Because you need a naked baby.

17 weeks

I haven't been posting anywhere near as much as I'd like because I've been wrestling with postpartum depression enhanced by the Infanta's continuing threenager neediness and Elessar's normal infant neediness. But Elessar is a happy, chunky baby, and you all deserve a dose of her cuteness to brighten your days too. :)

Updates..

I envy moms who find the time to post frequently with more than one small child. Maybe it's me, maybe it's my particular kids; most likely it's a combination (I never have been great at regular posting).

Elessar has been a challenge, and I'm convinced she's made it her mission in life to make sure I know she's a different person from her sister. After a couple of weeks of hours of screaming, we figured out that she's sensitive to dairy. So I've had to give up my beloved cheese... Fortunately I can still have butter and goat cheese, so I'm not entirely bereft, but it's not been easy to revamp my menu to be dairy-free. Elessar is now a very happy baby, but we're in deep trouble - she rolled over at 4 weeks, and at 2 months she's been working hard on crawling for a couple of weeks now. I would not be surprised if she crawls before 6 months.

The Infanta has been very needy as well. She hasn't turned any anger against her sister (yet), but she's definitely in the fast lane to becoming a "threenager", alternating classic toddler tantrums with intense Mama-need and utter sweetness.

Between the two - Elessar with complete physical dependence and the Infanta with major emotional neediness - I'm stretched to my limit. Fortunately I do have a good outlet with my knitting group (I go to every session for my mental health!), and I have an AMAZING support network and community of friends both near and far. I had a very bad night a few days ago, and posted a call for help on Facebook; by morning an acquaintance was at my house, washing every dish in my kitchen, and calls and messages of support are still rolling in! I'm convinced this is part of what it means that "it takes a village to raise a child" - when they're this small, mothers need community help just to function as much as the children need to learn from others when they're older.

Just a quick note..

For all of you who haven't given up on me completely:

32 weeks and counting! The Infanta was a reassuringly active baby; Elessar is a positive acrobat! When s/he's awake, I never know quite where I'm going to feel kicks/shoves/punches. S/he is, however, beginning to favor a head-down position, which is reassuring. My SPD is a pain in the arse - literally, as my sacrum is tending to be quite sore - but chiropractic care and knowing more about how to not make it worse is helping me to manage it.

A photographer friend and I went out this weekend and did a belly photo shoot. The few shots I saw were absolutely amazing, and as soon as she gets the disk of finished photos to me, I plan to post them, well, everywhere.

Part of the reason posting has been so scant in the last months is that the Infanta has hit 2.5 early and hard. I don't know why it took me so long to realize that, and to remember that her pattern her whole life has been that she hits her half-year disruptions early and hard, but once I did remember, it has made coping a lot easier. It's still difficult, especially as I'm feeling like a beached whale and mostly unable to move without pain, but at least I understand what's going on.

Edited to add: I know I'm not posting often, but I do tweet a fair amount. If you don't already track my twitterstream, I have a gadget that shows it over on the left.

Cuteness of the day

A, the Quiet One, and the new one are here for a few hours. Since they arrived at lunchtime, we all sat at the table and ate. The Infanta was in her high chair, but since we only have one, the Quiet One was bouncing around, doing things on a regular chair fit to give me a heart attack.

At almost the end of the meal, the Infanta (who been listening to a chorus of this the whole time) said, "Quiet One* sit down!" When the Quiet One sat(!), the Infanta followed with "Thank you!"

*Herself actually used the real name here.

Metablogging Musings

It's been almost two weeks since my last post. Some of that is because I'm travelling for the holiday, and preparations for travel ate a lot of my attention the week previous (and I'm not home until Tuesday - until then I'm still in California, visiting my mom).

But that's not all it is. It's also that there are enough people who read this blog now (or at least check in from time to time) that I don't feel comfortable being quite as candid here as I have at times in the past. I've done and experienced things that I want to write about, that I need to write about to help process them, that aren't things I can tell just anybody. Some of them I can't tell almost anybody, for reasons of confidentiality.

Also, I've just plain had so much going on recently that I haven't had brain space to look at it enough to write about it...

Enough with the excuses. I'm not giving up blogging, by any means. It's an important outlet for me, and an important part of documenting my and the Infanta's lives.

Speaking of the Infanta: about to hit eighteen months, she's just exploding in development. Talking, processing, playing... it's been huge just in the last week. Mom looked up at her on my lap this evening, and said that she (my Mom) thinks she (the Infanta) looks older than she did when we got here. I teased her and said "yeah, a whole week older", but I think it's true; she's changing mentally so rapidly, it's no wonder that she's showing changes on the surface, too.

It's late, and time to go to bed to rest for another day of solo parenting. How do full-time single parents do it?!

Threefer Thursday

1) I got to check the inside of the Infanta's mouth this afternoon, and three more molars are peeking through. It's just one point each so far, but they're there. She also has at least one canine trying to make it in... That's everything but her second year molars making an appearance, and she's still short an incisor. I'm beginning to wonder vaguely if I should be concerned. But only vaguely.

2) I have three client meetings in three days this week! Makes me feel like a real doula or something. One's a postpartum visit, one's mostly a formality with a mom that (re)hired me in February (the instant she got the positive test, basically), and only one's a new client... but still! Business! It's awesome!

3) Did you know that I tweet? (In case you didn't know, that's the commonly accepted present tense for the verb to Twitter.) I succumbed a few months back when I discovered that the Yarn Harlot tweets... and I'm hooked. *sigh* Anyway, if you don't get a Twitter feed yourself, you can follow my random thoughts over on the sidebar. It's currently stuck a ways down, but I'll move it higher at some point.

Leaps and Bounds

The Infanta's communication ability is growing daily - even hourly, sometimes. Her three signs count for five words - "all done", "nurse"/"out", "more"/"food". She can say "cat", "dada", "mama", and another I'll mention later, and babbles in very sophisticated-seeming ways. She nods "yes" and shakes her head "no", and will respond appropriately to some surprisingly complex questions. During mealtimes, she'll often reach for whatever's on the fork, but if we say "let Mama (Daddy) do it", she'll put her hands down and let us feed her (usually).

This afternoon, she asked to be put in the play pen. She did it with signs and gestures, but when I asked if that was what she was saying, she nodded emphatically. When I set her in, she settled down happily to play.

Her current favorite word, though? "No!"

I've got another think coming.

Today Bethany and (and ours girls) went and visited Karinda. On the one hand, we wanted to see her gorgeous new baby, and on the other, to help out with a few household chores. We probably stayed a bit longer than we should have, especially given how exhausted Karinda was, but she was glad that in addition to fiddling with food donations, dishes, and even laundry, we were able to take her 2.75 yo son out to play for a good hour or so.

Towards the end of our visit, I got a chance to snuggle the beautiful brand-new baby. The Infanta happened to be more or less in my lap at the same time, and at first did very well with the newborn in my arms. She was very interested, and did an excellent job of patting the baby very softly and lightly. Then the baby woke up enough to begin rooting for a breast, and the Infanta didn't like that so much. In fact, she got downright upset, even jealous; she started protesting loudly and trying to climb into my arms over the newborn. I'd already been about to hand the baby back to her mother, but it got difficult when Herself was practically pulling the squishy bundle out of my arms in her upset eagerness to be in them herself. It was obvious that she did. not. want. to share me, and that the thought of another baby getting at "her" milk supply was intolerable. So, it has become obvious to me that we will have to prepare her carefully for sharing nursing whenever we manage to have a sibling coming. I'm not sure how we'll do this, not yet anyway, but I'm sure we'll think of something.

Interestingly, once the baby was back in her mother's arms and latched on to her proper breast, the Infanta went back to watching interestedly, and even signed "nurse" - not requesting it, but identifying what she was seeing. I knew she was a smart cookie, but is this usual at 15 months?

Time flies when you're roasting.

It's been over a week since I posted last - yikes! I didn't realize until Mom called last night, wanting to know how things were since I hadn't posted... It's been hot. If you don't follow the weather in the Willamette Valley as slavishly as do the people who live here, we're on the down side of a really nasty heat wave - I think even my friends who live in places like California, New Mexico and Texas will agree that 108 is really, really hot! It's even worse when you live in a place that's rainy for 10 months of the year, and where 95 is usually considered roasting. As I type, it's about 92... and it feels a bit warmer than we'd really prefer, but it's not horrid. Two days ago? 108. Happily for us, we could go take refuge with my in-laws and their central AC for the afternoon; I'm not sure what we'd have done without that option. I've been feeling ambivalent about the fancy, expensive windows we had installed last year, but no more! With this heat, they've really been showing their worth, keeping our poorly insulated house mostly tolerable.

What else, what else... well, I'm on call for a mom whose EDD was two days ago, and that's pretty central to my life right now. It's hard to relax into doing much of anything when I know that any moment I'll get The Call, and have an hour to get ready and be over at her house (or wherever she wants me to meet them). I'm very excited to attend this birth, but being on call is really a strain.

At the same time, I'm instituting some changes with nursing the Infanta. I've really been feeling that her nursing has strongly contributed to losing two pregnancies now (early this month I had what I believe was a chemical pregnancy, where the egg is fertilized, but never implants). Since we really want to become pregnant again, I'm making an effort to reduce the number of times a day that she nurses. I'm aiming for about three hours between sessions (with the intent of stretching it longer bit by bit over time), which really isn't all that long, but is quite a lot longer than the 45 minutes or so she was doing earlier this month! It's a change for all of us, especially as Josh and I have to pay much more attention to giving her real food and drink to replace the mommy-moo we're trying to cut down on. I'm *not* weaning her completely, simply trying to adjust the proportion of milk to solids. I think it's going ok at the moment, but I'm also at a point of my cycle where she is much more relaxed about my supply. She does start getting frantic to nurse about a half hour before I'm ready to, which means that we're practicing the fine art of toddler distraction.

Perhaps by the time I post again, I'll have double the number of doula births under my belt. :)

We Have a First Word!

"Cat".

If you've been following along on the Infanta's obsession with felines (including her major motivation for becoming mobile), this will come as no surprise at all.

She's been working on words for about a month now; in fact, as long as she's been really walking - to the day, even. We've had assorted variations of something that sounds a lot like "light", and she says "hi" appropriately (with the cutest little wave EVAR), and she signs "more" (which I think she thinks means food) and sometimes "nurse" (we use the sign for "milk" to mean breastfeeding, because the official sign for nursing is... NSFW), but she's really pulled it together in the last few days with "cat". She even points towards places where the cats are known to lurk - even if you can't see into those spots from where we are - and says it. And then this evening, as she and Daddy were taking me off to knitting, she was pointing at everything and calling it all "cat".

Well, she's also mastered "dada", and she's working hard on "mama", but they don't seem to count those at the doctor's office. The signs they do count, however. Thirteen and a half, almost fourteen months, and she can say 4 words correctly. Not bad, not bad...

Sheesh!

Honest, this isn't turning into a Thursday and Sunday blog! It just looks like it.

I recently decided that it was time and past to teach the Infanta some nursing manners. She's been kicking and wiggling a lot while nursing, and I've gotten tired of it. So, when she's on teh bewb but not sitting still, I will detach her and set her down, even if she's in the middle of a let-down (she's usually concentrating on eating at that moment, but there have been times..), with the admonition that she must behave herself and sit quietly while nursing. A little while ago, I picked her up to nurse, and she happily latched on, but was kicking very strongly, so I set her down. And she screamed!! She sobbed and wailed and lay on the floor for a good five minutes while I went about my business (I have a pair of sample socks I'm knitting for a friend's yarn dyeing business), and after a while, when she'd quieted a little, I
picked her up again, gave her some teething tablets, and we nursed more less quietly.

We're pretty sure she's in pain from something today, though, although we disagree on whether it's teething or gas. Either way, it's making her fussy and sleep-resistant!

Father's Day

Dear Josh: I love you very much. You are a fantastic father, and an amazing co-parent. Even when we disagree on parenting philosophy, you graciously defer to me and support my methods. You are also an excellent and considerate husband; you make me aspire to be a worthy wife to you.

~Katie



Father's Day dessert: strawberry shortcake made with berries from my MIL's garden.

Sick and Tired

So over the weekend, that cough and sore throat turned into a cough and laryngitis. I had a lovely time knitting with the ladies on Sunday anyway... all the chatting did not help my voice, though, and yesterday I was left nearly speechless. I was also a bit feverish towards evening; not fun. Today my voice is a bit better, but I have a lot of phlegm, and am still coughing and feverish. Not much fun, but at least half doses of cold medicine are helping me sleep better at night!

I got out this morning and worked in my new garden beds. Many thanks to my friends KC and Heather who trucked their rototiller up from an hour away just to till a section of my front lawn! This morning I mounded earth to form beds, and then worked some old horse manure into them. I planted one bed - pumpkins and two kinds of beans - but realized that I have too many ideas and not enough definite decisions about the other beds to plant them yet. I have starts for tomatoes and two kinds of peppers, and also want to plant more of both kinds of beans, leeks, and zucchini.

The Infanta is becoming more and more difficult to get to sleep. I think what's happening is that she's becoming less flexible about bedtime, and what she thinks is the routine (and it is what usually happens) runs about two hours later than what we actually want to be happening. This means that she doesn't want to sleep until about eleven at night, and then doesn't want to wake up until eleven in the morning. Needless to say, this doesn't work in the real world. So I get her up earlier in the morning - nine-ish, maybe - and then she's cranky all day. In the evening, I've been trying to get her to bed by her sleepy cues, but she doesn't want to be in bed then, she wants to nurse and play more. If I stay in bed after she goes to sleep, she will stay asleep, but if I get up to attempt a little me time (for example, to write a blog post), she will wake up crying fairly quickly. She woke in the middle of writing this paragraph! I think the key will be being consistent with a bedtime, and probably establishing a more elaborate bedtime routine than we've had before now. I'm just not ready to give up my evening activities like knitting! Time for more Mama sacrifices. Can you believe I want more babies?!

I'm pretty sure the physical end of the miscarriage is complete. The last several days (TMI warning!) I had discharge similar to the very end of lochia - which it was, really - but saw none today, so I think my body may have cleared everything out finally, and may be ready to begin cycling afresh. That would be nice.

Chili?!

Because I decided that I didn't want to cook last night, and since leaving Josh in charge of food means that either we eat out, or it comes out of a box or a can, we had chili for dinner. I was all right with this; take a can of chili, add cheese and a couple handfuls of crushed crackers or corn chips, and you have a decent meal. What I didn't expect was a certain little girl giving me huge puppy-dog eyes, and begging her share! So I dipped a little gravy on my spoon, figuring she wouldn't like the spiciness (very mild even by my standards, but more than she'd had before)... and she loved it. Not only did she not spit it out, she begged more! In the end, she probably ate as much as a tablespoonful: gravy, meat, semi-dissolved chips, and all. She's showing no ill effects from her feast so far, and I'm thinking she may be getting closer to turning the corner on eating solids as a larger portion of her nourishment. My poor boobs would really like a break!

Thank you.

Everyone's comments and words of support mean a great deal to me, and I'm feeling much better. The strain's telling on me overall, though; I've had a lot of people in the last couple of days asking me if I'm ok and telling me I look tired. Well, I am tired! I'm mother to an eleven-month-old! And I'm fighting off a cold on top of it.

Happily, said baby is asleep - I left her in the now-properly-side-carred crib before 8:15! We'll see if she's actually down for the night, but it would be so nice if she were... Now to wade through all this laundry, and see if I can crash early, myself.

Mom, the hero.

I always feel like a hero when I get the Infanta to sleep with some time left in the evening to not be a mom for a bit. It's totally dorky, but I often come prancing out of the bedroom flexing my biceps victoriously: I am Super Mom! I got the baby to sleep before we all went to bed! I suppose I react this way because it's a relatively rare event; although I usually try to get Herself to sleep earlier in the evening, I don't generally manage it. Well, I managed it tonight! Got some good reading in while I was at it, too.

I needed a parenting win tonight, too. I went off to knitting today feeling like a totally bad mom - not because of the Infanta's pretty purple bruise, either. No, I don't feel bad because my rubber baby bounced off a corner; babies are made of rubber (within reason), and this isn't her first bruise, and will by no means be her last. The issue rather is that I feel like I've been completely withdrawing from "being a Mom"; I sit and knit and tell the Infanta not to pull all of Daddy's game collection off the shelf, rather than get down and play with her or teach her things. Some of that feeling is residual from low brain med levels, but it's also genuinely what happens. I'll sit down with my email and blogroll or my knitting; the Infanta will wander off to do whatever strikes her fancy with what's available (and she has no paucity of toys), and ten minutes later she's pawing at the lappy or happily unshelving games, or something else we really don't want her to do. And I'm really, really bad at getting down on the floor and playing with her. I knew I would be, but... I didn't understand how exactly that would play out in reality. Also, I feel like I should be teaching her things (and I don't just mean modeling daily life), and I'm not. At least, I don't think I am... But I don't want to turn into a "flash card mom", either, just... I don't know.

What's really getting me down is that I'm a "bad" mom, and I want another baby?! I'm totally insane.

With the weather getting so nice, we need to get out and spend more time with other moms and babies. Maybe that will help me realize that all the other moms are totally flying by the seats of their pants, too.

I love...

teething tablets. I may get some sleep tonight after all.

Because, now that those upper incisors are more or less through, the Infanta is starting on her lower canines.

Being Mama

...isn't all fun and games. As it were.

I have a regular weekly D&D night. A bunch of us get together down at the local game store and rent the private room so that we don't have try to compete with the anime club that meets there the same night. I have been bringing the Infanta and letting her crawl around and whatnot, but it's been requiring more and more attention from everyone in the group to keep her out of trouble - like, not letting her chew on everyone's laptop cords. It's really not fair to ask everyone to help me babysit, but I've been trying to ignore that so that I can get a little gaming in.

I've also been realizing recently that she's starting to turn into a toddler. I looked at her face the other day, and she's looking older, and not like even an older baby anymore, even though she's not quite walking (although cruising just fine, thankyouverymuch). She's also getting past the 8-9 month sleep regression, and wanting to be in bed by much earlier in the evening.

So near the end of last evening, after everyone's concerted efforts to keep my little teething cord maniac wrangled, I had to come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to quit going to D&D night. Although there were some noises made about bringing one of the games (we have two campaigns going) to our house so that I can continue to play, I'm not counting on that happening. I'm not very happy about this.

There are two main reasons I'm not happy:

1) I won't get to flex my gaming muscles. I've been a gamer for as long as I can remember; it's as much a part of my identity as being a knitter has become, and it kills me to not be able to have that part of my life active. It's especially bad when my husband gets to go and I don't! And no, I won't ask him to quit - that wouldn't be fair to him. For one thing, he needs to have things to do without me; I don't want to be one of those controlling spouses that never lets her partner do anything solo!

2) I'll be stuck home alone with the baby. But, you say, you're already a SAHM, what's a few hours more? Well, that's just the thing. I am home alone with the baby all day every day (unless I manage to drag us out somewhere - not that easy when I'm dependent on buses or rides from other people). By the evening, I'm tired and needing time for myself; whether it's to cook, shower, sew, or just do nothing, I need some non-baby time. If Daddy's not home, I don't get it. I actually managed to get a shower today while Daddy wasn't home for the first time in ten months!!! But that was only because I decided that the Infanta could be more or less trusted to play independently in the bathroom... and I only got about half my shower business done because she was done before I was.

I love my baby, and in the grand scheme of things, I'm willing to give up this particular adult activity while my children are little. For one thing, they won't be little forever; for another, I'll be able to pick up again when they're older. This doesn't mean I have to like it! But I think I understand better now why the gaming nights when I was a kid were always at our house.

Teeth and how to use them

The Infanta is teething again. She has all four upper incisors bulging beneath her gums, champing (if you will) at the bit to emerge. One way I know they're there is that she's gone back to rubbing her (nasty, sharp, pointy) bottom teeth against my poor nipples. She's tending to scrape them against my tender flesh at the end of a nursing session; I generally gasp involuntarily, say "No" sternly, and set her on the ground, or otherwise end the session abruptly. I'll be glad when this set is through.

But at least she's using them for their intended purpose, too. Blueberries last night; she scraped all the pulp out of the skins, making surprisingly little mess (except on her pants). I was making quesadillas for lunch just now, and had propped her in her high chair so she could watch. On impulse, I gave her a few shreds of cheese; when those promptly disappeared, I gave her a few more. When those also disappeared (and not onto the floor!), I decided it was time to learn how to sign cheese, just for future reference.

An unusual birth story

I woke up this morning to a woman laboring in bed with me. Go read about it on my doula blog!