Lies Your Parents Tell You

The other night, I accidentally stepped on a snail on the top step of our front path.  The crunch was loud and sickening. I hate stepping on snails. I like snails. They eat our vegetable patch and leave nasty, slimy trails, but I don't like killing them. It just feels like we have far too great an evolutionary advantage over these slow movers to wantonly squash them.

The look on your face, darling daughter, was horrible. You looked to my foot and then to my face, locking eyes with an expression equal parts horrified and accusatory.

"It's okay! The snail wasn't in there! It was just his shell! He's out for the evening. I swear."  "Yes, yes," chimed in Daddy.  "The snail moved away, he's on holiday, he needed a bigger shell."

Your knitted brow eased somewhat and you moved on to some other front yard mischief.

Later, I noticed two new snails eating the remains of their friends.  I could see the motion of their swallows, chunks of Cousin Snail moving through their snail heads and down their snail throats and into their snail gullets deep within their snail shells.

Maybe they don't need my deference after all.

Is an advocacy-less existence a meaningless existence?

I get tired of the sound of my own voice too, you know.  Sometimes, in the middle of some rant on breastfeeding (defending something that's never been attacked, for me, anyway) I pause and think, "this is going to be a blip. You're angry about a blip in time, a blip in Fidg's lifetime.  You'll be spending more time worrying about other problems later in her life."  Or maybe it will just continuously be something new to worry and rant about.  Is this why people have second (or third or fourth) children?  So they can feel like they are experienced in some aspect of parenting? Like something is familiar instead of each new age bringing an uncharted set of woes and worries?

The Fidg in Flight

""The FAA believes that unrestrained babies in airplanes are safer than restrained babies in cars. The NTSB does not. The AAP wavers, but appears to side with the NTSB currently."

Ah, the Government. So many agencies, so little time to come to consensus on anything.

Those who know me know I don't fly well. Do. not. like. it. Thankyouverymuch.  But I do fly and I don't want my daughter saddled with my stupid phobias, so I'll have to grin and fake it from now on.

She's taken one flight already and did splendidly.  All smiles, nursed at take off and landing, per many's suggestion.  But she was a lap baby.  She's happy to be a lap baby and frankly, not a lover of the carseat, but her mom is a lover of science and wonders now why she decided to ignore the laws of physics and their continued application at 30,000 feet.

But the laws of physics apply throughout the physical world. I know this. The world knows this. The FAA and NTSB know this. And yet, we still allow lap babies, arming millions of parent travelers each year with gurgling, babbling, cute balls of baby projectile weaponry, aimed at their fellow passengers and flight crews.

So, long story short, I just bought a $300 ticket to Vegas for my seven month old.  Oy.

Now I just need to figure out if the car seat will fit . . . .

P.S. Useful link: http://otoh.org/opal/carseat.html  Do you own googling to verify the facts, etc. Not other countries forbid lab babies. Why don't we?
P.P.S. This is another interesting, true post from the same site.

Who me?

I'm consistently surprised when Fidg expresses any preference for me, reaches for me, looks for me.  I mean, I know I'm her mother, but I still don't know why she'd like me so much. Biology, sure.  But it's a strange and wonderful surprise when her chin trembles and she lurches my direction when I get home from work.  What an undeserved honor from this unexpected fan.

Once a month kitchen duty

I read a magazine feature the other day in which one set of ingredients went into 5 dishes - the idea being you could cook on Sunday for the week. I thought that would be great. Then I found this website where you go big and cook for the month.  Yikes. 

At one time, this would've seemed like a big but doable project. Now, it seems like something Rob would end up doing as I sat and barked orders at him from my spot on the couch, nursing the kid.

Still, something to look into.

Family Foliage

These are lovely.  It's hard to choose a favorite design.  I see several that would be ideal for different family members.  But each design really is spectacular.

More on sleep

Another piece on infant sleep from Mothering magazine (a source I'm going to have to go "eh" on because of their vaguely anti-vaccine stance. Not cool):

One of the biggest crises of confidence that new mothers face has to do with sleep. Mothers feel responsible for their babies' sleep. Others ask mothers if their babies are sleeping through the night, as if this is something the mothers can control. Mothers lie to one another about whether or not their infants sleep through the night. And everyone lies about not bringing their babies into bed with them.

We lie because our society has unrealistic expectations of babies, and therefore we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves as mothers. Our expectations for babies' sleep simply do not coincide with babies' actual capabilities, or with the normal behavior of our species.

Yeah, I think we all lie. Or we probably should if we're tired of questions about how our babies are sleeping.  Mine still doesn't sleep as well as she used to, but I've stopped grieving the loss of my uninterrupted 5-6 hours and moved the hell along to whatever gets me enough rest to be coherent the next day.  Lately, that's been allowing Fidg to sleep next to me in bed. Or more precisely, allowing me to sleep next to her.  Safely.

I'm pretty sure this is safer than what I had been doing before: arranging myself with the nursing pillow and promptly passing out, only to wake 4 hours later and find both of us at odd angles.  The other night, she straight up fell of the pillow, landing with a soft plop on the mattress.  That's far more dangerous than consciously making the decision to allow her to sleep latched on.  She falls face down and I don't wake up for 4 hours . . . or worse, she rolls of the OTHER side of the pillow . . . . . Scary.

Also unhealthy, for me and her at this time, in my opinion, allowing her to just cry it out in the other room.  Forget the wisdom of the CIO method or Ferberizing your child, I know with a near certaintly that my child wakes in the night because she needs to feed because I don't pump adequate milk to stuff her full during the day time.  Kid's gotta eat sometime.

I need to just relax and let biology rule for a bit longer.  This time won't last forever.  And in some ways, despite me thinking this notion was stupid as hell a month or two ago, that extra time we have together at night makes it easier for me to be gone all day - especially now that she's beginning to notice when I leave.

(Okay, mom?)

Wisdom

After I mused about work/life balance to my virtual mom's group (without whom I would not be able to function), my daughter's godmother and mother of my godson sent along this fantastic passage from "Let The Baby Drive" by Lou Hanessian.  It's pretty amazing:

The focus shifts from whether I will work again (or whether someone out there thinks I'm worth hiring), to how I want to work, why I want to work, and what I want to do.  Maybe I want to invent something, write a children's book, open a restaurant, design an educational toy, work with parents and children.  This isn't about "having it all."  It's about making a life, not a living, as my old friend Robert used to say.

Now, therein lies an identity.  Not in the task, the title, or the assignment, but in the full investigation of our mixed emotions at every crossroads until, detour by detour, we discover the path to our true self.  

My ambivalence has nothing to do with how much I love my child.  It's not that I wish for another life or even regret the road taken, but rather that I am coming to understand the staggering complexity of our needs.  This is much deeper than a mere choice between home or the workplace.

Before motherhood, I measured my growth by my earnings, my outcome by my income.  But on the most successful day in my career, I still never felt like I had truly made a difference.  The most prestigious position I have held never once made me feel as though I was part of a larger whole.  I never felt eternity as a professional.  I never suffered the shameful despair of wanting to quit and the itchy panic of knowing I could not take a tidy little leave of absence or change jobs altogether.  I never felt the permanence of being loved.  I never cared so much how somebody else was feeling.  I never prayed for someone else first.

Sometimes, though, I am wistful, yearning for a time when I felt important in the eyes of others.  Then I remind myself that I have never been more important than in the eyes of this small boy.  And I was never as important at the office as I might have liked to believe.  

Looking at my life before and after baby-at labor before and after delivery - I realize now that being a mother has given me an opportunity that I never had in the sixteen years I worked before I had a baby: a chance to connect.  To commit.  To confront myself.  To learn how to give without regret and receive without apology.  To separate identity from image, and be accountable for whom I am, not just what I do.

 Now, I have had days at work where I felt like I made a difference.  But what rings truest for me here is the notion that simply placing work and home in front of women as the two factors to be balanced is really a narrow view.

Co-sleeping isn't bedsharing

I never much considered the distinction, but apparently, scientifically speaking, you co-sleep just by having the baby in the room with you, in a crib or bassinet, etc. So we've been co-sleeping with the Fidg since birth.

Lately, however, there's been some bedsharing as  well.  Waking every two hours to feed her was a bit of a drag and moreover, felt unsafe as I couldn't stay awake once I had her on the nursing pillow in bed with me.  If she's on the bed surface to start, she's not going to roll there and land face down or, worse, roll off onto the floor.

I'd prefer to get her back in the crib, but so every so often, she ends up in bed, and routinely ends up there after her 5 or 6am waking since there's just some dozing to be done between then and work.

The above linked article is pretty interesting and worth a read.  I especially like this part which academically chuckles over the paradox created by our cultures relationship with its ethics rules

It remains a curiosity of western cultures that we are largely unable to study prolonged mother-infant separation in a laboratory setting, even though our culture in the US provides us the perfect “natural experiment,” with thousands of neonates and infants being left to sleep alone for long periods of time every night. However, it is reasonable to at least suggest that solitary infant sleep represents an evolutionarily anomalous setting for human babies. As a result, infants may experience a physiological stress response that puts them at risk of energy depletion and immunological depression, while placing undue strain on their developmentally immature respiratory, cardiac, and neurological systems.

 Here's more on the definitions:

Definitions are important here. The term cosleeping refers to any situation in which a committed adult caregiver, usually the mother, sleeps within close enough proximity to her infant so that each, the mother and infant, can respond to each other’s sensory signals and cues. Room sharing is a form of cosleeping, always considered safe and always considered protective. But it is not the room itself that it is protective. It is what goes on between the mother (or father) and the infant that is. Medical authorities seem to forget this fact. This form of cosleeping is not controversial and is recommended by all.

Closet Case.

Eventually I'll run out of the low-hanging-fruit post titles.  Sooner rather than later, I hope. You probably so too.

I ended the work week amped for a Saturday of closet cleaning mayhem. Oh, it was going to be slash and burn in there. Those large Ikea bags (the "Dimpa" - yeah, I know my Swedish flat-pack speak, thankyouverymuch) with approximately 85 pounds of unwearable wardrobe? I was SO READY to just toss them into the truck bed and burn rubber to the nearest charity willing to take the lot.  I was mentally prepared to just let go. I was looking forward to the high I knew would come with the zen-like separation from material things.

So I pulled the bags out from under the bed and the floor of the closet, sat down, opened them up and . . . .

Photo Time!

Well, she's right about what it looks like.

Today was her first day of swim class at the Y.  She loved it. So did Daddy.

And over the weekend, she had her first walk on Ocean Beach

Almost Future

Right after my husband moved to the US and a few months before our wedding, my nephew celebrated his first birthday. During his party, I was standing at the patio door when I felt small hands clasp my leg.

I looked down and staring up at me, arms extended and asking for a lift, was a little girl about 18 months old. I scanned the room and looked back at her. She stared at me, arms still wavering in the air. So I picked her up and said, "does this belong to someone," to no one in particular.

Turned out the little girl didn't really belong to anyone, but was being informally fostered by a family member on behalf of a mother incarcerated and with a history of drug problems. Her foster carerer was actively shopping for a forever home.

The little girl, let's call her A, spent the party moving from grown-up to grow-up - especially the women - grabbing hold and reluctantly letting go only when necessary. This kid was looking for a mommy and dammit wasn't going to give up easily.

My wheels turned right away. Sure, the wedding wasn't for a few months and sure, we hadn't really seriously committed to kids, let alone to how many or where from. But here was a small person who needed a home. Would it be crazy to go to the beach for a weekend and come home with a child? Okay, a little. But not, like, SO much, right?

My husband - always the wiser and more deliberative member of the team - said, uh, no, we cannot take a child home with us.

Baby A found her home - a wonderful one with parents and siblings where she is loved and thriving. But I will never shake that image of those little upstretched arms and her grouping us together, holding on, wishing hard.

If I could only rearrange time, move that moment to my nephew's 5th or 6th birthday party, I'm sure I'd have taken her home. I'd have gladly been her mommy. But I can't do that. So instead, I'm just happy she has a home and that she didn't wait too long to get it. And I have this photo - a picture of an almost future, a picture of a will-be future now, featuring a different little girl.

Meeting Governmental Goals

As of Wednesday, my daughter will be among the scant 13% of children to be exclusively breastfed through the first 6 months of life.

And even as I say that, I feel compelled to disclose that there was about a week long period in her 2nd week of life when she received some formula supplementation due to severe jaundice (as prescribed and monitored by a Lactation Consultant, if that makes it any better). And she will have received exactly 18.5 ounces of generously donated milk from another mother - so take from that what you will.

The CDC's goals for breastfeeding in the US, by this year, were as follows:

Health People 2010 Objectives	# of States Meeting Objective, children born 2007
75% of mothers initiating breastfeeding	25
50% of mothers breastfeeding their infant at 6 months of age	14
25% of mothers breastfeeding their infant at 12 months of age	15
40% of mothers exclusively breastfeeding their infant through 3 months of age	17
17% of mothers exclusively breastfeeding their infant through 6 months of age	15

I wonder why we don't aim higher?

And the saddest data points of all: the lowest rates of breastfeeding continue to be among the poorest Americans - aka, the people LEAST able to afford expensive formula substitutes.  Why is this?  It's easy to imagine, of course, the immense practical barriers to breastfeeding - the lowest earners are less likely to have jobs at which they can pump, less likely to be able to take much maternity leave at all, etc.

If you look at the maps available through the above links you have to wonder what's wrong with the deep south, but then again, cross-tab that with the high percentage of impoverished and impoverished and non-impoverished blacks and you can draw some safe conclusions. 

Identity

Aside from the normal curiosity about what my daughter will be like - her sense of humor, her likes and dislikes, her personality - I wonder about my daughter's identity.  That is, how will she identify herself?  I suppose that depends in large part on where she spends most of her childhood and what we tell her she is.

On her father's side, she a first generation American - something that many Americans cling to as a badge of honor, a nod to our immigrant heritage and our need to find a culture aside from our own.  On her mother's side, via her grandfather and great-grandmother, she is second generation American, from a different origin than the first.  Will she celebrate either heritage?  In what context and to what extent?

She was born in a census year.  I identified her as racially Caucasian and ethnically Hispanic, English and I honestly can't remember what else. 

She'll never know her Italian war bride great grandmother, but will she feel an affinity for North Beach? Will she love Rome like I love Rome.  Will the Italian language sound comforting to her?  She won't hear it regularly growing up.  For her, will and English accent sound like family like spoken Italian sounded to me?

If her school has a heritage day, which aspect of her background will she choose to represent?  Will she be able to convince a largely doubting America that English is also a culture with strange traditions and traditional attributes that can be identified and explained?  Or will she assume she's just white.  The majority.  An absence of culture?  Will she ever meet her Mexican American relatives?  Will she ever hear a Tio call her mija?

And how might any of that affect her personality?  Is talking with one's hands an Italian cultural attribute or is it encoded in her genes?  Will she be apologetic and polite like an Englishwoman or a bit more brash and bossy like an American girl?