The benefits of ppd

I was talking to a friend who has a child Jack's age recently about the loss of one's social life after a baby.. or rather .. the change to one's social life. As my friend said, 'it's a new way to be.' She mentioned her husband was fairly blue about it and she asked me how that was for me. I realized that I wasn't really sad about it and I wondered why since that was always an important part of my life.

Here is my theory: one (ridiculous) cure for a migraine is to have someone punch you in the arm for one minute straight. the idea is that you'll be distracted from your migraine then when the punching ends, you'll be grateful and relieved that it's over.. then your migraine doesn't seem so bad. I think having the baby would be the migraine then the post-partum depression is getting punched in the arm. For three months, I was convinced I would never experience joy again. So when it was over, pain from the loss of a vibrant social life didn't seem like much to deal with... not that I recommend it but it does make most other types of emotional discomfort seem .. well.. not that uncomfortable.

I know it's blurry..

but I had to post this one:

Bye Bye Lumpasaurus!

When Jack hit 5 or 6 months or so, people started asking me questions like "is he crawling? or "is he sitting up on his own" or "is he pulling himself up" or "is he flipping over a lot" or "can he do long division?" Well, not that, but my response to all of the questions was a similar kind of exasperation that the long division question might provoke. The answer to all the questions was no, no, no, and finally, no not that either. If there were a string of questions, I would say, no, he's just kind of a little lump, happy to lay there. If he were a drinking man, he'd probably just sip on a margarita. To make light of all that business, Ryan and I began calling him our little lumpasaurus.

But those days are over. Jack is scooting and sitting up, and he spends most of his time on his tummy. He grabs my hands and cries unless I pull him to standing. He sleeps on his side or on his belly usually. In order to resist sleep, he flips over onto his tummy then ends up face planting when he just can't resist any longer. We've had to lower the crib mattress.

Oh the times they are a changin.

Here is Jack thinking about long division:



Me and the little guy:

Mad Skilz

Jack is almost 8 months old, and all of a sudden he is a lot more interested in moving around on his own terms.

He sits up pretty well and he also scoots everywhere on his tummy but only backwards or in circles. He even tried to pull himself up using the chair this little i-have-no-idea-what-that-green-thing-is-called hangs on. He quickly discovered it's hard to lift all of your weight without the use of your legs.



We also went swimming for the first time with our PEPS group at a great outdoor pool. Jack was ok in the kiddie pool but more tentative in the big pool. Other people in our group said their kids started out similarly apprehensive but after a few swims they loved the pool. Hopefully, this will happen to Jack since we have three weeks of swimming lessons coming up in August.

The Creeps

About a month ago, the New Yorker wrote an article about Paul McCartney. The writer spent several days with him. At one point, they were walking down the street in London and someone jumped in front of them asking for a photo and an autograph. McCartney was gracious and later the writer pointed out that the exact same thing probably happened to John Lennon on the day he was shot. The writer said that guy who jumped out at them could have been another Mark David Chapman (the killer) and McCartney replied yeah, but he could have also been jesus.

I appreciate this sentiment.. one can't live in fear and most people who approach you do not have malicious intentions.

With that in mind, I was in Trader Joe's the other day with Jack in the ergo. We were in the checkout line when a man in his late fifties walked by and exclaimed what a beautiful baby and could he see him (I took this as asking permission to approach us). I said sure and he made a funny face at Jack who smiled. Then the guy said, see - he can tell how much I care about him.

In the two seconds that it took for all of my blood to run cold the guy made another face at Jack who just looked away and I simply turned around. It was one of the creepiest moments of my life and it has really been bugging me. I completely froze and fled as soon as my motor neurons got the message from my brain that this person was a freak... and more specifically, dangerous. I wish I had reacted more aggressively.

I don't want to live my life in fear of people like this. They are few and far between. But when you encounter them, you do (to paraphrase anne lamott) want to stand guard outside your house with a shotgun for the entirety of your child's life.

Rituals

Months ago, when Jack was a tiny tike, the nurse practioner who moderated our First Weeks discussions reminded us that we can create rituals even at an early age. People talked about the rituals they remember as kids.. it was very sweet but at the time, I didn't have much energy for it.

Luckily that changed and now we have a couple of rituals we all enjoy. The first is that we always read to Jack before he sleeps. His favorite book is Baby Beluga. Every time I pull out that book, he smiles a big open-mouth smile. The other thing that we do is two days a week Ryan and I take Jack on a walk in the early morning hours just after he has woken up and eaten.. for a while this was 6am now its around 7. We go to one of the many espresso places near our house and then check out the sites. He looks around and inevitably falls asleep by the end of the walk. It's very peaceful, and the short trip always renews our spirits and reminds us how lucky we are.

eating disorder

is it possible to have an eating disorder focused on someone else's eating? You obsess about what the other person is eating and how much... it would also be the opposite of anorexia .. want-your-kid-to-eat-more-exia.

I have this illness. It started when Jack was in the hospital and he HAD to eat a certain amount within a 3 hour period. It was so stressful because he always fell asleep and sometimes the whole ordeal took 3 hours then we just had to start over.

Ever since then he has never eaten what he's supposed to.. maybe its just a big F you to the establishment that force-fed him. My latest theory is that he doesn't like eating from a bottle. He loves solid food and gets really excited to drink from a cup or eat from a spoon. So today, after he only ate a couple of ounces of formula, I poured it into a little bowl and spoon-fed it to him. He loved it and ate/slurped the rest.

He is a little man of mystery.

The Big Ride

Four years ago yesterday, Ryan and I pedaled out of Seattle beginning our journey east across the country. We did the ride with the Lung Association, and it was easily the best summer of my life... spending the whole summer outdoors, on the bike.. meeting new people .. watching the terrain change as we rode .. words can't really capture it. Although at the time, I tried. I am sure blogs were around but I didn't have one. I sent e-mail home from every rest stop describing my adventures (and there were many)

Every year since, we have hosted riders from out of town. This year, two lovely college students -- Ane and Liz -- from minnesota spent the weekend with us. We showed them around, reminisced about our ride and took them to the start this morning. They were really nervous but I was so excited for them.

Ryan and I have vowed to do the ride again but we have to wait until our wee one is much older -- We will be in our fifties (as many of the riders are). Kind of weird to think about..

Anyway, here is a photo of Ane, Liz, and Jack. If you want to live vicariously through them, I have linked to their blogs.

Berry picking

Today Jack and I drove up to Bellingham to meet bridget, her 4 month old nephew and sister-in-law to pick strawberries. It became a lovely day .. we ate lunch downtown, then did the required stop at mallard's ice cream for a scoop of the best ice cream anywhere (and i have eaten a lot of ice cream.. so I know this). Then we headed out to pick berries. My plan was to hold Jack in the ergo as I picked:



But strawberries grow on the ground and Jack was tired so he didn't enjoy hanging out as kneeled on the ground picking the berries. So he ended up supervising from the sidelines:



Archer (his 4 month old counter-part) was much more amenable to being carried around by his mom. We got some cute photos of them after the harvest:





the daily rant: if you ever begrudge a migrant farm worker decent housing or health care I suggest you go out to pick strawberries one day. After about 40 minutes, my back hurt, I was sunburnt and done.. it was fun as a lovely outing at a quaint local farm but not so fun as a way of life.

Happy Father's Day!

Included in the long list of things-I-did-not-know-before-Jack was what kind of father Ryan would be. During my pregnancy I thought (worried) a lot about how things would be once the baby arrived. Ryan did not. I asked him once if he thought much about it, and he said no. He reported not feeling particularly excited. I thought this might forecast problems. However, luckily for all involved, this has not been the case at all. Ryan and Jack are crazy about each other. It's a beautiful thing.



This weekend was also notable because we spent our first night away from our wee one. Our dear friends courageously accepted the challenge to babysit for almost 24 hours -- this includes waking up at 5:30am on a Sunday.. something baby civilians do not normally do. I hadn't thought much about leaving until about 5 minutes before I had to do it. Then I was sad and tried to convince my friends to come to Leavenworth with us (we went to a wedding). They declined .. and in the end, all was well. Our friends have a dog who Jack loves and he was completely unaffected by our absence. Every time ryan and I do something on our own, I am reminded how important it is for parents to get away. Happy parents = happy baby. It's such a simple equation but for some reason requires great momentum so a more accurate equation is energy + happy parents = happy baby.

Our pals with Jack



Us right before leaving (I was fretting that I had not written our will yet -- something I have been meaning to do in case - knock on all products resembling wood - something were to happen to us.. yes, I think hypervigilance about all possible scenarios of tragedy is either related to estrogen or some strange gene only expressed when there are two x's):



and on a complely unrelated note, Jack as the commander of the exer-saucer

will jack love science

I love science. I am currently taking immunology and it is damn fascinating. While I will grieve my entire life about not breastfeeding Jack, my class has made me feel better about it. Our immune systems have back-ups for back-ups and immunity is something you are always building. Women secrete one type of antibody and then other more general immune cells through breastmilk but the antibody is only one of 5 that we make.. and we also make our own general immune cells. I have no doubt it's better to breastfeed but Jack can still have a kick-ass immune system without it.
As I study, I feel a little regret that I wasn't introduced to the greatness of science at a younger age; and now that I have a child I think, I will show him how cool science is and then he will love it and become the scientist I won't ever be. This is a slippery slope. Jack may hate math and think the laws of thermodynamics are boooorrrriiinnggg. Then will I be disappointed? I hope not. I hope I can be the kind of parent who gets to know him and loves him as he is.. even if he hates math and is a republican.. although the republican part would be a serious challenge.

Rocket shoes

Among the items I found under my bed were these very cool rocket shoes:




also a gift from friends of ours from our amazon days. These shoes are so great. They have that crinkly material on the sides so they make playing with your feet even more fun than usual.

They are also great because they are not the regular baby boy apparel -- they are red and science themed unlike so many of his clothes which are blue and sports themed. He has a "future quarterback" sleeper that I call his ironic sleeper because my child will never play football.

Solid food, old/new clothes, and summer heat

It's funny that "they" say at 6 months you can start feeding your baby solid food when the food you feed him is almost liquid. So far in the past week and a half, Jack has eaten pureed sweet potatoes, avocado, banana, and pear. He seems to like this food a lot more than formula. I don't blame him because I don't like milk either.

Since I feel that our consumer society creates a bunch of crap you really don't need, I thought I would not buy bibs because I have so many towels and receiving blankets. This didn't really work out. Now I can imagine the day someone said, if only we could invent something that would actually catch the food that they spit out. Here Jack is pictured wearing a dishtowel that caught almost none of the sweet potato he ate.



After the baby shower last October, I put many of my gifts in a drawer underneath our bed. I sorted through the clothes and pulled out the items that would fit him during his first 6 months. As I sorted through the clothes again, I realized I had missed some and sadly, he is almost too big for them. Our friends Megan and Ben gave us this little get-up.. perfect for warmer weather.




Bridget took Jack to his first backyard summer party. He took a dip in the kiddie pool but apparently did not dig it. He prefers to lounge.

My generation

I just returned from a gathering with my PEPS group (parent group). I also just finished reading a blog entry of a friend whose wife was harshly judged for returning to work after having twins. I am glad these two things happened consecutively.

To be clear, every parent works whether they are paid for it or not. All of the women in my PEPS group work outside the home -- anywhere between 1 and 5 days a week. Months ago, before anyone returned to work, our group moderator (who was 10 years older than the oldest of us) asked the moms to express their feelings about returning to work. I think she was surprised when no one seemed to have any conflicted feelings. Some people had to do it, others didn't but no one really cared what anyone else was doing.

I feel like my peers get that this stay-at-home/work dichotomy is just false. We do what makes us happy and/or we do what we have to do. If you want to work 60 hours a week, it's great that you can choose that. If you want to stay at home (and you can), lovely! I do both, and it works for me. The judgement seems to come in from people who are resentful that they never had choices or those who are unhappy with the choices they made... the judgement generally seems to come from an older set of women -- I don't notice it among my peers. We all seem to understand that 1. having the choice is a privilege 2. happy parent = happy baby...

Frankly, these days, when people ask me questions I deem judgemental, I lie. Do you breastfeed? yes. How much does he weigh? 19 pounds. Don't you just loooooooooooove parenthood? Every second of it.

6 months!

On Friday, Jack turned 6 months old. It's so little time in my life but he has changed so, so much. These days, he sleeps all night, he is rolling over (front to back and back to front), he is beginning to eat solid food, reaches for everything, then puts everything in his mouth, plays with his toes, laughs, smiles, and babbles a lot. He seems to have a pretty mellow demeanor. He makes his needs known and when they are met, he is happy.

Infant development is a marvel. We went from this:









to this:




in just half a year.

It is awesome .. both in the original definition and the spicoli-inspired meaning.

Happy Mother's Day

One day late.

I never used to think about Mother's day much. I appreciate my mom every day so I didn't think Mother's Day felt that much different than other days. I have a *slightly* cynical side that notices we tend to set aside special days for people we say we value but really, we don't. If we really valued motherhood, we would have better daycare, and staying home with your kids would not be below "working" on the hierarchy of american activities that matter, (insert my usual rant here). However, we do have this one day to celebrate the all-consuming, lifelong, joyful, and anxiety-provoking role of mommyhood, and I am now grateful for it. Experience is a great teacher.

Ryan and I went out to dinner at Crush on Saturday night. It was our first real date night in 6 months. Very fun. My mom sent me flowers, and bridget also gave me a big bouquet and a very precious mug that she made with Jack. I went to yoga sunday morning and spent the rest of the day with Jack... it was a lovely day.

In Jack news, he will be 6 months old this Friday. Hard to believe. His latest thing is that he likes to roll over onto his stomach but then he gets stuck there, and cries. I roll him back over and he immediate rolls back to his tummy, and cries. We will do this 10 times in a row. It reminds me of the SNL skit with Tom Hanks when he played Mr Short Term Memory. He is eating dinner at a fancy restaurant then suddenly spits out his food because he has no idea what's in his mouth. I know Jack will learn he can roll back by himself, and that will be an exciting day.

The Bob

no one dreams that one day their child will grow up to be a petulant ass. yet there are many people who objectively fit this description. how does this happen?

i have a few theories, but here is one: if you got a new bmw when you turned 16, it is highly likely that you are one of these people. giving a teenager an expensive new car generally means the kid has been given everything they have ever wanted and has probably not worked one day for any of it. this causes personality problems.

because of this observation, i am very intentional about what i buy or don't buy for jack. almost all of his clothes and belongings (other than gifts) are hand-me-downs. there is no reason an infant needs all new stuff. so when it came time to buy a stroller, i thought about it for a long time. i looked at used strollers and found they were sort of gross .. spit up and food stains.. i could not find one in good condition. i really wanted a jogger stroller so i could run with him and i didn't want to buy two different strollers (our house is too small). unfortunately for me, i was at rei and tried the bob. the bob is like the brand new bmw of strollers. it is expensive but the ride is very smooth. after much hand-wringing, we bought it. and we love it.

my solution for this contradiction is that i just won't ever tell jack he had such a fancy stroller.

Expressions

Years ago, I saw an art exhibit featuring dogs and their owners. The point of the exhibit was to show how much the two looked alike. I particularly remember a photo of a red-haired man with a beard and his irish setter. They looked exactly alike because they seemed to have the same facial expression. It was funny how two different species could resemble each other only because they had a close relationship.

Obviously expressions are not passed in the genes. Even though Jack is only 5 1/2 months, he seems to have already picked up ryan's expressions as well as inheriting much of ryan's genetic code for his face. (these pics are almost a month old.. i have been meaning to post them for a while...)

Tuck and Roll!

Today was a very exciting day. Jack rolled over for the first time. I had recently read a list of developmental milestones that your child should reach by 5 months. If they don't reach even one of the various activities on the long list then I am supposed to call my doctor. He could do everything on the list except roll over. I thought, how do I get him to roll over? He just seems like a mellow kid, content to stare at the toys hanging from the gymini or jump around in his bouncy chair. And what can my doctor do? Make him lift weights or something??? I just shouldn't read the books...



Clearly, we are more entertained by it than he is.

Moms Rising

Before I had Jack, many people said that everything will change once he arrives. As with every other comment people made regarding parenthood, I had no idea what this meant. Now I know that the statement is not exactly true but the priorities of my daily life have changed, and so has my general consciousness about children. Now that I am a parent, every child is my child. I just read that 22 students were killed at Virginia Tech and all I can think about are their parents, and how their lives are destroyed. When really sick babies come into the hospital, it makes me very sad in a way that it didn't before.

One of the most difficult realizations is that as a society, we do not value children or parenthood. Only since 1992 have you had the right to take 3 months off (unpaid of course) after the birth of your child. Before that, your job was not secure and in small companies, it still isn't. Many people do not have paid sick leave and if you have good daycare, it's usually because you have money and you got lucky. I could go on and on. Luckily, now I have a place to channel my anger and disgust. A group called moms rising (www.momsrising.org) was co-founded by one of the women who started moveon.org. They have a great manifesto that calls for paid family leave, good affordable daycare, paid sick leave, health insurance for all children and a lot more. Family leave legislation has made it to the Washington state house and with enough pressure from voters, it will pass (although possibly not this session).

All developed nations have these rights.. and even some poorer ones as well. We have made so much social progress in the last 30 years so it's exciting to think this may be the next big movement. I hope so.

ps. i know lots of people who don't have kids who are very into them.. they did not have to have a kid to have this awakening.. but i did.