sleep

When you have a baby, everyone will ask you, "How is he sleeping?" They are all secretly hoping you will say "Terribly" and make them feel better about their own baby, or smug about the fact that they don't have a baby.

I was so nervous about sleep. I have never been one of those people who could stay up late. Or get up early. Eight hours? I'll take nine, please. Do you have ten? But what no one tells you is that having a baby isn't the start of poor sleep; pregnany is the start. I haven't slept through the night since I first got pregnant and hormones made me get up and pee twice a night even though there was plenty of room for my bladder. By the end of pregnancy your sleep has gone to shit and every time someone says "Sleep now, you won't be able to later!" you want to stab them in the head with a fork. Still, having a newborn who needs to feed every three hours (and takes about an hour to feed) is a shock to the system.

We've actually been pretty lucky with Peanut's sleep. (If you have a baby, please don't stab me in the head with a fork.) He had night and day sorted out pretty early on, and slept a lot as a newborn. But about two months ago he started going through a Wonder Week which lasted 5 weeks (false advertising!) and his sleep was terrible. He stopped being able to go to sleep on his own and his naps, never long at the best of times, shrank to 20-30 minutes three or four times a day. This meant he was exhausted by the end of the day and cranky for most of it.

We're slowly sorting it out now. I'm hesitant to write about sleep because it's such a contentious issue.  Anyone who has read about sleep, particularly on the Internet, knows that whatever you do will irreparably damage your child according to SOMEONE. Co-sleeping? Enjoy your neurotic, clingy child who can't become independent, that is if you don't roll over and SMOTHER him which you almost certainly will. Oh, you're sleep training? That's good if you're into BABY TORTURE. I prefer not to give my baby PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE from TRAUMA, but that's just me.

But I do want to share what I've been going through and what I've learned, so I'm going to go ahead.

happier

It's amazing how quickly you move on and forget what things were like before. Reading my last post brought back the despair and worry and made me realise how much happier we are. When I posted a link to my blog on Facebook, a friend suggested that Peanut might have silent reflux. When we read the symptoms, they really stood out as some of his weird behaviour: the fact that he never really threw up, his little cough, the way his breathing sometimes sounded rattley, and most of all the way he cried and arched away when I tried to nurse him. After being told it was "just colic" and perfectly normal by several health professionals, we presented the doctor with our suspicions and got a prescription. About a week later, we had a much happier baby. He started rapidly putting on weight (he had slowed down because of his dislike of nursing) and his poop stopped being green (from his nursing behaviour - he was only getting the foremilk and not enough of the hind milk). Best of all, we stopped having the days where he would just scream inconsolably for hours.

Having a baby, and in particular being the primary carer, is incredibly hard. I love Peanut so, so much and I can't imagine life without him, but I know that as time passes I'll remember this period fondly and forget the terrible stuff. Being alone in the house with a baby who can't stop screaming or let you know what's wrong is a dark experience.

But he's four and a half months old and he smiles at me when he wakes up and sees my face and he rolls over and looks confused about how it happened and he reaches out to touch the things that interest him and it's all so mundane and it's the most amazing and exciting thing.

colic

Colic is weird. When you have a baby you hear a lot about colic. "Does he have colic?" other parents will ask you in the same hushed tones you would ask, "Is it malignant?"

I have photos of him crying, but I find them kind of upsetting so here's a grumpy one. His dad is keeping the dummy in his mouth because when he gets upset he spits it out and then cries because it's not in his mouth any more.

In adults (footnote: I often accidentally say 'humans' when I mean adults, I think that is very telling [second footnote: I hate having footnotes at the end of an article because then you have to keep scrolling up and down, I saw a website the other day that had footnotes on the side and I thought it was rad]) colic is a Real Thing; it means 'severe abdominal pain caused by spasm, obstruction, or distention of any of the hollow viscera, such as the intestines.'

In babies, it means 'your baby sure does cry a lot and it seems to be related to his farts but we can't really find anything wrong and also maybe he stops crying when you drive around in the car which is weird if it's because of pain but have this medical-sounding term anyway.'

Babies are said to have colic if they cry for more than three hours, three days a week, for three weeks. This seems awfully pat to me, but that's OK because it's a made-up disease.

Colic is the worst. There is pretty much nothing you can do about it (although you can find endless suggestions on forums) and the only advice you will get is "He'll grow out of it."

I don't know if Peanut's screaming fits into the definition of colic because I haven't timed his screams and I don't really care, but he seems to be getting more screamy rather than less over time. Babies are supposed to peak in their crying around 6 weeks and then gradually improve until they are perfect angels at 12 weeks. I think Peanut is just screaming more because he's awake more; he's gaining weight and is perfectly healthy. But I do think his guts give him trouble; sometimes he screams like he's being tortured while he lets out a string of farts.

(Another sidenote: when you read about 'crying' babies, you get an image of weeping, mewling infants. This is very misleading.)

Anyway, there has been a very interesting study done in Italy (double blind, control group etc) on the use of probiotics given to colicky babies. I have asked my doctor and child health nurse about probiotics but was told that as I am breastfeeding, this was unnecessary. However, the study at the University of Turin looked at breastfeeding mothers and showed a marked improvement in crying in the babies given probiotics. (The mothers also gave up cow's milk, but since the control group also did this, it's not necessarily significant.) It was a very small group of subjects - 27 plus 21 in the control group - but it's interesting. The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne did a larger study last year but the results have not been published yet.

Lactobacillus acidophilus. You have these bugs in you oh noooooo

Anyway, I bought some baby probiotics for Peanut and I'm taking them grown-up probiotics as well (which I suspect are exactly the same as the baby ones except packaged in capsules and cheaper). I won't be able to report on their efficacy with any reliability, because crying is a thing that babies are supposed to just grow out of. But like every parent with a crying baby, I am willing to try pretty much anything. I'll let you know how it goes.

having a baby is hard

Before I had this baby--

OK, first of all, a digression. (Digression from the digression: I had to think for a while before I could remember that word. "Agression? Progression? I should go have a nap.") I don't want to use the baby's name on the internet. I grew up with the privilege of creating my own digital profile and I think he should be able to do the same, without potential employers or girlfriends/boyfriends reading about his farts and drooling and the hilarious face he makes when he's pooping. So I need a name for him. How does Peanut strike you? Too cutesy? We call him Peanut a lot at home, so it feels natural. Let me know.

 

Anyway, before I had Peanut, I thought I would be blogging about him all the time. Maybe too much! People would get sick of it and I would have to try to think of other things to blog about! And here I am, I have blogged twice since he was born (and only posted one photo!) and now he is 11 weeks old. Oh dear.

I don't think it's lack of time (although I don't have a lot of that) so much as lack of energy. When he naps I am doing things like showering, eating, and sitting on the couch watching Seinfeld pretending I'll get up and do some Pilates as soon as this episode finishes.

It's not like I haven't written blog posts. I have, I've just written them in my head while I'm lying in bed trying to get the baby to go to sleep. Once he's asleep, it all just seems too much effort and not a priority.

But I am going to make an effort to write more, because it's kind of like having a conversation with adults, and I need more than that. (I guess it's a conversation where I do all the talking, but that's no drawback.)

I'm going to try to write more short posts, instead of planning long ones that never get written. And I'm going to try not to worry about whether what I'm writing is clever or funny or even interesting. I'll just write to keep writing.

feedback loop

I have detected a serious flaw in the design of the human infant:

When he feeds, he falls asleep.

When he feeds, he also poops.

When he is put on the changing table, he wakes up.

When he wakes up, he wants to feed.

Did Kafka write any stories about newborns?

peanut

 

This tiny peanut was born on the 13th of February (his due date!) weighing 4.1 kg and measuring 53 cm. I will tell a bit of the birth story soon. The important part is that he is inexpressibly beautiful and I love him more than I can say. Sometimes I look at him and I feel like my heart is physically swelling in my chest.

blog-drunk thoughts

Egg in Tree by drteeth on Flickr

You know that feeling when you've read a blog's entire archive, become so caught up in the story that you've been not only thinking but dreaming about it, and then suddenly you've caught up and you feel bereft and unsatisfied? "What do you mean, I have to wait for more? Quick, live your life so I can read about it!"

Rebecca has been blogging at Fosterhood for three years and I just finished reading all 185 pages. She's a very unusual foster parent: young, single, highly educated, working full-time. (This is not based on my prejudices, I have no preconceived ideas about foster parents; I am comparing her to the statistics on FPs in New York.) I think what makes this blog so amazing is that it isn't full of posts about how blessed she feels and how she's responding to a Calling. She writes very honestly about her experiences, the good and the bad. She writes about feeling overwhelmed, she examines her motivations for foster parenting, and she is perceptive about the changes she undergoes.

Being 36 weeks pregnant, it's been making me think a lot about my situation and my baby. I don't know how coherent (or how interesting) these thoughts are but I wanted to get them down anyway...

First of all, it's increased my understanding of my own privilege (something I'd like to think I'm savvy about but I could always use reminding about). Many factors including my skin colour, education level and family structure mean that I have a level of support that many women could only dream of. Even when institutional/governmental support is available to people, the ability to a) find out about it, b) access it and c) advocate for one's self is not universal. I have literacy, unlimited internet access, an understanding of formal and institutional language. I have confidence in using government agencies because I don't have a history of being in trouble with them. My privilege allows me to see myself as a taxpayer and citizen who has a right to assistance.

It's also made me think about my baby's level of privilege. In fact, ever since I found out I was having a boy it's been in the back of my mind. This white, male child of a heterosexual, cisgendered married couple, both of whom have stable jobs and supportive families, will have chances and choices other children will never know. 

Finally, it's made me realise how easy it is as a new/prospective parent to get sucked into the rabbit hole of doing everything perfectly. You can spend days researching the best BPA-free, shatter-proof bottles (for your pumped breast milk, of course) and still feel inadequate. When I start to get crazy over this stuff, I need to remind myself, "My baby is warm, fed and loved. I am doing great." I also need to remember (again) that I am in a position of immense privilege that allows me to obsess over stupid shit instead of how I'm going to pay my bills, where my child and I will be sleeping tonight, how to avoid abusive family members, etc.

Like many people, I've said in the past words to the effect of "I could never foster a child! It would be way to hard emotionally." Rebecca's blog has made me re-examine this statement and realise that the truth is, I choose not to foster a child, even though I am capable of it, because it would be hard. It's hard for everyone. I don't think I'm a terrible person for that choice, but no matter how difficult raising a child is going to be (and I know it will be very, very hard at times), I hope I can keep some of this perspective and remember how fortunate we are.