When I grow up, I want to be a...

When skimming through my overflowing Google reader blog subscriptions, I came across an interesting posting on PhD in Parenting. It got me thinking about what kind of mother I want to be. Here's my list so far. I want to be:

• warm & affectionate; I hope that he enjoys all the cuddling & kisses that I'm currently showering him with for at least a few more years.
• creative; in how I solve problems, as well as in the crafty/artistic activities I hope to do with my boy & also in the sense of continuing to make things for him (clothing, toys, decorations for his room, etc.).
• empowered; meaning that I don't just put my child's needs before mine at all costs. I need to take care of myself too. Asking for help from my family, friends & community is part of that & of course, involving Oliver in as much as possible of the work of raising Linnaeus.
• relaxed; trying not to be too cautious & anxious about every aspect of his life. I think this is possibly going to be one of the hardest things for me to do.

What kind of parent do/would/did you want to be?

Prenatal Class Reunion

Today we met up with nine other sets of parents who were in our prenatal education class. It was great to see all the little ones & even better to talk to the other parents. I found it helpful to learn that we are all experiencing a lot of the same joys & struggles. Many of us mamas have had milk supply issues & other breastfeeding difficulties. Not to focus on the negative, but it really makes me feel better to know I'm not alone.

On the sunny side, all our babies are healthy & adorable. Every parent there seemed happy & proud of the amazing little person each mama had given birth to.We all have a lot to be thankful for.

I hope some friendships will come of this class & I'd love to meet up with everyone again in the future.

Nipple Quest 2010

Yesterday Oli & I had plans to drop by an old uni friend's yard sale to peruse her selection of 12-24-month boys' clothes & gear. Unfortunately, she cancelled due to our lovely wet coast weather. Instead, we ended up walking over to Auntie Sarah & Uncle Aaron's place.

There we had snacks & hung out a while. It's nice to have another person (or two) who is excited to hold, feed & play with Sprout. Sarah & Aaron also had a 'present' for us: they'd snagged a set of Skiphop Playspot floor tiles that someone in their building was getting rid of. After a relaxing afternoon we left to pick up a few things at the shops in the neighbourhood: Finlandia Pharmacy for Lactation tea, Home Depot for a light fixture, Babies R Us, Shoppers, Save-On & London Drugs in the hunt for a narrow version of the same bottle nipples we're using.

The narrow slow-flow body-vented silicone Nuk nipples are my holy grail right now: with them, we could bottle-feed little L straight from the Medela bottles I pump into. This would save us from having to transfer to a wider-necked bottle every feeding, then wash the damn thing afterward. Unfortunately, a slow-flow version of this particular nipple seems to be impossible to find in Canada. I've looked in countless stores & online as well, but have yet to find a Canadian retailer who sells the version I need. American online shops either won't ship here or will extort $23+ for shipping on a product which weighs less than an ounce & costs less than $3! I have found the medium-flow larger nipple version for older babies, but this would make getting milk from the bottle even easier for him, thus encouraging him to prefer it to the breast. Theoretically.

Our shopping trip wasn't all bad though, as I was able to find more Medela breast shields in the size I need & this has made pumping a bit more comfortable for me. Oli grabbed a light fixture we need to put in the suite downstairs & picked up some yummy samosas for dinner. We also picked up some gripe water from Finlandia--it's a tincture of herbal extracts to help with Sprout's gas pain. Poor little guy had a bad 'attack' while we were in Babies R Us (what better store for a baby to scream at the top of his little lungs in?) & at the same time his AIO diaper leaked everywhere. Luckily just pee, but it soaked his onesie, pants, bassinet sheet & mattress cover in the stroller. Changing a diaper on a baby who is screaming in that frantic, high-pitched, hyperventilating way was stressful. I went old-school with the solutions: swaddle, shushing & gripe water. Not sure which one helped, or if the over-the-shoulder burping was what did it, but he calmed down completely within about five minutes & fell asleep in the stroller on the walk home.

Things children have taught me

Yesterday I saw my friends Ian & Shelley & their sons at a photography opening in our neighbourhood. It'd been a while since I'd seen Emet & Leo. Even at their ages (15 & 8, I think) they still change so much in a few months. I made me think of the first time I met Leo, when he was about three. It was the year of the World Cup, when France played Brazil. Ian was reminiscing about watching the game with little Leo, who kept himself occupied drawing all over my arms & his with some face paints. I think it was that day that we (for some reason) stuck Leo into a tall upright laundry basket. I have a photo of that somewhere--he was so little & now he's a head taller than me. But I digress...

Around the same time I took Leo to Science World. It was an educational trip for me. Leo constantly surprised me with how much he understood of what he saw there & the things he knew how to do. He inevitably needed to use the washroom & as we went in I was wondering how much help he'd need. I mean, he was only three, hardly even tall enough to hoist it over the toilet rim. But he schooled me on exactly how to pee standing up. I was impressed as he explained the process step by step, using correct terminology (not 'weewee', but 'penis') & requiring nothing of me except to reach the flush lever.

I started to realize how much kids learn from their environment this summer, due to several encounters with children who happened to be about the age of four. The first of note was little Zoe asking when my baby would hatch. She was somewhat interested, but didn't quite have the right terminology, or really grasp the concept that the lump in my shirt was going to be a little person in a few months. Another time I met another friend's daughter Marlot, who I encouraged to put her hand on my belly to feel the baby move. When he didn't comply, I told her he was sleeping & she proceeded to whack my belly to wake him up! At the same event was Suzu, who tried to see the baby by looking up my skirt.

What these three have in common, besides their year of birth, is that they haven't got siblings & therefore seen their mom go through a pregnancy. My nephew Jonah, on the other hand, has twin sisters about three years younger than him. When I first had a conversation with him about his pending cousin, he initiated it, asking me when my baby would be born. He was always very gentle with my belly & seemed quite interested in feeling the baby move. When I said goodbye, he came over & put his little arms around my bump to give Sprout a hug. He even insisted that my sister buy a particular little hat as a gift for 'Pout' (as he pronounced little L's nickname) when she was shopping. That was the hat we brought Sprout home from the hospital in.

Despite how abstract it is to think that a belly bump will grow over months & then become a baby, Jonah understands. Just by living with a pregnant mama & now his little sisters, he's learned an enormous amount about babies. One of my favourite photos of him shows him laying on his back in his sisters' crib, one twin on each arm. Not to say that he's perfect--of course he's dealing with the fact that he's no longer an only child & slowly adapting to his role as big brother. However, he really taught me how much children can understand about pregnancy at a young age.

The lessons I've learned from my own son are (so far) harder to articulate. He's teaching me how to understand his cues & generally patiently waiting for me to figure out what he's communicating. This is so much harder with a newborn compared to a child who is talking. I'd compare it to suddenly having an alien living in your home. You are entirely responsible for his care & feeding. You know what he's supposed to eat, but not necessarily how much or how often. He doesn't speak & because he's new to Earth, every experience is foreign to him & quite often upsetting. In some ways, his needs are fairly simple: eat, sleep, be cleaned up, get cuddled. It's a fairly short list of things that go through my head when Linnaeus cries or seems to need something: hungry? wet/poopy? uncomfortable from gas or temperature? tired? However, distinguishing his hunger cry from his 'I have a burp to come up' cry is a lot harder than it sounds.

It's an incredibly steep learning curve, being a parent. I try to remember that I'm not supposed to just know everything & that as he learns about the world, I learn about him & how to parent him. It's very hard to be learning such crucial things as we go along, but there's no other way to do it. No matter how many books or websites I read about babies, he is a tiny individual. I need to watch & listen, being open to what he's trying to say.

Must... blog... about... poop...

I consider myself lucky to have avoided 'christening' so far, but poor Oliver has now been the recipient of a small load of baby poop twice. Today's incident happened as Papa was feeding little L his top-up. We are trying out the next size up of diapers & still need to get  the fit adjusted better, apparently. The leg leaked & Papa was distressed to discover poo had leaked onto his pants, the couch & even the floor. 

I wasn't much help because I couldn't stop laughing. Apparently six hours (total, in three 'bites') of sleep is enough that I feel a lot happier, but not enough that I can avoid dissolving into a useless pile of giggles at the slightest baby-related provocation. Poor Oli was a bit miffed that I just laughed at him as he opened up what might be the biggest mother lode yet in little L's diaper. I am so glad to have him home & to have a partner who is willing to share diaper duty, among other things.

It's pretty easy to laugh when it's newborn poo, as the stuff seems more like mustard than anything an older human might deposit in a toilet. Though perhaps it's just the new parent oblivion to/fascination with our progeny's bodily functions. I remember thinking months ago that I'd never write a status update on Facebook about my child's bowel movements, & as far as my sleep-deprived brain can remember, I haven't yet. However, I'm not above blogging about it.

Silver Lining

I think it might be the sleep deprivation, but I feel like I still haven't processed the fact that both Oli & I are unemployed. We've both been laid off at different times in the last few years, but never both been unemployed. I feel like I should be more worried, but maybe it's just that I'm so glad he's here to help me with the baby. I don't think I'd be sleeping at all if I had to do all this on my own. Maybe I would have given up on breastfeeding by now...

Despite how much more complicated it is to use formula, it's way more complicated to be feeding with both the breast & the bottle. Formula means spending time going to store & buying it, measuring & preparing it, heating it, cleaning & occasionally sterilizing bottles, remembering to bring it along when you go out... Exclusive breastfeeding requires no heating, no sterilizing or cleaning, no shopping, no measuring, just eating a little more to cover the extra caloric expenditure. It's my main goal in life at this point: to get back to 100% breastfeeding (if possible) as soon as I can.

So I spend a few hours a day with little L lying on my chest, or strapped on to me in our wrap, skin-to-skin, as it's been shown to help with milk supply. I'm taking Domperidone to help with supply as well. I wake up as often as I can manage at night & try not to let him go more than three hours between the beginning of one feeding to the next. This has been the hardest thing--when a feeding takes 60-90 minutes, I just don't wake up until he's good & crying mad, sometimes four hours later. Then I try to pump after every feeding to stimulate more production. In between is when I occasionally sleep an hour here & there. I'm trying to eat healthy & drink enough water, but so often I find myself pinned to the couch by a 9-pound person, unable to reach my water bottle, weighing the pros & cons of hydration versus waking him up.

The simple routine: feed, sleep, repeat.

We're settling in to a routine at the Linnaeus Corriveau-Kuehn residence. This week I feel surprisingly able to manage quite well on five to six hours of sleep, gained in three or four chunks during the night. I'm getting used to waking up about every three or four hours dreaming that I'm breastfeeding, only to discover that I'm still in bed, with a grumpy baby in a bassinet next to me. Little L is honestly quite patient with me--he usually doesn't wake me up until he's fairly hungry & will actually quiet down when he hears that I'm getting out of bed. He'll then resume squalling a bit while I change his diaper & remove his sleeper (this is to wake him up more thoroughly so that he'll nurse more vigorously) but isn't loud enough to be heard downstairs, apparently.

Life happens during the two hours or so between feedings. This is when we sleep, eat, pee, shower, go out for walks, get laundry or other chores done & endlessly wash pump parts & bottles. Not to mention cut his nails, give him baths, try to soothe him as he cries & whimpers, thrashes around & makes terrible grimaces in the throes of a gas pain attack.

Though I can't say I don't enjoy the breastfeeding, I do have to put most things on hold while I do it, particularly now that we're working on getting him to nurse more strongly & a bit longer. It is work. I need to listen for the sounds of him swallowing, do breast compressions & tickle him to keep him alert & drinking actively. But to have this tiny little person pressed belly to belly with me, usually with a small, soft hand laying on my chest, is so amazing. It's bonding time & I talk to him constantly as he nurses, sometimes encouraging him to keep sucking, sometimes telling him how much I love him.

When people say that having a child changes your life completely, they aren't kidding. Little L & his needs are my world.