Nursing Your Kids

With four weeks until due date I am sick of being, and especially looking, pregnant. Seriously. Stick a fork in me. I’m done. I think my weight gain has stalled somewhere around the 30 lb mark, a huge improvement from the (more than?) fifty I’d gained at this point with Sam, but the swelling has begun in earnest which is seriously interfering with my quality of life.

Aside from the self-esteem hurting fact that I can no longer find my ankles in the swollen section where my legs end and my feet begin, all of my shoes are painful to wear. Hell, even my ankle socks that used to fall off in bed during the night leave elastic marks across the tops of my feet. It’s finally spring and warm enough to fit into the maternity skirts and cropped linen pants that still fit over my ginormous ass, but I’m embarrassed to wear them because of the hideousness of my lower legs.

My hands are puffy and sore and my eyes are disappearing into my fat, fat face giving me a more porcine appearance than usual. It’s subtle to the people who see me regularly, but I feel like a whale.

And can we talk about my mother for minute? I generally try to reserve all complaints about her for my personal, semi-anonymous blog, but the other night she stepped over the line. She asked, “What do you think you’re having?” and I responded (as I always do) that I have no idea and no maternal instinct. She told me that I’m carrying differently. (Which I’m not, and I have pictures to prove it. I just look smaller because I haven’t gained an additional 20 lbs.) She then told me to turn around. I thought it was so she could look at me from the back since throughout both of my pregnancies I’ve heard that people can’t tell I’m pregnant when they see me directly from behind. My belly is mostly all out front. She then grabbed my sides and pretty much manhandled my love handles and quite pleased with herself she said, “You’re spreading. It’s a girl.”

My two-word response was not uttered aloud. Instead I jerked away from her and glared. Never tell a pregnant woman she’s spreading.

According to the website Holy Moly, Kanye West is a jackass who blames his fixation on boobs with being breastfed for too long. I couldn’t find anything on the New York Magazine website to back up their quote, but here it is anyway.

Kanye West told New York magazine recently about his obsession with ‘big tits’, blaming the fixation on his recently deceased mother…

“I was breastfed for too long. It messed me up.”

Canada is expected to classify BPA (the chemical found in some hard, clear plastics and some cans) as a dangerous substance. Recent studies have linked BPA to breast cancer, obesity, and infertility.

And a Yahoo article reports that the The National Toxicology Program found that

“experiments on rats found precancerous tumors, urinary tract problems and early puberty when the animals were fed or injected with low doses of the plastics chemical bisphenol A.

While such animal studies only provide “limited evidence” of bisphenol’s developmental risks, the group’s draft report stresses the possible effects on humans “cannot be dismissed.” The group is made up of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and the Institutes of Health.”

This is a controversial topic for mothers these days. Most women, whether they breastfeed or formula feed, use baby bottles. Many of the most popular bottles are made from plastics containing BPA. Mothers who formula feed are also exposing their children to BPA through the formula containers- many brands of powdered and liquid baby formulas contain BPA.

Some mothers, especially those with older children, feel that the risks of BPA are just hype, and that their kids turned out just fine so why panic now. Plenty of women on my pregnancy board used X brand of bottle or X brand of formula with their last child and have no interest in switching. Other mothers understand that toxins are everywhere but would rather limit their children’s exposure to those they can control. These mothers are actively researching bottles that don’t contain BPA and the brands of formula that either don’t contain traces of BPA or have the lowest levels.

I fall into the latter category. I know that my children will be exposed to many chemicals throughout their lifetimes. I know my children will eat unhealthy foods and play with toys I don’t approve of. I know there will be lead, phthalates, and BPA in my kids’ environment no matter what I do. Even so, I plan on controlling their environment to the best of my ability for as long as I can. I sold my Avent breast pump and bottles and plan on buying glass or BPA-free bottles for the new baby. Sam’s sippy cups are aluminum or safe plastics. Whether it’s hype or not, if a chemical might be dangerous I want to keep it away from my kid for as long as I can. I can’t control things forever, but I sure would like to try to keep my babies safe while I still have the ability.

It’s tough to know what to do, especially when such a huge portion of the population has a, “I grew up on chemicals and I turned out fine approach,” but taking small steps and making minor changes is a good way to start. Safe Mama has a great post on how to avoid panic and confusion.

After a long, long stretch of shitty bedtime habits we’re back to a somewhat normal going to bed routine. I don’t know what changed, or how it changed, but somehow Sam started acting like a reasonable human being at bedtime. For the last week or so after his bath, brushing teeth and a few stories I’ve been able to turn out the light, lay down with him for a few minutes, kiss him good night and leave. Usually when I start to climb over the gate in his doorway he’ll call for me and I’ll tell him where I’m going and to lie down and go to sleep. He’s complied every single night.

Sometimes I tell him I’m going to feed the cat. Other times I’ve told him I have to go fold laundry. One night I told him I was going downstairs to clean up the dinner dishes. Each night he’s just accepted it and gone to sleep. One night Bob put him to bed and didn’t have the same luck I did. Sam didn’t freak out, he just called for us quietly from the gate in his door. I went in to lay down with him for a few minutes and he was asleep in no time at all.

Tonight he was restless when I was cuddling with him. He was playing with his trains and talking. I told him that I had to go fold laundry. He said, “Oh. Okay.” I asked if I should go or if he wanted me to stay for a little while longer. He told me to go. I did, and he quietly fell asleep.

I don’t know what happened, what switch was turned. I don’t know how long it will last. All I know is that it almost makes up for his almost nightly 3 am wakeups.

I finished painting the former storage/new guest room and the plan was to move all of the stuff from the old guest room/Sam’s new room into it so Bob could get some wiring done. In the old guest room they didn’t wire the ceiling fan through the wall- they threaded it through a metal chain and attached it across the ceiling and down the wall to an outlet where you had to manually plug it in. To wire it properly Bob had to put two or three holes into the wall.

I asked if he needed help moving all of the stuff out of the room and into the new guest room. It was packed with all of Sam’s old baby gear, furniture, lamps, things we’re selling on craigslist, and a ton of other things that haven’t been moved to the basement yet. a big 9x 12 area rug was on the floor. Our friend came over to help him. I moved the painting supplies out of the new room and finished cleaning/sweeping up. I didnt’ mop, but I wiped down the dust along the corners of the room and cleaned up some spilled paint. We moved the bed into the new room. I left to deal with Sam who woke up from his nap.

About five hours later the wiring was done. Holes needed to be patched and the room needed to be cleaned. I asked if they’d moved the stuff to the other room and they said no, but they covered everything. With the rug. The porous, woven, rug. Bob assured me everything was fine and nothing was covered in dust. The next morning I went up to help him move some furniture. He moved the rug, picked up a bag of clothes causing a huge dust cloud to fill the room.

All of the bedding, all of the clothing, all of the furniture, the rug, everything was full of plaster dust. He asked me to grab an end of the dresser we had to move. It was still covered in dust. I told him that we weren’t moving anything into the clean room until it was dusted. He didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand that moving dust from one room to the next would cause MORE DUST. He didn’t understand that the very act of transferring dust would send the dust down the open stairwell to the floor below. He didn’t get that he’d just caused me several loads of laundry, at least $50 worth of dry cleaning, and hours of dusting that could have been avoided. I told him, “This is very distressing to me.” His response was, “It’s plaster dust, not poison.” I burst into tears and didn’t calm down for close to an hour.

He said he’d clean everything (and he did, more or less) but he sucks at cleaning and I almost always have to clean up after him if I want things to be clean, not just look clean. Most of the stuff is now cleared out of the room and it’s cleaner than it was, but not clean enough to paint. If I’m going to start the room it’s going to take hours of prep work in addition to the hours of sanding and scraping we learned is necessary. I am feeling very overwhelmed right now.

(Yes, that’s the international image for “I have hit the wall.” Please let this room be finished and this pregnancy be over soon.)

During an appearance on Oprah, Salma Hayek’s comments about her weight loss and her breastfeeding experience caused some controversy. Hayek said:

I thought, ‘As soon as this baby’s out, I’m just going to lose all the weight superfast because I’m going to breastfeed, and everybody tells you if you breastfeed, [the weight] is going to come off.’

I’m proud of what I’ve lost. And the rest is going to go when it’s time to go.

The main objection to the statement is that it sounds like she’s accusing women who did lose weight easily of lying and being unhealthy. I can see why her comments could be taken the wrong way, but since I’m one of the women who did not lose weight easily I know exactly where she’s coming from.

When I was pregnant with Sam I had an easy, healthy pregnancy where I worked out several times a week and ate well. The weight piled on anyway. My doctor didn’t believe that I’d gained as much as I had and questioned the accuracy of my pre-pregnancy weight. I carried small, with a big basketball belly right up until 37 weeks when I puffed up like the Goodyear blimp.

I thought for sure that breastfeeding would help me drop the weight. It didn’t. The water weight dropped off right way, but the rest went slowly. Even before I got the okay to exercise I walked miles every day up and down unfairly steep hills pushing a 30 lb stroller. Once I got the okay I went to yoga classes, did cardio several times a week and lifted weights two or three times a week. I ate well and drank a ton of water. It still took me nine months to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans and close to a year and two stomach viruses to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight.

I think it’s great that Hayek was honest about her experience, despite her generalizations. Her generalizations are probably based in experience- I’m sure plenty of Hollywood mamas work out too much and don’t eat enough in order to lose the baby weight, just as some of the mothers I’ve known have done the same thing.

For me, weight loss because of breastfeeding was a lie. I worked my ass off to lose the weight and it still felt like it took forever. If breastfeeding helped you drop the weight, that’s great. I’m envious. But it doesn’t work for everyone.

Since last Wednesday, Sam has slept through the night exactly once. I don’t know why he’s waking and I don’t know how to make it stop. He wakes up, goes to the gate in his doorway and calls for either Bob or me. There’s no rhyme or reason to the parent he picks and he’s usually pretty specific about who he will accept. One night he woke up calling for Dada. I woke up and got up to use the bathroom. He heard me cough and wailed, “Uh-uh! Mama back in bed. Dada! Dada carry.” Some nights he’s more agreeable to the other parent stepping in, and will allow a substitute, but that’s usually after several minutes of screaming for the other parent at the top of his lungs, which means everyone’s awake and unhappy.

I wish I knew what to do. He could be having nightmares or it could be something else. Aside from the wake ups, which are generally pretty brief, he sleeps for about ten hours a night. He’s been napping pretty consistently for 2-3 hours (yes, still in the car) so he’s not especially overtired with 12 or 13 hours total sleep each day. I know it’s not night terrors, since he’s lucent and fairly agreeable to getting back into bed as soon as one of us goes to get him. He also falls asleep pretty quickly once we’re in there, and though I’d prefer not to get into bed with him it certainly makes it easier for me since he quiets immediately and goes right back to sleep.

If this next child isn’t a sleeper I don’t know what I’ll do.

Things around here are starting to settle back into normalcy. After my spectacularly bad birthday two weeks ago things actually got worse. I learned my paid for, reliable, did I mention paid for car was totaled by the insurance agency. Crying, I called Bob at work to tell him the news but he told me he couldn’t talk. I called him back half an hour later and he still couldn’t talk. Close to an hour after that he called back and told me that he was on his way to the emergency room- he’d been hit in the eye with a hockey stick stopping in to the gym to talk to another teacher just before I called the first time. He didn’t want to upset me more, which is why he’d waited to tell me.

Bob was out of work for a few days with a bruised retina and corneal abrasions. He’s expected to recover full vision, but for now, a week and a half later, he still can’t see very well and bumps into things. It could have been worse, but the timing was terrible. We were feeling pretty bleak for a while and our car search didn’t improve our moods. Sam stopped sleeping through the night AGAIN which made things that much more difficult.

Sam’s still not going down easily or sleeping through the night. We put a deposit on a new to us 2007 car that ended up being more than we wanted pay, but with our luck we weren’t willing to take a chance on an older car with more miles on it. I’m still pregnant and I’m getting more uncomfortable each day. I’ve started to swell for real and can’t fit into my regular shoes anymore. At least the sneakers still fit. To add insult to injury a cat peed in my bathroom and despite crawling around on my hands and knees sniffing everything I can’t find the exact spot. Anyone want to adopt a cat or three?

So that’s why I’ve been quiet the past week or so. Life has been rougher than usual. I’m looking forward to the birth of this baby and margarita season.

I planned on writing a outraged piece about J Lo and her decision not to breastfeed because it would interfere with her ability to train for a marathon. The article I read had her quoted as saying things to the effect of, ‘I wasn’t breastfed and I turned out fine,’ as though that’s a good excuse for not bothering to even try to breastfeed when there’s no question that it’s the best possible for nutrition for an infant, and things like, ‘I want my children to be proud of me,’ like being an international sensation isn’t enough of a source of pride.

But since I’ve sat on it for a few days I’m not so outraged anymore. Instead I’m just sad that instead of spending time with her newborn twins she’s spending time with a personal trainer. Rather than make her kids proud by being a good mother she wants to make them proud by being in good shape.

I can’t really compare her life to mine. She is, after all, famous and her looks are worth far more than mine. But I still know what it’s like to want your body back. I was in great shape before I got pregnant with Sam and I’m sure I’ll never be in that kind of shape again. But before Sam was born I had ten or more hours a week to spend at the gym, lifting weights and practicing yoga. Perhaps when he’s older and the baby is older I’ll find that time again, but right now it’s not a priority. I still make time to exercise, and when the new baby is born in May I’ll make time to exercise again as soon as I get the okay, but for those first few months when the baby is nursing non-stop I’ll probably keep my gym membership on hold so I’m available for my baby. Those first months go by so quickly and with a spring baby I imagine I’ll get my exercise by walking to the playground every day or chasing Sam around the beach while wearing the baby in a sling or wrap.

It’s hard to struggle with body image when pregnancy so drastically changes the way you look and feel. I’m sure it’s worse when you’re paid to look fabulous. But so many other celebrities have been so public about breastfeeding that it just makes me sad that J Lo, who is such a role model, such an influence on women, seems to be telling the world that her body comes before her children.

Elizabeth Jett, mother to an exclusively breastfed infant and a five-year-old, failed to show up for jury duty in Maryland this October. She initially attempted to get out of service until the summer, but court officials denied her request offering her dates in January instead. Rather than agree to a date in January, she just didn’t show up to court and called in the morning of her service to say she wasn’t going. In January she was asked to come in to talk with the judge about her situation and found she was actually being held in contempt of court.

Breastfeeding a young infant is incredibly time consuming. Even if Jett were able to find appropriate child care she’d still need to be excused from court proceedings several times a day in order to express milk. Postponing her jury duty for a few extra months makes it more likely that she’d be able to serve well, rather than being distracted by her rock-hard boobs and the fear of squirting breastmilk all over her fellow jurors. I don’t think that it was right of her to just skip out on jury duty and I don’t think that it was wrong of the judge to hold her in contempt of court under the circumstances, but mothers of infants should be given some leeway in regards to rescheduling jury duty.

Lawmakers have proposed legislation that would allow breastfeeding mothers with young children to be excused from jury duty. This hasn’t gone over well.

Brian Frosh, Chair for the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, said the law would cause more people to try to postpone their duties, “If you start saying, we’re gonna excuse people for breastfeeding, you’ve gotta say ok to kidney dialysis, chemotherapy and all the other maladies that afflict the human condition.”

Frosh was also quoted as saying, “I really hope we don’t have to get in the business of passing laws for every excuse you may have for jury duty,” because obviously chemo is a lousy excuse for skipping out on one’s civic duties. Did my sarcasm come across clearly enough there? Because clearly Frosh is a dick. I mean seriously, chemo isn’t a good enough excuse to be excused from jury duty? Has he ever met anyone going through chemotherapy?

Frosh’s dickheadery aside, I think that Jett screwed up big time by failing to report. The law is law. Had she responded to letters and agreed to reschedule she wouldn’t be in this position.

For those of you keeping track, things have gotten better in the sleep department. By night four of our return to sleep training Sam cried at the gate for a little over 15 minutes- after 10 we put him back into bed and he promptly climbed out and returned to crying at the gate. But after a few short minutes more he climbed back into bed and went to sleep. By night five, he only cried for about 10 minutes. He was quiet before we returned to his room. Each night after I held my breath, waiting, and each night he was in bed before we had to put him back in. Last night, his cries weren’t even cries at all. They were just sad, sweet little requests. “Dada? Dada carry. Dada. Mama. Mama, take the gate off.” He was asleep before the ten minutes were up.

He isn’t sleeping through the night every night, but he’s sleeping through most nights and he doesn’t sound as angry when he wakes. He’s been sleeping a bit later in the morning too, which is just lovely for me since I love to sleep in. I think he’s finally starting to fully catch up on sleep. The cycle of sleep deprivation is coming to an end. For now, anyway.

This type of sleep training was a last resort for us. I don’t like letting Sam cry and aside from a few sleep deprived moments of my own, when I let him cry because I was just to frustrated with the crying to deal with him, we never let him cry until he was over a year old. Even after that we tried most other methods of getting him to sleep before we’d resort to letting him cry (or self-soothe, as the “experts” call it.) But bedtime routines weren’t working, rocking wasn’t working, staying with him while he fell asleep wasn’t working and co-sleeping wasn’t working. He was sleep deprived and we were miserable. We took a chance, tried something I didn’t want to try, and so far it’s working.

Knowing Sam and his sleep cycles, I’m sure it won’t last forever and I fully expect a return to sleep hell once the new baby arrives, but until then it’s nice to have two hours in the evening when we’re not arguing with a toddler about bedtime and we can finally watch the Netflix movies that have been collecting dust on our shelves.

Want to hear about my spectacularly bad birthday? We were our way to the zoo Saturday morning, with Bob’s cousins and cousin’s children following us in their car. I was driving. I merged onto the highway and a car a few cars ahead of us was scared to merge and stopped. The next car in line stopped, I stopped, but Bob’s cousin didn’t. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw he was still moving so I was prepared for the impact and I was relieved that it didn’t cause us to hit the car in front of us.

Sam in the back seat was fine, Bob and I were fine, the cousin and family were fine, but the cars? Not so much. Their small SUV smashed in our bumper pretty good. The trunk won’t latch, the taillights are busted, the license plate is pushed under the car, the license plate light is dangling and there’s other damage I can’t think of right now. Their car fared a bit better, but the front was smashed and was leaking antifreeze so it wasn’t safe to drive either.

We went directly to an auto body shop (where the cars are still waiting to be inspected by Bob’s cousin’s insurance.) We made some phone calls, rented some cars at the rental place next door, and about an hour later we stopped back at the house so I could pick up a book and my laptop. Bob drove me to the hospital where I reported to Labor and Delivery. They strapped me to contraction monitors to make sure the baby was okay and I wasn’t going into premature labor. I had to stay there for four hours which ended up being closer to five since the resident on duty didn’t put the time into the system until he saw me, about half an hour after I arrived and twenty minutes after I’d been hooked up.

Awesome. My car was smashed, its value to us is way more than its value to the insurance company which means they may or may not fix it rather than total it, and I spent four hours hooked up to contraction monitors on my 30th birthday. Let’s hope that’s not an omen for the year to come.

It pains me to think about sleep training, let alone be in the house when it happens, but the truth is that even though he cried for two hours the first night and one hour the second night, Sam slept straight through both nights without waking. This morning I woke up before he did.

About an hour after we left his room last night, Sam decided that he’d had enough, got into bed and went to sleep. He didn’t cry the entire hour and he didn’t cry nearly as much as he did the first night. He stood at the gate in his doorway for a while and talked about Thomas and Percy and James. Every ten minutes Bob went in, put him back in bed and left. Sam protested when he left, but didn’t scream like he did the night before. He cried mostly while he demanded that we take the gate off.

I don’t know what tonight will be like. We had a pretty good day, the three of us. We bummed around the house most of the morning then went to the post office. Bob went for a haircut and Sam and I went to play with the train table at Barnes and Noble for a while. Sam napped and Bob and I worked around the house. After Sam’s nap we worked for a bit longer while Sam played then the three of us went out to celebrate our wedding anniversary at a local restaurant that features a kids meal happy hour. Sam surprised me by eating just about everything on the table, from onion rings to my Thai turkey salad, even asking for lettuce.

Back at home we watched a bit of Thomas, played with toys, then got ready for bed. Sam and I brushed off the food from his teeth, picked out the color diaper he wanted to wear and the pajamas. Now, just 5 minutes after Bob left his room, he’s at his gate demanding to take the blue diaper and the red pajamas off and replace them with the green diaper and the blue pajamas. I am very tired and hopeful he’ll go to sleep more easily tonight.

Life was so much easier when he would just nurse to sleep.

A few months ago, before he got sick for the first time this winter, Sam was going to sleep. We’d read a few stories, kiss him good night and leave the room. It took about a week of putting him back to bed each time he’d get and standing in the hall until he was asleep, but it worked. 6 out of 7 nights he’d go to sleep on his own. Some nights he requested more kisses. Other nights he’d ask me to lay down with him and I would for a minute or two. Then I’d get up, kiss him again and leave the room.

But then he got sick and started getting the last of his 2 year molars at the same time. He was up coughing, couldn’t breathe through the congestion and his teeth hurt. A few nights in a row he slept with us and then we moved him back to his own bed when he was feeling better. Only he wouldn’t go to sleep anymore and he wouldn’t stay asleep We’d try to leave and he’d start to cry out for us to stay. His requests for more kisses turned into angry demands. He’d tell us where to put our heads on the pillow and which side of his bed to lie down on. When he woke in the night he’d demand either mama or dada and the other parent just wouldn’t do. His screams of anger and outrage would keep us both up if the wrong person came in to put him back to bed. He became a nasty little dictator.

We went back to trying to sleep train. I say we but I mean Bob. I just don’t have it in me, especially since I’m pregnant. We started a week ago and what worked the last time, putting him back in bed each time he got out no longer works. He gave himself a black eye banging his head on his many exhausted trips in and out of bed. Bob started sitting in the room with him until he fell asleep. That process takes hours. Each time Bob got up to leave Sam would wake up, furious.

At his two year well visit we asked our pediatrician what she thought. She says he’s manipulating us and we need to start putting him to bed and letting him scream, leaving completely and coming back every 10 minutes to put him back in bed. She suggested putting a sleeping bag on the floor so he won’t bump his head getting in and out of bed.

My inclination is to just give in and go to sleep with him to avoid the hours of screaming. But Bob agrees with the pediatrician. So sleep training it is. Last night, after two hours of screaming at the gate he fell asleep on the sleeping bag on the floor. He was still sniffling and crying a little in his sleep. It kills me. We’re just going to have to do this again when the baby comes and he stops sleeping all over again. It’s been just over an hour and he’s quiet. I wonder if he’ll stay that way.

I apologize for the super-lame post but we’re sleep training and I can’t think straight

March is a busy month in this household. What’s usually one of the two bleakest months of the year in Philadelphia is now filled with events. Sam’s birthday is the 8th, our wedding anniversary is the 19th and my 30th birthday is this Saturday, the 22nd.

We don’t have anything planned for our anniversary. Again. It’s only our anniversary though we’ve been together for close to eight years) and we’ve pretty much slacked celebrating it. Last year we were at a funeral on our anniversary and though my in-laws were kind enough to watch Sam for an hour after a four hour drive back to the city a funeral really isn’t my idea of anniversary fun. This year I’m pregnant, our anniversary falls on a Wednesday and we don’t have a babysitter. I don’t foresee anything especially thrilling.

Easter is early this year so my birthday falls on the day of Bob’s family’s annual day before Easter party which means I’ll celebrate my birthday with Easter egg hunts, Easter Pie and a ton of small children. It’s not the celebration I had in mind when I originally envisioned a 30th birthday party. My vision was more of an adult party, something that involved copious amounts of alcohol. People ask me if turning 30 bothers me, if I feel like I’m getting old. The short answer is no. Like many people who are content with their lives, the older I get the older my concept of old gets. I just wish that I could enjoy several rounds of cocktails with my friends.