Missing Miss Baby

Isn't she just breaking your heart, right this very minute?

It's just happened, really for the first time: I am missing Miss Baby, with my whole heart and body. Pynchon has really stepped up this weekend, giving me time away from the house to do copyediting and general tidying of a publication project that is drop-dead-due tomorrow. So I'm on my second trip to Starbucks of the day (switched from pep-me-up lattes to cool-me-out peppermint tea, natch) and ...

... my whole self hurts for missing my baby. My Miss Baby. All 15+ pounds of no-poop-yet, nap-striking, nipple-chomping, boobie-yanking, drool-mad beautiful happy smart adorable heartrending gorgeousness of her.

I'm at once pleasantly surprised and in pain: I've been attached to her so long and so completely and sometimes so frustratingly, and I've so been cherishing any little hours or half-hours I get to myself, that I figured I was just heartless and irredeemably selfish. But now I miss her and I feel like I could actually burst into tears.

Huh. That's new.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Miss Baby is now three and a half months old. I'm going back to work before Christmas, and The Dada is starting his parental leave. As we are exclusively breastfeeding until six months, and plan to continue b-f until one year, my absence from the familial home for gainful employment will necessitate some technological intervention.

I'm gonna hafta pump.

I splurged on the 'daily use' Medela backpack dual-pump with multi-phase pumping action. Um, 'woohoo'? It's all so clinical.

Here's me boiling all the components, a witch's brew of plastic mommy-replacement devices. It's easy enough to pump (mooooooo!), but the whole idea is just so undignified. Now, I'm really excited to go back to work (I miss grownup company, and I miss my job, actually), and, in a way, I'm really really excited that someone besides me will be able to feed Miss Baby. This will lengthen my leash considerably.

On the other hand, I was kind of pleased when Miss Baby utterly and with great hurling cries refused to take the bottle. I sort of, deep down, don't want to be rendered obsolete or expendable just yet. Yes, it's grueling to be the only food source, and the comfort of first, second, and last resort; it is sometimes less than cheering to discover that Miss Baby will holler inconsolably from her crib, only to fall fast asleep after a token three little sucks at the magic boobie. But, it's also kind of empowering: I'm The Mama, and she needs me, me, and only me.

However, I know that with December really coming up fast, the right thing to do is to introduce the occasional bottle now, just so that she gets used to it and won't freak out when The Boobies aren't around all the time. But you know, as much as I want her to take it, deep down I want her to reject it, too. Because otherwise, even though it's silly, I'll feel a little bit like she's rejecting me.

True Story: Cat Edition

"Look! I fit in the sling, too! Maybe you can carry me around
all night, instead of Miss Baby!"

Poor Crazy Kitty is having a bit of a hard time adjusting to life with Miss Baby -- all the new noises and smells and, let's be honest, the lessening of attention from The Mama and The Dada. She hasn't even made it into the blog yet! That's one neglect I can rectify right now ...

True story. A couple of weeks ago, when Miss Baby was still on her 11:00 pm bedtime schedule (I know! So gruelling!), Pynchon managed to sling her (that is, carry her around in the sling) to sleep and while I was in the shower, managed to put her down in her crib, pull up her blankets, untie the sling, turn on the baby monitor, sneak out and close the door. Without her waking up. A miracle. I mean, at this point, we pretty much wept from exhaustion every time we finally put her down, and immediately went to bed ourselves, for fear that our conscious breathing would rouse her.

How is this a story about the cat? Well, in the shower I had the secret knowledge that PCK was actually asleep on the nursing rocker in Miss Baby's (dark) room. When I came out of the shower pleasantly surprised that Miss Baby was in bed, I had to break the hard news that the cat was latched in there with her.

Thus began Operation Cat Extraction: I was nominated to turn off all the upstairs lights, open the door, sneak into the room (on all fours, natch, so Miss Baby might not chance to see me), and somehow get PCK off the chair and out of the room without her meowling in protest. And start fast, because the odds were good she'd soon enough get out of the chair herself, find the door closed, and meowl in protest anyway.

High dignity parental manoeuvring ensued. PCK was successfully extracted. Miss Baby remained asleep. Only to wake up from unrelated causes about 10 minutes later.

True story.

Tales from the Crib

I offer the following for your consideration:

Here's Miss Baby waking up from her (shortish!) morning nap yesterday. Please note that her feet are hanging out through the bars of her crib. Obviously, I did not put her down like this, but you can see she's not terribly distressed about the situation (although, if I were to caption this, it would probably read 'Put down the camera already, The Mama, and make with the rescue operation'). Basically, she's perpendicular to how she started. And she's managed to remove all her blankets, while keeping her comfort-diaper (that's another post) artfully draped over her shoulder.

Maybe her new name should be 'Baby Houdini'.

But that's not really the point. Here's the point. Do you ever look at a photograph and suddenly see things that weren't apparent to you in real time, in real life? For example, for all its comedic gold, this photo is alloyed with signs of Dangerous, Sloppy, and Unsafe Mothering Practices I am afraid to publish for fear the CAS or at least the BabyCentre gurus will come to pillory me. Notice the stuffed animal in the far right! The dangling ribbon at the top right! The profusion of bunched up blankets around the baby! And, the pillow, my god the PILLOW! Basically, this setup is just begging for a smothering to take place, according to all the experts.

I think the Modern Mother-to-Be spends most of her pregnancy learning about all the different, inadvertent, clearly negligent ways that she can kill her as-yet-unborn-miracle once it makes its way out of the womb (the guilt trip they pull on you while it's still in the womb is also, alas, another post). It's a world of 'never', 'don't do', 'avoid', and 'no': never put your baby to sleep on her tummy; don't leave baby unattended; avoid placing on a soft surface; no crib bumpers no pillows no stuffed animals no duvets no bedsharing no couchnapping NO NO NO.

If having a baby is about, fundamentally, saying a resounding YES to new life and new love, baby care is all about death-avoidance, stridently and righteously proclaimed by experts aplenty.

Don't get me wrong. I think the 'back to sleep' campaign conveys some useful information about avoiding potentially smothering your baby. And it's good that safety standards mean Miss Baby can only wedge her legs and not her skull between the bars of her crib. But aren't we all getting a little crazy with the safety proclamations? The pillow (eek!) in Miss Baby's deathtrap, um, crib, is a backrest for her: she goes to sleep on her side (ack!) because that's how she always fell asleep after feeds when we were bedsharing (horror!). She's got blankets at each end of the crib (yelp!) because she goes down in whatever direction she was facing to eat -- and the blanket from the foot end comes up to cover her, lightning quick, before she can freak out. The ribbon and the toy give her something to look at when she's considering whether to sleep or to wail. And all of these things contribute to a happy, well-napped baby.

Really, I have to give the credit for most of these innovations to my mom -- who put me to sleep on my tummy, under a duvet, with an electric heating pad for god's sake. Who bottle-fed me, propped me up on the no-doubt flammable couch with pillows, and watched me make my first roll ... right off the bed and onto the floor. And I survived. This generation of Grammas are horrified that we are horrified at their parenting technique. And maybe they should be. I think we're a little overcautious now, perhaps because we've become such a litigious society, or maybe because so many of today's new moms are operating a gazillion miles away from their families without much mentoring or support, or maybe because the baby gear has gotten so complicated and our lives so rushed we need terribly explicit directions to save us from ourselves. I don't know. But I sure am tired of worrying so much about Miss Baby's certainly imminent catastrophic death from a change-table-fall, car-seat-tipover, pillow-smothering, cat-attack, toy-choking incident.

You know what? No matter what you do, Miss Baby is going to spin herself silly in the crib, and wind up with her feet wedged through the bars. And she's likely going to be fine, and you'll likely take a bunch of pictures to laugh at with your friends. Everyone should just calm down. And maybe laugh a little more.

"Are you going to kill me, mobile? I just want to chew on you and love you!"

Things I don’t want to forget …

Here are some things about Miss Baby at 3 months old that I don’t want to forget:

1. The way she gives a big half-asleep sigh when she gets drowsy breastfeeding
2. The way she kicks her feet straight up in the air when she first sees me in the morning
3. The way she has become frowningly obsessed with staring at the barnyard-animal pattern on the nursing pillow
4. Her undying love of ceiling fans, with whom she shares all her secrets
5. The way she looks like a little baby bird when The Dada holds her up on his shoulder, all raised eyebrows and skinny little neck and too-big head
6. The way she’s starting to shriek really loudly, just for the fun of it
7. How she looks when she’s asleep in the sling: squashed, fetal, peaceful
8. The way she fits against me, curled up tummy to tummy, when nursing
   

Hm. There's a lot of boobie-related items on this list, I see. Well, that seems fair, as I spend a lot of time in the nursing chair with Miss Baby. Staring. Dripping. Letting the hormones kick in ...

I'm still hip enough to realize that these are not things that Miss Baby is going to want me to reminisce about out loud, let alone in front of other people, once she gets to be, oh, I don't know, seven. I can just see it -- "Mom, tell me again about when I was a baby!" says Miss Baby. "Well," reply I, "you spent a lot of time with your face buried in my boobs, and made the weirdest rasping breathing noises! My boobs were so big I thought I would suffocate you! Dad was worried he could never see your nose." What that anecdote has is naked Mommy, Miss Baby doing something icky, and Daddy looking at naked Mommy and icky baby behaviour. A surefire recipe for averted eyes, and then later, rolling eyes.

So I'll just share with the Internet ... she'll never be three months again, and I just have to write it all down.