It blows all over me. I was trying to shave my legs. It was clingier than Miles when he needs a nap.

I was seconds away from ripping it off the curtain rod and just taking a shower with the cloth, outer part of the curtain. I might have to take baths until I can either calm down or figure out a solution.

NATIONAL CHAMPS!

2010-05-01T20:49:00.003-05:00

I have to take a time out (or back in?) to give a shout out to my PSUWRFC ladies. I was so proud watching the game online. I even stayed up past my bed time. Way past. It was so worth it to feel again that excitement, knowing your team is the best in the country. And what a clinic they put on today! This was the last hurdle the team had to leap: back to back national championships. Now that that's out of the way, what will the next step be for Penn State Rugby??

I can't wait to find out! Agh. I am just so proud right now.

Rebirth

2010-03-31T16:00:00.005-05:00

*UPDATED: I fixed the broken link!

So a lot has been going on over here at Team Lev Headquarters. I have decided not to go back to teaching next year. I am going to focus on writing and, to make up the difference in income, I had to seek out an endeavor that was lucrative and yet allowed me to work in short bursts when Miles was either in a good mood or asleep.

So, on the employment front, I started doing transcription. As it turns out, I don't have the time right now to really pursue the types of writing activities that would be lucrative enough to cover my nut. But I do have short bursts of time to type what people are saying. I have some wicked fast typing skills (mostly from years of typing my own research interviews) and I had a really good friend (the owner of Yarnia!) who sort of shepherded me through the process of getting some gigs.

Then I had to take some tests from various companies. And I failed one. Let me tell you how well I handled that! Me! Type A, control freak, perfection nazi. I failed a damn test. It was like my world exploded. I pretty much ate 11.5 cupcakes and buried my head in the sand. (actually, I ate 11.5 cupcakes as part of a spring cupcake party...more on that later I guess) As it turns out, my problem was technological and not physical. I just didn't know the Word shortcuts necessary to type fast and accurately as people are talking. But I learned them!

And then I passed a couple of tests and got paid $75 to transcribe a test file, which I also passed (take that, shitty-paying magazine gig!). And now I'm doing some captioning and transcribing and it's been great. I stick Miles in the jumperoo and type for 20 minutes while he pushes buttons with his face and jumps up and down. Or then he falls asleep and I do some more work. It's all been pretty snazzy.

On the other issue, my writing, I have really been working to sort of streamline what I want to do as a writer. I have been, you might have noticed, very transformed by the birth of my son. It has affected everything about me and I find he's all I want to write about. Him and mothering in general and birthing in general. So I am reinventing myself as a mom/birth writing specialist. I don't see my writing about ecological sustainability as separate from this, so I'm still doing those gigs, too. I mean, who wants their baby to eat bleach or succumb to CO poisoning? So I keep writing about the earth.

Which brings me to my very exciting piece of news. I totally revamped my website, with help from my brother-in-law, and included a blog on there. Check it out here: http://www.katyranklev.com. I will, from now on, do most of my blogging over there on my own site and I'll pretty much be only writing about mothering and birthing. Am I a mommy blogger now? Probably. And I'm down with that.

I like to think I have a unique voice out there. I'm not scared to admit that motherhood is hard and often sucks a fat nut. I'm not afraid to admit it was really unenjoyable for large portions of the first four months. And I know I'm not alone in thinking so and I hope that my voice can somehow offer validation to other moms who share my experiences.

So you'll find me over there, where I publish my other work and will now publish my independent ideas. I've started out with a bunch of posts from this archive.

New stuff to come soon!

See? Isn't it all very exciting?

Ouch.

2010-03-30T05:21:00.003-05:00

I went to rugby practice last night! I was nearly as nervous walking to the field as I was the first time I walked to a rugby field...perhaps in some ways this was scarier because I knew what was coming and I went anyway.

I was kind of indifferent about the fitness portion of practice--I've never been what you might call a speed demon. Finishing last on sprint drills was ok with me (though the bent-over wheezing afterward was a teeny bit embarrassing, only because we practiced on Pitt's campus and PEOPLE COULD SEE!).

It was the contact I feared. Oh, the contact. When our captains announced we would work on 2 vs 1 drills, I got sick, nauseous. I had this giant swelling of fear inside me. I really and truly almost cried, I was so scared.

I kept playing out these scenarios in which someone tackled me wrong and I ruptured my uterus. Or else maybe my bladder would migrate and switch places with the uterus again, like it did after my surgery? Or, dear lord, what if I peed my pants or leaked breastmilk during the moment of impact??

I went through a couple rounds of the drill, sort of avoiding contact at all costs. And then KP let me tackle her. I would like to say that suddenly everything was better and that I was instantly the rugby player I was before. That would, of course, be a lie. But I did discover that I wasn't going to crumple like a piece of peanut brittle.

When I was feeling a bit blue about the whole exercise, another wise teammate (back in the game herself after a hiatus...she says her being long of the tooth equals my being saggy of the pelvic floor) told me that everything I did last night was more than I had done before. Isn't that wise?

So I did it. I finished practice and got more exercise in that 90 minutes that I have for months, unless you count squat thrusts holding an 18# baby and a few walks around the block, which really, really, really do not match the intensity of a rugby practice.

Corey asked me later if I had fun while I was there. I don't know if fun is the right word (because most of it was so painful and awful). But I was there, immersed in my friends and teammates and thinking only adult thoughts. Rugby practice had the marvelous affect of giving me tunnel vision, focus. While I was engaged in practice, I was only thinking about practice. My mind didn't have time to worry; I wasn't simultaneously doing laundry and mopping a floor and cooking rice cereal. I was just doing one, super hard thing at a time. So yeah, it was pretty outstanding, despite the agony.

At the end of it all, by some miracle, Miles hadn't gone to bed yet (perhaps his Dad overstimulated him?) so I found myself zooming home, shedding muddy layers in the car. I rushed in the front door, washed my hands, and got to nurse him to sleep. My favorite part of the day.

And then the little pea pod slept straight through the night for the first time! Which was good, because when I heard him meowing this morning, my post-baby body was barely able to drag its bones over to pick him up.

Welcome back to the game, Katy.

Liquids I Was Not Prepared For

2010-03-28T14:32:00.002-05:00

I knew to be ready for many things as a mother. I got ready for a lot of things that turned out to be pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But then, my baby spewed forth a handful of liquids I just never, ever expected. These include, but are not limited to:
1. Biscuit juice--the liquid goo that squirts out of Miles' face as he eats one of those teething cookies. The juice is not quite spit, not quite solid food, but filled with enough gluten to make a brown, gluey mess of everything in the house. Biscuit juice is gritty and could be an exfoliant. What I should do is just give my son a few biscuits and stick a cup under his mouth to catch the biscuit juice. I could then sell the juice to either Elmers or Sephora.

2. Laundry Leachate--similar to landfill leachate, only involving streams of milky, barfy liquid that sinks down through the clothes in the wicker hamper and pools on the hardwood floor, sometimes dripping down into the space below the hardwood floor. Anything the leachate touches needs to be doused in Borax-treated soaking water. Often, leachate contains biscuit juice particles.

3. Mucous--I knew my baby would make mucous. I can prove I knew this because I obtained one of those blue squeezy bulbs with which to suck the mucous from his various drain-holes. But I didn't know what the mucous would feel like, sound like, taste like as it sprayed all over my person and my home. (See leachate, above) Let me tell you, nothing beats a morning spent using your legs to pin down all the baby's limbs, your calves holding his head immobile, finagling the damn squeezy bulb up his nose and drawing out the mucous, only to have it slip and plop directly onto your crotch. Of your only clean pants that button.

4. Fruit juice--did anyone know that fruit juice is sticky and makes a mess? Even when it's super diluted? Why the heck didn't I know this? My floors are covered with dirty spots that were once juice spills and then got dusty or covered in cotton when someone decided to crawl right on through the spills. Then, frequently, I will step barefoot in one of these dead zones and need to use some sort of razor to get the grime from my foot.

5. Dried up barf--no longer a liquid, but a former liquid. Miles has this habit of barfing sort of secretly. When he is playing contentedly under the dining room table, say, then crawls into the living room, we'll notice his face and hands are barfy. Which means he barfed at some point, but didn't tell us! Then we need to hunt the barf. If we are unsuccessful and too much time passes, we have set ourselves up to find a clump of dried up barf, which is not quite as bad as fruit juice tar traps, but still requires a chisel, dish soap, and an old cloth diaper for cleanup. I just always assumed the baby would make a big production of barfing, we'd clean it up, and my worst problem would be the leachate in the hamper...

I'm sure there will be many more surprise liquids I haven't seen just yet, and I already know there are some new habits I am learning (i.e. always wear some sort of shoe or foot protection). In the mean time, I have a kid who has dragged himself through a puddle of something (dishwasher water? Spilled laundry detergent?) and I need to mop him up before he creates a new hazard.

Take Your $75 and Shove It!

2010-03-26T10:45:00.002-05:00

Update: I have secured $75 for this month. I will be earning it as a training exercise for a new endeavor. Corey and I have been discussing the conundrum of our finances. We want one of us to be home with Miles, we want each of us to have work/life balance, and we want to have enough money to pay our bills.

If Corey took an accounting job with a for-profit company, he'd make way more money, but we'd never see him. So, I am trying something new. It will still allow me to work from home and will require less immersion than writing, should I succeed in the training.

I don't want to go on and on about details because I might not be a good fit for this new form of self employment! But, suffice it to say that the $75 I could have earned slaving for one magazine article has been recouped in a way that could potentially improve quality of life for Team Lev!

Wish me luck on my training. Join me in feeling smug about the $75, no matter what happens!

Pondering My Bosom

2010-03-24T20:33:00.004-05:00

My bosom is on my mind again of late (not that it hasn't been ever-present in my thoughts since July 17). This is because I will be leaving Miles in 2 weeks to attend the AWP conference in Denver. I'm speaking on a panel there! I should be excited! I'm on the program! But yet, I am terrified.

My poor, defenseless baby will be home alone with his father (and Ninny) while I am off gallivanting and pretending to be a grown-up. What will he do when, every few hours, he wants to nurse? I know he'll be getting nourishment from a bottle while I'm gone and won't starve to death. But what about his emotional needs? That boy loves him some nursing time.

He sits down at my breast and pats it with both hands, kneads the extra flesh like a baker. He rubs my bosom, pats it with his little (sometimes-ice-cold) fingers, and looks up into my eyes as if to say, "thank you for letting me be near this wondrous bosom, fountain of all that is delicious and good for me." He makes oinking sounds and slurps.

Then his eyes roll up in his head and he falls asleep.

Will he forget how to do this while I am gone? Will he stop wanting to do this? Worse, will my bosom forget how to offer this experience? I spend many hours each day wondering what will happen to my nipples while I am away (will my hard-earned tough skin chafe while I'm gone?) or whether my milk ducts will explode and I'll die of engorgement.

I think about what bra I should wear while I'm out and about. On one hand, I have no need to wear a bra that flaps open with the flick of a finger. I'll get to keep my shirt securely fastened for, like, 8 hours at a time if I want. But what other choice of lingerie do I really have? It's not like I have a heap of F cup bras sitting around! And, really, F cup is me in denial and not wanting to purchase a better-fitting G cup brazier. I might as well leave my nursing bras at home and just bring a bucket truck.

Sidenote: I was out for a walk today with some friends and I possessed the smallest bosom of our party. Boy, did I feel dainty!

Among all this anxiety over what will happen to my bosom during this adventure lies the need to express my milk. I am going to have to use that damn breast pump again, many times each day. I spent a long time on the phone and internet securing a plan of action to get my milk back home with me (thanks, TSA!). But the bottom line is that, even though this trip will afford me uninterrupted sleep and the freedom to wear a turtleneck, I just cannot escape the constant presence of breast thoughts.

I'll have my insulated lunch box and ice packs with me at all times, my bag of pump parts, baggies of milk, and always the worry about weather I'll get mugged and someone will steal my liquid gold. I won't need to rush home to a hungry babe, but I'll be waiting in line for the lactation rooms both to relieve my exploding udders and to remind my bosom that it's not off duty yet.

I'm at a stage in my nursing experience where I think the process is awesome and totally rewarding. But I am still slammed to my knees at the tremendous power of Miles' need for me. As much as I want to pretend I am still sort of the same person, can still engage in lively discussions of pedagogy and networking and contract negotiations, it all slides away every few hours when my body reminds me of its main duty right now.

I know I say this many times every day, but I just had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Now, off to ice my armpits. I'm having a supply surplus this evening because someone went to bed early.

Strong Opinions About Writing and Money

2010-03-23T07:42:00.002-05:00

I just passed on a writing assignment because it paid crap. Bottom of the barrel crap. My reaction is very visceral and complicated, and I should probably wait to be less angry before writing about this. But I have a lot of feelings to work through.

For starters, I am insulted that the editor was insulted that I should ask for more money. She ranted about her overhead, her limited budgets, her bills to pay and then suggested that my putting a value on my craft, a specific per-word or per-assignment value, was somehow selling out. Why should writing not be a paid skill?

Why should I settle for the joy of having written for this magazine, for the joy I will bring my readers or the joy of seeing my name in ink?

If I applied this same logic, I would have to tell my babysitter she could also earn pennies on the hour for watching my child while I research and write--isn't Miles a joy to behold? And then I could tell the mortgage company I will only pay pennies per month for the space I use to write and the phone company, internet provider, grocery store, etc. because I am pretty cool. Isn't it a joy to support my efforts bringing joy to the world? Let's just set up a barter economy!

The implication here is that because my craft is writing--an art--I should do it for nothing. I should be a starving artist and maybe dumpster dive or go on food stamps to preserve the integrity of my work. Have I sold out in fixing a monetary value to my craft? Is my work less artful because I ask to be compensated for it? So be it.

Sidenote: If writing were not a valuable skill, why do universities charge many thousands of dollars to teach graduate students how to do it better?

There are not many people who can do what I do, and I should be compensated for my time spent doing this complicated activity. This is not opinion. I am continually flabbergasted by people who balk when writers demand a nice wage. If I were a plumber or mechanic, nobody would speak to me harshly or claim I am somehow mentally unwell for asking to be compensated for my work. In my imaginary scenario, I am the plumber. I ask for $40 for repairing a toilet clog. The client balks. I say, "Ok. Fix it yourself then. See ya!"

This morning a magazine offered me $75 to craft a mid-length feature article. The last feature I wrote took me about 20 hours of documented time, including research and drafting. It took me untold hours of shower-time-drafting, before bed pondering, dinner-time aha! moments and other subconscious wordsmithing. Can you imagine doing this for $75? I asked for much more than this. They balked. I said, in essence, "Ok. Write it yourself then." (Actually, I spent a long time thinking of a way to say this politely and came up with, 'I am going to have to pass on this assignment.')

I believe that people think they can offer these piddly amounts of money because people have begun taking this in exchange for writing. Craigslist drips with these sorts of offers because people take them. I hear the following argument all the time: well, I can churn out writing so fast that I end up getting $10 per hour or more!

To this I say, writing should not be churned. $10 per hour still blows.

Many people also imply that any money is better than no money. This bristles my feathers, too. I have a stack of bills on my desk, too, but I would rather pay them with snow-shoveling labor or working at Starbucks or bagging groceries. To do the work of writing for so little money sends the message that this is what writing is worth. The people who take those jobs slowly chip away the bottom of the barrel for the rest of us.

Today, someone knocked a hole in my sub-floor, monetarily speaking. I feel proud that I stepped around the hole. Yeah, I'm out $75 this month. I feel confident that I will find it elsewhere and for less labor.

Whine Me a River

2010-03-19T19:21:00.002-05:00

I have started letting Miles "whine it out" when I put him to bed. It occurred to us recently that we feel ok not responding immediately when Miles whines. We know that nothing is wrong because, for four months, we heard what noise he makes when something is wrong. Everyone on our block heard it. For 100 days. Without stopping.

So now, when he makes this whining sound, if we are mid-cup of tea or nose-blowing or almost at the end of an episode of the Office, we feel pretty forgiven for not running at high speed to see what's going on.

When we put him down for bed or for a nap, he often is asleep at the breast or over the shoulder and then, somewhere in the transfer to his bed, he wakes up and starts whining. We pat his back a bit, tell him everything is ok, that it's time for lovely sleep, and if he's not done whining yet, I'm going to go ahead and admit that I walk out the door, close it, and let him whine it out for a few minutes until he falls asleep.

I wonder if this is what people thought was going on when they would suggest I let Miles cry it out earlier in his life? Because this is totally bearable. I suppose it might sound like crying to some folks, who haven't heard what it sounds like when Miles ACTUALLY cries. There aren't even tears involved in this new whining, let alone stiff back arching and vomit-smearing. This is just limp-bodied, face buried in the hands, tired whining. He usually stops within three or four minutes, becomes totally asleep, and everyone wins.

Every now and then, the whining will turn into actual crying and we get our butts in there before it becomes screaming. But we've learned to tell the difference between the two sounds--or rather Miles has learned to make different sounds.

I think that in teaching us the difference between his desperate need for comfort and just plain whining, Miles has actually set himself up for a tougher path as a toddler or teenager. He showed us his good cards right away, so we know exactly what it sounds like when he is having an emergency. Which means we know what it sounds like when there is nothing actually wrong, too. For the rest of his life, he is totally effed if he is seeking any sort of urgent response from whingy little sleepy sounds.

Free of Phlegm

2010-03-19T07:08:00.003-05:00

Still isn't too sure about this grass stuff

Thinking about liking the swing

Liking the swing a little bit

Watching Daddy make a weird face

Whip It

2010-03-17T13:55:00.002-05:00

*Spoiler Warning*

I was disappointed by Whip It. Perhaps I had unreasonably high expectations because the film got so much hype in Bust magazine, but I just had this overall sense of "this could have been better" when it was finally over. Maybe I was angry that it wasn't a film about rugby?

My main problem with the movie was that it included a love story. Why was this necessary? I realize all the great sports films contain love stories on the side, and I was glad to see that the relationship was truly a side element to the larger theme of developing oneself through team sports. But I just felt like the Oliver thing was a distraction from some of the other really juicy plot elements. Were the conflicts with the mother character, Blue Bonnet pageants and the former best friend not enough? Was the drive to escape the small town not enough? I didn't need Oliver.

I also absolutely hated everything to do with Drew Berrymore in that movie. Her character made no sense. Name me a stoner who has a penchant for violence and unchecked rage! Why wasn't her character just a stoner or just an aggressive bruiser? In rugby, we have both types of person. But I can't think of a combo. Not to mention, Drew Berrymore couldn't act her way out of a pair of rollerskates. If her character threatened to beat up Bliss' mother one more time, I was going to hip check her into oncoming traffic.

I also was upset that many of the roller derby teams had male coaches. Based on my experience obsessively following the Steel City Derby Demons a few years ago and my knowledge gained watching the series Rollergirls, about the actual Austin roller derby circuit, I know that many teams are actually self-coached or coached by former female derby athletes. While it was great to see a male coach of a female team NOT in a romantic relationship with his players, I would have loved to see a female controlling the strategic reins of the team. Women need to see role models in coaching positions--the movie was based on a fictitious novel, so why not just make the coach character a woman?

Finally, I was disappointed with the characters' response to the male coach. When Bliss is first learning to skate, her coach takes her aside and tells her to basically get tougher; this is a contact sport. She becomes enormously upset and Maggie Mayhem has to intervene and soften the blow, tell her not to take it personally. Scenes like this are, I think, part of the reason women do tend to take constructive criticism personally. He was not being mean and he was not getting personal--this was not in-your-face, angry coaching. He was offering Bliss a real bit of information that was going to improve her game. I wish the writer or director would have just let Bliss absorb this message, learn from it, and then go on to improve her aggressive athleticism.

Many of these issues were handled fantastically in the series Rollergirls. The show featured women who were tremendous athletes, bruisers, stoners, just plain bitchy, super competitive, had the sport change their lives and alter their romantic relationships, etc. There were tattoos and disappointed mothers and lives adjusted to not only accommodate roller derby, but to revolve around that activity as the central focus. That series, I felt, did women's team sports everywhere a great justice. I wish it had gotten more attention. Stick it on your Netflix, queue. You'll be happy you did!

Anyway, there were some things about Whip It that made me really happy. For starters, I liked that the mean, dominant team won in the end. They were a competitive bunch of winners and it would have been a way crappier movie if the Hurl Scouts won the big tournament. I like when women are shown in roles that are ruthless and super competitive, because women are capable of being both.

I also liked that the villain character (even though I hate Juliette Lewis and will always picture her as mentally disabled a la The Other Sister) wasn't evil, just sort of bitchy and really wanted to win. I didn't understand why Bliss called her out for "outing" Bliss's real age--the film showed scenes of her telling her own team her age and Posh's parents are the ones who told Bliss's parents. What was that about, Bliss? I like that Carla Tate, I mean Iron Maven, pretty much just said she wanted to eff with Bliss's head and then just beat her where it mattered--on the track.

In the end, the film made headway in that it showed the transformative power of team sports, specifically full-contact team sports, for women. I just had an overall sense that it could have been better, perhaps with a different director behind the camera.

Pesky Front Garden

2010-03-16T14:19:00.004-05:00

For three summers now, I have fretted about my front lawn. Each year, I say ENOUGH! I will just plant food out there and be done with it. I suck at everything else. Then I cave and try to plant batches of flowers, which I neglect or hate or can't really afford. I've managed to kill a handful of hostas that were allegedly going to grow wild and look good year round.

I killed perfectly lovely fire bush.

I may have killed the lavender plant my friend stuck in the yard for me.

There are perhaps six tulips that have survived to grow again this year, and they look sprouty and lovely among the grass and weeds taking over the front bed.

This is the year where I say enough for real and I am planting food out there. Judge away, neighbors!

It was so gorgeous outside that I figured even my sick baby could benefit from helping me in the garden a little bit:

Look at his sad little water eyes! He breaks my heart.

I trucked him up front while I got the soil ready. Perhaps you can see in the background the brick border buried under gross grass and weeds? It looks like that year round, so we just hoed some compost into the soil and planted the vining peas along the trellis. Miles obviously just supervised and offered instructions.

Provided I can revive the lavender, I'll have that up there along with other herbs. I'm sticking mint, sage, basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary in my front plot. Those are things I know how to grow, they are things that are useful, and they fit our budget for landscaping. Plus, most of them are perennial!

I know, you are thinking, but mint is invasive! It will take over your whole front lawn and eat the neighbor children! To this I say, good! Less for Corey to not mow, more for me to make tea.

Where Does All This Guilt Come From??

2010-03-15T12:17:00.002-05:00

One thing that has surprised me about parenting is the amount of guilt involved in seemingly innocent decisions. Choose wrong, and you are forever on the wrong side of some binary. You have to face every food decision, every outfit choice, every toy purchase with conviction, because at every turn there is someone (real or perceived) asking you to defend that choice.

For instance, Miles is sick right now. I have been putting off calling the pediatrician because I don't want to be one of those moms who calls the pediatrician all the time. We have taken him in probably four times in his life so far for illness, and each time were told he'd be fine. Nothing to worry about!

I feel this huge force pressuring me not to call the pediatrician because then I'll be one of "those people." There is this discussion on my mom's email list right now about the evils of pediatricians, how they are pawns for the pharmaceutical companies, little better than drug pushers with lollipops. I also know quite a few hypochondriacs who know their physicians better than they know some relatives. Why not pay them for the peace of mind that everything is ok?

In general, we choose to let him cough and snot and poop and grump for awhile. Watchful waiting, etc. Except that on Saturday, his cough turned into really raspy breathing and his eyes just poured junk. I wanted to take him to one of those pharmacy clinics, but settled for paging the pediatrician.

As I waited for Dr. H. to return the page, I chided myself for overreacting and paging my doctor on a Saturday. I did this a lot more after we had a chat and decided Miles was probably just suffering from a bad cold.

Then, this morning, he coughed to persistently and wheezed so mightily I decided the guilt of being one of "those people" was less horrible than the guilt of being one of those people who lets her baby succumb to pneumonia or similar, so I put the pediatrician on speed dial and called every 4 minutes until I got through (it's rough on a Monday morning!).

As it turns out, he has an ear infection. "On a scale of one to ten, with ten being worst, this is about a 4.5," our doctor said. What does this mean? It meant, first, that I wasn't one of "those moms" and that it was ok to call the doctor! One layer of guilt eliminated! But it also meant another choice to analyze: He wrote me a prescription for antibiotics, but left it up to me whether I filled it. Oh great!

If I give him the meds, I could be setting him up for a resistance to antibiotics. I might be one of "those moms" who is all drug crazy and just medicates every single problem. If I don't, he'll get better on his own eventually, but he will suffer through several more days of discomfort, crappy breathing, and shitty sleep. I'll be one of "those moms" and give up my own rest to spend the night soothing my poor.

Surprisingly, I came to a conclusion on this one relatively quickly. Corey is picking up the amoxicillin right this minute. Which leaves me free to fret about all sorts of other decisions.

Time Change

2010-03-14T14:17:00.004-05:00

I have located perhaps the lone benefit to having a baby who refuses to maintain any sort of routine: spring forward day means nothing to my family. For the first time in my life, I remain completely unaffected by the change to daylight saving time. Am I tired today? Of course! But that's because I was up every 3 hours overnight, same as I've been every night for the past ten.

The "good" thing about Miles is that he doesn't give a crap what time it is or what is on schedule for the day. If he's tired, he wants to be asleep and if he is not tired, by God--he will be awake. He has no regard for weekend vs week day, company vs just family, time to watch Lost vs sing Music Together songs. Every few hours, that boy will be awake and then, once he has licked everything in the room, pooped, and jumped around for awhile, he will become asleep.

Most days, I find it very difficult to surrender to the unschedulability of this life. I find I can accomplish things, like going to the store or cleaning the bathtub, only when they are not attached to specific time frames. As soon as any sort of deadline or coordination is involved, forget about it. There is an equal chance I can be available or that I'll be counting to ten in the hallway before I try to nurse the crying baby to sleep for the fourth time that hour.

This represents such an utter and complete reversal of the life I once knew, where I could map out a day coordinated to the very minute, with things like "relax" and "eat cereal" penciled into the agenda at set times. I have had to change my way of thinking to focus on specific objectives, prioritized by importance, rather than view my day as chopped into specific slots. Heck, I used to mentally prepare for an entire week as a unit. Now, I can't do that any more and I'm learning to let go of the urge to try.

It's strange, though, that as we approached this clock changing weekend I realized time matters not one lick. It's totally arbitrary. Do you know how trippy that is for me? Yesterday, Corey and I just went about our day, went to bed as soon as Miles did, and knew he would wake up when he woke up. Our Sunday would be what it was going to be. It was strangely calming to just be in the moment because there was no alternative. It's hard to explain, but evening became just evening time, rather than the set of hours between 6pm and our 9pm bedtime...

For most of my life, I have dreaded daylight saving day because it meant I lost an hour of sleep. I'd inevitably have to be up for work or errand-running or have been out late the night before (or maybe I spent the evening before mentally reciting my schedule for the next week to make sure I hadn't left a single moment unaccounted for). I can't get over the fact that this year was so different.

Want to know when MW was up for the day today? 8:30am EDT. Want to know why that doesn't matter? Because he was also up from 12:00am-1:00am and 4:30-5:30, snotting and coughing and generally breaking my heart with his little chest cold.

Everyone assures me that I will be able to rejoin the world that rotates around a clock, one day be able to again say, "Sure! Let's have lunch at 12:30!" Today is the first day in a long time where I don't care--maybe my rigidly scheduled life wasn't that great anyway. It was like this shattering, delirious revelation. We'll eat when we're hungry, sleep when the baby sleeps, and spend the time in between doing what we need to get done.

In this case, what we need to get done is a top-to-bottom scrub of our snot-covered germ den, but that's a story for another day.

Beware the Ides of March

2010-03-12T16:47:00.003-05:00

I had to cancel the last leg of Levapolooza. That's what I have been calling this week, which was supposed to include a visit from Corey's parents, overlapped by a visit from Corey's brother, finished by a visit to NJ to say farewell to Corey's childhood home and introduce Miles to the fine arts of good bread and road rage.

Levapolooza quickly turned into just a visit from Jordie as Mom-mom went down with sciatica and, yesterday, Miles woke up with a head full of sick. The poor kid just can't seem to catch a break, healthwise. We spent 6 days working through some pretty torturous teething issues, which had MW waking up every hour or two in pain and riding out a low grade fever. The day the tooth finally broke through the gum, he wound up with a head full of snot.

All of this is to also indicate that I have not had more than 2 hours' sleep in a row for 8 days now. Perhaps Wednesday night I got 3 hours in a row? At this point, who can remember. I certainly didn't remember to brush my teeth today. Or change my underwear. I would say I am walking wounded, but I am not walking at all. The sleep deprivation finally caught up with me and I find myself flat on my back, unable to move. When I try, I am overcome with nausea and dizziness.

Corey had to stay home from work today to take care of us. I got toast with butter in bed. Miles got salted steam, the blue nose snot-sucker, and a squirt of saline. All certainly much less fun than a visit to Mom-mom, Peppy, and Aunt Dina.

I find it very sad that these woes should befall us just as the world is waking up from its lengthy, white nightmare. Just as I find myself able to escape the house and the neighborhood, just as we find plants poking through the soil and head outside without jackets, we are struck down. Beware the Ides of March, the Bard warns us. Beware indeed.

Pittsburgh Gets ICAN chapter

2010-03-08T15:12:00.002-05:00

A press release to share:

The International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) now has an on-the-ground presence in the Pittsburgh region. As the cesarean-section rate climbs past 31% (according to 2007 data from the Center for Disease Control), ICAN provides peer-based support for women interested in recovery and prevention. ICAN aims to provide factual information and evidence-based information regarding choices in childbirth.

The group’s next meeting will be held Tuesday, March 30, 2010 from 6:30-8:30pmin the office of Patrick Thornton, 1900 Murray Ave, in Squirrel Hill. Contact Amy Farr, 724-297-3221 or icanofsouthwesternpa@gmail.com for more information or search for the group via facebook.

ICAN is a worldwide nonprofit organization devoted to improving maternal-child health by preventing unnecessary cesareans through education, providing support for cesarean recovery, and promoting Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC). Their website (www.ican-online.org) offers community forums and informational webinars covering topics ranging from scar care to homebirth preparation. For more information or to join, visit www.ican-online.org.

Bubble Up

2010-03-07T10:17:00.002-05:00

My cousin had her baby on Friday. I found out she went into labor in the morning and waited by the phone all day, anxious to hear news of her progress. I was totally unprepared for how M's experience would stir up undealt-with emotions from my own birth experience. When, as it turns out, her labor mirrored mine down to almost every last detail, I went a little crazy.

Every text message or relative seemed to deliver worse news: medical interventions, dangerously low heart rate, cord wrapped around the baby's torso (this was not something I experienced with Miles), and an eventual emergency c-section. My response to her delivery was so complex: I was a little jealous of my cousin because she got to the stage of pushing, but then was totally not jealous that she pushed for three hours before the doctor "called it" and rushed her to the OR. I was delighted to hear I have a new baby cousin, with red hair no less! But I was truly sad thinking about the way he entered the world. I am not saying that my cousin was devastated by what happened to her at all. I was devastated just thinking about that whole process.

I am heartbroken that another mom had to have major abdominal surgery, had to have her organs moved around and placed on her chest, that another mom can't get out of bed for a week (at least!) to tend to the needs of her crying newborn and change diapers in the middle of the night. My heart just aches for all these damaged bodies with staples in their skin. My cousin is allergic to Demoral...they had to find a nursing-friendly alternative pain medication to ease the burning she felt around her incision. I can't imagine that.

What is going on that more than 30% of babies are born until extreme conditions like this? Why do I feel so powerless when faced with news of such happenings? I need to work through these feelings and find an outlet for my political childbirth energy. This month's ICAN meeting (the first I'll get to attend!) can't come soon enough.

The Office Baby

2010-03-05T09:39:00.003-05:00

Spoiler Warning

I have been so nervous to watch NBC's The Office episode where Pam and Jim have their baby. In general, I hate how labor and birth are portrayed in pop culture. There are either shots of women flat on their backs, gasping in pain, demanding drugs (see Friends, Waitress, Knocked Up, etc.) or birth itself is totally erased as a male OB announces the sex of a baby and we cut to a mother, elated, holding a wrinkle-free, totally clean baby bundled in a blanket.

There was, I felt, a great opportunity for The Office to do something new with the portrayal of labor, and I wasn't totally disappointed. Even though they made it into a joke, the episode showed Pam trying to "hold the baby in" until midnight because their insurance would give them more hospital coverage that way. This is a very real and very problematic scenario. Women with limited insurance or no insurance find the prospect of birth terrifying. What if something goes awry and they are faced with crippling medical bills? I have seen the statement of benefits for my C-section. The bills were not insignificant. I have to sense that Pam putting a time stamp on her delivery had to hit home with many women in the audience.

The episode also showed Pam laboring on her own terms. She ate food with Kevin (she's allowed only ice chips at the hospital), found her own way to focus through the contractions, and didn't stereotypically strangle her husband or tell him it was his fault or other unfunny antics. She just breathed, changed her clothes, and ate recipes featured in the Twilight series.

I also liked the reference to Pam having pubic hair as Michael invaded her privacy while she was pushing.

What struck me as most important in this episode was the accurate portrayal of breastfeeding as something that is tricky for some women. This show just *might* make up for the horrendous depiction of Nancy's nursing escapades in Weeds. In addition to actually featuring some scenes where babies are held up to mothers' bosoms, The Office (while not showing any areola) demonstrated how support, or lack thereof, can affect breastfeeding success.

The nurse in last night's episode encourages Pam and Jim on many occasions to just let her give the baby a bottle of formula. Pam expressed a need for lactation support and instead of offering it, the nurse suggested taking the baby to the nursery and giving her a bottle if she cried. How many mothers are talked out of breastfeeding in this way, by someone in a position of authority discouraging them instead of showing a new technique or saying, "I know it's tough! Why don't you try once more while I take a look?"

How many other women are discouraged from trusting their instincts when they express, as Pam did, that something just doesn't feel right? I was so fortunate to have great lactation support. Based on what I have read on mothering forums and seen in last night's episode, the nurses I had are rare gems. Thankfully, Pam gets a visit from a lactation consultant later in the episode. The joke of the scene is that he is a male lactation consultant. But neither Pam nor I seemed to care about that as the more pressing concern of nourishing baby Cecilia took precedence and Pam is taught some techniques to help with let-down.

My favorite thing about the episode, and the image I am glad to take away, was the scene where Pam and Cecilia were alone on the bench outside, with that ridiculous cape of a Hooter Hider. Pam nervously puts the crying baby to her breast and finds, to her joy, that Cecilia finally gets the latch. It was a moment that reflected many of the things I felt about breastfeeding--that it is both "natural" and impossible, that it is both beautiful and stressful, sometimes painful, and wonderful when you both figure it all out.

I am so curious to see what the series will do once they show Pam returning to work. Is it possible, I wonder, to capture in a sit-com the paralyzing stress of pumping, fixating on whether the baby has enough to eat, and trying to let-down in an invasive environment? I can't wait to find out.

Road Rage

2010-03-03T13:52:00.004-05:00

I ran over a parking chair today. I don't feel badly about it at all. Some of you might be thinking, "What the hell is a parking chair? Did she mean to say rocking chair?" That's because not everyone lives in a place where people stake claim to public roadways by abandoning porch furniture.

After the big snow, it at first seemed totally justified to claim your 10 feet of shoveled space. I mean, it took upwards of 2 hours to dig out a hole big enough for a car. I know because I did it twice. With a baby! So people in the city started putting out things to mark "their" turf while they went to work or the store or wherever. A lawn chair here, a garbage pail there, every now and then a sawhorse. If you have brief business to conduct on that street and need to park on the public roadway there, tough beans.

Every now and then I can have pity on people who do this and think it sounds acceptable. Sometimes people live on Negley, for instance, where parking is hard to find in the best of times. Some people get home from work late at night and don't want to march for twenty minutes when they finally find a space to stash their coffin/car/giant SUV. Others live in neighborhoods that didn't get plowed out until, like, yesterday, making driving and parking a treacherous endeavor.

Most of the time I just feel like this is silly. It's a city street. Anyone who pays taxes, and technically anyone who doesn't, is free to legally park there. Should you have a true medical need to park in front of your house, you probably have a yellow line on your curb and a handicapped sign outside your house.

Also? I talked to our mail carrier. She can't find anywhere to stop her minivan while she does her job because all open spots are filled with lawn furniture. I have been letting her block the bottom of my driveway. Sure, she could double park and get out, move the furniture, park the van and repeat when she's done. But she doesn't have time for that crap. Recent cuts have doubled her route and she doesn't get paid overtime right now. Parking chairs impede the postal service!!!

I digress. It's been weeks since the last big snow and we had a string of melty days that took care of many of the heaps of snow between spots, freeing up lots of curb for easy parking again. I, myself (sufferer of parallel parking anxiety), parked on Centre twice this week without difficulty. If I can do that, you can park near your house without a wicker loveseat to guide you home.

IT'S TIME TO PUT AWAY THE PARKING CHAIRS. Here is what happened today. The streets are filled with potholes. They resemble the bombed out dirt roads I saw in a video of street conditions in Gaza. There's a bit of wind on this gray day. Miles and I were heading along Black Street, home from the Toy Lending Library.

A big gust thrust a bag chair into the air. It tumbled end over end and landed in the middle of the road, skirting a sinkhole. My choices: drive around the chair, through the pothole, possibly sinking through to China; continue onward and crush the chair, which is just a big piece of litter in my opinion. I cursed and drove right over it, smashing its legs to bits. I should have stopped the car and stolen the chair, abandoned as it was in the middle of the road. Next time!

Delicious

2010-03-02T06:08:00.002-05:00

Miles slept straight on through until 5am today, ate some milk, then went back to sleep. Since I had gone to bed at 9 last night, I felt totally energized and decided to stay awake while my family slept on. What a great idea!

I had the most delicious morning. I sat around and slowly sipped tea, read smut on the internet, ate cereal that I could chew and swallow before it turned to mush in my bowl. I think this is the secret to a long and happy life--private morning time.

Could there be anything more amazing than sitting on the couch in a bathrobe watching the sun start to rise, just listening to the silence of my often-noisy house? If everyone keeps being asleep, I might even get in a workout before 7am. A girl could get used to this sort of thing...

Back in the Saddle

2010-03-01T17:38:00.003-05:00

I am coaching again. My god, it feels good. I maintain that coaching is way more satisfying than playing a sport, at least for me. I am coaching a select side team, which means low commitment in terms of time. An ideal situation for a mom struggling to get back into her life. Because it's an all-star team, it means that a lot of the girls I coach are better rugby players than I ever was or will be.

Which is totally fine, because I am a better verbal communicator and organizer than they ever were or will be. Which is why I like to coach!

Yesterday, I coached the girls in a scrimmage against Penn State, my alma mater. It was so surreal to drive onto campus, pull into the parking lot of Holuba Hall (in a car! Alone! Without 8 other teammates on my lap!) and pull rugby jerseys out of my hatch back. I had a total Twilight Zone moment as I walked in those front doors and went to the bathroom.

Then I started to get nervous--not because my girls might lose the match, but because my former coaches were going to watch me coach! For those who don't know, Penn State has the best collegiate rugby program in the country. The current team has several girls on the national team, a dozen All Americans, and they won the national championship by over 60 points last year. The coach (my former coach) coaches the nation's coaches. I failed to tell the girls any of this information beforehand.

When they came out of the first period down two tries, I did tell them this information. That they held such a team to such a score was awesome! I have some stunning athletes and I wanted them to feel really proud of how they were playing. But more than anything, I wanted to shake the feeling that I was being personally observed and analyzed. I saw their performance (which was strong!) as a reflection of my coaching abilities, all judged before the men who taught me how to play rugby over a decade ago. It was very intense. I got great loads of armpit sweat out of the situation.

When I coach, I use a visualization technique my favorite ref Lois Bukowski taught me: get in your zone and put on your coach hat while you are in the car. From the moment you open that car door, you are "coach Katy" and you need to emit that energy.

So there I am, trying to maintain my zone, conduct warmups, wrangle the troops, and my former coaches are all walking over to give me hugs and say friendly hellos before the match. I was so torn! Do I hug them, or do I maintain my bubble of coaching energy? I went with the hug and totally lost my focus.

Which was nothing nearly as bad as after the game, when Pete was talking to me about what I should be saying in my pep talks (ah, how I miss that man's pep talks) and chatting about some of the mental stuff associate with rugby.

Talk about bursting my energy field! It was like I was 18 again, mesmerized by the aura of Penn State rugby and too sheepish to claim authority. At any rate, I feel really good about the game, proud of the girls, and totally ready to face the rest of this season. Let's go Trees!

Late Night Reading

2010-02-25T13:27:00.002-05:00

Well, I did it. I missed a bedtime with Miles and the world did not implode or explode. In fact, the wee lad slept straight on through from 8pm until 5am (though he did awake marinading in his own pee-pee since no diaper on earth could possibly contain that much liquid).

The point is that I did not stuff my face in nervousness. This was mostly because there was no dessert at this soiree. I wasn't even tested by a tarte table. Instead, there were heaps of wraps and pasta dishes and fancy yummies from some of my favorite eateries. But I had already eaten dinner. And who the heck wants extra pasta when you've just had soup? I had one beer, one cheesed cracker, and that's all.

What I got instead was a lot of excellent conversation and adult stimulation. I met lots of literary folks and writers and graphic designers. I only talked about Miles 60% of the time, which was a huge improvement over most social interactions. As I walked to the venue in dress pants, a real shirt, and dangly earrings, I thought about how easy it can be to "pass" as a normal person. Nobody saw me as a person so off-kilter she drops her deodorant in the toilet and must go without. I slid into the crowd at Alto Lounge as a writer, an adult, an MFA.

I found it didn't take me long to get over feeling shy and removed from the world and it felt so damn good to just see people and be out in the city after dark. Even if I did leave by 8:30.

Regardless, I have now fulfilled my goals set for myself at the beginning of 2010. I have attended 4 cultural events (two movies, two readings) and read two books (John Irving's new one and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which was half of the reason for last night's shindig).

I'm glad I have those goals out of the way because that means I am ever-so-slowly putting my professional life back together. Now I can concentrate on my physical health in earnest during the next segment of the year. Because, if I'm totally honest, I have not been a mindful eater. Once I freed myself to eat sugar, I ate it. I made the mistake of going to a La Leche meeting snackless on Tuesday and ate 4 cinnamon rolls in a starving, desperate failure of a social excursion.

Now that Miles can crawl, I can't just leave him to lounge on the mats at the gym, so I haven't been going. Double fault! I am left with two solutions:
1. Go to bed by 9pm at the latest so I can make it to the gym by 6am, thus missing all evening social interactions, work functions, or cultural events
2. Allow myself to stay up late and sometimes repeat last night's experience and discipline myself to work out independently at home.

I am not sure which of those choices sounds more difficult/fulfilling. I am going to avoid thinking about it and instead dwell on the memory of last night's success until Monday.

Syndicated!

2010-02-23T18:20:00.002-05:00

This afternoon I got an email from my editor at the Mother Nature Network, informing me that Forbes.com had chosen one of my articles to put on their website! If that isn't the best news I heard all week, I just don't know what is! Check me out here. Special thanks to my childcare provider for helping me stop freaking out about the organization of my story!!!

Baby Friendly

2010-02-23T08:47:00.004-05:00

There has been a heated discussion on my Mamas email group lately. People are totally fired up about local hospitals and the "formual goody bags" they send home with new moms. Apparently, Mercy hospital downtown is trying to achieve a Baby Friendly hospital status.

I am ashamed to say I have never heard of this before. But, upon reading this argument, I remembered something:

One day, I opened my front door to see a cardboard box from Enfamil on the porch. It contained a canister of formula in a gold wrapper, with happy rabbits on the can. I remember feeling rage upon seeing that canister, and I remember immediately blaming my mother for its being there. You see, she had given my name and mailing address to the store when she bought me maternity pants. I had been getting coupons for Huggies and Playtex bottles ever since.

I angrily took the formula inside, where its presence seemed to whisper, "Just in case your body isn't enough, I am here." It taunted me. I hated it. I vowed to take it to a women's shelter because I couldn't bear to throw it in the garbage can.

But I had a newborn! Who the hell can manage a trip to deliver unwanted formula to a women's shelter with a newborn? It gathered dust on top of the fridge.

Then, as it turned out, I did need that can. One horrible day when I had not slept for weeks and Miles and screamed without stopping for weeks, I got not one drop of milk from my breasts when I tried to pump. Not one drop. I pumped and cried and screamed for hours. I nearly bled. Not one drop. And all the while, Miles screamed.

Corey eventually wrenched him from my arms, prepared a bottle of formula, and I crumpled on the floor sobbing while my baby happily drank food that did not come from my body.

Do I believe Enfamil caused the unfriendly cycle of sleep deprivation and milk supply issues and Miles' strange eating habits? No. Is it possible that the presence of that can of formula in my house was just one more voice in a chorus pressuring me and making breastfeeding a challenge? Yes. Definitely yes.

I still get coupons in the mail from Enfamil. When I read the email messages, I thought that I wasn't able to comment, since I had been given no formula goody bag when I left the hospital. I had only seen lactation consultants and had good, nursing friendly advice. But then I looked at the coupons. My last name on the coupon is smooshed together, all one word. No space, no hyphen. The only people who do that are the folks within the UPMC system.

It seems Magee had indeed given me a goody bag of formula. When I figured that out, I became unspeakably angry. How could the same institution provide the midwives who gave me such support through my birth trauma and then mail formula to my house?

The circumstances surrounding my birth filled me with feelings of failure, with ideas that my body had failed to deliver Miles, and this affected every single moment of my early mothering. Including my breastfeeding experience. When that "failed" to be enough, too, I was in a bad place mentally.

To realize now that my healthcare system played a part of that, that they sent formula to me "just in case I need it," that makes me feel very vigilante-like. It makes me want to find out the addresses of all new mothers in town, go to their houses, and kick the cans of formula out of the hands of the mail carriers (unless, of course, those mothers have ordered those cans on purpose).

Suddenly, I am much more interested in Baby Friendly hospitals and in their mission. I never, ever realized that wanting to deliver a baby through my vagina without medicine and then feed the baby breastmilk made me such a political activist. But it does. You have to fight to be able to do those things. You have to fight long after you have had your baby if you want other women to be able to do those things.

Let me tell you, women and their uteri and offspring are viewed as great big dollar signs. I wish I had realized that sooner. I feel like I was mentally preparing for all the wrong battles before I entered this crazy phase of my life. What I wish more than anything is that I can help younger women know their options, know what their choices are, so they can be better prepared. We should be allowed to make natural choices!

Keep your formula in the stores. When I need it, I will come and buy it. That is all.

Sugar Free: Day 7--Off the Wagon

2010-02-22T19:36:00.005-05:00

My last day of the first week without refined sugar was a whirlwind. I ran a coaching clinic in West Virginia, so I was gone most of the day and didn't really remember to consume food, let alone food with sugar in it. This same clinic last year attracted exactly 12 girls, so you can imagine my surprise to discover 84 ready, willing rugby players in the Shell Building at WVU. I was overwhelmed! What a great problem to have! But it didn't give me much time to gorge myself.

Long after the event was over, I had all sorts of thinking to do about what had transpired, what it meant, how I might whittle that group down to the 23 I can take along to the Midwest tournament. So I didn't do any snacking. Corey and I just took Miles on a snow hike to see Mt. Snowmore down the hill, I ate supper, and was in bed by 8pm.

One of our neighbors got crafty with the shovel. Wish I had thought of it!

So that brought me to Monday, the first day of a new week. I had two choices: go for two weeks just to see if I could do it OR (and I think this was the harder choice, actually) go back to eating whatever I wanted, but try to do it mindfully and with control. For instance, I took Miles to the grocery store today. There was nearly a Fried Green Tomatoes, Kathy-Bates, Tawanda!!!!! moment in the parking lot. Such an event would normally drive me to eat an entire candy bar, what with having to walk Miles many blocks in the pouring rain since some jagoff took my parking spot.

But I didn't eat an entire candy bar. I bought one, then ate just one square when I got home. I didn't even ask the cashier if I could hold it immediately after it got scanned. I think that's progress. Mindfulness! Control!

The next big challenge for me will come on Wednesday. I am going to a literary event in the evening. I will be missing bedtime for the first time in my son's life. There will be a dessert table. If I were completely abstaining from sugar, this would be ok. I'd have a piece of cheese and get on with my life. But what will I do now? Can I make it just eating one piece of dessert at said event? Will the thought of my precious baby sobbing himself to sleep in his room, while Corey maniacally plays video games downstairs, drive me into a sugar coma?

I think I might have the sort of personality where, with junk food anyway, it's all or nothing. Either I eat the entire bag of Doritos in one sitting or I don't eat Doritos at all. One of each kind of dessert or just a slice of cheese. This is what I would like to work on. Moderation, mindfulness. It seems, I think, a greater (and more important) endeavor.

Sugar Free: Day 6

2010-02-20T17:52:00.004-05:00

Man, today has been awesome. Today is one of those days where you can't help but look at your life and want to brag about how amazingly full it is, how damn excited you are to be living it.

I am blessed in the following ways:

Miles did some wonderful sleeping last night, which means Corey and I did, too.

Then, I got to go to Crossfit all by myself and do a super workout, almost as prescribed.

Then, my whole family took a kick-ass walk to the coffee shop for lunch. I can't prove that my bagel sandwich didn't contain refined sugar, but I would like to hope so. It was amazing. Miles saw some fun friends, who held him so I could eat with both hands. We had the best time!

Family hike to the Mo-Glo!

It was nearly 50 degrees in my neighborhood, so I finally (with the help of the sun) unearthed the Nissan. And the battery was in fine shape. And it had gas in it.

Then? To finish it all off I am getting my belated Valentine's dinner cooked and cleaned up for me. I just get to sit here on the couch and someone else is going to cook the food and then clean up the mess. What will that feel like? It will feel like eating a slice of ripe peach dipped in whipped cream on a sunny Caribbean beach with muscled men fanning me while they refill my girly drink. That's how good it will feel.

The point of this is to say that I didn't crave sugary junk food one time this entire day.

Sugar Free Day 5

2010-02-19T14:03:00.003-05:00

The word of the day is persevere. This is the kind of day (or, rather, pair of days) where I would eat an entire dark chocolate bar to take my mind off what's going on in front of my ears. Maybe 2 bars. You see, Miles is getting a tooth up top and unlike the last time he got a tooth, he is a screaming mess of a human being in pain.

This means that he is up every 3 hours for at least 2 hours at night, screaming bloody murder, and spends his days cranky and also crying. Today, as MW and I drove back from a run to Babies R Us, he screamed and screamed for 45 minutes as I sat with my foot on the clutch waiting for the light to turn green on 130. I wanted dark chocolate and a cupcake like I have never wanted those things before. The car reverberated with his shrill, breath-holding screams and I couldn't help but scream right back at him in frustration. I almost threw on the e-brake to run into CVS on the corner. Lord knows, only one car was getting to move each green light and I would have had time.

But I didn't. I clenched my jaw and dealt with it. And when I got home, I didn't have time to scrounge for candy because I had to feed that baby and then feed myself and by then, it was time to put Miles to bed. Which makes me really, really want something sugary. I feel like I "earned" it. During the first 100 or so days of my son's life, when every day was spent like this one, I treated myself to sweets whenever I felt proud for making it through an hour or a minute or a 15-second stretch without spontaneously combusting.

Well, by God, I made it through nearly 24 straight hours of crying and fussing, and I want some fucking fudge. But I don't have it in the house and I don't have the energy to procure some. So instead I am drinking a beer and breathing deeply, slowly, purposefully. And really? It's just not the same. I feel an almost crippling craving for something sugary.

Sugar Free Day 4

2010-02-18T09:38:00.004-05:00

Corey made himself toast for breakfast this morning. The smell of it was terrible for me to resist as I sat on the floor feeding Miles mushed up bananas and oatmeal. Luckily, it took me so long to coax this meal into my son that the smell of toast had dissipated and I could eat a bowl of bran/flax flakes with no lingering cravings.

I find that temptations are everywhere for me this week because I am on deadline. I have always felt stressed by deadlines, but was always the sort of person who turned things in a week AHEAD of deadlines. Now, with limited and specific hours dedicated to work, I find I need every instant of the time allotted to complete an assignment. And so my mind will not settle.

In the evenings, when I would like to be writing, Miles is very clingy and I have to carry him around the house. As I do this, I think how wonderful it would be to hike to the new bakery and eat biscotti. If I can't be writing, I reason, I should be eating a delicious treat!

My hands just can't be still when I have unfinished business, so if I'm not shaking a molecule rattle, I am folding laundry or washing dishes or frantically picking cradle cap, all the while wishing I were eating M&M's one at a time.

I remember when I was working my loathsome corporate job. I found the work so boring and soul-sucking that I ate almost constantly throughout the day. In contrast, when I am deep in the vortex of a piece of writing, it takes the neighborhood church bells screaming their 6pm hymns to remind me that I haven't had a scrap of food in many, many hours.

I am realizing more and more how much of my eating comes from my nervous, fidgety hands needing something to do. If I am not fully present in what I'm doing, I eat. Being snowbound and learning to adapt to life as a stay-at-home mom will certainly free up my hands! This is something I must work on. Wouldn't it be nice, after I am done with this experiment, to eat a cupcake and absolutely savor every morsel of its deliciousness rather than scarf it down because I have nothing better to do?

What started as something sort of competitive (let's see if I can go without sugar just to say I can do it!) has really made me take stock of my lifestyle. I am coming up with all sorts of mini-goals: control my quantities of all foods, drink more water, eat mindfully, and now I am thinking it's probably good to really engage with Miles and expose him to the world. He has a waterproof snow suit, after all. Why shouldn't I just put Lansinoh on his cheeks and take him outside for long walks instead of watching him roll back and forth on the carpet as I yearn for banana bread?

I keep telling myself that, come summer, I'll definitely do more activities with him, be outside, go places. If I keep that up, I'll never run out of reasons to postpone leaving the cocoon. Really, my mindless shoveling of food is just a symptom that something else is off kilter. Next up for me: slip into the vortex of ACTIVE motherhood the way I used to disappear into my work. Time to see if my snowpants still fit!

Sugar Free Day 3 (1 again?)

2010-02-17T13:41:00.003-05:00

Something terrible happened yesterday: I cheated and ate sugar by accident. I wasn't even thinking and popped a whole wheat pita in the toaster, ate the whole thing, then read the bag. Ingredient number 3 on my frou-frou whole wheat pita? Sugar. I guess this means I have to start over?

The slip up got me thinking again about mindfulness and eating. I know that the main "meals" I eat each day are very healthful and balanced, because I cook them all myself from 90% "whole" foods (i.e. nothing packaged, nothing my grandmother wouldn't recognize as a food, etc.). But I eat a lot of snacks in between those healthy meals. A lot of snacks. Miles is old enough now that I don't get to use "I just had a baby!" as an excuse to shovel in the food. He is starting solids, too, so I am not nursing as much and need to cut back.

Despite my best intentions, I'm not getting in a lot of working out, either, so my caloric needs are just not as high right now. And still I snack. I snack and I snack and I snack. The cheat-a pita wasn't even actually breakfast. It was second-breakfast (I think of meals like hobbits do).

So today, I am looking not only at the contents of my foods, but at my quantities. I don't want to spend my life worrying whether the whole wheat pita I toasted contains refined sugar (beyond the confines of this 2 week experiment, obviously). But I do want to know that I am eating the whole wheat pita because I am actually hungry and not because I smelled toast and felt like I should eat some.

I don't have a whole lot to focus on right now, being snow-bound with a baby and all. Thus, I spend a LOT of time thinking about what I put into my body and even more time thinking about what I would like to put in there. Today was a rough one for cravings. I want a cupcake or a chocolate bar something fierce! I hope that pita didn't throw me into a terrible downward spiral and that I can overcome these urges with a nice, juicy pear.

Sugar Free Day 2

2010-02-16T09:53:00.004-05:00

I have been thinking about food a lot lately. Corey and I finally got to watch Food, Inc. this weekend and I am fixated on the one couple who feeds their family entirely from dollar menus at fast food restaurants. They say in the film they have only $1 to spend and they can get a meal at McDonald's for this but not at the supermarket. In the film, the family spends $8 to feed the four of them dinner.

Later, they go to a grocery store and hold up a head of broccoli sadly, lamenting that it costs more than one dollar, that it costs more than a burger...and broccoli alone does not dinner make. I thought and thought about their situation. If they are spending $8 per meal per day, that gives them $168 per week to spend on food. When you think of it that way, they are spending $38 MORE on food than Corey and I spend each week. And we buy expensive food!

There were long stretches in college where I existed on dried beans, rice, and other cheaply made soups. I made huge batches of them on Sundays while my body recovered from rugby and ate them again and again all week long. Yeah, it might cost more than a dollar for a bag of beans or for a handful of carrots, but those food items last more than one meal! I am certain I was eating for $30 a week for just me.

But that brings me to the other troubling leg of that family's problem: they have no time to plan out a week of meals, drive through the sprawl to the closest grocery store (in their area of Texas, there are only fast food restaurants and no close stores that sell fresh produce), and later prepare the meals. The family works, I recall, several jobs to make ends meet and I can say from experience that making healthful meals on a budget is a time consuming endeavor. While it might be possible to stretch dollars more efficiently, there is not a way to add more hours to a day.

Surely there is a solution for this family. Have they seen the dried legumes in the bulk food aisle? Perhaps the elder daughter can chop carrots after school for soup or they can use their time in the car to plan out meals instead of waiting in line at the drive thru? Can someone buy them a crock pot?

I can only imagine that it's hard to concentrate on such things when you are scrambling to live check to check, exhausted from working multiple jobs at a low wage, and stressed that people keep telling you your "choices" are making your kids sick.

As I begin my refined sugar fast, relying instead on expensive, protein-rich snack food I don't technically "need" to eat, I try to be mindful of how very fortunate I am. I am lucky to have both the means and the time to give up sugar and concentrate on the food that fuels my family. With that in mind, it's easier to walk past the candy aisle when I trek to Rite Aid.

Sugar Free Day 1

2010-02-15T19:58:00.003-05:00

Totally not bad. I got a little hankering for something sweet after dinner, which is totally normal, so I had berries with agave nectar, plain yogurt, and a little pumpkin flax granola. Rather than eat a huge bag of candy for daytime snacks, I ate things like an apple or some chips with hummus. All in all, I think my first sugar-free day was a little too easy. Which tells me the worst is still to come!

A Bold and Terrifying Endeavor

2010-02-14T18:01:00.003-05:00

Starting tonight, after I finish the last of my Sweetheart Box from Dozen Cupcakes, I am going to begin a truly scary experiment. I want to see if I can make it one week, perhaps even two, without consuming refined sugar.

I read once that our sugar addictions are far more powerful than even a heroin addiction, that my body might completely revolt if I try this. I did a preparatory sweep of the house (which means I consumed all the candy) and read all the ingredients on our non-candy things. I was shocked to discover how much refined sugar we have, and we make great efforts to eat healthfully. Heck, our hippie corn chips have refined cane juice in them! Even Corey's beloved Peanut Butter & Co products have been "newly improved" to include cane sugar--the ingredients used to be just peanuts and salt. Luckily I stopped using "regular" toothpaste, or I'd have to cut that out, too, what with the saccharine and all.

In order to make sure I survive, I wanted to ensure I could still eat desserts while I detox. Fruit and yogurt parfait, here I come. Honey and agave nectar are totally cool with me and I made a concession for cane syrup only so that I could eat the wheat crackers I bought to accompany my snack foods (cheese and hummus). But no ketchup. And no dark chocolate. That's what's killing me.

I can forgo all other things without difficulty. But dark chocolate? What will a day be like without eating a square of that?? I shudder to think, but will soon be able to report.

Why am I doing this? I was inspired by the Rookie Moms, who did something similar a few weeks ago. And, after a few weeks confined to my house eating junk food, I feel the need to cleanse my insides. I feel sluggish and gross and I know that my days spent staring angrily at the snow, consuming muffins and candy, are largely to blame.

So, for the next fortnight, I attempt to go where I have never gone, and that is a place without artificial sweetener, without refined sugar. Hopefully I will emerge refreshed and with sparkling teeth!

Tempting Fate

2010-02-12T12:06:00.004-05:00

Miles sleeps now. Each night, we start putting him to bed as soon as Jeopardy is over. We carry him upstairs and put him in pjs with soft lights on. We put him in his night diaper and sleep sack. Sometimes, he gets totally ready to go at the sight of the sleep sack. Other nights, the three of us just hang out on the floor in our bedroom and maybe read books or just let Miles touch our faces.

Then, on with the static, off with the lights, and within 15 minutes he is generally sound asleep.

He wakes up once at night to nurse (which, according to numerous articles I've read, is totally normal for breastfed babies) and then sleeps til morning--generally 6:30 or 7:00.

I cannot quite explain how much of a difference this has made in my life. I feel more like my self, more ready to face the world. Being well-rested totally changes my outlook, my ability to parent, my mood...everything. I find I can set goals again, and work to achieve them. I look forward to every moment chasing him around as Miles rolls from one room to another, shoving things in his mouth.

There was a time, when I was sleepless, where I regularly spoke with a mental health professional to determine whether I had postpartum depression. She explained the list of symptoms, all of which I was exhibiting, and then showed me the symptoms of someone who was suffering from extreme, debilitating exhaustion. They were identical. She wrote me a prescription for sleep.

Months later, I sometimes dig out that prescription note. I used to stare at it and beg the universe to fill my doctor's orders. Now, I can laugh about it. Seriously! When Miles falls asleep in his carseat or rubs his eyes near bedtime, I can chuckle a bit at how damn ridiculous it was to march him up and down the stairs or stomp around the block to get him to snooze.

Obviously, in writing this and putting it out there for the world to see, I have cursed myself and Miles will cease to sleep. But something tells me, as he yawns and rubs those eyes over on his quilt, that he has started enjoying this whole "resting" thing.

UPDATE: Obviously, Miles woke up 4 times last night because I teased fate. I dangled a big carrot in front of her face and she bit it right off. We think one of three things happened to Mr. Man last night to interrupt his sleep:
1) nightmares--we think this because he went from sound, sound asleep to SCREAMING every hour for the first 3 hours after we put him to bed
2) constipation--I gave him some cheese yesterday. And some oatmeal.
3) earache--he keeps touching his left ear, but has no fever. He is always a fidgety dude, though, and usually pulls hair or does something else repetitive while he nurses. Ear tugging could just be his movement du jour.

Bewbs!

2010-02-10T09:08:00.002-05:00

I stopped nursing Miles in public when he took to pulling off my breast and leaving my nipple exposed to the world at large. Plus he makes noises while he eats--Tasmanian devil noises straight from a Warner Bros. cartoon. He is just such a high maintenance nurser, rhythmically kicking his top leg while using his free hand to either smack me in the face or pick seeds out from between my teeth, that I decided to make sure he was well-fed before we left team headquarters.

Also? I am rocking a 34G bra right now. When my boobs get engorged, that bra shrinks and clings to my chest like hole covers on a bowling ball. So there is pretty much no such thing as modesty. The Motherwear shirts I bought with their advertised panels and delicate, lacy shelving for "discreet" or "versatile" nursing were not meant for what I've crammed into them.

But when Miles and I flew to California, I had no choice but to nurse him in front of others. I initially tried to rig up some privacy with clips and a blanket, but he kicked and yanked that whole thing down before pulling off and sending a stream of spurting milk into the seat-back table (which was in the full upright, and locked position). I got really frustrated, to say the least. It made me even more determined to nurse him in private.

One day on our trip, we went to the beach. I love the beach. I find the mass expanse of the ocean to be really soothing and humbling. Miles and Patsy and I walked around in the sand, jumping out of the icy tide, watching the surfers, and Miles needed to eat. I was inspired to just stretch out on a driftwood log and feed him right out in the open. No blankets, no hunching, no looking both ways to check for passersby. I just hoisted my udder out into the salty air and let Miles go to town. It was great!

He ate like a gourmand and I forgot to feel tense, forgot to look all around to see who might be staring. Miles was true to form, digging in my nose and kicking me in the crotch while he made loud oinking sounds and ate. I kept thinking, "It's like he doesn't see anything embarrassing about this at all!"

And of course he doesn't! He is just eating. I sometimes make moany sounds when I eat something delicious, and I sure do fidget and kick my legs when my feet don't reach the ground. Why shouldn't my baby do the same thing? The whole experience really recharged my batteries. I didn't even try rigging up machinery to fake privacy on the rest of our trip, not even on the flight home and not even in the holding tank waiting for my rescue in Cleveland.

When Miles was hungry, I fed him, no matter where we were. And you know what? He wasn't as kicky or flaily when there weren't curtains or blankets or "hoods" dimming the lights on his feeding operation. When I wasn't super tense, he relaxed, too. My whole body just surrendered to the process. I haven't had the opportunity to leave my house since we returned, what with snowmageddon and all, but when I do, I will feel free to exercise my right to publicly nurse my baby. I reclaim the ability to not feel embarrassed by that act.

People will probably stare a little bit--I would stare, too, if I saw a boob that enormous--but since when (before Miles) have I cared about that? This is going to be a liberating revelation. I can just tell.

Deeeeeeeelicious

2010-02-09T12:08:00.002-05:00

Often, the highlight of any adventure (for me) is the food I consume. My trip to the West Coast in February was no exception, although it was seemingly commonplace, small things that delighted both me and my wee bairn.

For starters, people grow citrus in their yards there. In. Their. Yards. I consumed several of the most delicious oranges the universe ever provided, grown by a neighbor. While we were out for a stroll one day, another neighbor told me to stop taking pictures of her grapefruit and just eat one already. Patsy's very own yard sported the buds of blooming lemons. Actual lemons!

And did you know kiwi was a citrus fruit? I learned this in California when I fed ten thousand of them to Miles, who gobbled them down truffle pig-style.

While my Pittsburgh brethren are forced to eat wilty grocery store basil, Patsy and I bought some farm fresh and weaved it into the most delicious local eggs and cheese for a breakfast I still remember exploding in my mouth. This was the day I decided I could start feeding Miles some of the foods I eat. He just sat on my lap and ate omelet with me, and we loved it equally.

I think the other things I ate (cheese, salad, pizza, eggplant sandwiches) all just tasted so wonderful because all the ingredients were so fresh! An unexpected highlight of my week was the opportunity to eat things just pulled from the earth. Oh, how I long for August...

Rescue Mission

2010-02-07T08:25:00.005-05:00

When Miles and I landed in Chicago for our connecting flight home yesterday, I turned on my phone to discover a text from Corey: Your flight has been canceled. In a previous life, this is when I would have begun to panic and melted into a pile of crushed cheerios beneath my seat. But I had just flown 4 hours with a baby who napped the whole time. What could possibly bring me down?

I talked to the ticket agent to weigh my options. Here is what the airline offered as a solution: We could send you on the next flight back to Oakland!

Discouraged, I opted out and found a rocking chair (had to keep that baby asleep) and called my family to think of a real solution. There were a couple of thorns in the way of a safe return home, not the least of which was that I was wearing a tank top and my jacket was tucked neatly in my luggage, which I was not allowed to access until it arrived in Pittsburgh. Further, since we had rented a car seat, I had no means of leaving the airport except via rail or bus. Or airplane.

Our eventual solution was to hop on the next flight to Cleveland, where Corey would meet me and bring us home. This ended up being the best idea because I learned Pittsburgh's airport would remain closed for several more days. I started getting a real picture of how bad things were back home when Responsible Dave texted that he'd been skiing on 5th Avenue.

As Miles and I hid, locked in the family restroom and lounging on the floor I "disinfected" with a paper towel and hand sanitizer, I got increasingly worrisome messages from home. Our street was impassable, packed with 2 feet of snow. Dave had to drive his Subaru as close as he could get and Corey hiked a jacket and car seat into it before they could head out to get us.

My flight to Cleveland was completely filled with persons in my exact same boat and I spent a lot of hours in a sort of holding tank at the Cleveland airport waiting for my heroes. As each person there was slowly gathered by a family member or else heard news that help would not be able to arrive that night, I grew more and more thankful to have such an amazing husband and friend.

We slowly crunched our way home over snow-packed roads while Corey applauded the wonders of all-wheel drive. Long after midnight, we got to the end of the passable roads and Corey scooped Miles into his jacket, zipped him in tight, and headed toward our house.

At the end of the ordeal, I am left with nothing but gratitude. I feel so fortunate that Miles handled the extended air travel with ease, that I have such good friends who jumped to help us, that Corey didn't even think twice about spending 6 hours on a rescue mission to reunite with his baby. Now, who wants to help us recover my belongings from the cargo hold?

In Which Miles Goes Flying

2010-02-04T22:35:00.003-05:00

My two overarching fears in traveling with Miles were screamsicle relapse and explosive poop mid-air. I did a lot to alleviate my other anxieties (rented a carseat, spent the weekend cobbling together replacement straps for the Ergo when someone in my family lost the chest strap hoisting MW up the stairs in the Cathedral of Learning, etc.), but knew I couldn't control the things that came out of my son. As it turns out, these things were the least of my worries! What I should have been leery of was "free" parenting advice! (And also morons)

My first bit of free parenting advice happened when we went through security. I had MW in the carrier, declared his liquid medication, got through the metal detector with ease. When it came time to reinsert him in the carrier and gather up all my belongings (they even made me take off Miles' shoes!!!), I suddenly lost my ability to function. I just didn't have enough arms to buckle the baby in the carrier and grab things off that damn conveyor fast enough.

I got my first parenting tip of the day from a business traveler who shoved me with her hands: "Move faster! You're holding up the line."

I felt a fiery, raging beast well up inside me. The only other time I felt such anger was when an opposing rugger dangerously cheated in a scrum once and I called her an Effing C right there in the middle of the field. This time, I screamed at the top of my voice, "STOP SHOVING ME! DO NOT SHOVE ME!" It was my first use of a Mom Voice and I found it to be effective in getting people away from me. I earned a huge bubble of space, concerned looks from the TSA people (though no assistance from these same persons), and finally got everything strapped back on.

We just went on our merry way, boarded the plane, and happily discovered it to be nearly empty! Hurrah! A whole row of seats to ourselves! Until a moron got on the plane.

I was sitting by the window and had started nursing Miles in anticipation of takeoff. The moron sat in my row--not in the aisle seat, but right there in the middle. Pressed up against my person. In a nearly empty airplane. It was so unbelievably strange. After takeoff, she looked around and asked me, "Isn't this B2?"

I told her I had no idea what she was talking about. She showed me her boarding pass stub and said, "My seat. Aren't I in B2?"

Let me pause to mention that MW and I flew Southwest. Every person in the universe knows that Southwest doesn't have assigned seats. And if you don't know that, by the time you get on the airplane you should because they say it over and over and over again: There are no assigned seats on our planes! They are all open. Open seating!

I reiterated this to the moron, who just nodded. AND THEN DID NOT MOVE. She sat there, pressed up against me, the whole 2 hour flight to Chicago. Also? She gave me odd looks when MW kicked her as he nursed.

Apart from this moron, the flight was amazing because not only did my baby not cry, he giggled and laughed the whole time. What a flirty, happy kid! I entered the long leg of the trip feeling strongly positive.

We had another nearly empty flight, but this time a little grandma-looking woman had the aisle seat while we took the window. At first, I felt like this grandma was a great seatmate, but each moment I spend thinking about the flight brings new little timebomb memories of truly shocking things that she said during transit. She had all kinds of advice to give out, such as:

"You need to get him on a schedule so he doesn't eat so frequently."

"He only sleeps a few minutes at a time!! He shouldn't have woken up from his nap yet. You need to get him sleeping longer!" (My immediate reaction to this statement was the thought, "Oh! Of course! That's what has been wrong with my life. We just all need to sleep for longer increments. I should have thought of that myself but didn't.")

"I didn't know his knees were so fat until you took his pants off." (This is not really advice, but is also really not nice)

"Just change his diaper right here on the seat. Nobody cares." (This was only bad advice because he had pooped a mighty poop and it sort of got all over the seat. Note to future travelers: your airplane seat might have baby poop remnants on it and you should wipe it off before you sit)

And, my favorite, "You change his diaper too often. He sure does pee a lot."

Now, this woman did hold Miles so I could eat my sandwich, so the flight was not a total bust. Also, the babe was a dreamboat the whole time, so I chalk it up as a victory.

As I mentally prepare for my flight home I realize I am an experienced enough mother to handle a baby on an airplane. I won't tempt fate and predict that he'll repeat his awesome travel debut, but even if he screams I feel like I'll just handle the way I always handle it if he screams. What I doubt is my ability to avoid arrest when reacting to people handing out great tips about baby-raising.

A very wise mother once told me that I am not bitchy enough when it comes to Miles and people touching him or otherwise affronting his aura. I suspect that is rapidly changing. Go ahead and give me a little shove or some judgment in the airport on Saturday and try out my new armor!

Crochet

2010-01-31T15:10:00.002-05:00

I haven't crocheted since I learned how to knit. Not one hook. But this latest issue of Bust has a crocheted DIY project in it...so that got me paging through Debbie Stoller's Happy Hooker book...which got me thinking maybe I shouldn't shun crochet just cuz I can knit now.

It's like there is this great divide, a binary between yarn people. Crochet people don't knit. Knit people don't crochet. I think yarn people are judgy about it, too. I think I felt more proud of myself for learning to knit than I did for learning to crochet. Maybe I am the one who made up this binary? That would be terrible. How divisive of me. Maybe? I actually don't work yarn in group settings enough to know whether this is true. But anyway, I feel like I crossed a divide into knitting and stayed there happily for about 8 years. Until there was this purse pattern. And the blanket featured in Bust! This has opened all new worlds for me in terms of goals.

Now I feel sudden pressure to finish my other nephew's sweater so I can get started crocheting something awesome. There are seriously cute things to choose from PLUS I could have the satisfaction of feeling truly bipartisan if I cross the divide and give both art forms a chance. It seems like a good, humanitarian thing to do.

Alas, I cannot begin on this upcoming trip because I'll have a baby upon my lap most of the time (though, admittedly, crocheting would be easier than knitting in this scenario). But you look out, LYS, when I get back. I am coming your way.

Top Gifts for This New Mom

2010-01-28T14:50:00.002-05:00

I would be remiss to express gratitude for Operation Angel Miles and not also mention the other things that made my life better during the first months of motherhood. APART from 3 months' of weekly friend-helpers, the best, best, best things I got (in no specific order) were:

1. Coupons for Wheel Deliver. Corey and I could pick any restaurant we wanted and have our favorite food delivered! We chose, I believe, Mediterranean.
2. Money specifically designated for a housekeeper. I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful it was to not care about dust or filth while we used that gift.
3. Free babysitting. Beware, all ye who said, "Just give me a call if you ever want/need me to watch Miles." If I haven't already called you, I will soon.
4. Freezable food.
5. Commands/requests to leave the house for a walk or beverage. I was forcing hermitage upon myself when Miles was a screamsicle, so my friends who insisted I leave the house did me a great service indeed.
6. Beauty products. Corey's mom gave me some frou-frou stuff just when I was beginning to feel gross and disgusting. Afterward, I still felt gross and disgusting, but I had healthy, clean skin and a pleasing odor about my person.
7. Electronic pictures of my baby. It is shockingly difficult to remember or find time to upload pictures and everyone far away wants to see them. I love it when people take pics and put them online FOR me!
8. Moral support. Emails and voicemails and facebook messages reinforcing the fact that I could indeed be a great mother were (are!) an invaluable gift.
9. Romance. We got a gift certificate for a date as a Christmas gift. It was our first date in 6 months. I tried to make Corey hold my hand, but his eczema felt scratchy...
10. Disinfectant wipes. Now, I am trying to rid my household of bleach-based cleaners, but I must say that having a baby is messy and those tubs of wipes are pretty darn awesome for quickly eliminating poop from the bathtub or sweet potato from the television screen or even Corey's fried chicken oil splatters. When they are all gone, I will probably even buy more (even though they are cost-ineffective). So there's a gift that changed one of my household habits!

Now I am just waiting for a few of my friends to give birth so I can copy some of these fantastic gift ideas and make some other mom's life a little bit easier. Isn't that the best feeling???

Continuing Adventures in Baby-Travel Anxiety

2010-01-27T14:20:00.002-05:00

I am putting my Denver anxiety on hold for the moment because Miles and I are taking a trip to see my friend Pat-Smear (this is her roller derby fantasy name) in Oakland, CA.

I had/have the following worries about this trip:
1. Miles will scream the entire flight there and back
2. My luggage (and therefore carseat) will not make my connecting flight
3. Miles will not sleep at all or sleep at crazy times because of the time change

There really isn't much I can do to mentally prepare for number one. I know to nurse him at takeoff and landing because of the air pressure stuff. I know that I can pee with him in the Ergo (his bouts with screaminess at least prepared me for solo airport travel) and I know that I can pack a bunch of food that's edible with one hand so I don't starve whilst on my journey. If Miles is going to scream, I will just be prepared for armpit sweat. Maybe I should take a Vicodin along for myself...

I have eased my own worries about number 2 by discovering that one can RENT a carseat. In fact, one can rent just about anything. If I wanted, I could rent a bucket of tub toys or a bouncy chair or a high chair or even a Pack-N-Play. I will settle for just renting a carseat, to be delivered and picked up from the airport!!!

And number 3? Who the hell knows what will happen. I might rely on caffeine to make it through this trip alive.

It's very interesting to me that I look forward to the challenge of this trip as much as the quality visiting time. I have never viewed a packing list or an airport security adventure with such a sense of must-conquer. Everything from the metal detector to baggage claim will have a new sense of difficulty. I have been giving myself pep talks at 2 in the morning while Miles night-nurses, so I think I am ready.

After I get back, I can resume worrying about the trip I'll take WITHOUT the baby.

What Rugby Means to Me

2010-01-23T20:42:00.004-05:00

In college, our coach always gathered the team in someone's living room or a hotel room before a big match and made us share what rugby meant to us. Things always got emotional as people laid bare their souls and talked about the transformation the sport catalyzed in their lives.

Well, I'm not in college anymore and I'm not even playing rugby at the moment, but I feel called to share what rugby means to me right now. I have been searching for months for the right words to express what rugby has meant to me lately, and I just can't find them. There is no way to measure in words what my rugby team has done for me. But I'll try.

One morning in November, as the Angels headed to Texas for nationals (without me), I woke up horribly depressed as Miles suffered a major sleep relapse. I sat on my sofa, shaking and rocking, with my head under a blanket and sobbed as we blared static through the house and Corey marched the screaming baby up and down the stairs through the wee hours of the night. I decided to check my email and found a note explaining Operation Angel Miles.

My teammates knew we were having a hard time. They knew I was finding it impossible to cope with the isolation of months spent in my living room, marching a baby up and down the stairs. They knew that the sleep deprivation was compromising my mental and physical well-being, that I had to stop driving and that my eyelashes fell out. And so, before they left for Nationals, they left me an IOU.

My teammates set up a schedule and, every single Tuesday for the past three months, two of them showed up at my house to do whatever we needed. I have had ruggers washing dishes and getting Fenugreek for me. They swept my floors and took out my trash and marched my baby up and down the stairs. They engaged me in adult conversation, helped me decorate my Christmas tree, and took dictation while I nursed.

And that was just the surface. The true benefits of Operation Angel Miles were not just the immediate help with chores. The ripple effects are immeasurable! Some nights I got an extra two hours of sleep because my work was finished, which snowballed into a more coherent day and better mothering. Or certainly better teaching. Who knows what student benefited from my regained ability to think critically?

And, the part that matters most of all, I gained confidence the hard times would pass. I got to close my eyes every second and know I was supported by this amazing network of women who would not let me disintegrate. This gift was a boundless gesture of grace. I never knew what it really meant to experience grace before, but I will not forget how it feels enveloping my family.

How do you begin to express gratitude for such an act of love? How do you put into words what the bonds of this sport have meant to me in my darkest and most difficult hours? Operation Angel Miles saved my life this year.

What does rugby mean to me? This:

Conference Trip Breast Anxiety Phase 2

2010-01-20T17:37:00.002-05:00

Several things happened today on my quest to ease my breastfeeding anxiety regarding my imminent conference trip.

Thing one: I secured lodging. I will be staying at the Melbourne Hotel and Hostel. I will be a brisk 15 minute walk from the conference, which is great unless it rains or snows, and I will be paying exactly $34 per night for my room, which includes a refrigerator to store, among other things, breastmilk! Really, I don't think I could ask for better turnouts.

I was going to stay with my friend Big Perm, but another writer/mom friend talked me into a hotel. If I am going to be sans baby, that means I am going to get uninterrupted sleep. I should indulge in that sleep in a real bed in a room with a door that closes, right? Right!

Thing two: I found out half the conference will be in the convention center in addition to the hotel. So that made me have more worries about pumping. In vain! I phoned the convention center and it turns out they have several Mothers Rooms with chairs and outlets. Could this conference BE any better at easing my anxiety?

Things are starting to come together. Heck, I might even take a non-nursing bra with me on this journey. Or a non-nursing shirt! How cool would it be to wear real clothes???

Very Boring

2010-01-19T15:13:00.002-05:00

I know it's totally uninteresting to read about when things are going well, but I have had a really, really positive experience with the past few days. Here are some highlights:

1. On Saturday, Corey told me not to worry about dinner, that he would make it. This usually means there will be something from a box served alongside chicken sausage. This time, he made this amazing, complex meal. Using a cookbook! He served me Alice Waters fish with sauce, vegetables with Alice Waters sauce, quinoa that was all seasoned and delicious and cooked in broth. I am telling you, I almost let him impregnate me again I was so beside myself with joy. I don't think he has EVER chopped and sauteed and prepared food in that manner. And it was not associated with any sort of occasion or holiday. Just because. Color me delighted!

2. Several of the Crossfit workouts this week were partner ones, so I got to do a full workout while Corey or my friend Kathy held Miles. I sweated my face off and almost did Fight Gone Bad Rx. Those darn push presses...next time!!

3. My godmother sent me a bunch of chocolate as a belated Christmas gift. Boo ya!

4. I went to the chiropractor and had my back adjusted. I have had this nagging hip pain since I was pregnant, surgery didn't help, and lugging Miles around has made things super hard. But now, a few cracks and crinkles and I feel great. Best part? Totally covered by insurance (apart from a minimal co-pay).

This is the best I have felt in 6 months. And all it took was food, a little exercise, and a talkative man cracking my neck.

I am sure there will be some sort of disaster or something that will produce a more interesting bit of writing in the coming days, but for now I am boringly happy. As Sandra Boynton would say, Moo, Baa, La La La!

Evangelical Post About the Fruit of the Vine

2010-01-18T15:44:00.005-05:00

I am preaching the gospel of spaghetti squash. Yes. Squash. Until yesterday, I had not eaten this particular vine fruit. Acorn and butternut squash are regulars at my house, but not typically spaghetti squash. Then, this girl from the gym suggested eating meat sauce over spaghetti squash for a Zone-friendly, balanced meal.

(Side note: Corey is basically doing the Zone now, which makes me irritated because the last thing I need is extra time requirements to weigh each ingredient I throw in the dinners I prepare...or restrictions on the ingredients I can use! I just want to cook things, ok? I don't KNOW how much a handful of spinach weighs!)

So after searching in several stores, we located a spaghetti squash. Not sure if we are off season or if there has been a rush, but it was hard to come by. I roasted that sucker in the oven, carved it open, dug out the guts with a fork, and LO!

The resulting meal had the same mouth-feel as spaghetti, tasted yummier, and was incredibly more satisfying and delicious. Let me explain to you how I love me a big bowl of pasta. I love it. Corey and I have, on many, many, many occasions, eaten an entire bag of pasta in one sitting. I LOVE pasta. I usually make big vats of sauce so I can eat bowls and bowls of it over the course of a week.

Spaghetti squash tastes awesomer than pasta. I am totally sold. Corey later informed me of the exact Zone components or block whatevers of the meal and didn't even irritate me. I heard him say I could eat twice as much of it and shoved him out of the way for more helpings. Do I feel glad squash is good for me? Sure. Do I love that I have uncovered a new favorite, versatile food? You betcha!

You heard it here first. Spaghetti squash is the new dark chocolate. So go, children, and buy thee some spaghetti squash, roast it, and eat it with good cheer.

Circles

2010-01-17T16:49:00.005-05:00

Six months ago this very moment, I was standing in the shower at Magee moaning in time to Snatam and waiting for Miles to evacuate my body. Man, I was hungry. Why can't laboring women at hospitals eat food? Anyway, for the next few months AFTER July 17, I spent most of my time marching up and down stairs as this was the only way to soothe my high needs, screamy baby.

Many other wonderful people in my life took stints marching those stairs. Corey spent more time, more hours marching up and down stairs wearing Miles than anyone in the world. I remember like yesterday those long, multi-hour stretches of Corey marching while the static blared and we prayed and begged Miles to just go to sleep already.

Today, to celebrate his half birthday, we took our giggly, farty, rolly baby on the adventure of his lifetime. We took him stair climbing in the Cathedral of Learning! We marched his ass up 36 flights of stairs over and over again. It was like giving him a million dollars or 80 bars of super dark chocolate or a blank check for the bike shop or anything else you can think of that constitutes your ultimate fantasy.

I wish you all could have seen that kid in his Ergo on Corey's back. He loved himself! He fell asleep a few times, he stared at things, he giggled, he chewed on the straps. And Corey and I moved our bodies and felt good. It was like a great family date.

As we wound circles up that giant building, I couldn't help but think of the exercise as a rite of passage. I felt like telling Miles he'd better appreciate this stair climb, because it is probably the last one he'll ever get. I am so thankful that he no longer needs such endeavors to be a calm and happy baby! How very far we have come together...

Lactation Rooms

2010-01-15T20:05:00.002-05:00

I am speaking at a conference in Denver this April. Want to know what stresses me out about this endeavor? The same thing that has stressed me out for the past six months: my boobs.

Where will I pump while I am there? What will I do with all my milk? How will it stay cold on the flight home? Will I have such pumping anxiety that I won't be able to pump and, thus, my milk supply will dry up while my poor, poor baby yearns and yearns for a nice nurse???

Rather than drown in what-ifs for two and a half months, I have begun proactively addressing my worst-case-scenarios. First step: I called the conference hotel to see about a lactation room.

When I first called the hotel, a chipper British-sounding dude answered the phone. "Hello," I told him, "I will be coming to your hotel for a conference in April. I was wondering if you have lactation rooms for nursing mothers?"

At this point, he began to stammer and sputter and seem obviously uncomfortable. Also? The British accent went away. "Ummmmmm I really have no idea. Ummmmmm I don't believe we have anything like that. Ummmmmm no. We do not."

"May I speak with your manager, please," I said. He asked if he could transfer me to the concierge instead. I said sure.

So the concierge gets on the phone, an upbeat woman this time. I asked her the same question. And she was all about it! "Oh, honey, you're not the first. Trust me. Let me tell you what we do. I stick the nursing moms in the manager's closet. I say it's a closet. But it's been really a nursing room for years. There's a ratty couch in there and a plug. You just come find me when you need it."

Isn't that cool? Isn't that interesting? The dude at the front desk had no idea there was such an accommodation and the concierge was a wealth of helpful, reassuring information. I think I need a concierge to follow me around everywhere I go. Certainly someone to identify safe pumping places for me.

Next step: secure a fridge/freezer for storing bountiful breastmilk.

New Publication!

2010-01-14T18:56:00.002-05:00

Check out page 110 of this month's Fit Pregnancy. I wrote about belly button bling for pregnant ladies! I am unabashedly proud of writing articles that people can snag at the grocery store, even if they are fewer than 200 words. For now!!

Such Validation

2010-01-11T13:19:00.003-05:00

I have not made it a secret that I felt (and feel) traumatized by my birth experience. I am currently hard at work researching an article about this very topic, a process which I find completely therapeutic and enlightening. I learned a statistic today that both floored me and gave me such validation, I can barely express my relief at having read it.

According to research conducted by the Childbirth Connection, lots of women experience trauma related to their childbirth. This doesn't even necessarily mean women experience emergency C-sections as I did. Plenty of women who have had vaginal births have things go wrong or are treated in such a way as to make them feel un-listened-to or unimportant. The result?

18% of American women demonstrate some signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after giving birth. That's nearly 1 in 5 women.

9% of American women demonstrate ALL the symptoms of PTSD after giving birth. Nearly ten percent of the women in this country, 400,000 women every year. These numbers are staggering. We tend to associate PTSD with soldiers returning home from war, not with women having babies, bringing "bundles of joy" into the world.

But Birth Trauma is a real thing. Having a healthy, beautiful baby and mothering that baby do not take away from the experience of bringing that baby into the world. It is still possible to experience the birth process separately from experiencing motherhood. The birth process is important to women and in many, many cases this birth process leaves them feeling...well...traumatized.

My great hope as I work on this article is that one mother out there will read my writing and recognize her experiences are real and valid and that she is not crazy. Most important, I hope just one mother will discover that she is not alone. Far, far, far from alone.

Information about the New Mothers Speak Out survey can be found here.

No Idea

2010-01-09T09:00:00.001-05:00

Warning: This is a post about poop. Lots of poop.

This morning, Miles farted a mighty fart. The force of that fart lifted his butt and legs off the ground, like Denise Austin working her lower abs. He then proceeded to loudly poop right there in the living room, like what's the big deal? I'm pooping here!

I gave him some time to finish and then carried him upstairs to change him in his crib. He had still been in his pjs, so I took those off thinking it was time for some clothes. Then I opened up the diaper and started to clean things up. Only, he wasn't done pooping! More and more and more poop just started coming out. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't fast enough with the clean diaper, so it was just flowing out of the dirty diaper.

I knew one thing: I didn't want poop in the crib because I had just changed the sheets and anyone who has ever changed a crib sheet knows what a miserable freaking job that is. But what I didn't know was what do to about the poop.

Panicking, I scooped up the baby and ran into the bathroom with him, catching the poop in my hand as he pooped it out. I held him above the toilet, where he started to scream and cry. Probably because there was icy water splashing back on him as his poop feel into the bowl.

So I'm standing there covered in poop holding him while he poops and cries and I'm saying, "It's ok! You're such a big boy! Look at you pooping on the potty!" But I can't figure out how to clean us off. Should I put him on the cold tiles on the ground? Should I put him on the bathmat? I had no idea.

In the end, I used my elbows to get some toilet paper, ripped it with my teeth, and did a sort of cursory wipe job. Then I put him in his crib.

I turned around to take off my shirt, covered in poop as it was, and grab a diaper. But then I heard a horrible splashing sound.

I turned back around to see Miles, sputtering and choking as he forcefully peed into his own mouth. He started trying to swat the pee away, getting it all over the walls, the pictures on the walls, the toybox, the crib rails, the floor, and of course the damn crib sheets. Then he started to cry. And also shiver, because he was naked (remember, I was going to put clothes on him and had taken off his pjs).

So I clutch my pissy, shivering, crying child to my naked chest and I have no idea what to do. I mean, what do you do? Where do you put the baby down while you gather your thoughts? What can you touch without contaminating it? Why doesn't anyone tell you what to do when you have poop on your hands and pee and poop on your chest and you are holding a piss-covered, naked, shivering, crying, cold baby?

There is certainly not a chapter in ANY parenting book (I'm looking at you Dr. Sears) telling you what to do in this scenario. I had no idea. I pretty much stood in the middle of the room saying, "It's ok! It's ok! Everything is ok!" as the pee dripped onto my slippers.

I was paralyzed by my inability to know what to do. Should I touch the doorknob on the closet to get a towel, spreading more feces and urine around the room? Should I just put him on the hardwood floor and then have to mop later? I had no idea! No freaking idea!

Here is what I did: I put Miles back in the urine-soaked crib. I ran into the bathroom and prepared a warm, wet, soapy washcloth. I gave him a vigorous scrubbing and put him on the carpet on the floor of his room, draped a blanket over him, and immediately secured a diaper over his junk.

Then I washed my hands.

Then I ran back into the room and put him in a warm, fuzzy sweatsuit.

Then I moved all the furniture away from the walls so I could scrub pee-pee off the crib, the floor, the toybox, the walls, and the artwork. I was still mostly naked, wearing pee-pee slippers. I heaved all the dirty toys and sheets and mattress pad into MW's hamper and just scrubbed and mopped up and scrubbed, saying, "It's ok! You're such a good baby right now!"

Meanwhile, Miles rolled himself over, got one arm stuck in the ottoman for his glider rocker, and started pulling the pissy toys out of his hamper and putting them in his mouth. Which I didn't notice because I was cleaning and muttering.

At this point, my mom tells me I should have cleaned out the inside of his mouth. It makes sense. He had peed directly in there and was then sucking on urine-soaked animals. But I had no idea.

I put Miles in a safer area (the floor of my bedroom), finished cleaning, wrestled with the sheets for a half hour to get the crib back in order. At this point, Miles was hungry. But I was all covered in pee still, so I had to take a shower since I didn't want to put a pee-pee nipple in his mouth after all of that. Then I gave my baby some milk and some cuddling time, because we both needed it.

Just When...

2010-01-08T09:26:00.002-05:00

Just when I am at the end of my frayed rope with Miles, when I can't stand for another instant to be a human pacifier or to feel milk squirting out of my body into someone's mouth for one more nanosecond...Just when that happens, he blows my mind.

This morning, I was nursing him to sleep for a nap. He was fighting the nap. For a long time, he wrangled and mangled his little body and looked around and I was about to give up, stomp downstairs and feed him a papaya. But then he looked up at me and made eye contact and he settled down.

A sense of calm came over his face, I felt his body relax, and his little palm opened and rested there on my breast. He fell asleep. In that little face was such a perfect sense of calm, the most untroubled of little minds. It was a miracle. His peacefulness radiated through the whole room and I hated to leave him there.

But I did! I left him in there and went on to do other things.

Motivation

2010-01-07T09:12:00.002-05:00

I have been struggling with my motivation at the gym. For one thing, I have to go to the gym with Miles (see? Right away with the excuses). This generally does not go well. I get about 20 minutes of working out time before he loses his sh*t. Luckily, many Crossfit workouts can be completed in this amount of time. But often, they cannot.

This week, halfway through a workout, I found myself rowing and doing good mornings with him strapped to my chest in the Bjorn. Usually, I just stop what I'm doing to pick him up, soothe him, put him back down, and work out for a few more minutes. If I'm really honest with myself, I need the "breaks" in the routines. I maybe pat him a little longer than he needs to be patted...

I am devastated at how much fitness I've lost. You should have seen me 42 weeks pregnant. I was in the best shape of my life, I think. And I was never, ever a fit person. I had one "fit" year of college when crazy Jim made us do really torturous things at conditioning. I sort of tapered off until I started Crossfit in June of 2008 and got to a really, really fit place. I was so proud of myself! I noticed huge differences at rugby practice in my sprint times and everything. Only I still wasn't a super fit person. I couldn't even do a pull-up or climb a rope at that point.

Then I got knocked up. Then I had major abdominal surgery where they took my organs out of my body. Then I had this high needs baby. Etc. And now, when I do get a chance to work out, I let all of these excuses get in the way of my motivation to work hard.

Last night, I dropped down to a really low weight medicine ball, used a box for jumping pull-ups, and quit the workout after 4 rounds. If I am truly honest with my body, I could have done better. I could have given more. I just didn't. And this wasn't a lack of energy or sleep deprivation thing. It was giving up.

I seem to have lost my edge. The competitive fire that burned, burned, burned inside me is, like, fizzled out or something. Before, when I couldn't do things like run or hoist my body weight up to a metal bar, it wasn't because I didn't try hard. It was because I just couldn't. Now, I feel like I am so far behind in my fitness that it's almost insurmountable. I feel myself giving up.

This terrifies me because there is a strong tendency in my family toward out-of-shape-ness. I say on one level that I want to avoid this, that I want to be fit. But something is blocking my drive to get there.

I need a Rocky marathon. Stat.

Strobes

2010-01-06T09:12:00.002-05:00

Last night was a little better in the sleep department, so I feel like I have more patience today, if not more clarity. We are trying a two-pronged approach to the sleep trouble this week.

Prong 1: Light.
Corey has hammered some jaggedy nails into the top of MW's window frame and, from them, draped a navy blue Ikea sheet that doesn't fit any of the mattresses in our house. Because we don't have European beds I guess. With the trashy looking sheet hung, MW's room is black as pitch.

We decided to do this because the people across the street from us have a strobe-light laser show for the holidays. They have Griswald-quality lights hung all over their house and the lights flash on and off in time to holiday music that they blare all night long. They also have a plywood Nativity set, but that's neither here nor there.

The strobe lights don't bother Corey and me because Corey has moved his wardrobe in front of the windows in our bedroom. I don't want to talk about his decision to rearrange furniture such that it blocks all light from the room. The point is I didn't know the strobe lights continued into the night until I went into MW's room and thought there were police cars outside. Then I saw the laser light show and we hung the sheet.

Prong 2: Food
Our pediatrician had us start Miles on solids about a month ago, thinking that with his particular struggles gaining weight combined with his reflux, it would be good to get MW eating some solids. We are now seeing some really good weight gain, sometimes an ounce a day. So we make sure to cram bananas and avocados and sweet potatoes and mushed up pears, etc. into his diet.

I don't cram. We offer it, mashed up, in nice little tablespoon-sized portions. But he seems to like food. A lot. Particularly pumpkin. And boy, oh man does the food change the consistency of his BMs. Does it help him sleep better? Who the heck knows.

Hopefully, the dark room (or at least a room that does not resemble a rave) paired with a full tummy will give us some results in terms of fewer night wakings. As for why he resists sleep for 75 minutes when he DOES wake up, well we will chip away at that problem next.

Demoralizing, Soul Sucking Torture

2010-01-05T07:30:00.003-05:00

My baby still won't sleep at night. I can't stand it. It has been six months and he still wakes up repeatedly. Corey and I had what I thought was an acceptable system where I would diaper and feed him during one waking and Corey would do the next so we both could get a little bit of sleep.

Only now, Miles has changed the rules on us. He no longer goes back to sleep after eating and getting his ass wiped. And he's too damn heavy to march up and down the stairs anymore. His night wakings take a minimum of 75 minutes and usually include screaming and yelling from both frustrated parents. Ok, it's me doing the screaming and yelling. Corey just angrily gets back in bed and fluffs the covers over and over and over again, silently.

Miles makes me ache. Just when his sleep resistance shreds me into a writhing heap, he sticks out his little arm and holds my finger with all his strength. I just know he is equally devastated that he can't figure out how to fall asleep. He seems to be begging me to help him, but I have NO IDEA what else I can do for him.

We get two schools of support through this situation. One group of people tells us it's time to let Miles cry it out, that he needs to learn to self soothe and that enough is enough with this nighttime bullshit. Another group of people tells us that parenting is a 24-hr job, and that we should view his night wakings as nighttime parenting and just surrender to our hungry, high needs baby. This group reminds us how long it took us to get Miles gaining weight, that he really seems to need all the night time calories. Again and again and again.

It always seems like those are the options: martyrdom or Ferberizing.

My gut tells me not to let Miles cry it out. I can't bear it. Plus, when he becomes really upset he vomits. He vomits so much vomit that he smears it in his hair, in his ears, on the sheets, on the walls. When we leave the room, frustrated that he won't sleep, we inevitably come back 10 minutes later to a vomit whiteout. That doesn't feel like good parenting to me.

I just wish I could figure out what the hell this kid needs. There is still no consistency from one day to the next. A nap could be a half hour or 2.5. He could wake up for the day at 4am or 830. And so I stagger on, sleepless, filled with the high anxiety of never, ever knowing what will come next for this baby.

This, too, shall pass. That mantra has been the only consistency in my life since July. This, too, shall pass is all I have left. It seems those words will have to spell me a little bit longer.

Would You Rather...

2010-01-04T21:08:00.002-05:00

If you had the financial means, would you rather have full-time household help (like, a person to pick up ALL your crap and mop all your floors and dust your flipping ceiling fan blades all the time) or a driver? (It should go without saying that the driver would both buckle a baby into those damn car seats AND carry the flipping car seat thing to and from the car)

For me, the answer is definitely driver. Driver!

On days like today, where snowy weather increases my driving anxiety to epic proportions, I think about how different my life would be with a driver. I could have actually gone to Dozen for my interview (for the article I'm writing about cupcakes) for one thing. I wouldn't feel worried about getting to the gym tomorrow for another!

And I could go to the Strip (when there aren't sinkholes) any time I wanted with a driver to parallel park for me. It's like my ultimate fantasy. "Driver," I'd say, "let's go to the fish store." Or the biscotti place. Or the tea shop. Or even Squirrel Hill! I never go to Squirrel Hill because there's nowhere to park.

My friend Manidis once told me it was extremely sad and terrible that I plan my day around parallel parking. She can't believe that I sometimes don't go places because of the lack of convenient parking. I mean, some of these locations expect you to parallel park on the left on one-way streets! Sheesh! If she were a true friend, she'd stop trying to teach me to park more confidently and just hire me a driver.

Obviously, when it gets nice out again and my bike, Etienne, has air in her tires, I will realize this is a ridiculous fantasy and switch over to wanting the full-time domestic help to pick up after my husband. But for now, I dream of Morgan Freeman beeping the horn as he scrapes snow off the Mazda for me.

Yurt People

2010-01-02T20:53:00.003-05:00

I can't stop thinking about this article from the New York Times. I find myself obsessing over the technical details of living as a family in a yurt. Like what did they do about diapers? I couldn't rest until I found out the answer. I actually emailed Erin and she wrote back! They use pocket diapers with compostable/flushable inserts. G-dipes. We could totally do that.

But what about that outhouse? Can you imagine going out to the bathroom in the middle of the night in an Alaskan winter? I bet they have a chamber pot. I just bet.

I think what truly inspires me about the article is the minimalist lifestyle of this family. I find myself looking around my room and watering at the mouth, thinking of all the material possessions I could get rid of. I'm currently sitting in my office and I think, of all the books, clothes, knitting supplies, and wedding memorabilia, the only things I really couldn't part with would be my laptop and my passport. Who really needs the Granta Book of Reportage? Or all my old drivers licenses?

When I texted my mom about this story, she was quick to inform me I couldn't move my family to a yurt, not even a yurt with broadband. Obviously, I am not going to move my family to a yurt. But I can strive to stay in this house, even if we do have more children. I thought about this as I was rocking MW to sleep. He doesn't need half the crap in his room. He doesn't need 85% of the crap that we have heaped up in the basement. And Corey and I surely don't need 85% of our accumulated crap (though I dare say Corey has accumulated more crap...I reject my mother's gathering genes while Corey seems to embrace those from his father).

I would really, really feel happy if I spent my free time 1) sorting through every object in every room and making a huge Goodwill donation and then 2) setting up more efficient, thoughtful storage in the basement. I feel so inspired by Higman/McKittrick family! Sayonara, extra possessions. Sayonara, excess/frivolous spending. What positive changes can this story bring about in my life?

Oh, Kenneth

2010-01-02T14:28:00.003-05:00

New Year's Eve I went to bed at 930, right after I watched a repeat of 30 Rock. We're still going to be pretty early around here because Miles is still giving us lots of sleep trouble. That particular night he was up three times...

But anyway, right before bed, at some point the character Kenneth made reference, sarcastically, to something being as useful as "a college degree for moms." That one stung, Kenneth! Now, I know Tina Fey and her writers were being clever, but given the recent job shift around my house, that line just really sunk into my bones and has been nagging me since. Way to home in on the thing that makes me question my self-worth and make a joke of it, Kenneth the Paige!

Of course I know that education for education's sake is valuable for everyone. My many years of higher education have made me an enlightened being... But in a way, Kenneth is right. College was pretty un-useful for the work I am doing right now. I mean, never once in college did any professor teach me what to do when your child has pooped through all the diapers you brought along for a brief outing to watch a football game.

There is shit I am going through right now that nobody ever teaches you in college. What good is microeconomics knowledge when my main concern this week is bulb-suctioning mucous out from my wee one's little nostrils? Where were the courses that prepared me for the miracle that is Miles' ear. I mean, my body made an ear! That I can now stare at for many hours in a row.

I feel like SAHM-ing, in all its agony and ecstasy (two weeks into it anyway), is completely unrelated to anything I learned in college. So you make your little jokes, Kenneth. And one day, when I found an accredited college that teaches people how to parent (required course materials to include dark chocolate and Baby Bjorn), I will email you an enrollment packet!

Those Darn Neighbors!

2009-12-31T08:28:00.003-05:00

Preface: I don't get out much.

Our neighbors are too nice. We figured this out when we moved in and they mulched our bushes for us. Then they pretended not to be angry when I woveled up their oregano plants. Now, ever since I slipped down the stairs and banged my elbows (still healing!)
they have been shoveling our walk and salting our stairs for us. Which is, of course, awesome. Unless you are crazy! Which I am!

I feel so driven to pay back their shovel deed. When it snows, I wait for the last flake to fall so I can spring outside and quickly shovel before they get there. I want them to wake up to shoveled steps! So this morning, I nursed Miles and waited for my moment. It stopped snowing.

I practically flung the baby at Corey, slammed on my snowpants, and ran outside, not even checking to see if the steps were icy. Before I could stick a shovel in the snow, I was thwarted by G, all dressed in his fancy work clothes, nearly finished with their walk. Gah! I think I actually yelled at him. He seemed confused, like he didn't know it was a contest?

Now I have to think of some other way to thank them. When I asked him to describe the contents of his lunch, he mentioned that he was out of bread. Maybe I'll bake them some bread, using herbs I'll steal from his garden...

Chicken Divan

2009-12-29T12:59:00.003-05:00

My grandmother grew up right around the Depression and WW2 rationing and is, well, super old. I think she is 81 or 82. She doesn't quite get the concept of vegetarian and she sure doesn't like to talk about or seem aware of what happens in industrial farming operations. She seems to not be entirely aware that when a food contains meat, that makes it a meat dish. Or that chicken is a meat. I have talked about this before.

So at my family's Christmas party this year, we were supposed to be eating macaroni and cheese. It was wonderful. Nanny made a big pan of it. Mmmmm. But then there was some other old lady there who was somehow related (not sure) and she brought a pan of something called Chicken Divan. Or Divine? Anyway, nobody even mentioned the word vegetarian or talked about dietary preferences. But she kept walking around saying, "That is totally vegetarian except for the chicken!" I just chuckled into my napkin.

Then, when Nanny was dishing up leftovers to take home, she kept trying to get me to take the leftover chicken divan. I was trying to just tell her no thank you without getting into dietary choices. But she kept saying, "The only meat in there is chicken! It's practically vegetarian!"

I finally just said we didn't have room in the car to take it back with us. I wonder what my older sister would have done?

Judgey Judy

2009-12-24T06:27:00.003-05:00

I took Miles to Whole Foods yesterday because we had eaten literally everything in the house. I'm talking we had even consumed those random little half bags of whole wheat pasta hiding in the back of the pantry. We were stocking up on non-perishables!

So we made it through most of the store and saw there was a sample lady in the cheese section. Excellent! I'm back on dairy anyway. I shot out my left paw for a cheese sample when this douchebag lady in stretch pants grabbed my arm and said, "You know that's RAW cheese, right?"

I said, "OK" and popped that cheese in my mouth.

She looked at Miles, dangling from the front of me in his polar bear costume (so cute!) and said, "Oh. (sniff) You must not be nursing."

First: nursing moms aren't supposed to eat cheese made from raw milk. Just like we aren't supposed to drink alcohol. But I can have a glass of wine now and again and by God! I can eat a cheese sample from the cheese lady in Whole Foods!

I became so enraged by this woman's audacity. I thought of all the many months I have just spent struggling with nursing, the many hundreds of ccs or whatever of Fenugreek I ingest daily. The hours I have spent watching this video (where the woman's yield is truly staggering and makes me feel competitive/inadequate). And this grocery store judgey woman wants to get all up in my face for indulging in some local cheese?

What if I weren't nursing? She doesn't know anything about us. Maybe I had some sort of breast disease. Maybe Miles was adopted. The way she emphasized NOT and NURSING implied that I was totally garbage to her. I was so agog I just stomped away and told Miles he wasn't allowed to be like her when he grew up.

People NEVER have any sort of filter when it comes to sharing their ideas about your baby. When I was super pregnant and walked around with my skirt tucked into my underpants it took many blocks on a crowded city street and many floors in a crowded building before anyone said something to me. But dangle a baby from your chest and eat some cheese and everyone has an opinion to share!

Sometimes I know I am a pretty judgemental person, but I like to think that I would never approach a stranger in a grocery store and judge her parenting choices.

Paranoia

2009-12-20T20:24:00.003-05:00

We did not take Miles to see Santa this year. Because of Swine Flu. Yes, I know it's his first Christmas and you only get one first Christmas and my parents took me to see Santa for my first Christmas so Miles should have gone and cried on his lap like all the other babies. But there is so much Swine Flu! And he's fewer than six months old. Just the thought of him getting this terrible disease, or any disease, makes me shiver.

I went through so much with Miles just getting him to enjoy being outside the womb. I am feeling way too vulnerable (paranoid?) to take him out of the house, let alone stand with him in line and hand him to a germy old man.

So, with this fear in mind, I headed to the grocery store on Friday. Not for bread (which I bake now) or milk to weather the blizzard, but for moist towelettes, barbecue sauce and avocados. The point is that Miles and I were in Giant Eagle in a strip mall one week before Christmas on the day of a big snowfall. It was mobbed.

The crowds didn't bother me too much at first. I had Miles in the Ergo and was planning to speedily weave in and out of the lanes. I always think of my college rugby coach in such situations and practice evasive running. Only this time, I had a super cute baby wearing a polar bear fleece outfit. I'll tell you what--every single person in Giant Eagle tried to stiff arm me, tell me my baby was adorable, and then touch his face.

I was looking at the different choices in the condiments aisle when I felt a tap on my shoulder (GERMS!). "You have the cutest baby!"

"Well, thank you!" And I continued to look at the sauce, not realizing the stranger was not done yet. Oh, no! This woman wanted to touch my baby's face and coo at him. It's ok to coo at my baby. But touch his face? I did a little spin move to escape. Little did I know, this old lady was but one of a zillion incidents where I had to evade a would-be face touch.

This happened again and again and again. Every stranger in that joint was all up on his skin. I'm not trying to keep him in a plastic bubble, but can you not touch my too-young-for-a-vaccination baby with your swine flu fingers in the grocery store, strangers?

I know he is irresistibly cute. For heaven's sake, he just learned to blow raspberries and has been sticking out his tongue and smiling:

Can you imagine how cute he was doing that dressed like a polar bear, facing out in the Ergo carrier? It's intense.

But, no matter how cute, he is still a vulnerable little dude. I don't know why people think it's ok to touch strangers' babies. I would never reach my hand out and touch a stranger's baby! On the face! Each time someone tried to touch Miles, I saw the whole thing in slow motion: the withered, leprosy skin sagging from a ragged, boney finger. Festering disease and boogers under the fingernails. Lice, possibly Ebola incubating on the finger's surface. A mess, I tell you. I'm sure of it. And the Swine Flu!!!

By the time I left the store, I was dizzy from so many spins and twirls and sidesteps (plant, shift the weight, stiff arm out!) to get away from these touchy strangers. Now, ordinarily, I am a person who eats food off the floor. Once, in a shameful, hungry moment when I was working in the dining commons in my college dorm, I even ate an (apparently) untouched piece of sausage.

But this is a baby! In a polar bear outfit. Totally different story.

Call me paranoid, crazy mother, standoffish asshole, whatever. But I am hereby instituting a rule:

If you are a stranger to me, you are not allowed to touch Miles. At all.

SAHM

2009-12-18T10:09:00.003-05:00

Stay At Home Mom. That's me now. I did not renew my teaching contract for the spring because, at the time we needed to do that, I was only getting about 90 minutes of sleep each day and my eyelashes fell out of my face. Not to mention I wasn't safely able to operate a vehicle. I thought, "teaching might not be the best activity for me in this state of health."

So that leaves me at home with Miles from now until at least September 2010. This makes me extremely uncomfortable. I'm a workaholic, you see. I have my freelance writing, but it's super hard to write and simultaneously take care of an infant. I've had to turn away work from many of my favorite clients. Some days I can get a sporadic hour of work done while he stares at his mobile, but that's only enough concentration for fluffy writing or perhaps some editing. As for writing actual sentences? Not happening so much. I want to know how writers manage to work from home while their kids are there. Seriously! How do they do it? Send me an email!

Anyway, the biggest blow to my identity is having to rely on Corey financially. Like, we are combining our bank accounts and he is the breadwinner. I still can't really believe it. Can Corey and I afford this situation? Sort of. I didn't really take maternity leave when I had Miles, and I had saved up a pretty nice cushion for that time period. Plus I'm due for a string of overdue freelancing checks that will give us a nice little cushion. We'll manage. It's not like we're going out boozing or hitting the movies at night time!

There's a part of me that is excited about this change because I'll get to spend a bunch of quality time with my baby who gets more delightful every day. It's not like I'll be spending my days marching up and down the stairs like I was this summer. Now we eat sweet potatoes and read books and blow raspberries at each other. So that's cool.

But the other half of me, the one with an MFA and several master's certificates, longs for a different kind of stimulation, maybe a nice conversation about pedagogy every now and again. It's a complicated place to be in. How can I rejoice in this gift of time spent raising my baby and still fulfill the competitive, intellectual slices of my identity?

Because I'll be staying at home, elbow-deep in laundry and diapers and Miles, I have decided it's extra important to have goals and to stick to them. Right now, I resolve to do the following for the first quarter of 2010:
1. Leave the house every single day at least once
2. Work out at least twice a week
3. Attend 4 "cultural" events (movies, lecture, ballet, etc.)
4. Read 2 books

Just looking at that list makes me feel overwhelmed, like maybe I added too many things. And that reaction right there, the armpit sweat and heart palpitations, tells me that somehow, the intellectual part of myself will be ok for the time being because the mom part of me is still in basic survival mode. There will be many decades of opportunities to work myself ragged. I have a rare, rare opportunity here to mother my own child. I'd better get started.

And Boom Goes the Dynamite

2009-12-15T15:40:00.002-05:00

My little sister is in town visiting. She watched Miles for me this week when I went to campus for meetings and paper grading. But before that, on Sunday, we planned to go to Dozen for brunch. We didn't look at the weather or the news, but opened the door and headed out for what we thought would be a lovely little breakfast. Only there had been a massive ice storm that literally shut down all major roads in the whole region.

The porch (and all major roadways) was a sheet of ice. I stepped onto this porch in my rainboots and slipped. Totally ass over elbows. Up into the air like a cartoon character. And then I just kept falling. It was like after I hit the ground, there was more and more ground to hit and I kept on going.

I slid down the porch steps on my back and took the brunt of the fall on my elbows. Then I just sat in a freezing puddle on the landing crying like Miles until the neighbors all came outside and Betsy (clad in little elfish suede boots) slipped and slid as she helped me inside. Thank God Corey had Miles inside and I didn't fall with him! How embarrassing. One of the neighbors thought to say, "Didn't you watch the news? They shut down the Parkway!" And lo, they had.

Anyway, it's a few days later and I have this massive bruise on my arm...and I love it! It makes me feel like I play rugby again! I keep showing it to everyone and poking it. I feel like it's a passport into my old self, who used to be all tough and get bruises. It's been way over a year, you know. Many, many months since I've had a bruise. Welcome back, bruisey skin! I missed you.

(This picture doesn't really do it justice...)

Call the locksmith

2009-12-07T16:02:00.002-05:00

Corey and I have this inside joke where, whenever one of us (usually me) is overreacting, the other says, "Call the locksmith." This is because, and I can't remember where we were living at the time, I once lost my keys for like five minutes and was running around screaming, "We need to call a locksmith!!!!"

I jump to conclusions...

I also tend to lock myself out of my dwellings. A lot. In college, I was famous for running down to the Toftrees office in my undies and pjs, barefoot, in the winter time when I would lock myself out en route to the laundry room. I blame my parents for this habit, because I grew up in a house where the doors were never locked. I didn't learn to internalize the notion of, "Do I have my keys with me?"

Anyway, we used to have a hidden key outside our house, but brought it in when we got the driveway redone and never remembered to put it back. Plus, Corey always has his keys, so who ever thinks to check?

Friday night, we headed to our friends' house for dessert. MW was being a little angel and even FELL ASLEEP IN THE CAR on the way home. I'll say that again. My son fell asleep in the car! Look out! We were so happy, my husband and I, gazing at the lights, talking about life, licking pie off our lips, when I said, absentmindedly, "so where did you find your keys this morning?"

Because Corey had misplaced his keys that morning before work. Which wasn't a big deal, because I wasn't going to leave the house and lock him out during the day. Even if I did leave the house, I was unlikely to lock it. I'm famous for going to the grocery store and leaving the front door OPEN, literally hanging open, not to mention unlocked. I don't fear thieves because Frank is always keeping a vigil from his porch.

So anyway, Corey said, "I don't know that I ever did find my keys."

"Well, did you leave the front door unlocked?"

"No....Don't you have your keys?"

"Of course I don't have my keys! I didn't even bring my purse!" (I also never take my wallet or identification or anything of that nature with me...I know! I suck at this!)

So we pulled in the driveway and Corey went around to see whether fate smiled upon us. She had not, as all the windows and doors were sealed up tight. I sat in the back seat with my sleeping baby and phoned people who might potentially have keys to our house. They were all out, of course, because it was 745 on a Friday and we're the only ones who go to bed that early.

Corey eventually looked back at me, sucked in his spit, and said, "We might have to actually call the locksmith." I laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more. Then I googled "locksmith, Pittsburgh, PA" from my phone.

Corey left the car to knock on doors to see if any friends of the previous owners still had keys. After a half hour, we hit paydirt when the previous owner's mother (who lives a few blocks down the hill) agreed to drive up with a spare and a good nagging session about the importance of leaving a key with a neighbor. Thanks! Noted!

But the moral of this story is not that we drove straight to Home Depot to have copies made and delivered to our neighbors, nor did we re-hide the outside key. The moral is that we had this potentially emergent, stressful situation and I remained calm! If it weren't a locksmith situation, Corey would never have had the chance to even make a locksmith jokey reference. Because I was totally chill. And Miles kept on sleeping. Something about the previous four months spent ceaselessly nurturing an inconsolable screamsicle has given me perspective!

I knew that, worst case scenario, we'd call the proverbial locksmith, be down one inside joke and out $100. I have never had such vision, such composure. I found it refreshing. I feel like a whole new woman.

(Corey later found his keys in his pants and we took that old-owner's-mother's key and gave it to a trusted neighbor)

Cross This Road When You Come To It

2009-12-04T10:14:00.003-05:00

Here is a piece of context: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I am on campus all day. Meanwhile, my breastfed baby is at home slowly sucking down my hard-pumped nutrients. I have increasing difficulty pumping, mostly due to this and similar incidents with the dean. When I do finally get home, I generally burst in the front door, change my pants, and immediately nurse his starving face off. I can't dally after work. I have a baby to feed! I rush-walk with elbows out to get to the bus and I pinch my own fingers with anxiety if the bus sits in traffic. The journey home is the most stressful part of my whole darn day.

Here is another piece of context: At the writing center, I have been working with this blind student lately. He tends to schedule my last appointment of the day and then, since we are headed in the same direction, he asks me to help him walk to the bus shelter on 5th and Bigelow. At first this was a really interesting experience. I never helped a blind person walk before, so I liked having to talk about bumps and steps and inclines. But then, it takes MUCH longer than my race-walk with elbows out. Much, much longer. And I usually get the bus at 5th and Atwood, where there are typically still seats, instead of 5th and Bigelow, by which point the seats are all gone and the aisle is packed tight like my new back fat in my old shirts.

This means that if I help this student to the bus stop, I generally miss the EBO and have to catch the next one 7 minutes later AND I have to stand the whole way home. So my baby is crying, I'm standing, I'm freaking out, and I'm pressed against the mushy stomach of another bus rider who may or may not have Ebola/Swine Flu.

I, thus, had to tell this student I couldn't help him walk to the bus. And even with all of these factors considered, it took a lot of guilt and self-pep-talking to finally not offer my services to help this student!

Here is what happened after work the other day: I finished my shift, threw on my coat, and was race-walking down the hill. My elbows were really pumping, because I saw my bus approaching and I was about to miss the light to cross 5th Ave. There is nothing worse than being stuck across a 4-lane street and watching your bus rumble past as you wait for the light to change!

My stars aligned. The light stayed yellowish-green, the EBO rumbled onward, and I was going to be ok! Just as I crossed 5th Ave, a little, hunchy old lady patted my arm (elbow flying! Look out!) and said, "Ma'am, can I ask you a big favor?"

I paused. "What can I do for you?" I figured she'd ask me for change for the bus or something. I was even ready to give it to her, so excited was I to have made the light and see my bus approaching.

"Can you help me cross the street?"

THUNK! That was the sound of my heart hitting the pavement. Really???? I said, "Oh, dear. I just came from across the street...."

Then, before I could finish, this woman got irrationally furious with me. She started swearing and yelling and calling me names. Using profanity about young people these days! I got so fucking angry at her that I started yelling right back. "Look, I have to get home and feed my newborn baby! And my damn bus is coming!"

"Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah!" And she started sort of lumbering away. As I got on the EBO, I saw a nice couple helping her across the street. I spent my whole ride home wallowing in guilt. There I was, the woman who refused to help an old lady across the street.

But you know what? I'm glad I chose Miles over that damn lady. I walked in my front door on schedule and he was so happy to see me. We had a lovely nursing session and then he had a great night's sleep afterward. And for that, I refuse to feel badly.

So why can't I stop thinking about that lady?

Hiatus again

2009-11-29T16:52:00.001-05:00

I have caught my annual cold, it's holiday madness time, the semester is ending, and I am swimming above water. But just barely! Be back soon with renewed vigor.

Bubbly Baby

2009-11-22T19:05:00.002-05:00

Miles has stopped screaming. It's pretty official, I think, since it's been more than three weeks since he's been a scream flavored popsicle, as my friend Kathy calls him. Instead, he talks and burbles and (when he gets upset) cries. There is such a pleasant difference between crying with tears and back-stiffening, blood-curdling, teeth-gnashing screaming. We'll take crying any day. Honest.

Not sure what the difference is. Perhaps weighing 12 pounds, perhaps just being 4 months old, but even with sleep troubles, he is a different kid. I want to run across the street and knock on Anna's door and tell her to ask me again if I'm having so much fun over here. Because now? Most of the time? We are!

I mean, look at this family enjoying a trip to the zoo. Who wouldn't want in on that action?

The Gates

2009-11-19T21:49:00.003-05:00

My friend Beth alerted me via Twitter that Jean Claude (of Christ and Jean Claude fame) has died. This made me feel very sad and sentimental because I was working right near Central Park when their famous art installation, "The Gates," was up.

I remember when I started seeing those orange pillars. I would get out of the subway every day, the C or E line at 8th Ave by the Natural History Museum, and walk along the road not looking ahead, but to my right and wondering what the hell was going on.

Even after someone explained to me that this was a very famous art installation that would make the whole world pay attention, I still didn't get it. Some days, during lunch, I walked around under the flappy fabric and tried to decide if it felt like art.

The orange fabric was not orange, but saffron, even though all the saffron I had ever used was bright yellow. People all around me kept whipping out little scissors and snipping off pieces of the fabric to keep as mementos, something so they could say one day "I was there! And look! I took part of this thing with me!" Corey was working as a bike messenger in Manhattan then, and he sometimes rode to meet me for a sandwich. We'd sit on a rock in the sun and look at the flappy gates. He could reach the fabric from the seat of his beater bike, could reach right on up and slap it as he rode beneath if he wanted to.

The more I read about JC and C's work, the more I looked at those fabulous aerial images of their vision made real, the more I started to think about my place in the world. And every day when I saw those gates, I was experiencing something. Some days, I thought about Aslan's gate from The Last Battle. Other days I just thought about how amazing it was to work right near Central Park, for a rugby magazine no less. Other times, I just thought that weird orange fabric looked really peaceful and nice flapping along in the breeze.

I think that might be what art is for, right? To help you experience something. To give you a moment of mindfulness in a crazy, hectic New York day.

I feel really sad for Christo. She lost her love and her other half and her muse even. I wonder what she will do with her grief, if it will consume her so much she'll wrap the world in black just to show that we are all sad with her.

UPDATE: As anonymous points out, I have foolishly mixed up the genders of Jean Claud and Christo. That was really irresponsible of me. I have no excuses. But I still feel sad that Christo lost a loved one and I still feel moved by my experience with The Gates!

Bedtime Ritual

2009-11-18T11:17:00.003-05:00

I think Corey and I are guilty of providing an inconsistent bedtime ritual for Miles. So I am renewing my dedication to making it so, in hopes of ever improving his sleeping habits. We had something like a routine going, but daylight savings effed everything up and then he went on another sleep strike and I became a zombie again...last night was a good night so I want to keep things that way! Here is the ideal evening gameplan:

1. Bath when appropriate (like the days when he excretes all over himself from all possible orifices)
2. Massage with the lovely apricot oil and his red light
3. PJs, bag, medicine
4. Read 2-3 books in his chair in his room
5. Hug quietly for a few minutes
6. Nurse to sleep

The big problem with this is timing. We would like his bed time to be 8pm, so this ritual would start at 730. Only, some days he does not nap AT ALL and is super exhausted and a big fat mess by 6pm. MAH-eessssssss. What do we do then? Start the ritual early? Force him into a massage and book readin' while he squirms all over the damn place?

Everyone keeps telling me babies need routines and I need to help him have a routine and make his days all identical, yada yada. There are never two consecutive days where Miles does the same anything. I can't even say bedtime is the same time each night, because everything depends on his daytime behavior.

We are hoping that a bedtime ritual can be the keystone in a consistent lifestyle for Miles. Maybe he just needs a good jumping off place.

Letter to the Absent Housekeeper

2009-11-13T14:14:00.002-05:00

Dear Lady Who Did Not Show Up At My House or Call to Cancel:

Thanks for ruining my weekend! Since you asked that we bump your "arrival" until Friday, there is now 14 days' worth of filth and laundry at my house instead of just 12. All week, we knew you were "coming" on Friday, so we didn't let ourselves get concerned with the dishes or dirty clothes or gross bathtub. We used those spare moments to play with Miles or brush our teeth.

But then you didn't show up! So now, the time I was going to spend grocery shopping and grading papers is devoted to washing, folding, and putting away clothes. And ignoring huge dust bunnies on the stairs. And negotiating with Corey about who will scrub tomato sauce off the stove (And typing angry blog posts with one hand while I nurse a baby).

I say all this to point how much I value the job you were going to do at our house and how vitally important this paid service was going to be at this particular moment in our lives. I'm not even sure if we can squeeze in a trip to Costco now, what with all the crap we have to catch up on in between convincing Miles to sleep. In other words, you have let me down in a big, fat way.

All I can do is thank the heavens my rugby team has done something amazing for me. There will be two RELIABLE people here on Tuesday to help me out of this panicked snit. And I guess I can ignore dusty floors until then. Not sure about the barf-covered shirts and bras. I mean, I only have so many...

Sheesh! You can't even pay someone to help you out these days. Please don't contact me again, "housekeeper." You stink like cheese.

Baby Soothers

2009-11-11T19:12:00.002-05:00

Over the course of my adventures with Miles, I have come across a number of women who also had screamy babies. I never knew such people were out there, screamy baby survivors. But they are. And when you find one, a real one, you feel the sort of bond that immediately makes you lifelong friends. It's like meeting a rugby player for the first time. You just know so much about this person that you can get right to checking each other's armpits for deodorant skids upon first meeting.

So in talking to these fellow survivors, I learned that the screaming babies tend to fall into categories. It's true.

I classify Miles as an "up and down" screamy baby. This means he needs to be moving up and down in order to not be screaming (although he screams much less now at week 17 of being alive than he did at week 3). At our house, we get our up and down action in on the stairs. We go up and down the bottom step again and again and again. At first we used the bouncy ball. Now only the stairs will do. Occaisionally, he will tolerate the back porch step. Mostly, it has to be the bottom step of our upstairs staircase.

Another mom with an up and down baby did lunges. Millions upon millions of lunges over and over again until she had thighs like Katherine Zeta Jones in Chicago. Beth from work had an up and down baby and they did the entire flight of stairs, up and down. So did the lady from yoga. One neighborhood mom walked up and down Vilsack Street until her kid was four months old. Luckily, he was born in spring and not, say, January.

Other moms had "around and around" babies who need to be circled around and around something. My friend does laps around the dining room table. Other people use the block, circling the neighborhood until the residents think they are stuck in a continuous mobius. I met an around and around baby who preferred the coffee table. I feel for that mom! The small circles! Oh, the vertigo!

Not to be judgy, but I don't feel the same empathy for people who had driving babies. Maybe it's because you can sit down while driving and it doesn't hurt your back? Not that there is anything fun about the gas money and carbon emissions, not to mention hours spent in a confined space with a screaming child. The ones whose babies needed the bus or subway are another story entirely. When public transportation is involved in pacifying a jetsetting baby, then others are witness to the humbling experience of a writhing little body and a grownup pleading, begging, praying for the screaming to stop. I am glad Miles is not a jetsetter, I think. At least the stairs are private.

What other kinds of screamy babies are out there? I am so curious to hear what soothed these little imps. Not because I am seeking advice, but gathering information about something that completely fascinates me even as it drains the hairs right out of my eyelids. What the heck is wrong with these babies that they scream for four months unless very specific conditions are met? And what, in fact, are the conditions others deal with in pacifying their screamy loved ones?

Do you have a screamy baby? What made this baby stop screaming? I am dying to know!

By the Numbers

2009-11-05T19:48:00.002-05:00

5: days this month Miles has been coo-ey and happy during the day
4: days so far this month that Miles has slept in 4 or 5 consecutive hour chunks!!!!
84,567,798: number of moments so far this month I have thought of something amazing related to being Miles' mother
0: days this month I spent sitting in the rocking chair, wishing my eyelashes weren't falling out, praying for sleep, begging my baby to stop screaming
2: number of times I pumped in the conference room today
6: total number ounces of milk I extracted from my bosom during those pumping sessions
0: number of times the DEAN caught me with my boobs out
3: number of dark chocolate bars I have eaten this week

Got Milk?

2009-11-04T11:38:00.003-05:00

This is a post in which I will describe my milking machine, so be forewarned!

I am a working, nursing mother. This means that each day I am at work, I have to retreat into some sort of cave and hook myself up to a pump. I call it my milking machine. When I was still pregnant and didn't think much about such things, Corey's cousin offered me her $300 breast pump since she was done having kids. "Sure," I said, noncommittally, "Whatever."

If you are not a working, nursing mother (or nursing mother in circumstances which necessitate pumping), you have no idea, none at all, what it means to invest in an electronic double breast pump. You just don't stop to think about the fact that once every three hours or so? You are going to have to milk yourself. Like a cow. It even makes little moo sounds, like WHEEEEE! hunh, WHEEEEE! hunh...WHEEE! hunh...

I feel darn lucky now that Ambika gave us this pump, because it's a good one. Very powerful and whatnot. Good suction.

So I have this milking machine, the plastic things that suck the milk from my boobs, a few bottles, a package of sanitary wipes to whisk the milk drips off the phlanges before I put it all back into my tote bag, a cooler, ice packs, a hand pump just in case, and spare nipple pads. I have to haul all this luggage with me each time I go to work. Then it takes like five minutes to rig it all up. There are plugs and tubes and lids and little white rubber things that always fly off into the bottle or get stuck in the crud catcher in the sink drain...what a mess. It's a whole process, I assure you.

Let's say I finally get myself situated in a chair, shirt bunched up, both tatas hooked into my milking machine. Let's say I am staring at a picture of Miles and trying to make milk come out of my body for this milking machine. I close my eyes, eat my sandwich, and imagine that I have a cuddly baby on my lap instead of the Ameada "Purely Yours" milking machine going WHEEEEE! hunh.

At long last, the milk starts to go into the bottles. Sometimes. Only if I've taken 9 fenugreek capsules each day, which makes my urine and sweat smell like maple syrup. The point is that it is damn difficult to offer forth milk to this machine. There's plenty of milk in my body! Wooo boy! It's in there! But it won't come out for me, generally--only for Miles in person.

Last week, I was in the conference room beneath the Writing Center, milking myself. Conditions were ideal. I was two squares away from finishing the Thursday NY Times crossword, an accomplishment in itself, and about 3.5 ounces into a good bottle for Miles. Yes!!! I thought, This is a good milking session.

All of a sudden, the door to the locked conference room burst open. The dean of undergraduate studies, who has the keycode apparently, came bustling into the room with a few undergrads. There I sat, on the floor, crossword puzzle on my thigh, milking machine all over the place, tubes and bottles and cups and plastic boob-suckers of various sizes at arm's length (depending how swollen my boobs are on a given day, I need different size milking accoutrements) when the DEAN of undergraduate studies was inches away from my milk-spewing nipples.

"Ohmygod I'm sorry," I said. Why was I sorry? I don't know. It came out. "I didn't know you were coming in here."

"Oh, that's ok," she said. "We're using the room for different things." She and the students kept on coming in, hanging some sort of poster. My nipples had, by this point, stopped offering milk. But the machine kept milking. WHEEE! hunh WHEEEE! hunh.

"What ARE you doing, anyway?" she asked as I sat there, mouth agape.

"I'm....pumping my breast milk."

"OH!"...

"OH! I had no idea you did that in here."

pause. awkward, awkward pause.

"Sometimes I do," I stammered.

"Hmmmm. Well just let us know when you're done." And she and the students backed out of the room.

Needless to say, there was no more milk aflowing that afternoon. Oh no. I started the long and arduous process of bottling up and cooling my milk, disconnecting my hoses, sanitizing my utter-pumps, packing up. Breastmilk was dripping everywhere, all over my pants, and I kept trying to wring it into a bottle, because every drop counts!!! But no dice. I was in such a snit. I had to get out of there.

I didn't even make eye contact in the hallway, not with the DEAN who had just seen my H-cup boobs and my milky nipples. Oh no. I just marched back up to work to tutor students for the rest of the afternoon as if nothing had happened.

I haven't had a good milking session since.

Time for Dessert

2009-11-02T11:23:00.002-05:00

I promise this post is only minimally related to being a mom of a high needs baby. So yesterday, Miles and I planned our day around our trip to my teammate's baby shower. It was supposed to be only a 12 minute drive, according to Google maps, so I wasn't at all worried about him freaking out because we just zip home if he did.

Needless to say, I got terribly lost in Millvale. I hate Millvale! It doesn't make any sense. I drove around and around for nearly an hour as MW screamed in the back seat. He just wailed. So I started crying. Then I called some rugby girls who were already at the shower.

One of them had to DRIVE TO Family Dollar to get me, I was such a wreck. And it was good that she did because I never could have found my way up the brick nunnery streets to where we were going. (Sidenote: This was the same teammate whose car I rolled into during the Stanley Cup final when I had no gas. What a mess.)

So we get to the shower and everyone is sitting around laughing and I feel a bit shaky. I start eating cookies. The rugby girls were, after all, stationed right by the dessert table. There were like 5 kinds of cookies and two cakes. I just helped myself.

An hour goes by. People are chatting. Everyone at my table is eating cookies. We ate some pasta salad, cheese and crackers, and fruit, too, but we were mainly eating cookies.

I was, in fact, sitting at the table with a cookie in my mouth while Ferko held Miles. The grandmother-to-be made her way to the table and said, "We are serving dessert now!" Only I didn't understand her. Perhaps the loud crunching of the cookie in my mouth muffled my ears? I asked her to repeat herself. "Dessert is served!"

I was so embarrassed. What a wreck! You put six rugby girls by the dessert table and of course we had been eating the cookies before we were supposed to. Ha! I guess at least we didn't cut the guest of honor's cake before she got to do it...

Trickertreat!

2009-10-31T19:09:00.002-05:00

A Better Day

2009-10-31T08:32:00.003-05:00

Little dude slept pretty darn well last night. Alas, his infrequent wakings still involved over an hour of work to get him back into a sleep state...but still! Sleep was had by all (Incidentally, I could have had 8 straight hours in the cave, but I had set my alarm for 3am so I could make sure I was upstairs when Miles woke up to save Corey the trip down to rouse me).

We had family play time at 530, singing transportation songs and one about a goose. Mostly Miles squealed, I sang, and Corey talked in rhythm. Things were looking up! But then he turned on us really fast and Corey marched his butt back to sleep. The two of them are on the couch sleeping to the static.

We can only hope that today will be a day that looks more like this

or this

and not one that looks like this

(Photo courtesy of the fabulous Amy Whipple)

or this.

Incidentally again, today is Halloween. My favorite, favorite holiday of all the holidays. This is the first time in my life I am not going to wear a costume for Halloween. I love costumes. I just didn't have the energy to create one this year. But stay tuned, because screams or no screams, M-dub will be in his costume later and he is going to make the rounds and have his photo taken. I personally hope he is crying pretty vigorously when we take him to see Frank across the street. Then maybe he can poop on his porch...but not on the costume.

A Typical Day With Miles

2009-10-30T07:44:00.004-05:00

7am awake, eating, diaper change
745-815 happy time singing wheels on the bus or other transportation-themed songs
815-10 screaming, screaming, some eating, marching up and down the stairs, blaring white noise
10-1030 catnap
1030-11 eat
11-1130 potential happy time
1130-1pm screaming, screaming, screaming, me eating lunch with one hand, marching up and down the stairs, blaring white noise, some fretful nursing

at this point he either sleeps for a half hour or 2 hours. If it's a half hour, he screams the other 90 minutes

3-330 potential happy time with more singing, possibly kisses
330-5 screaming. see above
5-530 catnap
530-615 eat, diaper change
615-7 screaming his face off even harder than all the other time spent screaming
7-830 start bedtime: cereal, nursing, bath, marching up and down the stairs, blaring static, screaming, repeat the marching
830-11 sleep
11-1130 formula bottle

then he is awake every 90 minutes to 2 hours, nursing and screaming with marching and static.

You might notice there isn't a lot of sleeping going on. Most days, I feel so tired it's dangerous for me to operate a vehicle. Every spare ounce of energy I have is spent trying to coax Miles to sleep. In fact, there is a lot of arguing, wrestling, wrangling, epic battles. We have done and tried everything. Reflux medicine. Swings, bouncy chairs, co-sleeping, crib sleeping. Sleeping in shifts. The day we added the formula was an emotionally disastrous day for me, but we did it and he still doesn't sleep. Same with the cereal.

Today Miles is 106 days old. While other folks with kids his age are enjoying roll-overs and solo sitting up, I am struggling to manage a life that is really pretty difficult with this baby. We see lactation consultants and pediatricians. A sleep specialist won't see us until he is 6 months old. I talk to a post-partum counselor. I ask the midwives for advice.

I know it will pass. But right now? With a baby who is in such obvious, constant distress? Motherhood seems a far shot from the enjoyable experience I longed for.

Bone to Pick

2009-10-22T07:17:00.002-05:00

I am a little peeved at the representation of rugby in this week's New Yorker "Talk of the Town" piece. They make fun of the athletes for having had injuries, for being rowdy, for drinking beer, and for singing crappy songs at post-tournament banquets.

Now, I will be the first to admit that rugby parties can get rowdy. I have seen lots of testicles in my decade of rugby and, once, on a very strange birthday I was forced into drinking Jim Beam from the severed head of a roasted pig. But you know what? My teammates and I train really hard and are outstanding athletes. The article is kind of flippant in mentioning that the US women's team is ranked 3rd in the world. That means something! Those women train their butts off, leave their families for months, leave jobs unpaid to represent this country on an athletic team.

Also? Other sports have crazy parties. I have been to the lacrosse house at Penn State. There were testicles there, too! And...adults? They drink booze. A lot! Have you seen the NFL commercials sponsored by Coors Light? And Budweiser?

The piece suggests that rugby lost its place in the Olympics because salty fans threw bottles and rocks, as if soccer fans don't freaking commit suicide when their teams lose and other such behavior. The piece fails to mention that 15s is impractical for Olympics because of the amount of recovery time players need after a match!

Finally, pointing out gross injuries is a tired joke to play on rugby. There is all sorts of research pointing to football as super dangerous. Heck, Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the New Yorker last week that football players have so many concussions, the sport might not even be different from dog fighting if you think about it his way.

All I am saying is Hey! World? Enough with the rugby jokes. Get over it!

A Moment of Bliss

2009-10-21T11:29:00.002-05:00

Last night I got home from work to find two things that never happen: my baby was laughing and there was a spare bottle left in the fridge. I put my stuff away and got to nurse him in person instead of hurrying upstairs to pump for the next day while he fretfully catnaps to static. We had this great moment on the couch as a family, just hanging out. It was so pleasant that Corey suggested we go to Oh Yeah for soy treats.

I immediately got scared. Take our baby in public? During fussy time? I wasn't sure if, after a day of work and no sleep for ten days, I had the mental stamina to nurse in public as a scream stifling technique. But we put him in the car seat. And he didn't scream! And we drove to Oh Yeah. And he didn't scream in the car! And we ate our ice cream and went for a walk. No screaming.

At one point I turned to Corey and asked if this is what real families are like. If that was what it was like to have a baby and laugh with him and just be out in public together. Not in our living room with static blaring or marching up and down the stairs. Or crying ourselves.

It was this perfect, blissful moment where I could almost envision a future that seemed well rested and happy. I am trying to cling to that memory, because I paid for it later. Miles was up each and every hour last night. He is so exhausted he doesn't know what to do with himself. I hope he figures it out soon so we can have more moments like yesterday.

Notes from a Sleep Deprived Madwoman

2009-10-19T13:14:00.003-05:00

Snacky D's parents came over yesterday to meet Miles. They revealed that Snacky himself, Eagle Scout extraordinaire, was once a shitty sleeper, constantly screaming baby like Miles. And look how he turned out! Our friend now falls asleep on couches and in car rides. I once helped carry his sleeping carcass into his room and he never even woke up. So someday, the theory goes, Miles will be just as cool and good at being asleep.

When will that someday start? Can someone tell me a specific date so I can write it on the calendar? When I complain about my delirium, I think people think Miles wakes up briefly once or twice at night. No.

Miles goes to bed at 830. Sometimes he wakes up immediately and Corey marches him up and down the stairs for a half hour. Like last night. Then, when he is asleep at 9, he wakes up again at 1130 and eats for 45 minutes and needs to be marched up and down the stairs for another half hour.

Then he wakes up less than an hour after that and eats for a half hour and falls asleep.

Then he wakes up an hour after that and eats for a half hour and falls asleep.

He repeats this until 6am, when he craps his pants audibly for like 20 minutes and then laughs his face off, ready to greet the day. Nonplussed.

Each time I hear his grunty cry in the middle of the night, my body is so sad. I think I am starting to hear things, I am so tired. Even Corey agrees, we can still hear Miles crying after he stops.

He is three months old now. I was setting so much stock in the fact that colicky babies typically outgrow their issues by three months. This was supposed to be the magic number, the day when he would sleep for, like 3 hours. Three hours! In a row!

This will pass, I know this logically. But my God. I had no idea how crippling it could be to experience such exhaustion.

Channel Snacky D, Katy. Miles will one day sleep like Snacky D.

Fran, Again

2009-10-14T19:53:00.003-05:00

Today we did Fran at Crossfit. I am back doing Crossfit. Sort of. Anyway, my December pregnant time for Fran was 5:15 and I was pushing 40# for the thrusters. Today, unpregnant but not having moved my body at all for three months, I finished in 5:12, but was really pushing it with 30#. And jumping pullups.

I feel like I have to accept the fact that I won't do a "real" pull-up this year, nor will I likely complete a rope climb. Unless of course Miles starts being chipper and silly when I put him down in his little car seat thing on the floor of the gym. That's what was going to happen in my vision of the world. I would take him, put him on the floor in front of me, and he would laugh and blow spit bubbles as I did pull-ups. Real pull-ups. Maybe he would clap for me?

In reality? He screamed until he threw up during the car ride to the gym, then I put him in the Bjorn and did some step-ups until Corey arrived to hold him. I busted out Fran and then nursed Miles on the floor by the ergs while Corey did his Fran. That's almost the same thing...right?

Humble Pie

2009-10-14T10:15:00.002-05:00

So, I had two cavities. I know. Me! The girl who likes to win at the dentist. The person who GOES to the dentist specifically for the self esteem boost when the dentist calls in all the staff to ogle at my perfect, awesome teeth. I had two cavities.

Of course, I blame Miles entirely. For one thing, I have consumed significantly more dark chocolate since he has been born than during the entire rest of my life. For another, he is so time consuming that I often don't remember to floss my teeth and only get in a cursory brush once a day. Sometimes I forget even that. Someday, when my teeth fall out, I am going to send him a bill for dentures and say he started me on a terrible downward spiral into poor dental health.

I haven't had a filling since I was 15 years old, and even then I just had two little surfacey fillings from where my braces latched onto my molars. I didn't even know what was involved in getting a filling, so of course I had Dr. Dan talk me through the process. I was immediately sorry I had done so!

The whole practice of dentistry seems so medieval. So torturous! Drills in the mouth. Metal rings around the teeth. The grinding and the smoke and the smells! The metallic taste! My god. The worst is the Novocaine shot I buckled down and finally got since I am such a big baby. I literally whimpered while the needle was going into my cheek. Now my whole lip feels like a puffy goiter jutting out of my face.

I keep trying to sip my disgusting nursing tea and it dribbles right out the corner of my mouth. Much like Miles. I think the two of us should wear matching bibs for the rest of the day as we sit and stare at each other, trying together to figure out how to control the rubbery sausages holding in our spit.

Additionally, I no longer have any superiority over Corey in the dental department. Nobody tells you when you deliver a baby that you should budget for fillings because you'll be too consumed to care for your teeth properly. Nobody tells you that you are going to have to eat crow after months and years of teasing your husband for his decay-prone teeth. So let it be known that I, Katy, have publicly apologized to Corey for making fun of his cavities and am publicly recognizing the hypocrisy involved in such taunting now that I have had two, TWO, teeth filled in one day.

I realize now there is nothing funny about that chair in the back corner office and that it actually hurts quite a bit to have this problem remedied. I feel compelled to massage his back or something in penance. You know, with all my free time. As soon as I'm done flossing, I will think about offering to do something nice for him. But I really do feel badly for making fun! And I will never do it again.

Rookie Moms

2009-10-11T18:07:00.001-05:00

I have a Rookie Moms guide to Pittsburgh up on the Rookie Moms website right now!!! Check it out!

Weekend In Review

2009-10-11T11:20:00.002-05:00

Friday:
Pro--Mom came to visit
Con--potentially rabid, wild Rottweiler camped out on porch
Pro--ate good Thai food for dinner
Con--submitted sub-par story draft to editor, who noticed and commented that draft was, indeed, sub-par
Pro--got hair cut
Con--Miles didn't nap and was unhappy about it
Pro--made candy corn using the recipe from this month's Bust
Con--the candy corn looks like, as my former rugby coach said, extracted teeth
Pro--the candy corn tastes like candy corn. mmmmm

Saturday:
Pro--Miles took a big nap during the day
Con--Miles did not sleep well Friday night and everyone was, thus, tired all day
Pro--did a Crossfit workout in the morning
Pro--pumped a big bottle
Pro--got a visit from friend Steffy with her baby Sam

Sunday:
Con--Miles had his shittiest night's sleep since September 23
Con--couldn't pump very much milk this morning
Con--in tired haze, included cell phone in heavy soil load of laundry, thus destroying phone
Pro--switched to Corey's old cell phone, which is superior anyway
Pro--used Backup Assistant to get all old pictures and phone numbers into old/new phone
Pro--Miles took 2 hour nap
Pro--after Miles eats, whole family (including mom) can go to JG's meat/Steeler's party
Con--too tired to operate a vehicle safely, particularly through Fort Pitt Tunnel
Pro--Corey got way more sleep than me and can drive

Overall assessment: Mostly a good weekend. The addition of dark chocolate to our pantry and a daily beer courtesy of Snacky D helping us out with a beer run pushes the scale toward pro every time!

Um, Hello?

2009-10-09T13:07:00.002-05:00

There is currently an un-neutered Rottweiler curled up on my porch. That's right.

Here is what happened. Miles was being fussy today. Super fussy. So he hasn't napped really. In the midst of his screamiest moment, I decided that he should eat again even though he had just eaten an hour ago. So there I sat on the sofa, all boobed up with Miles.

Then Juan knocked on the door. Juan is helping to clean our house (he is here because someone offered us a gift of housekeeping for a few months and I wasn't saying no to things anymore, so now we have Juan. Juan is amazing, btw). Anyway, Juan says, "I didn't know you got a dog!"

I'm all, "Juan, what are you talking about?" I look over my shoulder to see him sort of jiggling the ears of a mangy dog camped out on sidewalk. I told Juan I most certainly did not get a dog, that he should get away before it bites and he dies of rabies.

So then my mom shows up. I had sent her to the store for me because I don't have time to go grocery shopping. All that's in my fridge is soymilk, beer that Snacky D brought, and some pickles I pickled (they are delicious!). Mom calls me from her cell phone from the car. Miles is really starting to become unhappy at my breast and wiggling around and I'm freaked out about the dog and nobody is relaxed and the phone rings.

"Katy, why is there a Rottweiler on your porch?" It had climbed onto my porch! I told my mom to call 911.

They didn't answer so she hung up.

Mom hid in the car, Juan went outside to investigate, and I started looking up numbers for Animal Control. I mean, I don't have a dog. I don't know who to call or where to look in the phone book. Juan found a phone number on the tag, but they told me information was missing and they could do nothing for me. Nothing.

I left some messages on some phone numbers I found and then got a real human being. "We been chasing that damn dog all day! Where you say you live???"

By this time, the dog had moved from my porch to my neighbors' porch. They have German Shepherds and other dogs. Not good. I guess he didn't like it there? Because he walked his big ball sack back to my porch. Where he is currently camped out next to the stroller.

The stroller is on the porch because the other day, for the first time, Miles tolerated the stroller! We went for a walk like normal people do. But now we can't repeat this because he is screaming and, oh wait, there is a ROTTWEILER on my porch.

Did I mention that there is an enormous, dirty, smelly ROTTWEILER on my porch? One that does not belong to me? Yep. Life is interesting.

The Bjorn Ultimatum

2009-10-02T11:03:00.004-05:00

I might have mentioned a few times that Miles is not the world's best sleeper. Of all possible inherited traits, this is the one I most wish he got from Corey. I mean, Corey is famous for falling asleep on couches at parties. It was his MO in college. That man will sleep for 14 hours every day if you let him. Miles? Not so much.

I think that, like mine, Miles' mind must race and prevent him from sleeping. I can just see his little inner monologue. If I sleep now, I might not get the breast milk for awhile. Oh. Look at the ceiling fan. That's cool. Ow. My nail hurt my eyeball when I jabbed it in there. Did I poop today? Do I have two of these arm things? Will they give me the breastmilk if I stop crying I wonder? No? Ok. Hey. My whole hand fits in my mouth. Don't I have another one? I do! I think it might fit in there, too. Nope. I should cry again...

But there is one thing that will ALWAYS eventually put him to sleep: walking around in the Bjorn. No matter how long he has been awake, no matter how wound up he is, if you march him up and down the stairs or stomp around the neighborhood long enough, he WILL go to sleep.

And here is the big problem. Typically, he only stays asleep if you keep him in the Bjorn. Moving. Which is all well and good if you're well rested and down for a 90-minute walk so he gets some sleep. I've sure done that before! Lots of times! Or else I'll just march up and down that bottom step until my legs are on fire and pretend I'm at Crossfit instead of in my living room.

But most of the time, I don't have the energy for this. So I am left with this huge conundrum. Do I put him to sleep in the Bjorn? Because if I do that, he'll sleep, which is good, but I can't put him down or stop moving at all. Which is bad. The alternative is to spend, like, 100 years shushing and nursing and blaring static and rocking in the chair that Corey refuses to oil. So it creaks like one of those old pirate ships you hear in movies. Or maybe a shopping cart with a bum wheel. And Miles spends this entire hundred years wailing and screaming in your damn ear and it's just agony. But at least you're sitting down.

Today, I felt up to sticking him in the Bjorn. We walked. And walked. And just as I was running out of bottles of beer on the wall, I looked down and the turd was asleep! So I walked awhile more to make sure he wasn't just faking (he does that sometimes). But then I was sweaty and hungry and it was beginning to drizzle. So I did a scary thing: I attempted to remove him from the Bjorn and put him down.

Most times, he is awake before you unsnap the top snaps. And that, friends, is the worst moment of your entire life, because you know what you have ahead of you, and it's not fun. I have changed my mind about Hell, in fact, to believe it involves spending hour upon hour with screaming, sad little infants because there really isn't much in the world that's worse.

So today, I risked the wake-by-jostle inherent in Bjorn removal. And by God! It worked in my favor! I couldn't believe it. My child fell asleep not after hours of agony, but on a cute little walk. I even chatted with some neighbors on this walk, got some fresh air, felt, in fact, wonderful. And then I put Miles down and he stayed asleep. Like a real baby!

I was so scared it wouldn't stick that I choked down some lunch, pumped out a bottle, and ran back upstairs to stare at him.

Still out.

I dug out my kettlebell and did a wee little workout. I went on facebook. Still out. It's been two hours now and I totally could have done, like, real writing or work or at least made lesson plans. But I am so scared he will wake up just as I get in the groove that instead, I choose to watch internet television and eat dark chocolate.

For the Love of Sleep

2009-10-01T20:42:00.003-05:00

For ten days in a row, I got fewer than 90 minutes of consecutive sleep. For ten weeks before this, I was getting between two and three hours in a row a few times each day. This took a toll on my body such that I did not feel safe operating a car. I was a walking, weeping mess. A disaster. I spent the days sobbing and feeling like there would be no tomorrow, that I would surely die of some unknown cause. Perhaps I would fall into the bags under my eyes and suffocate?

Anyway, it reached a tipping point where I simply had to sleep. Corey and I fabricated a plan. I made pumping breast milk a priority--it is hard to pump when your baby still sometimes eats every hour OR is in constant need of being held or soothed. Not much spare energy for extra milk production...but that day, we made it happen. I pumped and I pumped and I pumped until I had a spare bottle.

Then, I nursed Miles at bedtime. I immediately retreated to a cave we made in the basement. On the cement floor, on a camping pad, in a sleeping bag with ocean waves playing on the ipod, I hid from the rousing sounds of my baby's wails. I went in there at 830pm, scared I might not sleep through the disaster I was sure would happen above my head.

The plan was that Corey would pacify Miles until he got hungry again, give him the bottle, then pacify him until he got hungry AGAIN. We figured this would buy me 5 consecutive hours of rest--the most I would have had since Miles' birth. I couldn't allow myself to believe it was possible. Five hours of sleep? It might as well be 14. I had to use a Benadryl to get to sleep.

So my head hit the concrete at 830 and, apart from a few brief wakings up for no apparent reason, I slept like a lichen until Corey shook me awake...at 5am.

Miles slept from 830 until 1130 (that alone would have made me a new woman) and then drank his bottle and then slept until 5am. Let's take a minute and appreciate the enormity of this. Miles slept for 5 hours. In a row. Without drugs. I swear.

There are not words to describe the difference the cave has made in my life. I have never known such exhaustion as motherhood brings. I know that new parents are supposed to complain of tiredness, but I never could have imagined the weariness of ten weeks without delta sleep, without a second of restorative rest. Wee little catnaps and then full days of constant nurturing...it seemed unbearable. It IS unbearable.

But I have slept down there about four times now and each time, Miles sleeps for most of the night. This morning, he slept until 6am! I had to wake Corey up for work when I crawled out of the cave on my own. You see, we had stopped setting alarm clocks because what's the freaking point? Miles would make sure we were up in a half hour even if we drifted off, right? Not with the cave!

I don't know what it is about the cave situation, whether it's that Miles can't smell/sense me and thus stays asleep or whether the full bottles knock him out better than breast alone or whether the fates are just effing with me. But by God, I am sleeping in my cave until this kid works out how to get himself asleep. I will take a sore back over a slow death by exhaustion any day.

Language Lessons

2009-09-26T20:27:00.004-05:00

For years, I have been communicating my needs to Corey very subtly at times and very obviously in others. Like sometimes, I talk a lot about cupcakes at breakfast and hope that he'll get some on the way home from work, though I don't actually SAY this out loud. I just mention the extreme preference for cupcakes above all other things. Subtle. Or when I'm sad and need a hug, I cry and tell him I need a hug. Obvious. I feel I'm being equally obvious when, after I go to the grocery store, I make little piles of things that need to go either upstairs or downstairs. Then, I put those piles near the appropriate staircase. Take paper towels. We store the paper towels in the basement. So when I buy those 92-roll packages, I kick them to the top of the basement steps.

The message? Next person to go down to the basement should take the paper towels along. I feel this is a rather obvious message. Corey disagrees and will climb over the paper towels or shampoo or tampon boxes or what have you. No matter how I arrange them on the stairs, he will march around or under or over these piles. When I see this, sometimes I get so angry that I also climb over the pile to make a point. This just typically results in both of us climbing around piles of toilet paper for a few days until I cave and put the shit away. It's maddening.

Today, our whole family went to Giant Eagle. It was our first actual family outing, because doctor visits do not count. Miles did a pretty great job, flirted with the cashiers, only cried at the very end. We were pretty joyous. When we got home, I put the groceries away while Corey changed a diaper. I set aside the ass-wipes (we call those moist Cottonelle towelettes "ass wipes" instead of "flushable moist wipes"...why polish the turd, so to speak?) and a package of disposable diapers (we use those for night time in hopes they will help M-Dub sleep a bit longer, to polish his turds, so to speak) and made a sort of barricade at the bottom step. The message? Next one upstairs should take along the ass wipes and the diapers.

I almost fell down and died when, a few hours later, I saw the diapers in M-Dub's closet. I actually did fall down and die when I saw the ass wipes put away in the bathroom. I am typing this from heaven, on a cloud of flushable moist wipes and perfumed disposable diapers. Why he waited until now, when he clearly had a baby in one arm and difficulty stooping to gather the diapers and ass wipes, I will not speculate. But he saw them in the way and knew what to do about it!

It only took six years of living together, but finally my Cookie Pie has learned to speak Katy.

Attack of the Super Nerd

2009-09-24T10:23:00.002-05:00

So I was riding my bike to campus today (both because I need the exercise and because I am afraid of terrorism and avoiding the buses until the G20 business clears up) and I saw an awning that made me pause. Literally stop pedaling and contemplate digging out my phone to take a picture.

I sat there, chomping my gum with my mouth wide open...like a cow. God! I love chewing gum like that. Just chewing the crap out of a piece of gum. I digress. I thought immediately of my experience tutoring students for whom English is not their first language. Often, these students struggle with articles. As in, where do I put a? An? The?

This sign was a building label. This building label read as follows: The D'Arlington. Now, I am not an expert in French. I haven't studied it for many a year. But I am pretty sure that De or D' in French MEANS the...or at least "of the." So that building, those people who etched the stone oh so painstakingly, reads The The Arlington. Imagine the stoneworkers chiseling in a whole extra, unnecessary word?

I didn't take the picture. I just chomped my gum and rode away. But I sure do hope the French delegates see the building and laugh at us a little bit.

Unless, of course, my knowledge of French is super poor. In which case, the joke is on my sleep deprived self. Either way, I worked on through a great piece of gum and got a nice rest before a big hill.

Oh, The Anxiety

2009-09-23T12:02:00.003-05:00

Miles fights sleep. A friend of ours told us, bluntly, that he has a terrible case of FOMO. When we learned the meaning of this acronym (fear of missing out), we became entirely convinced that Miles indeed has a serious case. He will yawn, yawn, yawn, and then slowly rotate his head. Left. Right. Left. Center. Left again, eyes so wide they seem propped open with toothpicks. For hours.

Others have gotten him to become asleep in, say, twenty minutes? A half hour of trying? It takes me, usually, 1.5 hours. This generally includes a nursing session, several diaper changes, much marching of stairs, and, recently, very loud waterfall sounds on Corey's ipod plugged in to the stereo. Which replaces the static we used to blare from 91.7. Just last week, Miles' favorite white noise source, like, replaced their empty static sounds with screeching and, sometimes, music! Gah! So now we have waterfalls. Which I prefer.

But anyway, Miles fights the slumber. The FOMO gets going and I start to fear he will never overcome it. Until he does. Often, he will just collapse into slumber so suddenly, mid-wail, that I think he must surely be dead. The house will go from WAAAAAAH WAAAAAAAh WAAAHHHHHHHH to just silence. I never trust that he is not, in fact, dead, and generally have to stick my finger under his nose to feel his breath. Which wakes him up.

And then, every now and again, I get him to sleep. Actually asleep. Where I can put him down and walk away and he continues to be asleep. Theroetically, I could do work during these moments. But I am so paralyzed with fear that the FOMO will get him that I cannot do anything. Sometimes I can switch the laundry or eat or shower...or write a blog post. But my shoulers are super tense and I am like a cheetah on the prowl, each muscle ready to spring should the FOMO act up and my son stops napping prematurely.

I hear the little dude chirping awake right this very moment...but at least this time he slept for two hours first!

Random Thoughts I'm having Simultaneously

2009-09-16T12:00:00.003-05:00

1. Is it bad if I drive to campus so that I can get home quickly enough for research for an article I'm writing for a sustainability website? I think I should ride my bike to maintain moral superiority...
2. What should I eat for dinner?
3. Will Miles be a good lad if I walk down to my friend's house and demand he make me a cocktail later?
4. How could it be that Miles drank only 2 bottles on the very day I wasn't up to pumping an extra for tomorrow? Is life getting better?
5. Have I bitten off more than I can chew in signing up for 3 freelance projects AND having student papers due?
6. Will I ever wear a tankini again?
7. Why do my feet smell if I wore socks today?
8. Can my students tell that the gaping sore in my face is from me picking a zit?
9. I really and truly love very dark chocolate.
10. The sweat on Corey's forehead beads up like prop sweat might on an actor

Doorbells

2009-09-15T11:32:00.002-05:00

When we first moved into our house, there were a lot of little things missing/broken that didn't seem like such a big deal until they were. Like the doorbell. We had this mangled, broken, rusted, corroded piece of crap dangling from the door frame for a long time. And people would hesitantly bury their fingers into its depths, hoping for a sound to chime, and nothing did.

This is because, and we searched, there were no chimes inside the house. One day I couldn't stand the sight of the eyesore any longer and tried to rip the button unit from the brick. Only the screws were so mangled, the thing wouldn't come out. Corey and his friend Harry finally exhumed the thing from the wall and left a gaping hole until we could decide on a replacement.

We bought a fancy wireless doorbell and set up the chimes inside. We set them super loud because when Corey is down in his man cave, he can't hear ANYTHING except, miraculously, the notification that dinner is ready to eat. So now we have a loud doorbell. Then we had a baby. Whoops!

I keep meaning to either dismantle the doorbell or hang a sign near it. Because, my god, when Miles finally gets to sleep it is a shame and a half for something to wake him up. Our doorbell is super sensitive, so sometimes people ring it accidentally every time they walked into our house (not naming names!). Sometimes, it just goes off when a cat walks by our house.

Sometimes, delivery people ring it when they bring some of the metric tons of clothing Miles gets in the mail or the fruit baskets that are sent by angels. But today? Today was my last straw.

Since Miles is now a human being instead of a wailing changeling, he reluctantly takes naps. He started to look tired around 845. I had fed him not moments before, so I changed his diaper and started patting and rocking him. Nothing. Then I put him in the bassinet and just let him suck his thumb and stare at his monkey toys. Nothing.

I took him to the basement and stood by the dehumidifier. I marched up and down the stairs. I set him near his mobile. I played yoga music. I rocked him. I cried. I fed him again. He barfed. I changed his clothes. Nothing. Finally, eighty minutes of love later, he tuckered out. Slipped into slumber. I breathed a great sigh, stood up from the bed, and prepared to do something. Like maybe brush my teeth? Or pee?

But then I peeked out the window and saw them. Evangelists. Walking up toward my porch! Before I could sprint, before I could bellow, before Hell could freeze over, they marched their prairie clothes up my creaky steps, thrust out their plump fingers, and RANG MY DAMN DOORBELL!!!!!! Oh! They rang my doorbell!

I think I just sat down on the floor and melted. I know I hollered something out the window. Something about my baby, who HAD been asleep, and not having time to speak with them just now. Could they please leave? I might have been polite like that. (Although I was terribly impolite with Peyton, who worked the parking booth at the Irish festival this weekend, so who is to say WHAT I said to those buxom ladies who woke my damn baby?) It's ok, though, because they slipped a brochure about Armageddon in the screen door for me to peruse later. Like when my baby is napping I guess.

And, because this is what you do when you have a baby, I went back upstairs and started again. Luckily, he just needed a wee toot on the tit to drift back off. And as soon as it was very clear that he was under, I made a sign to hang near the doorbell: "SSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH BABY SLEEPING! Please knock SOFTLY! Do NOT ring bell!"

I didn't take the bell down. Why? Because it's so sensitive that I am deeply afraid I will breathe near it and cause it to ring. And damn it, I need him to sleep at least until I can wash my face and put on deodorant. Maybe later, when Miles wakes up, I will dismantle our fancy, loud doorbell.

The moral? Be careful which DIY projects you wish for, I guess.

Gratitude

2009-09-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

I like to think I am in charge of things. I like to plan ahead, take care of people, get shit done, etc. I am accustomed to being the person who has the sunblock or the chapstick or the extra garbage bags on days it rains and everyone's rugby crap threatens to get soaked. I am also the person with a mapped out life plan, who has spreadsheets and goals and really extensive to-do lists. And then I had a baby and major abdominal surgery and couldn't get out of bed. And then my baby cried all day. ALL DAY. Literally ALL THE TIME unless there was a breast in his mouth.

I went home to my parents' one weekend and he cried for 16 hours save for his nursing stints. For the first six weeks of this, people offered to do things for me and I said no thank you because I could do it all myself, right? I could totally handle the screaming AND do the laundry AND get ready to go back to work AND take care of Corey. Until one day I couldn't and I sort of collapsed into a really, really dark place. I called up my family and asked them for help.

And that, friends, is the hardest thing I have ever done (perhaps tied in first place with constantly nurturing Miles around the clock...but maybe even harder than that!). I mean, when I was in the hospital I allowed my sister to give me a sponge bath. And I peed blood on her feet in the bathroom and she just wiped it off and pretended it didn't happen (although she did photograph me later with a sheet boner, so perhaps she got her own after all). That was ok, because I was on drugs and everyone on drugs needs help.

But since then, people have been DOING things for ME. Things I usually do for other people. Like friends show up and cook me food. Or they sit with Miles and bounce him on a ball to radio static for FOUR HOURS so I can take a walk or just not be the person to do that. They come over and they bring pie and ice cream on the very day when there is nothing I need more than pie and ice cream.

And my teammates seem to miraculously appear around 5pm most days, when I want to be cooking or eating food, and they hold my son so I can eat with two hands. They just show up *POOF* like I pulled them from a hat.

But there really is nothing quite like family. I called them on the phone and they drove out here and stayed for ten days with plans to come back in a few more days. And man! Did that make a difference. It was like I could breathe oxygen again. I worked out a few times. I went to meetings. I stood in the back yard and picked gourds. And the best part? Corey's mom got Miles to sleep! During the day! Not on a human being!

And then a lactation consultant and I discussed Corey's lactardedness and how it might affect Miles and I stopped eating dairy. And then, suddenly, my son started smiling. Here is some evidence:

And this, in turn, allowed ME to smile. Which is huge, because most of the time I had been sobbing these deep, gutteral sobs like a wounded mammal and I was running out of tears. But yes, I can smile now. Here is some evidence:

So this, THIS is why people have children. This is what it feels like! How do people do this without family and friends and accepting help???? Why the eff was I declining offers before?

Perhaps because I have this strange German Protestant work ethic sort of pounded into my DNA, that combines with my type-A personality and leads me to believe I have to not only control everything, but be in constant motion, working every second that my body is awake because otherwise, I'm being lazy or useless. Anyone who has ever had a 5.5 week old baby knows that sitting on the couch producing breast milk IS work, but try telling that to my internal monologue. I have never felt as lazy and bone tired exhausted in my whole life.

But then, I have also never felt as grateful to have a community. Each day, when I think I am on the brink of despair, when there isn't anything that could possibly allow me to survive for another nanosecond, the doorbell rings* and there's a dude there with a fruit basket or Corey's mom scrubs my bathtub or someone takes my baby and tells me to just walk around the block.

You know what it's made me realize? People feel glad to do these things for me--they wouldn't offer otherwise. People love me (or at least my offspring). Human beings don't have to live in these tiny little self-controlled vacuums because sometimes, it's ok to be vulnerable (Not that I remember this all the time, but more hours of each day than before...).

So fear not. I am getting some help/love. And it's ok to allow my loved ones to express this love, because it makes me want to just pay it all forward to some other mom with furry, unbrushed teeth and milk stains on her good shirts. Mark my words. As soon as MW gets some neck control, he is going in the Ergo on my back and I am going to a new mom's house to paint her toenails and then wash her shirts. And I'll show up with pie!

*more on doorbells later

Wee Hiatus

2009-09-08T19:43:00.002-05:00

As it turns out, raising Miles has made me feel like I got hit by a truck. And then the truck backed up and ran me over again, while the driver yelled, "Face it, Katy! I am older and I have more insurance!" Or maybe the truck driver would have said something about relinquishing ideas of control or the notion that babies nap during the day, thus making it possible to carry on a normal semblance of a life.

I am at a place where I begged my family for help. And they came out here. Which is great, because I have become a woman who has to pencil in DUST LIVING ROOM a week in advance, so I really need the spare hands rocking my high needs baby.

While all this transformation and sleep deprivation is affecting me, I am simultaneously trying to return to work. I have taken three writing assignments and begun teaching two classes. And it is A LOT for me to handle.

All of this is to say I am taking a hiatus. I am not going to Facebook or Tweet or blog or even read blogs until I get my shit together. If I have 19 spare seconds to read Facebook, I could have been napping or clipping my toenails. If I have several minutes to post a blog, I should have been emailing my editors. Or commenting on student papers. Or peeing (still have to remind myself to do this, as that part of my anatomy hasn't regained functionality).

I will be back when Miles starts napping and I start getting crap done. In the words of the great Eric the midget, Bye for now.

First Feature!

2009-09-02T17:57:00.001-05:00

My very first feature article in a national publication has printed!! Fly Midwest this month and check out the 8 page photo spread! I feel like such a rock star.

Weightless

2009-09-01T12:38:00.002-05:00

This morning, I zippered myself into some pants. This is significant! I have whittled myself down to a point where there is a pair of pants in my home that zipper. Of course, I have to dangle my spare flesh over the top of the waistband in order for the zippering to happen, but nonetheless, here I sit. In pants.

Because I went to work today. I left Miles at home with Corey and headed to campus to teach and tutor for a full day. I was not heartbroken about this after all. This morning, I rocked my sweet screamy baby to a fitful sleep before leaving my house. I was forlorn for the first few minutes, but the closer I got to my bus stop? My steps became springy. I smiled at people. I sat in the non-handicapped seats and, like, read a book on the bus.

And then I got to campus and peed without a screaming kid dangling from the Bjorn. And wiped! Properly! By the time I got in my classroom, I felt like a million bucks. The more I talk to grownups about real grownup things, the more I can forget that somewhere back home, the static is blaring and there is a person frantically begging my baby to stop holding his breath.

I know a lot of moms have a hard time making it through this day, the first day apart. But man, this is a welcome respite for me. This is me recharging my batteries so I have the energy to parent my little dude in the evening. And I bet he will sense that I am coming to him with renewed vigor and maybe not scream for as many hours tonight. Heck, he might even nurse peacefully, enjoy his tubby, pee on my face and then laugh about it.

In the mean time, I am discussing comma splices and complaining about the transit system and griping about office politics. And it feels so light and free and amazing to stand in the sunlight and look both ways and cross a busy street as a totally nondescript person. Gosh.

Probably, 46 days from now when Miles is three months old and theoretically better able to handle being in the world, I will cry about being at work. Today? Work feels like a vacation.

Are You Having So Much Fun?

2009-08-30T19:57:00.003-05:00

Another neighbor (as in not Frank the jerk) stopped me on the way home from a walk the other day to say, "Are you having so much fun with your baby??" She is around my age, thinking of having kids soon, and seems to be a really, really happy pleasant person. But I was on that walk with Miles because he had been screaming for an hour or so without rest, and continued to cry on my walk.

I said, "Well...we haven't reached the fun part yet." Her face fell. She seemed to think I was a mixture of a horrible person and a Debbie Downer. I told her how Miles keeps on making those noises and weird, contorted faces once we get inside. And all night. And then again all the next day. Her question really stuck with me for a long time. Still does. Am I having fun?

Every now and then, there will be an hour or so where I can think, "Yes! Awesome! This is so great!" But really, the majority of my time the past 45 days has been spent desperately trying to comfort a screaming, upset baby OR super, super tense with anxiety that his calm will be short lived and he will explode into unrest again.

My son cries. A lot. You could say he has colic. You could say he's a fussy baby. You could go the Dr. Sears route (like Corey and I prefer to do) and say he is a high needs baby. You could do what my dad does and say he is spoiled...or else that there is something desperately wrong with him. It all amounts to the same thing. Miles cries. And he doesn't sleep. And it's not fun to parent him right now.

Do I love the crap out of him? Sure. But do I also scream right back at him in desperation at 430 every morning? Do I use the F word at my infant child after numerous hours of incessant wailing? Do I sometimes hand him to Corey and just leave the house to stand on the porch and stare at my plants? Yes. Every single day.

Corey is currently downstairs fiercely rocking our son in the rocking chair with the radio blaring 91.7 (pure static) at full volume. Miles is tightly swaddled with a pacifer, stomach down like Dr. Karp suggests, jiggling away. With his eyes wide open. Because he doesn't sleep. At least he isn't crying right now. Fun?

Some people have babies who don't behave this way. Like there are people in the world who can put their children down on surfaces that aren't made of human or can, like, run errands or show their babies off at work or even take showers while home alone with their kids. I guess lots of people. Some people have really great ideas or advice on how to help these babies (gas drops are working a little, we nurse frequently, tuck up his legs...I have tried pretty much all the advice except the catnip tea. Oh. I won't give him whiskey, either). Some people come over and hold him for me for a bit and he goes right to sleep for them and I wonder if they think I'm exaggerating. Fun?

Our doctor told us this is not something to be concerned about and that he is confident it will pass. He told me I will look back on this time like a grain of sand in the hourglass of time (he talks that way...) and he is probably right. It will be like I remember junior high, when I had a bright green retainer and horrible glasses, greasy skin, basically a mullet, and my mom let me wear MR Ducks shirts to school with too-big pants. I look back on those times now, when I thought I would NEVER get breasts or have a friend or have someone fall in love with me, and it's like a grain of sand in the hourglass. But it's like a black, greasy grain of sand from an oil spill or sewage explosion with jellyfish stings clinging to it. In other words, I still recognize that time as agonizing.

I feel like Corey articulated our experience the best (he always is good at articulating the really important things). He says that parenthood so far has been the very highest of highs and the very lowest of terrible lows. With Miles, there is no middle ground. We are either on the brink of despair, crawling on the floor in prayer to some entity to soothe our unsoothable baby, clinging to one another in broken-hearted agony OR we are clutching our chests in ecstasy, sure that our hearts will swell too large to fit in there. Only the joyous, chest-clutching moments come really infrequently.

I have faith that things will improve and that I will come to view parenthood as a blissful blessing. For now, though, I will say only that I am exhausted. The space between my blood vessels is tired. And I will stop there, because my baby finally fell asleep and that means I can go stare at him with Corey, clutching our chests as we forget our exhaustion and marvel at our perfect child.

Thunder Vision returns

2009-08-25T12:01:00.003-05:00

Frank, the old Italian man across the street, spends his days working on his landscaping or people watching on his porch. As such, this summer, every time I open my front door he yells across the street "Your baby cries a lot!"

For the first two weeks of his life, this gave me such a complex that I wouldn't take him anywhere public. Because you know the implication of his comment is that my baby cries, he can hear it, and I am somehow inadequate as a baby nurturer to stop said crying.

After that, I got a little more confident and more angry at Frank, but still either he or his wife had that ever helpful comment each time I opened the damn door.

Last night, Miles was in rare form. He hadn't napped all day and said, "Fuck yinz! I am NOT sleeping tonight. Instead...I will CRY!" So between 8pm and 730 this morning, the little turd slept a total of 4.5 hours. The rest of that time? Wailing.

Our evening was spent alternating between sixty minute nursing sessions and Corey marching up and down the stairs with Miles in the Bjorn. There were brief periods where Miles would sleep in the Bjorn on Corey's chest, but otherwise, it was wailing, agitated nursing, and me yelling right back at my infant child.

So this morning, when we went to leave for the Aviary (I hoped that the screeching birds would drown out my screeching kid), I had my Thunder Vision activated. You see, I opened the front door and Frank said, "Miles sure cried a lot last night."

In my fantasy, I told him, "Really? He must have gotten agitated when we set him in the back yard and went inside to snort coke."

In real life, I just looked at Frank. I relived the previous twelve hours, the tense muscles, the crying from all three of us, the poop smeared under my nails, the barf on my pajamas, my non-showered body and furry unbrushed teeth. I wondered what small part of Satan sneaked into Frank's skin and urged him to make this comment, a statement that no amount of garden beans or fresh figs can forgive. I blinked my baggy eyes at him, got in the car, and drove away as Miles howled down Route 28.

Eff you, Frank.