You have the right to remain silent

B and I were discussing our significantly scaled-back social lifestyle recently and decided that having a baby is a little like being placed under house arrest.
Sure, sometimes we leave the house. On weekends, we usually take turns. One person goes to the grocery store, and another person gets the oil changed. (Or B goes to the grocery store and then gets the oil changed - whichever.)

When my parents are kind enough to babysit the little man on weekends, we both can leave the house together. Sometimes we even (gasp!) go to a restaurant. Usually we run errands. I know, I know--contain your envy.

Rarely do we both leave the house with E, as he usually falls asleep and then his naps for the rest of the day are thrown off.

Knowing that this lifestyle is somewhat self-inflicted makes it a little easier to tolerate. A few months ago, after reading several books about infant and child sleep, I chose to put E's naps first whenever possible. And so we do, but my goodness, it's difficult.

How do we cope with this huge lifestyle adjustment? First, we accept that it's how our lives are going now, but it's not how they will always go. We hope that by the time E is down to 1 nap per day (which usually happens between 12 and 15 months), we'll have a little more freedom.

Second, we buy as much as we can online. Amazon is my new best friend. I joined Amazon Mom, which is a free program that offers 2-day shipping on nearly everything. (It's amazing.)

And finally, we do our best to enjoy this time with E. Life with a new baby presents many challenges, but witnessing these early months and all his discoveries and firsts is pretty amazing. He gets more and more charming every day.

And some day, we will be able to take him out so he can show off this charm to the rest of the world.

A twenty-six moo salute

Today marks twenty-six weeks from E's birth. This occasion should be celebrated: I have achieved my pumping goal.

I have pumped at home, at other's homes, and in hotel rooms. I have pumped in parking lots, on highways, and by the side of the road. I have pumped at work.

I have pumped in the middle of the night and in the middle of the day. I have pumped while E napped, and I have pumped while trying to juggle a crying E. I have woken forty-five minutes early for the past 6 months so that I could pump. I have stayed up later than I wanted to so that I could pump.

I overcame the challenges that arose so that I could continue pumping. I pumped during an earthquake, a hurricane, and a snowstorm. I pumped during a 50-hour power outage. I pumped when I left my charging plug behind in a New York hotel room. I pumped after my first pump wore out and I had to get a replacement.

I pumped for hours a day, every day, for the sake of my baby, with the help, assistance, and encouragement of family and friends, and especially of B, who supported me in my goal, despite its numerous inconveniences.

So what now? I'll keep going, for a little while at least. I recently reduced my daily pumping sessions to 3 and consequently have to thaw some of the stockpiled supply to keep E fed each day. Probably by the end of the month, we'll start supplementing with formula. Eventually, I'll drop to 2 pumping sessions, and then 1, and then stop completely, whenever I decide that I've done as much as I want to, and we'll switch to 100% formula. By then, E will be eating more solids and won't be drinking quite as much as he is now.

To all my pumping sisters, both full- and part-timers, I raise my single, small, celebratory drink to you.

Phantom baby cry

Perhaps you've heard of phantom limb, a sensation in which an amputated limb seems still to be attached to your body. I've uncovered a similar phenomenon: phantom baby cry.

Phantom baby cry manifests itself in several ways. When you're sleeping and your baby starts and then stops crying, you continue to hear the crying in your head. Only when you look at the baby monitor and see that it is not lighting up like the Fourth of July do you realize that your baby has settled down and is no longer crying. Yet you continue to hear the crying in your head.

Phantom baby cry doesn't always begin with your own baby crying, though. Any sound that resembles your baby's cry, such as children playing outside, certain types of music, and even birds, can trigger it, and then you stare at the baby monitor, trying to figure out if your baby is in distress.

I first experienced phantom baby cry in the hospital after delivering E, and it interrupted my sleep then as much as it does now. I simply cannot return to sleep after experiencing phantom baby cry.

I am hopeful that phantom baby cry will fade, just as the baby-in-the-bed dreams have mostly gone away. In the early days, I woke several times per night to B patting, hugging, and jiggling a pillow, attempting to soothe it because he thought it was E. Other times, he'd wake in a panic, patting around the bed looking for E until I explained that he was in his crib. These moments were somewhat funny until I started having the same dreams, waking up and thinking that I had lost E in the bed.

Anyway, the baby-in-the-bed dreams mostly went away when E started sleeping in his own room, and I hope that when E's sleep becomes a little more predictable and less fraught with tears, phantom baby cry will go away.

Please let it go away...

My latest obsessions

And now for some non-baby chatter.

My latest obsessions...

Pandora
I'm late to the party on this one, but I'm rarely an early adopter of anything, so no surprise there. Pandora, if you are also late to the party, lets you create your own radio stations. You start with an artist, a song, or a genre, and by liking or disliking music, you can take your station in just about any direction. Or if you want a low-touch experience, you can skip the liking and disliking and listen to what they throw at you.

I have been going through phases. For a while, it was Time to Say Good-bye radio, and I walked around the house pretending to be an opera singer. (I suspect that B is glad that my Sarah Brightman phase has passed - for now.) Now I'm listening to Halleluja radio; I think I could listen to that song all day.

My Billy Joel station is also a fav.

Having a working cell phone
Perhaps "obsession" is too strong of a word. In fitting with my what-is-technology theme, I use a Blackberry that B bought before we were married. About a month ago, I learned that it was no longer receiving incoming calls. Shortly after, I found I could not send text messages.

Unfortunately, this situation is no longer tolerable. I need to be reachable, and I'd like to be able to send text messages. Maybe I'd even like to take a picture or two.

B and I decided that we'd buy new iPhones when the iPhone 5 came out, except...yeah, the iPhone 5 didn't come out. I decided I could live with the bargain-priced iPhone 4, and B ordered the 4S for himself, and our new phones should arrive in the next week or two.

I have mixed feelings about this purchase, considering my new phone is a year old, and do I really want to jump on the bandwagon before the rest of the world has had a chance to vet it, but I am taking a gamble on Apple. Apple, don't make me regret this decision.

My Kindle
I bought my Kindle over a year ago but didn't start appreciating it until E came along.

I went back to work after 6 weeks of leave (a story that I suppose I ought to share, perhaps sometime, if I'm feeling very brave), and B stayed home with the little man for a while. B watched him during the day, and I took over at 4 o'clock, after my workday ended. Part of the evening involved, obviously, putting E to sleep.

I wanted E to learn to fall asleep on his own, but this task is not an overnight process. I'd rock him, and then I'd put a drowsy-but-awake baby into his crib to see if he could fall asleep on his own. If he started to cry, I'd pick him up and start rocking, and try putting him down again in a few minutes.

Sometimes he'd fall asleep, only to wake up a few minutes later and need more rocking.

This process could easily take a half hour at night, sometimes more, in a darkened room. My Kindle and its booklight-equipped cover provided me with entertainment and an opportunity to do something that I enjoyed each day while teaching E a valuable skill.

The Fremont Jones books by Dianne Day will probably always remind me of that time period, as they were my main entertainment. I ran out of Fremont books and have since moved on to the Mary Russell books by Laurie King. Both books feature strong female protagonists who investigate crime. I would more strongly recommend the King books, particularly if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes.

Buying a Kindle has transformed the way that I buy and think about books. Before, I carefully considered every book acquisition because I would need to find a place to store it, and our bookshelves are already full. Now that my books are digital, I can buy as many as I want and never have to worry about storage.

My book expenses have, needless to say, skyrocketed. On the other hand, since my clothing is frequently covered in drool, snot, and spitup, my clothing purchases have been radically reduced. Why buy nice stuff if it's only going to get baby-gooped?

I miss Anthropologie...

Baby as handbag and other misconceptions

We booked E into a daycare center before we told family and friends that I was pregnant. I had heard about lengthy waiting lists and didn't want to be stuck without daycare options for him.

At our orientation, we learned that they were open from 7 AM to 6 PM. These hours gave us pause.

In the olden days (pre-Rooster), we both left the house before 7, and B always got home around 6:30. Depending on traffic, I usually got home between 5 and 6, but epic traffic days could involve a 2-hour ride home and an unpredictable arrival time.

For pickups after 6 PM, the center charges $1 per minute. Timeliness is of the essence at the end of the day.

We realized we were going to have to make adjustments in our lives. At the time, I reasoned that B could take the later train, dropping E off at 7 AM on the dot, and I could pick E up, arriving by 6 each night. In my mind, I thought of E a bit like a handbag that one could drop off and pick up at will and who would happily adjust to whatever schedule we needed to keep for work.

Parents of babies, feel free to snicker at my naivete. I certainly do.

After E came along, reality set in, and I realized that a baby is not at all like a handbag and he does not happily adjust to anything unless it's something that he wants.

I now know that his being at daycare from 7 AM to 6 PM would be difficult, if not impossible, since he usually does not wake up until 6:45 or 7 AM and usually goes to bed for the night between 5 and 5:30.

Yes, he really goes to bed for the night at that time, and he sleeps the whole night through (in his crib!) without needing a feeding. We have a sleepy baby.

In other sleepy news, he needs 3 naps a day. Most but not all babies eliminate the third nap by 9 months. If I had to guess, I'd say that E is going to be one of those babies who still needs a third nap.

He can't be awake for more than 2 hours without needing another nap, and 2 hours is pushing it. Usually, he needs to sleep after being up for an hour and a half.

As a result, we are frequently housebound. Sure, we could take him out in the car, and he'd fall asleep, but he wouldn't have a good nap; he'd wake up frequently; and any sleep that he might have had in his crib would be lost. I feel guilty doing that to him.

So we stay home almost all the time. If we need to run an errand, one person goes, or my parents watch Eli while we leave together.

Did I expect to be housebound for the first year of E's life? No, certainly not. Again, I thought he'd be like a cute, smiling handbag that one could take about during one's day, and that he'd nap when it was convenient for me.

On the plus side, E is more charming than I anticipated, and he brings me more joy and happiness than I expected. Every night before bed, I peek into his room and see him curled up on his left side, sleeping away, and I smile and say thanks that he's in my life. When I go into his room in the morning after he's woken up and he smiles up at me and is genuinely happy to see me, I accept the tradeoff that I've made - freedom gone, but new joy discovered. The sacrifices are worth it.

And I am grateful that B and I had 6+ wonderful, travel-filled, and delightful years before we undertook this adventure.

Successes, tempered by horrific frozen breast milk

A couple weeks after we got home from the hospital with little E, one or both of us went grocery shopping. (Those first few weeks are hazy in my mind.) When we (or B) returned, we brought in groceries and had nowhere to put them because on the counter were two dishtowels, covered in drying bottle and pump parts. We had to put the grocery bags on the floor and unload them from there.
I remember thinking, "Is this how my life is going to be from now on?"

The answer is, yes! Life is, in general, more difficult with a mini human. But we are learning to adapt.

For instance, with regard to the counter, we've figured out that we can fit said bottle and pump parts on one towel. And now that I pump less frequently, we don't have to run the dishwasher two or three times per day, so there are occasionally stretches of time in which there are no drying parts. That having available counter space in our kitchen is a success is testament to how carefully one will look for anything resembling success during trying times.

Another success is E's sleep, not that we can take credit for a sleepy baby. He started sleeping through the night at a young age. We can take credit for breaking two habits (which, in the interest of full disclosure, we imposed upon him)--sleeping in his swing, and sleeping in a swaddle. I worried on a daily basis about how we were going to get him into his crib and out of his swaddle. Last week, feeling inspired (ok, guilted, whatever) by daycare, I declared to B that E was sleeping in his crib that night. And he did.

Did he sleep through the night? No! He woke up frequently. However, we turned the baby monitor off, and I put in ear plugs, so my night was not too horribly interrupted.

Perhaps you think I am a neglectful mom for being honest about our sleep training. However, I read Weissbluth's book about childhood sleep twice, and he convinced me that his "extinction" method is the best way to break babies of bad sleep habits. Teaching E how to fall back to sleep on his own is a skill that he will need for the rest of his life, and the sooner he learns it, the better off he will be.

He's been in his crib, sans swaddle, for about a week now, and it's going well. Last night he was awake between 4:30 and 5, singing to himself. I'm considering turning the hated baby monitor off for good, but I'm worried I won't wake up if he starts crying and something is genuinely wrong.

(In case you're interested in sleep training, I highly recommend reading a book about it. Some people are under the mistaken impression that sleep training means that you can put your baby down if he's crying and you don't want to deal with him, or that you never go to your baby when he cries, or that you don't have to do your part to get your baby ready for sleep. I recommend learning the rules before you play the sleep-training game.)

One final success is pumping, though even that success is tempered with the horror of spoiled breastmilk. B has already covered this story well in his blog, so I won't go into much detail, but we spent over an hour last night defrosting, sniffing, and dumping an entire month's worth of frozen milk. Tonight we work our way through August's milk and hope that not all of it has turned soapy/metallic/horrific.

This post is as scattered as my mind is lately.

Achy breaky mom

I gave birth over four months ago, but I'm not finished with my pregnancy rants yet.

I expected to be a little creaky during pregnancy, when everything spreads out a little. But I expected the creakiness to be over after little E greeted the world.

The creakiness did not end. In fact, it only got worse.

I feel as if I have aged 30 years in just a short period of time. My knees ache when I walk up the stairs. My first steps of the day after getting out of bed are tentative, delicate, and painful. My joints crack when I walk. This is my reward for giving new life?

A quick internet search revealed that I am not alone with my achies, and they might be related to breastfeeding, a painful irony to accept. Isn't the breastpump punishment enough? Must I feel arthritic, too?

Motherhood: Not for wimps.