Filed under: Links
For your reading pleasure: an interesting (and short) article by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/opinion/28kristof.html
Filed under: Baby Momma
Tuesday May 26th 2009
Dear Emerson:
Today you are three months and 26 days old.
THE NAPPING DILEMMA
So, we have yet to resolve the ongoing napping dilemma. While I have noticed that you have started to show more consistent signs of daytime sleepiness, you are still adamantly against an actual nap (which shall here-on-out be defined as: an extended period of daytime sleeping, preferably over one hour, which occurs in said baby’s own sleeping apparatus, during which, the mommy may exit the chamber of slumber and GET SHIT DONE!). Presently, the only way I can get you to sleep for an extended period of time is to lie down with you. The minute I try to set you down in your own bed, you invariably and immediately wake up.
I am really not sure what to do about this problem.
I am going to start with a modest goal: ONE consistent afternoon nap. I am going to try to have you go to sleep sometime between one and two o’clock each day. I think the timing alone will be the first goal – trying to establish some sort of schedule. Then perhaps we can work on getting you to sleep in your own bed. Baby steps. Baby steps.
Love,
Mommy
Thursday May 28, 2009
Dear Emerson:
Today you are three months and 28 days old.
TRIUMPH?!?!
It is 1:38 pm, and you are asleep – in your own bed.
I am not holding my breath, but this could be a FIRST. The first time I put you down for a nap in your pack-n-play (awake) and you actually (gasp) FELL ASLEEP. On your own. In YOUR BED. If this truth holds, do you understand what a MONUMENTAL ACHIEVEMENT has been witnessed on this day in the household of Baeten?
Despite many people telling me otherwise, I have generally been an opponent of the “let your baby cry” school of childrearing – especially for babies your age. I base this opinion on absolutely no scientific evidence or any personal experience. It is an opinion of pure instinct. It seems like letting a child “cry it out” before said child is able to really reason, or have any real concept of cause and effect is unnecessarily cruel. I think that you are too little to really know why you are crying or be deliberately unreasonable. So for me not to attend to you is to tell you that I don’t care about your distress, physical and/or emotional, and that just isn’t the way I want our relationship to start.
That being said, I will let you fuss and cry a little. The flip side of my previous comment is that I don’t want you to turn into a spoiled brat that lives in a world built around immediate gratification. Also, it sometimes happens that the circumstances of life prevent me from addressing your displeasure IMMEDIATELY. But, as far as nap and bedtime attempts go, I have always gone and gotten you when your crying passed “displeasure” and reached a timbre of actual distress.
As previously documented, the Battle for the Nap has been epic and ongoing.
Up until today, here is a breakdown of our general nap time routine:
- I nurse you in the bedroom, and if I am really lucky, you get sleepy while you are eating.
- I burp you and lull you to sleep in my arms.
- I put you in your bed.
- You IMMEDIATELY wake up.
- You fuss fuss fuss….eventually developing into a full blown crying fit. This process can occur in seconds or can be stretched over 10 or 15 minutes.
- I pick you up.
- You stop crying.
- I lull you back to sleep in my arms.
- We nap together on the bed.
- As soon as I get out of bed, you wake up.
Today, I decided to try something new. I fed you, burped you, and put you in your bed – fully awake. Then I went into the kitchen and made myself a salad. I decided that, barring hysteria, I was going to let you fuss and cry until I had eaten my salad. I call this the “Salad Method” of baby sleep philosophy.
You fussed.
You cried (although not with the escalating ferocity that you typically display).
I ate.
And then, as I chewed a bite of tomato……..God descended from the heavens on his silvery white steed of compassion and mercy, floated into our bedroom, hovered over your perfect little baby face, and bestowed tiny butterfly kisses of drowsiness upon you. And you slept.
Until now.
Now you are SCREAMING.
SCCCRRRRREEEEAAAAMMMMIINNNGGGGGG!!!!
It is 2:03 pm.
Almost a half an hour.
Baby steps. Baby steps.
Half an hour IS progress.
Love,
Mommy
Filed under: Booda & Max
Max has made a full recovery.
The Monday after my last post on the subject, Max was a little bit better, but still not his normal self. He had spent the previous weekend moping around, not eating, and looking generally sad and sick. So I took him to another vet for a second opinion. They gave him a pretty complete physical exam and then told me to take him home and give them a call if he wasn’t better in a week. Thank you ma’am, that will be $200.
Later that same evening, Max seemed much improved, and he continued to get better over the next couple of days.
The evidence suggests that his recovery was based predominantly on the fact that we passed the $5oo mark on his veterinary care. I am pretty sure that as soon as the debit card was approved for that $200 transaction, Max’s immune system sprang into action. The $300 we spent on the previous two visits just wasn’t enough to tip the scale of his immunological response.
If I had known that there was such a strong correlation between Max’s health and the amount of money that we spent at the vet, then I would have just forked over the money right away and saved our poor puppy a few days of misery.
We are glad that he is back to his goofy normal self. 
Filed under: Baby Momma
Baby is in her bouncy.
Happily she sits.
10 minutes.
No screaming.
Awesome.
Max the wonderdog is sick.
It all started this past weekend when we noticed that he was holding up his left hind paw. We assumed that he had just strained it a little bit while he was romping in the yard with Booda, but as the days passed it did not seem to get any better. So on Tuesday I made a vet appointment for him. He and Booda both needed to go in for their annual well-dog visits anyway, so Max’s injury just pushed that errand to the top of the list.
As the week progressed, Max’s leg did not seem to be getting any better. If anything, it seemed to be bothering him more and more. He has still been cheerful, but his overall “volume” has definitely been turned way down.
Then yesterday morning he didn’t finish his breakfast.
Now, if you have EVER met Max, not finishing his breakfast is a VERY BIG DEAL. Max has always been an incredibly food driven dog. In fact, we often worry about his eating habits because he has a tendency to not chew his food – he just inhales it. It is almost like a doggie magic trick. You know the one – the incredible vanishing food trick. When he was a puppy he swallowed an entire rib. Whole. In the flash of the splittest of seconds. I was sure that I had killed our brand new puppy. We took him to the vet, fully expecting an expensive surgical extraction. The vet sent us home with instructions on the emergency symptoms that might occur – NOTHING EVER HAPPENED. It didn’t even slow him down one bit. The days passed and turned into weeks…..and eventually we just figured that the rib was no problem for his SUPER DUPER digestive system.
Our present worry was further compounded when he wouldn’t touch last night’s dinner or this morning’s breakfast. Something is defintely very wrong in Max-land. Last night I coaxed him into eating some roast beef – but it was difficult, and I am not being sarcastic. This morning, he wouldn’t eat any of the wide array of tasty treats we offered him (roast beef, peanut butter, bread).
Today we took him to the vet. What ensued was like the very long doggie version of House. Dr. McGee looked him over from head to toe. He took his temperature. He palpated his leg. He drew blood. He ran several blood tests, which counted his blood cells, and organ function. He tested his urine. So far, everything has turned up in the normal range. Which is good because it rules out some of the really bad things that could be wrong with him, but frustrating because all of that testing and we are no closer to knowing what is wrong with him. So Dr. McGee gave him a shot of analgesic for his leg discomfort, and one of antibiotics – just in case, pumped a couple of syringes of “doggie nutrient paste” into him, and sent him home for observation.
Poor Maxie-poo has been lying in the same spot since we came home four hours ago. Poor puppy.
I have made some yummy boiled hamburger and rice dog food for him, and hopefully I will be able to get him to eat some of it.
Hopefully he will feel better soon.
The obvious, yet still surprising thing about having a baby is that it COMPLETELY changes who you are.
I think that statement deserves a resounding “DUH!” from the crowd.
While I was pregnant, and even before I was pregnant – when I was just contemplating motherhood in a vague and nebulous sort of way – I do not think that I underestimated the enormity of motherhood. I am a fairly pragmatic girl, and I knew that having a baby was going to be an enormous amount of work and something that radically changed the breadth and perspective of our lives.
What I did not expect; however, was how dramatically and immediately it changed me – the essence of me, the core of my identity, and the foundation of my self perception. While I understood that I was taking on a huge new job, I really thought that it was something that would be added to what I already was – like, “Hello, my name is Anna. I am an adopted Korean, college graduate, chocolate chip cookie lover, wife, small business owner, AND a mother.” I knew that the “and a mother” part was weighty, in all likelihood more weighty than any of my previously donned roles, but I still thought that the central object – the “me” – would stay relatively the same. It would just have adjusted to its additional new role.
But I was wrong. Having a child changes the central object. You are no longer “Anna” who is a wife, a business partner, a goof ball, a dancer – whatever….. You are now some new incarnation of “Anna the Mother.” On many days you aren’t Anna at all, you are just “Emerson’s Mom.”
This has been a major topic of self reflection for me and a HUGE adjustment, and I would have to assume that I am not alone. In fact, I would be so bold as to hypothesize that much of the “baby blues” and postpartum depression that you hear about is at least partially due to women dealing with this exact transition and adjustment.
It is a wildly confusing process because it involves such an intensity and polarity of emotions. Total selflessness vs. complete selfishness. Overwhelming heart melting love vs. extreme overwhelming exhaustion and frustration. Wanting to be with your child 24/7 vs. wanting some time (make that ANY time) of uninterrupted alone-ness.
While the change is fairly immediate, the reconciliation of that change, at least in my case, is a process – an acceptance of the evolution or metamorphosis that parenthood necessitates. As my family moves past the three month mark, I feel like I am finally starting to wrap my brain and heart around this process, and in doing so, finding a path towards some sort of productive sanity. I am starting to realize that this new me doesn’t have to completely destroy the old me in order to be effective. Instead, I must find a way for the old me to evolve into something new and different. I am working my way towards a place where I can be this new “Anna the Mother” and still find room in the machine for some of the cogs that defined me in my old life (husband, work, dog lover, etc.).
This whole conversation is not to say that the first three months were not full of wonderful, amazing, life-changing moments – moments that brought tears of joy and amazement to my eyes, moments that felt cosmic in their significance to us as a family and to our place in the world. But the first three months were also months of brutal anarchy. Night was day. Up was down. Some days I could hardly find a coherent sentence, much less recognize myself as the same person I was before parenthood. And until it actually happened, I didn’t realize how unnerving that lack of recognition would be.
In the first few weeks, one of my friends wrote to me, “Don’t mean to scare you, but your life has changed. But by three months, your sun will shine, no matter what. But it is the longest three months–the most exhausting three months–boot camp has nothing on being a new mom.”
At the time, I read that with hope, but a streak of skepticism born of physical and emotional exhaustion. But we are officially past three months – and what do you know? The sun is shining.
