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My First Time

10 Jul

Jake, me and C went to our first farmers’ market this morning.  I love love love the Saturday A.M. market and had been missing it since I started taming the wild Seabass.  It was once a regular and cherished appointment I had with myself; suited in my grubby weekend clothes and armed with a cup of coffee in one hand and shopping list in the other, I used to wander the rows of fresh fruits and vegetables for as long as I wanted.  There were rambling visits with friends and idle chit-chat with farmers.  I was the portrait of leisure.

So this morning’s trip was a little different than that to which I’m accustomed.  For starters, I was no longer alone.  Now I had a sensitive nine-week-old and a nervous dad pushing baby around in the stroller – not exactly the recipe for relaxation.  Also, we’re coming to the crest of the summer fruits and vegetable wave and I can eat neither tomatoes nor strawberries due to breastfeeding.  Can you say criminal?  I spent half my time leering at the tomatoes and strawberries from afar, imagining what they taste like, smell like, feel like.  Father forgive me, for I have lusted.

While I didn’t get to drink coffee around the market (breastfeeding strikes again!) I did manage to chat briefly with a few friends.  But after the stroller paused en route for more than about 43 seconds, Seabass became anxious to move on.  When he finally started launching into the “you-pushed-it-too-far-Mom” cry, I decided to get serious about my shopping list.  In an attempt to satisfy my craving for summer fruits, I bought an outrageously large watermelon without stopping to think how I would carry it to the car.  I looked at Jake.  “I guess I could put it in the bottom of the stroller,” I reasoned, but two attempts proved me wrong.

“Here, you push the stroller and I’ll take the melon,” offered Jake.  So we traded duties and began our departure through the last row of the market, but a booth selling dried apricots stole my attention.  A young girl held a pair of tongs and a basket full of dried apricots, trying to lure passersby into sampling them.  Why no one did, I don’t understand.  I am the Free Sample Queen.

We must have been 15 t0 20 feet away from the booth, but I set my sights on those tongs and moved in for a delicious dried apricot before realizing I had walked away from the stroller, which was now rolling backwards toward an unsuspecting shopper.  Mind you, the baby was in the stroller.

Thankfully, Jake is an alert and aware human being.  He turned to see the stroller drifting and snapped me out of my apricot-induced trance just in time.  “Jaime?!?!” he called.  “Um, the stroller?”

Embarrassed, I ran back to the stroller and looked around to see if anyone caught me being a self-involved idiot.  An old man sitting on a stool snickered and told Jake, “You have to keep an eye on the baby and on her!”

“Yeah,” I said sheepishly as we walked away, “I’m not used to being a mother yet.  It’s my first time.”

No offense, you hippies

7 Jul

The family bed of our fears

You’ll notice a lot of my posts begin with the words “Before we had Seabass, we thought….”  Why not add another to the pile?

No offense, but BEFORE WE HAD SEABASS, WE THOUGHT people who did “the family bed” were hippie Phish-listening weirdos.  (Really, no offense.)  There is that amazing scene in “Away We Go” where Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character describes the importance of a “continuum” from inside the womb to outside the womb which includes a bed for the whole family.  So…we basically didn’t want to be like that.  Just the crib for this here Seabass.  Yup, yup.

“Ha ha ha!” said God. “This will be the first in a series of many preconceived ideas which I will dash to the ground.”

The first night home from the hospital with our boy was rough.  I would do my best to soothe him to sleep for about 30 to 45 minutes before laying him down ever so gently.   But from his reaction to being placed in the crib, you’d think his sheets were burning hot baby-melting lava.  He just wouldn’t have it.  I’d try this for hours to no avail.

It was undeniable at this point that C preferred falling asleep close to my body.  Since he fell asleep almost immediately while nursing, I finally became so loony that I decided it was perfectly reasonable to sit in the rocking chair with him at the breast all night long.  Parenting’s all about sacrifice, right? I thought.  So for several nights, I sacrificed.  Until I woke up one morning with C drooping halfway out of my arms and saw that my ankles had swelled to the size of tree trunks.  Perhaps this is the wrong kind of sacrifice? I wondered.

Now, if I was reasonably anti-family bed before having C, Jake was violently anti-bed.  So it took a lot of courage to come to him with my little request.  When I asked if Seabass could share the bed with us, his mind raced forward to imagine our baby as a fifteen year-old who still cuddles up between us every night.  “For how long?” was his first question.

“I don’t know, until we see if it helps.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hey man, I’m the one with the elephant ankles.  Can we just try it?”

Since my husband is a loving, caring man, he said yes with the caveat that we re-assess at the one-month mark.

There was still one major issue to resolve: our bed.  We have slept in the full-sized bed I grew up with for the majority of our marriage because 1) it was free, 2) it’s pretty and I care about that sort of thing, and 3) we own sheets that fit it.  I’m aware that many people who try family bed are afraid of rolling over their newborns while sleeping, but frankly, I was more afraid that one of us adults would roll off the bed than onto the baby.  We tried family bed on the full-sized mattress for two nights, but neither Jake nor I slept much more than a wink.

It must have worked somewhat like sleep deprivation torture because on that third morning Jake woke up and announced that we were going to buy a brand new big bed.  I can’t emphasize enough how out of character this was for Jake.  No offense to my wonderful husband, but he is very cheap.  For him to buy a new bed so that the baby could sleep in it with us made me wonder if he was feeling alright.  But I jumped on the opportunity nonetheless.  Yay for new furniture!  Yay!  Yay!

The new queen-sized bed, mattress and box springs arrived just a few short hours later from a discount furniture place in town, and Jake scrambled to get the old bed out and the new bed in quickly thereafter.  To our surprise, the first night in the new bed was almost equally difficult as in the full-sized, though, as C grunted in that half-awake, half-asleep gassy state from sundown to sunrise.

“At least we have more space,” I reasoned.

“Yeah, but I don’t even feel like we’re allowed to enjoy our new bed,” lamented Jake.

The next night I assumed would be like the handful of nights before.  I nursed C in bed and then laid him as deftly and quietly as possible between Jake and I so that he could hopefully fall asleep.  But no.  With my first move, he writhed and cried.  Here we go again, I thought.  Jake had been seeming a bit zombie-ish from a lack of sleep lately, so I decided to bring C with me into the nursery to put a few walls between his crying and Jake’s ears.

I soothed and rocked and swung and bounced Seabass until I feared my arms might collapse.  But when he finally conked, I had this silly notion that maybe, just maybe, he’d sleep in the crib.  Call it my first case of mother’s intuition.

And wouldn’t you know it?  That cheeky little bugger slept five hours in the crib that night.  He hasn’t enjoyed our brand new family bed since.  But I’ll take it.  I’ve got a kid who loves to sleep in his own room and a new swingin’ piece of furniture.

ADDENDUM: Not two minutes after I wrote this, a friend posted this article on Facebook.  What timing!

Crying and Peeing. Together.

2 Jul

A lot of new moms are shocked by how hard it is to recover from childbirth.  No one tells you that you’ll fantasize about walking for the first month, or that the real “little bundle of joy” you’re taking home is a bag full of adult diapers and Tucks pads that the hospital gives you.  No one tells you that you’ll be shifting in your seat on a very very very sore behind while nursing the new baby for hours on end.

And no one tells you that you’ll pee your pants.  Perhaps more than once.

At this point, some of you – particularly those of you who are male – may be clicking on that little red box with an ‘x’ inside the upper right corner of your screen because you simply don’t want to know this about me.  But those of you who have had a baby or are sickly fascinated with what it’s like will enjoy the following narrative immensely.

***

Once again, I am up with Seabass at 3am.  He’s probably about 2 weeks old, and I am dutifully changing his diaper.  But when I stand up, I vaguely notice that my bladder is full.  Huh, I think, I’ll have to visit the bathroom when I’m done here. This is pre-pregnancy, normal person thinking.  I bring Seabass over to the changing table and – whaddya know? – he starts to cry.  Really hard.  As I remove his diaper, a surprisingly acute stream of pee arcs from his body to the wall.  (Whenever this happens, it always takes me a second to realize what’s going on, and by that time, something – whether it’s me, the wall, or C’s face – is completely soaked.)  Something about the stress of covering Seabass’ little willy while attempting to quiet him at 3am causes me once again to consider my full bladder.  Wow, I really have to go, I think.

Only this time, as I’m thinking it, I’m actually peeing.  Never mind that my brain is telling my body to hold it.  That simply doesn’t seem to matter anymore.  So I start to cry.

If we’re looking for a silver lining in this story, I can tell you that it was wonderful to connect with my son as we were both crying and peeing together.  Really, a lovely moment.

But since then, I have learned a number of very important lessons:

  1. At the first inkling of a tinkle, run to the bathroom.  Do not mosey. Do not tempt fate.
  2. When everyone tells you to practice Kegels during your pregnancy, do not blow it off as a mere suggestion.  The practice of Kegels could mean the difference between a happy, fulfilled motherhood and the loss of all dignity.
  3. A wet bottom is just a sneeze away.  Beware.

Good Stuff #1: HUSBAND

1 Jul

I have a single friend who recently revealed that she is thinking about having a baby via a sperm bank donation.   At the time she told me, I was still pregnant.  I hadn’t yet experienced any of parenthood’s highs and lows. I think my response to her at the time was nothing more than a hearty good luck and a smile.

Just two weeks into motherhood, though, I called her up and had her come over under the guise of showing off the baby.  My real motive, however, was to exhort her not to go forward with the sperm bank plan.  And why?  Because having a baby without a father is downright kamikaze.

Although I’ve always believed that children need the love and security of both a mom and a dad, practically speaking, if it weren’t for the love and security Jake has shown toward me, lil Seabass may have ended up on someone’s doorstep by now.

Hyperbole, of course.  Mostly.

I’ve had Seabass alone during the day for about three weeks now, and I can’t describe the sense of relief I have when Jake comes home from work.  The sound of his key in the lock at 5:30pm heralds the first full breath I take all day.  It means that the baby will calm down in new, different arms and hear a new, lower voice.  It means there will be fresh energy restored to our home.  It means there will be a shoulder to cry on when I’m bouncing on the exercise ball and trying to breastfeed but Seabass just refuses to eat.  And it means there will be new ideas to try when every response to “WHAT NOW?!?” has been worn to the nub.

So, I gave my whole opinion to my crazy friend, half expecting her to look at me askance and ask when I’d become June Cleaver.  But she didn’t.  She sincerely thanked me for the tip.

It may have had something to do with the fussy, grunting, back-arching Seabass in my arms.  Just a guess.

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