Focusing on Feeding

I haven't been around much, lately. I've probably been at the computer about as much as I usually am, maybe more since I'm spending more time sitting down. But I've been listening to music, watching videos with the kids, or passively browsing facebook most of that time because it's hard to type with only one hand.

No, I didn't injure myself. I've just been holding a baby the majority of the day, every day. This development came about as a result of a couple of things:

1. Cub is becoming more aware more of the time. He's enjoying some relatively quiet awake time, instead of waking up only to complain of dirty diapers and stomach discomfort. Right now, he's a few feet away in his play pin, making adorable baby noises, looking around. This morning, though, I had to put him in the wrap just to make my breakfast because he was not about to be put down (nobody put's baby in the... crib?) even though I had just fed and changed him and he was even wearing his favorite pjs.
   
   Yesterday, I put him on his bedroom floor on his tummy and laid next to him in the same position (I call it frog position) with my knees up under my belly and my hands under my chest. We looked at each other for 15 minutes or so while I sang to him and he made a wide variety of frustrated faces. I can only imagine that he desperately wants to be able to do something, really anything with his body on purpose. He is getting better at not accidentally hitting himself in the face with his phantom hands, though. Would it be offensive to him to say, "baby steps"?
2. I got sick again. This is the worst January for communicable disease. Honestly, I haven't looked up the statistics on that, but I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not, by a long shot, the only one of my friends to get sick recently and I haven't kept track, but I would bet that I'm not the only one to have been sick more than once in the last several weeks.
   
   This time, though, it was a flu-like 24-hour thing. I was sore everywhere, with a fever of 102 degrees and a horrible headache. I stayed in bed almost an entire day, which would have been nice if I weren't sweating and apparently passed out on Papa's side of the bed (it's closer to the exterior wall, so it's cooler over there).
   
   Papa told me over dinner last night that this year has actually been a rather effective year for the flu vaccine, but that Colorado specifically seems to have gotten it's own strain that was not covered by it. I don't think that's what I had, but the thought of it sure makes me want to stay inside more. Unfortunately, Papa works with a bunch of people who have school-aged children and they're all calling in sick in rotation this month, too.
   
   Anyway, now I'm struggling to get my milk supply back, again, for the Cub. I'm drinking lots of fluids and trying to eat high calorie snacks. It really is a good thing I like peanuts and almonds. The pacifiers are just collecting dust during the day, because I don't want to ever turn him down if he seems interested in nursing, even if I'm pretty sure he's not hungry. And when he's done, I use the pump (thank goodness for having a good one, this time). It's all very time consuming.
   
   And I just got over that last bug and finally got back to normal milk production. *sigh*

The girls using the art table they got for Christmas

I'm currently trying to help the twins decide what "extracurricular" activity they want to pursue. The options for kids their age in our area are swimming, ballet, gymnastics, basic self defense, shotokan karate, taekwon-do, guitar, pottery, tennis, soccer, t-ball, lacrosse, volleyball, and softball. I've kind of got my fingers crossed that one of my four kids wants to play lacrosse someday, but I'm trying not to suggest anything to them. I want this to be their decision.

Our community centers also offer a line-up of parent-and-child cooking classes I think I might offer to take with them if I can figure out what to do with the Cub for the duration. 

They want to go to Jumpstreet for their birthday outing. That won't be until after Cub gets his 2 month shots, so their outing will be a couple of weeks late. That was their decision, because they wanted us all to be able to go together (the alternative was for them to go with Papa on their birthday, and I would stay home with Cub). We'll still have an at-home celebration on their birthday, for which they've chosen to have pinata cookies, which I've never made before. I love birthdays for that reason. They're a great excuse to bake something new.

Do-overs, please?

Okay. I'd really like to reboot and pretend last week never happened.

As I mentioned in my previous post, C and M fell rather suddenly ill one night, kept us up with panicked vomiting, and were more or less fine the next day. It seemed like that was the end of it, and that we were all very lucky to have escaped whatever it was. But a couple of nights later, it was S's turn. The night after S, it was me. And S and I stayed sick for a couple of days.

When I got sick, my partner (who is now officially going by Papa) stayed home to help out with things, which was sweet and super helpful, but seems to have aided in his office slipping further and further behind. That is not to suggest that he is the pillar that holds the rest of his team up (maybe he is, but that's not what I'm trying to say here). There have been several other absences due to illness around there recently. Now they're talking about overtime, but are reluctant to let the employees work extra hours from home, like they did last time this was a problem. In other words, longer hours away from home for Papa if he volunteered for overtime, but he says he won't because he has a new baby and it would be ridiculous to expect him to.

The Cub is crib training. I'm trying so hard to teach him that it's okay to sleep in his own room at night. He's still pretty sure it's not okay to sleep at night at all. I told my mom I'm thinking he just doesn't understand that everyone else in the house wants to simultaneously do nothing at all interesting for at least 8 hours straight. Needless to say, Papa and I don't get 8 hours straight. We don't expect to. But we're often subject to hours of dissatisfaction from Cub as he informs us that our choice of sleep time is unacceptable. We swaddle and unswaddle, change diapers, feed, rock, leave the light on so he can see his crazy wallpaper and other interesting stuff in his room, and still end up completely lacking silence. So, Papa is going to work tired and taking accidental micro-naps at his desk. He says he wakes up as soon as his head slips off of the hand it was resting on. Thankfully, everyone in his office has kids and knows that he just had his first baby. They specifically expressed that they expected this from him.

Yesterday, the kids made peanut butter cookies with my standing mixer. Last night, after they went to bed, Papa's dog ate most of them straight off of the counter. This morning, in a haze, I changed Cub's poopy diaper and left it by my bed. Mid-day, while I was helping them make lunch, I discovered that my dog ate the entire inside of said diaper while I wasn't looking.

I called my mom. I desperately needed someone to talk to about the insanity. She's living with my older sister in Texas, helping take care of my first niece (who is only about a month older than Cub) while my sister goes back to work. I was reminded that having a newborn is crazy and messy and ridiculous... but having your first newborn is all of those things plus an incredible emotional upset because you think you should be doing better.

When I had the twins, I remember thinking I couldn't do anything right. I remember how a crying baby (or two) totally erased my mind and I would forget what I meant to do... or even what I was in the middle of doing. I remember thinking my babies didn't love me or even like me, and I remember thinking something was wrong with me because sometimes I didn't know what to do and sometimes I even got mad at them or wanted to cry because nothing was working. I felt like a terrible parent whenever I had to put them in their crib and walk away for a bit.

Now, when I have to do that, I still wish I didn't, but I don't feel like a failure. I know that it's better to let him cry, safe in his crib, while I compose myself than it is to let that stress pile up and end up angry with a baby who doesn't understand and can't do anything to help himself, let alone me.

Maybe it's impossible to avoid high expectations for your first baby. Maybe all of those magazine and TV ads that show airbrushed moms with their perfect, smiling babies make us believe they're going to be born adorable and giggling... not spitting up and screaming. The adventure is new every time, as far as I can tell, but the first time was definitely the hardest and I'm glad I don't have to go back and do that over again.

It gets easier.

Amish Bread

For Christmas dinner, the night before I went to the hospital to deliver the cub, we had a friend over and had a nice, smallish, homemade meal. We made salmon, broccoli-cheese soup, deviled eggs, and mini cheesecakes. We also made this "Amish white bread" with the kids. It's straight-forward, fun, doesn't require a bread machine and it's actually quite delicious; a great first bread recipe for kids. The flavor, consistency and crust would lend itself well to making a bread bowl, in fact.

Amish White Bread

Serves 2 9x5 loaves

Total time 2.5 hours including rise time

Prep time 2 hours including rise time

Ingredients

2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

2/3 cup white sugar

1 1/2 tbsp active dry yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup vegetable oil

6 cups bread flour

Instructions

Dissolve sugar in warm water, then mix in yeast. Let sit until yeast creates a froth on the surface of the water. This takes a few minutes. I used this time to talk to my kids about yeast as a living organism, and that it eats the sugar, etc.

Mix salt and oil in to the frothy yeast water.

Add flour, one cup at a time. I used 5 cups of flour in the bowl, then used the rest to flour my table to knead the dough. In the process of kneading the dough, a lot of that 6th cup gets incorporated. 

Knead dough until smooth. I let the kids do a lot of this. They had fun, punching, poking and otherwise abusing it.

Place dough mass into a well oiled bowl and roll to oil surface of dough.

Cover dough mass with a damp cloth and let rise for about 1 hour. It should double in size.

Punch dough down and knead for a few minutes. Divide in half and form into loaves (or balls if you want to make bread bowls).

Place into well-oiled, 9x5 bread pans. The bread ball in the picture at the top was baked directly on an oiled cookie sheet.

Allow to rise for 30 more minutes. Bread mass supposedly should expand to about 1 inch above the top of the bread pan. Mine did not, but it turned out fine.

Bake at 350 degrees F/175 degrees C for 30 minutes.

From the Depths of Sleep Deprivation

Baby E, who I'm referring to as "Cub" was born almost two weeks ago via planned C-Section, which went phenomenally well. In fact, the staff (a room full of women) made small talk about how much faster and more smoothly this one went than they're used to, and then chatted about unrelated personal stories. My anesthesiologist said, "you know it's going well when they're talking about what they did for the holidays."

Recovery has gone as well as can be expected, I think. I stopped needing to take pain relievers for anything other than headaches about a week after he was born. I've lost 20lbs and am back to ideal weight. Right now, I'm right where I wanted to be before I decided to have a baby. Unfortunately, I will likely continue to lose weight and get back down to pre-pregnancy weight in another week or two even though I'm trying to eat a lot of high-calorie snacks.

Cub is doing well. He was back over his birth weight at only 1 week old. He's a champion eater and I'm able to provide everything he needs. For that, I feel fortunate. So far, he doesn't seem to have any problems, though he just had his first official appointment today, and his genetic screening won't be complete for a bit. As far as that is concerned, they just won't tell us if everything comes back okay, so no news is good news.

The only real trouble is he won't sleep in his own room, yet. This is not a problem I experienced with M. S and C really just didn't sleep much at all, I suppose because they were premature and colicky. Cub is somewhere in between. He can keep up a good fit for hours if you try to put him in his crib, but will sleep just fine if he can cuddle up with me or my partner. Additionally, two of the girls spent all night throwing up for a still undetermined reason the night before last. That translates to very little sleep for me (because my partner can sleep through anything, and I cannot.) which means headaches, accidental naps, and back to using eye cream I haven't needed since M was tiny. But I try to remind myself to think of it this way: He wants me to hold him, now. He won't always want me in his room at all.

I'm remembering, now, how breast feeding means I have very little personal time. Don't get me wrong, I'd trade my personal time for peace of mind any day. I love that I'm able to provide Cub with everything he needs and rest easy (assuming I rest at all) knowing that I'm saving money and time and he's getting the best I can offer. The draw back is waking up in the middle of the night, every night, to feed him because the other option is to have my partner get up and go to the kitchen to warm a bottle of pumped milk so I can get some rest. That might start happening on weekends, though.

Speaking of which, he went back to work today. He took the morning off so he could take Cub to his first check-up, since I'm not supposed to be driving. Tomorrow, he's taking the afternoon off to take me to my first appointment. Then, it's back to the usual schedule. Right now, I'm tired and emotional and, as a result, not so sure I'm going to survive this business.

Sometimes, when Cub is upset and I'm super tired and feeling insecure, I sing this to him: "Hey. You're Okay. You'll be fine. Just breathe." I love this song, and It's as much for me as it is for him.

Ze Frank, an American online performance artist: "I received an email from a woman named Laura, who had recently moved to a new city for a new job. She was overwhelmed with anxiety and asked me to write her a song to help her calm down. I asked her to send me an email describing what it felt like when she was overwhelmed. I asked her to tell me what kinds of thoughts went through her mind when she was anxious. I wrote a sketch of a chorus and quietly asked some people in my audience to record themselves singing along while wearing headphones. I received about thirty recordings. I mixed the tracks together (w/o any pitch correction) to create the chorus. I sent the final song to her in an email before releasing it to the public. She liked it :) Thank you to everyone who participated! Just Breathe."