So many events the past few days. Kept having to slip away to another room where she would lay on the floor, kick her legs and smile, only to have her burst into tears the minute she went back in the carrier. The moby is permanently stained with her tears.
Why is it I always feel like my child is the only one crying?
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I worked my first full week this last week. It might be the worst thing I’ve had to go through so far. It’s l like breaking up with someone I’m in love with. I was so distraught pulling out of the driveway Monday morning that I hit the nanny’s car who was parked DIRECTLY BEHIND ME.
Christ.
That evening Cora wouldn’t even look at me, just cry. And eat. I held her to me, my nose in the fluff of her hair, and smelled the powdery smell of Rosa’s perfume. Like a dagger in the back, the smell of another woman on your child. I gave her a bath.
Tuesday I thought it would be better, but as I pulled out of the driveway I looked back and saw the empty place where her carseat should be and the tears came again. Wednesday I cried at clinic and Thursday I burst into tears in my PEPs group. By Friday I was numb. I came home early, laid in bed and nursed Cora, with Stella curled up in a ball next to me.
On the up side, I got to write and teach and see patients. I almost felt like a real person again. In those moments I wasn’t on the verge of bursting into tears.
I’m sure it gets better. I hope that doesn’t mean I just get more numb.
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She outgrew another outfit yesterday, this pink fleecy thing with bunny ears. It makes me sad, folding it away, knowing she’ll never be that small again. Those skinny legs, that fluffy head.
I feel like a kid reaching for another cookie when her mouth is already full. I want more. I can’t bear the idea that she’ll never be newborn again, never be 2 weeks old. She’s just starting to get easier– sleeping through the night and going 2 or 3 hours without eating– and already I miss it. I yearn for those quiet early mornings, her head nestled into me smelling of warm milk.
In the midst of all this, we’ve hired a nanny, Rosa. Last night I cried when I discovered she had folded all of Cora’s clothes. It’s like I’m being replaced. But I did this, I’m the one who needed to go back to work. I am torn in two, wanting to be a real person and yet never wanting to leave her. A part of me wishes I could suture her to my side but the other part knows I would grow to resent her. I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what I want.
This morning Cora smiled so big when Rosa came to the door and my heart broke. It is so hard.
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Cora is focused these days. When you hold her she stares intently at your face, her brow furrowed, trying to mirror your expression. Stick your tongue out and a few minutes later, out comes a hesitant tongue.
But the most exciting part is the smile. It just started this past week and it’s impossible to resist.
Posted in newborn | Tagged baby, expressions, first smile, newborn | 1 Comment »
Before Cora was born, we were bombarded with advice on everything from diapering to what kind of stroller to buy. It was mostly helpful. Except when it was high and mighty like “we just couldn’t imagine putting 10 diapers a day into a landfill.”
Ahem.
Of course now it’s 20 times worse because in the 8 hours a day I spend breastfeeding, I read baby books. And they all say different things.
I knew this. As a pediatrician I had had parents ask me about this, struggling to navigate the seas of opinions.
“We don’t know what to do about her nails. Our midwife said we should bite them off, the nurse said to peel them, and the book says to use nailclippers. Which is right?”
It’s hard when you find a book you like (partly because it agrees with what you’re already doing on say, sleep) and then it comes right back and says something else that you’re doing is just totally wrong. In the hormone maelstrom I’m living in, these kinds of things drive me to tears.
Just yesterday I dug into Penelope Leach’s book “Your Baby And Child.” Leach is a British pediatrician, a bit old-fashioned in her advice but so practical and scientific that I can’t help but love her. My friends call it the car manual for kids.
The book is exquisitely detailed with step-by-step pictures of bathing and feeding. And I totally agree with nearly everything she says.
Then yesterday I read the chapter on breastfeeding. And it turns out she is in the nipple confusion camp. I don’t believe in nipple confusion. I mean, at the extreme—sure. But we give Cora like one bottle a day and she still latches like a champ. As I said before, she breastfeeds EIGHT HOURS a day. One bottle a day is like pissing in the ocean.
We use a pacifier too, with wild abandon. She is not fooled. It helps if she’s upset about something else (being moved to the carseat, for example) but if she’s really hungry she’ll spit the damn thing out.
The problem is, I read these things and I feel guilt. Huge amounts of guilt.
They don’t warn you about that in the baby books.
Posted in pregnancy | Tagged baby, breastfeeding, newborn, nipple confusion, pacifier | 3 Comments »
Breastfeeding is hard.
I thought I knew that, I thought I was prepared.
But the first week my nipples were cracked and sore. When she tried to feed she would bite. It brought me to tears again and again.
I finally called the helpline at Birth and Beyond (which miraculously is free) and the woman told me about “cliff hanging” babies. She said maybe Coraline felt like she was falling off, so she bit. I ordered a support pillow, bought some gel soothies, liberally applied lanolin, and it all got better.
Now two weeks later the feeding part is almost easy. I love watching her when she feeds, her eyes wide open, her free hand waving in the air. I bought a fancy cover-up and now I’ve breastfed on park benches, in the car, in front of my father-in-law.
But it’s still a lot. She feeds every 3 hours and it takes her 40 minutes to feed. I spend 8 hours a day breastfeeding, more than I sleep. The pillow (embarassingly called “My Brest Friend”) is a miracle, as it leaves my hands free while she’s feeding so I can write or read or talk on the phone. But it doesn’t change the fact that I spend most of the day breastfeeding.
I had no idea.
Posted in pregnancy | Tagged breastfeeding, My Brest Friend | 1 Comment »
There have been a lot of changes lately.
First of all, I got my legs back.
I think that’s the best place to start. After the labor, the pushing, the surgery (I’ll get to all of that later), it feels good to have my legs back. They look like mine again. I had forgotten.
And of course there is the biggest change of all, there is Coraline. Coraline June Chrisman, born 8/17/09 at 2:22 in the afternoon.
I was talking on the phone with my friend Kira on Saturday when all of a sudden it felt like I peed myself. We rushed off to the hospital, to find that yes, my water had broken, but no I didn’t need to stay. They sent me home with some maxi pads and directions to call in the morning.
It was such a strange feeling, not what we expected for our labor. We both had images of what they showed you in the films from the birthing classes….timing the contractions until they hit 5-1-1 (five minutes apart, lasting 1 minute each, for 1 hour).We had packed the car expecting that my labor might start at any time, that we would have to drop everything.
Instead, we did the laundry, emptied the dishwasher, packed and repacked our bags. On sunday we ate a big breakfast of poached eggs and bacon and went off to the hospital. Despite my wimpy contractions, they decided to admit us, now ruptured 16 hours, and give me misoprostol to kickstart labor.
And so we waited, watching the West Wing from the hospital bed, picking up sandwiches from Victrola. It felt like we were in a hotel, with a peekaboo view of the mountains through the city skyline, our fancy champagne chilling in the fridge.
Around 5pm we went for a walk and my contractions started getting worse. Cobe wanted to pop into Victrola for a latte but I wouldn’t let him. I couldn’t bear to be inside a coffee shop when a contraction came, the pain temporarily blocking my speech and closing my eyes. And the thought of having to sit outside and sway during a contraction like some crazed homeless woman was even worse.
Back in our room the pain built until I could no longer lie down, the pain unbearable unless I was on all fours. Cobe called my mom to come while I created a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor. I knelt on the pillows, my arms resting on the balance ball, and tried to breathe through the contractions but when the big ones came it was all I could do to scream, “No no no no no, I can’t do it I can’t do it I can’t do it” while Cobe and my mother said, “You ARE doing it” and fed me ice chips.
The worst was the nausea, a bitter feeling that came over me in a wave at the crest of the contraction forcing me to the bathroom just as the pain was at its worst. I threw up again and again, losing my sandwich, my breakfast, any resemblance of noursishment.
By early morning I was finally at 8cm and I seemed to hit my stride. Now I could breathe through the contractions, first long slow breaths and then panting when the contraction was at its worst. All attempts at visualization went out the window, but I could count my breaths–1234, 1234, 1234–knowing that at some point the pain would ebb, like a wave falling over me. And then finally by 7am I was pushing, but something felt wrong. Pushing was supposed to be easier but it felt worse, each push causing searing pain in my abdomen. When my midwife finally suggested an epidural after 2 hours of pushing, I started sobbing I was so relieved.
Ten minutes later the anesthesiologist had placed the epidural and I could see again, my eyes taking in the room full of people. And I could feel to push. I pushed for 3 more hours but something was still wrong, she wasn’t moving. Finally the OB examined me.
“You have an anterior coccyx,” she said, “I don’t even want to instrument it. She’s just not going to fit.”
Some people would have been saddened to end up in the operating room after getting so far naturally, but I was so tired. I had done it, I had taken it as far as I could and now someone else could do the work.
And then we had Coraline.
And everything changed.
There is so much more, so many things everyday, but I’ll save that for later. For now I’m going back to sleep.
Posted in pregnancy | Tagged baby, c-section, delivery, epidural, natural labor | 3 Comments »
Okay I kind of love this.
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As I look back it seems I’ve been using this as a journal for my bad days.
And it’s just not fair. Because there are a lot of good days.
Now that the weather has settled down into a more Seattle-like 70s and 80s, I am less of a wreck. I was running home every day last week and just collapsing in the pool I was so hot. I feel better now.
It doesn’t hurt that Cobe’s cousins Lezlie and Emily threw me a beautiful shower last weekend. We made onesies, all of us in this light filled room at the top of Lezlie’s new house with a view of the Puget sound, cutting out ducks and bears and ironing them on. Felt really good.
And the week before I somehow got dragged to a punk rock show at the Capitol Hill Block Party which was truthfully kind of a blast. Felt pretty hard core to be standing up against the rail watching the lead singer of the Jesus Lizard crowd surf while 8 months pregnant.
There’s even video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12dNtw-BDd8
She moved a lot today. It was a good day.
Posted in nesting, pregnancy | Tagged baby shower, jesus lizard, onesies, punk rock | Leave a Comment »
I’ve hit that point, when everyone knows you’re pregnant. It has its advantages.
In our present heatwave, women look at me pityingly in the grocery store checkout line and say, “I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be pregnant right now!’
And mostly my husband puts up with my little fits of craziness. They occur daily. He dried the towels on high instead of medium, he ate the last of the chocolate chips, or something or other about my father in law.
Luckily I mostly don’t feel that bad, even with the present heatwave. I like sunshine, we have a pool, I don’t have a job that involves manual labor. But my feet have progressed from cankles to elephant feet to my current fave, “sausage feet.” My toes look just like little sausages. I’ve started to get jealous of other people’s feet, their slender ankles. On the plus side it likely means that at least a few pounds of the 35# I’ve gained are in my feet.
And we are mostly ready. At least on paper. We’ve finished our birthing class, put together the crib, bought some wipes. Still need to figure out the breast pump, arrange the changing table, install the carseat, and buy some diapers. But I need these 3 weeks! Everytime someone tells me I could go any day an inner voice says “NOOOO!”
Feels like falling off the edge of the world.
Posted in pregnancy | Tagged heat wave, pregnancy, swollen feet | Leave a Comment »
