August 5, 2006

The Boy changed Karis today without even being asked! TWICE!! First he changed her diaper and gave her to me in bed. I fed her and we snuggled back to sleep. A bit later he came over for a snuggle of his own and said, “She’s wet.” “Did she spit up?” I asked. “No, around her diaper area.” “Did you put it on right?” “I think so.” He took her over to the changing table and replaced her diaper, and then he stripped her. He took out a long sleeved sleep sack. We’re in the middle of a 100 plus degree heat wave, so I felt compelled to stop him and suggest a lightweight onesie.
It took two attempts to get it over her head and afterwards he said he thought he almost pressed his thumb through her soft spot, but he officially dressed his daughter all by himself!
He handed her back to me with great pride and a palpable sense of achievement. Karis was very dry and happy. All was well in our little corner of the universe.

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August 4, 2006

Oh these smiles! They’re killing me! Karis is the smiliest baby ever born. Every time she locks eyes with someone she beams out a giant cherubic smile. It doesn’t matter if she’s fussy or crying, if you can catch her eye she’ll pause and smile. My favorite is when she’s nursing and she looks up at me. I’ll smile at her and she’ll shrug up her little shoulders and smile back with the breast still in her mouth. It’s so very disarming.

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August 3, 2006
There’s a sucker born every minute

The Boy has really been coming into fatherhood this past week. The more alert and engaging baby Karis becomes the more pleasure The Boy gets out of spending time with her. She’s a smiling champ – usually very happy. Yesterday she got busted sucking her thumb. I found it achingly adorable, but The Boy was horrified.
Karis was happily napping in our bed on her tummy with her face pressed hard against the side of my pillow. I know, I know, a recipe for S.I.D.S. I feel living in a one room shoebox affords me the luxury of indulging the baby in mildly risky behavior considering I’m RIGHT THERE watching her breathe. Anyway, I moved the pillow away from her face, which stirred her enough for a bit of wriggling. She quickly settled down again because unbeknownst to me she had found her thumb.
The Boy came over and turned her onto her side revealing her tight little fist pressed fiercely against her mouth, her lips happily smacking. We both gasped. Me with delight, he with horror. He pulled at her arm and her thumb came out with a loud POP!

Busted!

A devout former thumb-sucker myself I see no problem with this. She’s going to need orthodontia regardless and a thumb is never lost or dropped unexpectedly.
The Boy says it’s an impossible habit to break. I disagree, providing the child is ready to quit. I can still remember the night I decided to stop sucking my thumb. I was the ripe old age of seven, and while I never sucked my thumb in public I had always gone to bed with my thumb in mouth and my “bipee” (a cloth diaper) pressed against my nostrils smelling of laundry detergent and peace. That night I said to myself, “Ok, you’re seven now. It’s time to stop sucking your thumb.” I put my left hand under my butt and went to sleep. I never sucked again. Didn’t even miss it.

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August 1, 2006

We have a visitor upstairs in Hun’s apartment. He is an uninvited guest in the form of either a giant cockroach or an average sized water bug. I haven’t seen him myself yet but everyone that has, claims he is the size of their palm! I have affectionately dubbed this interloper Gregor Samsa after Kafka’s bug in Metamorphosis.
Gregor has laid claim to the bathroom. Any attempts at squishing him are met with his lightening fast speed. He is becoming a bit of a local celebrity, each sighting evoking screams of excitement and animated retellings of the experience.
An exterminator is scheduled to arrive Thursday between noon and five. I hope poor Gregor doesn’t take it personally. Huns’s apartment just isn’t big enough for the both of them.

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July 26, 2006

I came home from my math workshop yesterday to find Karis awake. This is unusual. She is usually napping when I get home. I was delighted and held her close. She was a little fussy so I offered her a breast. She began eating ravenously but would stop suddenly and scream. I checked her mouth for cuts but found nothing. I offered her a bottle with the same reaction. She would suck ravenously then scream. She also wanted to be held just so. I did a full body search looking for anything out of the ordinary. No hairs wrapped around fingers or toes, no scratchy tags. I checked her diaper. Aside from being put on backwards (I chuckled at Aunt Danielle’s mistake) there was nothing pinching or irritating her. I feared an ear infection. I checked her mouth again and noticed what could be thrush on her cheek. It looked like residue from her last feeding.
We snuggled for a while and she continued to fuss and cry so I decided it was better to be safe than sorry and I took her in to the doctor.
She weighed twelve pounds and didn’t have a fever. She ate without crying in the waiting room. By the time the doctor called us in she was a little ball of sunshine. She smiled and “talked” the entire time the doctor examined her. Typical.
We checked her all over. Her ears were fine. The doctor checked her mouth and mentioned seeing milk residue. I mentioned seeing it before, so we deduced that it wasn’t residue after all, but thrush. Thrush can be painful, so that explained why vigorous sucking would cause her to scream. We took our Rx, thanked the doctor, and had a nice stroll home. Her disposition was much improved.
I’m scheduled for my post partum exam today. I never rescheduled it after Karis’s birth, so it’s a 9 week exam instead of a 6. I’m dreading walking through the heat and humidity, but I’m excited to introduce Karis to Dr. Howard.

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July 25, 2006
It happens…. eventually

She pooped! I never thought I could become so elated over a bowel movement, but there it is! She hadn’t pooped in SIX days. The state of her bowels has occupied my mind almost constantly for the past 4 days. I am surprised at the great feeling of emotional relief I’m experiencing as a result of her physical relief. Never before have I been so happy to clean up poop.

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This kid cracks me up. Her newest enjoyment comes from playing what I call “the match game”. I’ll sit her up in front of me propped up against my thighs and touch my nose saying, “mama’s nose,” then I’ll touch her nose and say, “baby’s nose!” She finds this all very fascinating and exciting. We go through all the different features on our faces and she’s so intense and focused on what will happen next.

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Jesse and I set up an impromptu studio in Mugga’s basement. We used a clamp light with a makeshift filter we dubbed a “snood”.

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July 21, 2006

I’ve heard some men consider lactation to be erotic or exciting. The Boy is not one of them. He regards my milk producing breasts with a mixture of awe and subtle repulsion. He likes their new size – he has made that abundantly clear. He finds himself repeatedly frustrated by urges to touch “the girls” knowing full well that one of two things will happen. One – he’ll be too rough and I’ll slap at him and scold him, or two – he’ll wake them up and open the floodgates.
Rare is the time that I can step out of the shower without milk pearling at my breasts and dropping silently to the bathmat. When The Boy takes notice he’ll scrunch up his nose or turn away as if to say, “My God woman – can’t you turn those off!”
Another process he can’t seem to wrap his mind around is why I pump my breasts. I originally started pumping to save milk in the freezer for when I start back to school. Now the freezer is packed to capacity with frozen milk. The Boy deems that reason enough to stop pumping. I still pump – either to relieve pressure or to avoid waking up damp in the middle of the night. Each night I pump a fresh bottle right before bed with the secret fantasy that he’ll wake up at three AM and say, “You sleep angel, I’ll feed her the bottle.” Yeah. Right.
I also pump in case I’m killed in some random accident involving piano movers and frayed safety straps. I figure at least she’ll get this one more feeding from me if I die before coming home.
I still can’t figure out why The Boy finds my pumping so distasteful. I hypothesize that he doesn’t like to be reminded that breasts are functional rather than strictly recreational.

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I’m convinced that hospitals nation wide unwittingly employ spies in their delivery wards. Posing as nurses these spies obtain information about the birth of your child and your home address. This information is then used to bombard new mothers with free samples of formula. They’re like drug pushers – you get your first try free of charge, but once you get hooked it will cost ya!
My first run in with a formula pusher was in the recovery room. Similac provides each new mother with a handy little diaper bag. Inside each bag you’ll find a thermal bag with two ice packs to keep a bottle cool and four mini bottles of formula. They also include pamphlets proclaiming to be hard fast advocates of breast-feeding. They explain that the mini bottles are for mothers that want to supplement with formula.
After you are sent home they give you about three days of peace. That’s just long enough for your nipples to be at their peak of soreness. Then you get a knock at your door. Special delivery! A huge box of Enfamil! I shake my head at the sad thought of all those new moms with throbbing nipples thinking, “well, maybe we’ll try a bottle just to see…” Or the moms that supplement because they worry they’re not producing enough milk and then wonder why they don’t produce enough milk.
Hey, it’s a business. We all gotta make a buck, but the second time the postman came knocking at my door with another heavy box of unsolicited formula (this time from my old friends at Similac) I said “no thank you” and had him return to sender.
Their latest gift? A baby milestone calendar – just to remind you that they’re there
If ever you want to supplement – or if you’re tragically killed in a freak piano moving accident.

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July 18, 2006
The Boy is convinced the baby is fat and retarded. It sounds harsh, I know. The idea seemed to pop abruptly into his mind rather than creep in slowly over the weeks. He is convinced I feed her too much, and glares suspiciously at us whenever we breastfeed less than four hours apart. His obsession with her weight comes from love. He wants a healthy, socially accepted child. It’s just frustrating and tiresome trying to explain to him that you can’t overfeed a breast fed baby. Her stomach is small, she needs frequent feedings. Most breastfed babies are plump and cherubic! She’s the picture of health!
Genuine worry creases his brow whenever I eat a bowl of ice cream. I can see the wheels cranking in his mind, envisioning the fatty ice cream traveling down my throat, skipping my stomach all together and pooling in my breasts. There it will wait, growing in caloric power until the baby feeds, instantly gaining unsightly rolls which she will struggle fruitlessly to burn off years from now as an overweight teenager with low self-esteem.
The retardism theory originated at her birth. Her umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, and her face was a deep purple. The Boy’s first reaction was, “Oh my God she’s dead!” followed by, “Oh my God her head is deformed!” In his reasoning the lack of oxygen to the brain coupled with the shifting of the skull bones to accommodate the birth added up to a non refundable ticket to Easter Seals camp.
Even so, I was able to reassure him that she suffered no ill effects from her birth, and that her head would take on a rounder, less cone-like shape in the next few days.
The subject didn’t come up again for several weeks. When Karis was around four weeks old The Boy became tired of the whole new born stage, “Come on! She’s a month old. Why does she just lay there?”
He truly was surprised at her inability to hold a conversation – or at least maintain eye contact for longer than three seconds.
Now I’m willing to admit that Karis isn’t breaking any records in the development department, but she isn’t falling behind either. The Boy was willing to accept my explanation that all babies develop at their own rate, and that Karis was right on schedule until we wandered into a breastfeeding shop and met Kyle.
Kyle was three days older than Karis. The Boy was willing to overlook the fact that Kyle was a good bit smaller and thinner, after all, Karis is in the 75th percentile for height. However he just couldn’t ignore that Kyle was very alert and animated. Let’s be honest – Kyle was downright caffeinated. He was wriggly and sharp. He would engage with passersby and smile. He would track you with his eyes as you crossed the room.
OK! All right. Good for Kyle. I’m sure he’ll grow up to be some charming smarmy politician or an inspirational speaker. Maybe he’ll help inspire depressed teenage Karis to lose all that weight! One thing he won’t do is help me convince The Boy that our daughter is JUST FINE.
Babies are PEOPLE. Short, rather helpless people, but people none the less. We are all unique individuals.
I know The Boy, and I know that only time will calm his new-father fears and anxieties. Until then, I’ll just keep reminding him that we don’t want to be those parents that constantly push and pressure their children until they crack. Each flower blooms in it’s own time.

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