cindy's world

Allie skipped a nap for the past 2 days in a row. She had been doing pretty well before that, taking her 2 naps for usually over an hour each. Yesterday, she skipped her morning nap and took her afternoon nap an hour early and stayed down for 90 minutes or so. Today, she skipped her afternoon nap altho her morning nap lasted almost 90 minutes. Jayne is totally frazzled because when Allie doesn’t get her sleep, she is crabby. According to Jayne, she’s also been unusually dependent, protesting and wailing if left alone for a bit, or even put down sometimes. Both days, Allie crashed while playing at various times out of sheer exhaustion, and both nights, she had to be put to bed early and knocked out easily. Tonight while I nursed her to sleep, she was the limpest I’d ever seen her. It was like she was drugged. I sat her up to switch sides and she just stayed asleep, sagging against me while I had her in sitting position. I did get her to wake up, whimpering, to eat a little on the second side, but that lasted 3 minutes before she was out cold again. Poor baby.

I love that she’s super-happy to see me when I come in the room and would stop what she’s doing as recognition crosses her face, and she’d break out in a big smile. I open and close my fist in a wave to her from across the room or from the upstairs landing while she’s downstairs, and she locks eyes with me, smiles, reaches her hand toward me, and open and closes her little hand in her greeting back to me.

Jayne was reading The Wonder Weeks when I walked in this evening after getting home from work. She said that Allie seems to be in the middle of a developmental leap so Jayne’s relieved “it’s not [her].” Sure enough, the book says Wonder Week 37, the World of Categories, begins its first phase at approximately 34 weeks (or between 32 and 37 weeks) and the second phase at about 37 seeks. As baby learns to see and associate details with things, baby learns that a cat is an animal like a cow, but it is not a cow. Pea puree is food like water, but it is green and comes from a bowl and tastes different. And then the baby’s working on new physical skills, too. Language, emotions, understanding the two from others. Brain waves show drastic changes at this time. The baby feels overwhelmed by all the new information bombarding its brain, which will cause some or all of the following fussy signs:
* crying more easily than usual
* seeming cranky, whiny, fidgety, grumpy, bad-tempered, discontented, unmanageable, restless, or impatient
* jealous and clingy
* sleeping less
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. All of the above. Also, I learned that they are now old enough to have nightmares. This explains the 2 nights when, about an hour after going to sleep, she suddenly woke up screaming and crying. This didn’t last more than minutes or less until she laid down and konked out again. I had wondered whether she was having night terrors, but she’s too young for those and nightmares make sense. This chapter in “Wonder Weeks” seem to be talking specifically about Allie, even down to the “When you set your baby down to be dressed, undressed, or changed, she may protest, scream wriggle, act impatient, and be unmanageable. Most babies do now.” This is why I start the changing/dressing routine at 6p and finish at 6:20 deaf and sweaty. The books says this fussy period lasts about 4 weeks. =P

But it’s cool. I tell myself, it’s okay if she misses a few naps as she goes through this phase. It’s okay if she’s sweeter than moon pie (which hubby introduced me to a couple years ago and I still gag now thinking about it) one minute, leaning back in my arms and cuddling against my shoulder, then suddenly bounces impatiently and tries to wriggle out while voicing a big loud complaint the next. She’s growing, she’ll get over this, and she’ll live. Unlike the toddler who is the reason for our preliminary hearing the past 2 days. Today, my judge held the defendant (baby’s mother’s boyfriend) to answer to one count of murder and another count of assault of a minor under age 8.

I had mused before about the fact that I was unaffected and dispassionate in dealing with criminal cases with children victims when such cases seem to bring out the inner murderer of other adults, and assumed it was because I was not a “kid-person.” I’d wondered if I’d feel differently if I were a mom. Today, I figured I would get to find out.
This morning we were given an assignment to do a preliminary hearing in which the victim is a 17-month-old little girl. Allegations are that the 22-year-old mother’s boyfriend (who is not the father) slammed the little girl onto the floor or some other hard surface, causing fractures and enough damage to her skull and brain stem that it killed her. The mom and defendant seem to say that the kid fell off a chair on accident while in the defendant’s care and it was not child-abuse related. The defendant is charged with a count of murder and a count of assault of a minor.
Before knowing anything about the case, just flipping through the evidentiary photos almost brought me to tears, and the autopsy photos of her skull were…*gag*. Now we’re in the midst of an expert witness pediatrician’s testimony about the injuries, and we’ve heard a part of the mom’s testimony. None of it has moved me to tears and the mom was rather giggly and rather clinical in her testimony (she’s a nurse). So I’m doing pretty well, I haven’t lost it in a fit of hysteria, yet. This is going to go on for a couple of days.
Meanwhile, I think this is a good time for sharing something I saw the other day and loved, cuz it’s SO TRUE. I have friends who occasionally comment about how we Asians don’t age, and I usually respond something to the effect of, “Yeah, but when we turn 60, overnight we look like our grandmas.” Observe:

Mr. W had noted that despite having signed all the forms and taken the blood tests to donate our 3 remaining embryos several months ago to the fertility clinic, his credit card was still being charged monthly for embryo storage. We expected there to be some delay in seeing the charges stop as our tests needed time to clear before the doctor signs his approval and acceptance, but it’s been 2.5 months. So I called the fertility clinic today to ask about that.

I felt totally like a bad mother as I listened to myself inquire as to whether the results of the tests were okay or if there were a problem with the embryo donation since we were still being charged for storage. It sounded like I may as well have been saying, “Hey, stop charging us for our children, we already told you, we don’t want them anymore. We’d rather have the money.” Ugh.

The end result of the phone call is that the person I spoke to at the office checked through the computer records and confirmed that as of May 5, everything was finalized and we should’ve stopped being charged. She was going to call the finance department to make sure they take our credit card off file for the automatic payment deductions. She’ll refund for the May charge.

Bye-bye, little embryos. Mommy loves you. May you find perfect loving homes with parents who will love you at least as much as I do.

Some mornings really make you appreciate your time machine. And if you don’t have a time machine, well, then, it’s just a crappy morning that you’re stuck having to live with.

Allie was up before 5:30 a.m. playing with the tassels of the diaper sack that her grandma (on her dad’s side) made, which sack is hanging off Allie’s crib railing. I’m gonna have to take that sack off now that she can reach it. The crib mattress has already been lowered, and she can still reach that stuff laying on her back. I would’ve done it already, except that we were super-late this morning. After her playing, she finally fell asleep again after 6am so I didn’t have the heart to wake her at the usual 6:15. Mr. W decided he needed to fuel up before leaving for work, so while he did that, I went to wake Allie alone. She whimpered. 🙁 It also takes twice as long to change her diaper and clothes now, since she likes to roll over while you’re trying to do everything, and then she un-velcros her diaper tabs, one tab in each hand, as you’re working on putting her clothes back on. When you’re trying to put the unlatched diaper back on, she twists turns and makes that harder, so that you have to hold on to her legs or turn her over, and while your hands are occupied doing that, she unlatches her diaper tabs again. Or eats her shirt. So yes, we started off late, and ended the nursing session later. She also poopied three times yesterday (into her cloth diapers, so I had to wash the inner linings of two of them in the toilet with my bare hands, which, believe me, is still preferable to her NOT pooping, especially now that she’s on solids), and the last time, there were traces of blood on the wipes, so I’m not sure if it’s the food (only rice cereal mixed with breast milk, and steamed pureed zucchini so far), her straining to get that third poopie in a row out (the poopie’s now way less runny than exclusively breast milk poopies), or it could’ve been from Mr. W’s last wiping of her butt after the 3rd poopie. We’ve been using Desitin after each change since, and that’s yet another thing I have to do that Allie doesn’t cooperate for.
Since we were running late, by the time I brought her downstairs and handed her off, I decided I didn’t have time to drink soy milk so I took it from the counter back into the refrigerator, putting in the door, where I’d retrieved the carton almost an hour prior. The carton got stuck at an awkward angle between other things in the door and the top of the compartment, and soy milk started chugging out. I tried to push it in, and it didn’t go; I tried to pull it out and it wouldn’t go, either. Milk just kept coming. Mr. W came behind me when I was struggling and said, “WHAT are you DOING?” I exclaimed I’m not DOING anything on purpose, it’s STUCK! He finally yanked it out and now there was a huge cleanup of the fridge and the floor necessary. That made us even later. And then we hit every red getting to the freeway, and by then, freeway traffic was horrid and we were completely stopped more than we were moving for the last part of our drive. So the drive took longer than usual, but not to worry, we spent the time well fighting in the car.

Last night, after I put Allie in her crib, she twisted and moved herself off the bear. She was also in the rare state of being completely wide awake after I’d nursed her to sleep, so I decided to pick her up and move her onto the bear. She started BAWLING. I knew I had to leave because the more I stayed, the more she was going to scream instead of put herself to sleep. Outside her closed door, I felt awful, as I always do when she’s crying instead of sleeping. I looked over the railing down the stairs and my partner, who was supposed to be in the thick of it with me, was obliviously playing his newest computer game addiction, Diablo 3. I’ve seen/heard many women complaining about this game stealing their significant others lately, but I haven’t said anything about the game or whatever because I’d been so busy with Allie care that I would just go to bed early while Mr. W was playing, or I’d eat, or do some cleaning chore I needed to get to. However, this last Memorial Day weekend he spent playing the game more often, we had most of our meals separately while he played, yesterday he had friends over so we weren’t together as he entertained and I cared for Allie and they did their own thing that I wasn’t a part of, and he had dinner out with one friend while I stayed back with Allie to nap her. None of it’s a big deal, but it was just a lot of being on my own in one weekend even tho he was physically around. He plays the game with headphones on so as not to be loud, which I appreciate, but that means he’s got his back to the goings on in the house, I can’t talk to him, he can’t hear us. That means that last night, when I looked down for support while Allie was screaming, I felt completely, utterly alone. I retreated to our bedroom next to Allie’s and watched on the camera as she calmed down and dropped to sleep. It didn’t take long, less than a minute of screaming and crying, less than half an hour before she was knocked out after soothing herself to sleep, but it was nerve-wracking. Then, I went downstairs and for dinner ate leftovers alone while Mr. W played his game, never turning around.

Aside from the peak of it last night, it hasn’t been too bad because I’ve been spending way too much of my alone time reading an e-book version of “Fifty Shades of Grey” on Mr. W’s first-generation iPad (the loyal iPad that’s been replaced by Mr. W’s newer, younger, hotter model, the iPad3). I didn’t know anything about the novel, except that it was on the NY Times’ Bestseller List and that people raved about it, so I wanted to see what all the hype’s about, and I wanted “pleasure reading” that was not a infant development book (which is all I’d read for the past year). My first impression was that the writing is awful. Second impression was that the author was an unskilled amateur who stole all her predictable characters, settings, and material from the “Twilight” novels and the movie “9 1/2 Weeks.” (“9 1/2 Weeks,” btw, had impressed me with its psycho-social depictions of the dysfunctional relationship between Kim Basinger’s and Mickey Rourke’s characters, and you can take the soft porn aspect of it out and I wouldn’t miss it at all, I’d still be able to write an analytical essay about the characters. But when I brought this up to Mr. W, all he could remember about the movie was some food sex scene. I guess the mark of a good movie is that there’s something for everyone. =P) Now, I’m on my 3rd impression, which has stayed. Yes, the writing is still crap and the editor should’ve been fired for sleeping on the job, but the characters! Anastasia now reminds me of me, and Christian reminds me of a man or two I’ve known, and the whole thing…well…sexual quirks aside, I’ve been there. Their email exchanges slay me, because it had been me. And I’ve been with a Christian (maybe spread out among multiple people) before. I get why she’s hooked, I get why she’s confused, and I get her internal struggles, and when the character was chided for “over-analyzing,” I didn’t see it because that was what I’d done, too (and been told the same). I hated the same people she hates, for the same reasons, rational or not. She even writes emails the way I wrote them. A part of me delights in the relatable development of the book, and in the back of my head, memories made me simultaneously uncomfortable as things hit close to home, again and again. For me, my Christian(s) did not end well, but I was glad to be out, even if it meant losing the witty funny playful word interactions, the open-hearted communication, the highs I’d get with someone’s possessiveness even while knowing that it’s a double-edged sword. It means they care; it means they care too much. It means they may want retaliation. What I learned from those relationships is that as exciting, charming and earnest early words and promises are, they all don’t mean a thing if the person’s actions don’t borne them out. Mr. W isn’t as verbose, communicative or florid, I can write my heart out in an email to him and I likely wouldn’t get a response, but he’s rock-solid in his actions, both in what he does, and what he chooses not to do.

*shaking self out of that train*

Allie has her 6-month vaccinations today at 5pm. I’d originally just hoped to be home early enough to get her to her appointment on time. Then before the weekend, Mr. W suggested that we take the whole afternoon off and spend time like we used to by ourselves and go out, engage in some activities we hadn’t indulged in for the better part of a year. Allie was going to be with Jayne anyway, and we’ll still get back early enough to nurse her and get her to her appointment in time. But then after this weekend, after feeling ignored and alone and unimportant, after the fiasco with the soy milk and being chided by Mr. W in the car about how I put the carton in wrong (I didn’t even know the carton had been opened before I came downstairs with Allie; I’d thought it was still sealed), blah blah, when Mr. W asked in the car whether I wanted to book a massage this afternoon, I just spat, “No!” And then the fight started and lasted, and traffic held us back and made him even more late and more frustrated. The carpool lane didn’t do much to alleviate anything, we may as well have not even carpooled today and then at least we both would’ve gotten to work on time (since his work starts before mine, I could afford to be later, but he couldn’t). Something to keep in mind for the future. Long story longer, we didn’t make any plans for this afternoon, he’s already said he’s not going to take the afternoon off, then, and my only priority all along has been getting my child on time, anyway, not beaches, massages, romantic early dinners, movies, or anything hedonistic.

Please, Allie, don’t have an inconsolable crying fit after the vaccinations like you did for over an hour last time. And now I forgot to pump. *running off, late for yet another thing*

** Addendum hours later: The bad morning continues with a weak pumping thanks to a torn pump valve. Some mornings are just not worth the 4am I crawl out of bed.

We had a fun morning: Mr. W and I walked Allie down to the edge of our neighborhood where the bicyclists doing the Orange County Triathlon went by. These people had the presence of mind, panting and pedaling uphill, to say good morning and smile at our Allie Cat wearing a pink cat head cap with little pink pop-up ears. Well, she did look pretty darn cute. Allie got to watch the bikes zoom by and listen to another lady shouting encouragement while some guy played songs on the bagpipe to entertain the competitors at the top of the hill. It would be fun to go to the Lake and see the swimming segment of the tri, but they likely did that part already. It comes before the bike, right? Surely these people aren’t that drippy from sweat at 7am.

Allie did an older baby’s schedule yesterday: she woke up 7a, had a nap at 8:50a for about an hour and a half, had another nap at 12:50p for an hour and a half, and skipped the last nap, went to bed for the night at 6:30p. That’s what the sleep book would call ideal. 7am wakeup, nap at the right times of 9a and 1p. Last nap is optional at 4p. It wasn’t as simple as it sounds; we’d skipped the last nap because my parents had come over and we were out having all-you-can-eat sushi. The owner/sushi chef “encouraged” us to treat him to sake shots, and he may have taken a few too many. We waited too long for him to complete our order with uni, and didn’t get them. Turned out he thought he gave them to us, and that’s why we were waiting around. Anyhow, by the time we left it was 4:30p; Allie had missed the time window for the 3rd nap AND was late on the 4th feeding of the day, which bothered me because I’d planned on putting her down early for the night due to the missed nap but that’d put the 4th and bedtime feedings too close together. I ended up doing that anyhow; she ate at 5p and again at 6:15p. The 5p feeding was short, tho. I got a lot of crap from Mr. W and my parents for my pushing everyone along so I could get home do what I needed to do. “See, Allie’s fine, the only one stressed about this is YOU,” Mr. W kept saying. Yeah, well, Allie being fine is just luck and I didn’t want to push it any more than we were doing already.

Allie’s been doing other older-baby stuff, too. I put her to bed on her back as usual, and for 3 mornings in a row, we woke to see in the monitor that she was on her tummy. Then when we finished our morning stuff and went to her room to get her, she’d be on her back again. Mr. W claimed that she rolled consecutively from one end of the rug to the other, but I didn’t see it. Her aim is now lethal. You can’t carry her and not pay attention or things will get knocked to the ground or poured on herself. She picks up toys, turns them around to study different angles of them, gives them a test chew or two, and then would deliberately swing them to the edge of her high chair or carseat carrier and drop them. And when she’s nursing, she’s learned that biting me gets me to say, “No!” or pull her off or say, “Ow ow ow” or some sort of reaction. So when she’s done eating (she makes sure she’s done cuz she knows a bite means the end of the meal for her), sometimes she’ll turn slightly up to face me, and I see her eyes curl into little moons of mischief as she starts to smile. Uh-oh, here it comes. She makes eye contact, and bites down slowly, watching me. Sometimes if my reaction is strong (“NOOOO!” I’ve yelled before), she looks startled and concern laces her eyebrows as she looks at me. If I smile or talk to her, her features relax into a relieved smile. Sometimes I won’t talk to her. I’ll keep staring at her sternly. She keeps looking at me nervously, eyes wide, waiting for a sign that things are okay. And then she won’t bite me for awhile. Once this lasted almost 2 days. It’s not gonna be a fun time when the upper teeth start coming out.

Speaking of not a fun time, tomorrow is Allie’s 6-month appointment. I took the day off to give Jayne a long weekend. The appointment is at 11a, so all that means is that Allie needs to be up from her morning nap, changed and fed at 10a so we can be out the door at 10:30a. Timing should work. The problem is that the electricity company has a scheduled electricity outing for our area from 9a to 2:30p to work on some stuff. That’s a long time without babycams! That also means no air purifier/white noise running in Allie’s room during her naps that I won’t be able to monitor, AND it’s trash day so the beeping of the 3 separate trucks will be louder than normal. 🙁 I was hoping Mr. W would want to take the day off to go to the appointment with us, but he said he’s going to work. I’ll just keep reminding myself that I can do this; I did it for the first 4.5 months of Allie’s life. Note to self: park car outside in the morning so we don’t get trapped in the garage during the power outage and not be able to leave for Allie’s appointment.

Mr. W and the stepdaughter (who just got back in the wee hours of the night last nite from a 2.5 week West Coast choir tour for her university) just left to go pick up his son for a bikeride and lunch. I’m seeing this alone-time with Allie, who’s napping right now, as practice for tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll hear Allie cry without cameras, but it sucks to not reassure myself after noises and stuff that she’s still asleep by peeking on the cam. I won’t even have the computer for entertainment when she’s down. Oh, the stepdaughter just presented me with a beautiful handmade quilt she got from one of the families that hosted her West Coast tour, as a thank-you for my arranging and booking her Europe trip for her (she’s going to Germany and Spain in 3 days, lucky girl) and for Mother’s Day.

Allie’s been rolling from her front to back for awhile, which is very disruptive to her naps (that she takes on her tummy), because she hadn’t been able to roll back to her front. During our road trip earlier in the month, Mr. W swore Allie rolled from back to front while she was playing, but I didn’t see it. She’d been getting close, sometimes “accidentally” doing it, but often trapping her arm underneath. Early this morning, we saw on the monitor that she was peacefully sleeping on her stomach in the crib altho I’d put her down as usual on her back. I think it’s official now. And I’ll have to remove her bear that she sleeps on and wrestles and cuddles with, now that it’ll become more of a suffocation risk. 🙁 I hope a flat mattress instead of a cozy bear, when she’s half-awake and reaching for comfort, doesn’t jar her fully awake.

We’re in day 2 of a Family Law divorce trial. Not really interesting, and it’s been a challenge to pump while trial’s going on. I’d simply leave and pump in the jury room with the door closed, and while I’m gone, my judge will swear in any new witnesses and jot down new trial exhibits identified, and when I return to my desk, I check my court reporter Louise’s realtime transcript on my computer and compare it with notes, and catch up for my minute order. This is all going to change. With the $15 billion deficit that our governor announced earlier this week, California has been cutting its budgets by going beyond trimming the fat, deeper than the muscle, down to the bone. For us, in addition to other measures, this means the state is ripping every court reporter in our county out of their positions, lining them up by seniority, laying off the 60 lowest on the totem pole, reducing the next 60 into part-time workers, redesignated a bunch of courtroom as no-court-reporter and/or partially-reported courtrooms, and the remaining reporters are going back into available courtroom positions by seniority. With this upset, we are losing the reporter we’ve had since I’ve worked for this judge (which is practically my entire career of 13 years).
We’re a trial courtroom and we do primarily Civil Law trials. Under the new rules Civil Trials will not be provided a court reporter. If the parties/attorneys want the proceedings recorded, they have to provide their own private reporters. This is crazy to me. How are they going to appeal anything without transcripts? What if there’s a dispute as to what happened? It’s all going to be he-said-she-said? For me, it means also that I no longer have realtime, so when I leave (to go pump) and miss something, I miss it completely, forever. I guess I can have my courtroom assistant take some notes for me, but it’s still very uncomfortable as she’s unaware of what kind of information I would need written down. And I’d have to count on her to pay attention AND understand what’s going on, both of which are not guaranteed. :/ Also, if I’m going through my notes at the end of the day and I realize there’s a discrepancy, like I have two exhibits with the same number written down, I can’t just go to my reporter’s office and say, “Hey, I think I may have misheard an exhibit number…can you check your notes for me?”
On a more personal level, Louise has been more than a coworker to me. She’s been a big sister, giving me guidance with work issues, personal/emotional issues, and a friend who’s been kind unconditionally, not just to me, but to people around in general. She’s been my outlet at every major emotional episode since I was 21, using her own life experiences and compassion to help me through very hard times. She gets my humor and laughs when I made oddball comments that go over other people’s heads. She’s changed my life in so many ways. Emotionally, she’s taught me to recognize the difference between negative actions stemming from my ego feeling hurt, vs. legitimate reactions to protect or improve myself. She’s taught me about the strength of acceptance and inaction (i.e., resisting retaliatory behaviors, or in childish terms, not “getting someone back for what they did to me”). My physical health has improved thanks to her, too. I started running way back in 2000 with her advice and encouragement, as she has been a lifelong marathoner and gave great tips on training. We worked out at the same local gym for some years, and would give each other new workout ideas and exercises and tips. Since she started her health and nutrition kick some years ago, she’s been sharing her knowledge (and sometimes, cookies!) with me, taught me so much about nutrients, vegetables, organic foods, cooking. Oh yes, and we took a few cooking classes together for fun at a bakery she’d discovered. And she found Rebecca. She’s also helped me out in so many little ways when I was overwhelmed at work, whether it be from putting a cart of files together (when I was in Law & Motion) or by babysitting the courtroom because I had to get away to do something in another part of the building. She also co-threw me my work baby shower.
She’s still in our courtroom reporting this Family Law trial because Family Law has been designated as reporter-required proceedings, but as soon as this trial is over, she’s released from us, as if the Powers that Be just cut the cord that bonds us all to this courtroom, and she’s being dragged away and will be sent on a day-to-day basis to who-knows-where. Wherever her assignment office decides they need a reporter for that day. Louise has been well-adjusted about it all and her perspective is that she’s grateful to still have a job and a reliable paycheck, but our little work family is going to be forever changed.
I keep telling myself that my losing her as “my” reporter doesn’t mean I’m losing her as “my” friend. She’s not disappearing off the planet, and I still have her phone number and we’re online social networking friends so I can still stalk her (heh). As far as my finding one of my favorite people in the world, this job has already done its job. Staying in each others’ lives is in our own hands.
One of the joys of coming to work is dimming, though. Mr. W is becoming ever more eager to leave California as we watch this state go on its downward spiral…and I’m starting to come around and resist less.

The kid bit me for the first time this morning during nursing. She acted like she was done, turning away, but I thought she was just distracted because she was on that side half the time she normally is, so I put her back on. A few seconds later, a sharp pain. I tried not to say “ouch” but it was too late because she caught me by surprise. I was also surprised she didn’t just bite and let go; she kept the pressure on for a few seconds. I tried to press her face into my skin to get her to let go but she was in an awkward position where it really didn’t do anything, but she let go on her own anyway and acted like nothing unusual had happened.

She may have been getting me back for putting her on when she was done eating. Or it may have been for letting her sit up by herself unsupported, which she’s able to do until she reaches to her left or right for something (and she’s ALWAYS reaching for something these days, even if it’s just the blanket she’s sitting on) and then falls over on her face in that direction. I laugh when she does that because it’s funny and she’s clearly unhurt. Maybe her little budding ego is hurt when she’s laughed at now, who knows.

Looking back, it’s interesting how insecure and incompetent I felt with the baby stuff from Allie’s birth until…last weekend. I was completely overwhelmed and feeling underprepared, and was constantly playing a game of catch-up, researching and reading everything I could, trying to be a more effective parent by trying to anticipate her growth and symptoms and how to best address potential upcoming issues. I’m finally at the point, thanks to the very successful naptraining over the weekend, of feeling like, “Hey, I’m not a totally sucky mother, after all.” It could be because I was SO freaked out at how crazy everything was going at home the first week Jayne was with Allie (I cried in the bathroom at work last Wednesday), by comparison, the weekend felt totally do-able. And also, because this week is going well and Jayne is “getting it” with Allie’s routines and stuff now, I’m feeling much more comfortable. The constant nagging nausea and anxiety hanging over me actually dissipates here and there. People at work with young grandchildren and helpless-feeling new-mom-children are coming to me, asking advice, and my advice is actually WORKING for them (especially in the areas of sleep training). There are more learning curves coming up immediately ahead such as when we have her try solids for the first time this weekend, but hopefully nothing that kicks my emotional butt like the first 4.5 months of Allie’s life. At least, until teenagerhood sets in. Ugh.

RE DODO:
Dodo has a vet appointment this Saturday to get an update on his kidney disease condition. He started vomiting bile more often over the weekend, and I relayed that to the vet, who’d called to check up on him over the week. She explained a process from the kidneys’ failure to do their job efficiently which ends up with excess acid production in the stomach. The end result is that I have to add another medication, this time an antacid, to his morning and evening medication routine. Luckily, I was able to get it in liquid suspension form, also tuna-flavored. It should be delivered directly from the pharmacy this week. I think the stages of this disease are progressing faster than I’d initially expected.

RE ALLIE AT HOME:
Allie has been doing well this week. Jayne has been following my written instructions/diagram, so Allie’s had all 6 naps on time Monday and Tuesday. Monday was picture-perfect and she had substantial naps. Jayne had to wake her at the 2-hour mark from her Monday noon nap so she doesn’t oversleep, and she had to again be awoken from her late afternoon nap yesterday. She did take a short morning nap yesterday (about half an hour), but she was left in her crib until the full hour had passed before she was picked up and fed. The feedings are in normal stretches after the naps, too. So as long as I can avoid looking at the cameras in the day, I don’t feel too much anxiety.

RE PUMPING:
Milk production dropped dramatically in the past week, but yesterday appeared to pick up a little again. I’ve given up trying to pump at night before I go to bed as the amount I’d get out makes the exercise a waste of time, but I’ve pumped in the mornings prior to Allie getting up, which has been working out. I’m usually so engorged at that time that I don’t need a let-down to get out at least 4 ounces, and I’m finding that I’m more engorged earlier in the mornings, so overnight milk production has increased. This morning I got out 7 oz an hour before Allie was to be up, still leaving enough for her to nurse with in the morning. I’ve also gotten out a half ounce more in each work-pumping yesterday than I had the day before, so I’m hoping it’s an upward trend. I think it helps that I’m less freaked out about what’s going on at home.

RE WORK:
It’s been a pretty light week as far as court hearings go for us, so I’ve been taking advantage of it by washing out and drying the pump parts after each pump session (when it gets busy I’d only have time to wipe the parts out), and by hammering the 30+ divorce cases sitting in the bin waiting for me when I got back. The relief clerk who was at my desk most of the time, Andy, did his best in keeping up with those and did process a gi-normous quantity of the cases, but I heard the clerk’s office was so behind in getting the defaulted divorce files farmed out to the courtrooms for processing that they put 5 people on the default desk to clear the backlog, and each courtroom was hit with 7-8 cases a day in addition to the courtroom’s regular work. Everyone’s grumbling and everyone’s behind. Well, after a week and a half of pounding on these cases, I cleared my cart yesterday and got caught up. I still see it as what may stand between me and my baby at the end of the day, and I don’t ever want to give a supervisor a reason to tell me I can’t leave for the day because I’m leaving work behind.

YESTERDAY EVENING’S STATUS MESSAGES:
“Cindy daringly took a shower 15 mins after Allie went to bed, aiming for the deep sleep part of Allie’s sleep cycle…& Allie reportedly didn’t move from the shower sounds! This could mean a shower daily is now possible! *moved to tears of joy*”
That’s huge! Allie’s finally outgrowing the overly noise-sensitive sleep phase of her babyhood!

“Cindy would love to take a field trip back in time to see the day when ice cream was invented. Was it an accident? Was it a stroke of genius? What was everyone’s reactions when they tasted it for the first time? What flavor was the first ice cream? Who came up with adding vanilla? In fact — oh, look at that, it’s 8:50. Time for bed.”
I think I’m gaining a little weight back. I’d like to gain it back by hitting the gym, but having to be back from lunch to pump at 1pm, gymming is out of the question for now. Altho…hmm…I should be able to do some stuff at home (floor exercises), and at least do some walking or SOMEthing at lunchtime.

Nap re-training went really well over the weekend. After the stunt Allie pulled on her first nap on Saturday when I had to let her cry for 23 minutes before she went back to sleep for 2 hours (I had to wake her so that she didn’t oversleep), she didn’t try it again. She hit all her naps on time and woke up from them at the right times, usually about one hour and 45 minutes. No fits in between REM cycles, no rolling around in her crib. I did notice latency has increased (taking longer to go to sleep during soothing); it used to be about 10 minutes, now it’s up to half an hour on some naps, with sometimes a few minutes of protest crying before she zonks out. I wrote detailed notes of her naps and her behavior before and during them. I also did a 12-hour daytime timeline with color-coded brackets and instructions for naptimes and feeding times. Jayne got here late again this morning so I didn’t have a lot of time to go over all the specifics, just went over things generally. I hope she reads the chart and notes. Stepdaughter conversationally said yesterday that she was hanging out with Jayne and chatting and they saw Allie wake up and cry on the monitor, and that they waited 5 minutes before Jayne went up and got her. Stepdaughter almost said it in a defense, like, “We did wait, though — we waited 5 minutes.” 5 minutes is not effective, obviously, because Allie then learns she can easily outlast Jayne and get picked up early from the nap. The point is to have Allie in her crib for an hour whether or not she sleeps the full hour, so she doesn’t expect to play during naptimes. Given the chance (i.e. she isn’t getting picked up after her first REM cycle), Allie sleeps for at least 90 minutes in a nap, and soon doesn’t even bother moving much during that initial REM wake-up, but goes right back to sleep. Altho Allie was crabby and would cry for no reason on Friday, we got our happy smiling well-rested baby back on Sunday. We also got black-out curtains for her this weekend and Mr. W installed them right away. They block about 70% of daytime light. I don’t want it black in her room cuz I still want her to know the difference between daytime naps and nighttime sleep.

Pumping didn’t go so well. I get consistent advice from other pumping mothers to keep at it, pump before going to bed. The timing is fine because it would be about 3 hours after Allie last ate for the night when I go to bed, but I can’t get letdowns anymore. Squeezing the hell out of each side as I’m pumping on the hand-pump with the free hand yields about 5 mL per side in 10 minutes. Basically it’s a total waste of time because it takes me longer to clean the parts afterwards. The time could’ve been better served by sleeping. I finally pumped at 5:30a this morning before Allie’s first feeding of the day and got almost 4 oz total by squeezing until my skin burned. I know there’s milk in there, my body just won’t release it. The only reason I got out what I did this morning was because I was engorged from no release overnight. I wonder if my doing that would get me less at my first work pumping later.

Dodo yowled every 15 minutes starting at about 10:30p last night, lasting for 45 minutes to an hour. Then he started yowling every 10 minutes starting at about 4:30am this morning for over an hour. He yowled more over the weekend, too. Not sure what changed. His yowling is even louder. I’m still medicating him as instructed.

This weekend, I discovered that staying at home and just doing babycare is, surprisingly, easier than going to work. I’d expected to feel better knowing I’m getting a break from 24/7 baby issues, but it’s harder psychologically at work because not only am I not free from baby issues as I worry about Allie’s routine going nuts at home, but I have to worry about pumping (whether I can get away, where, how long I can afford to pump/store/clean, whether it’s productive). The baby stress is compounded, and I have work stress and obstacles on top of that. There’s a giant backlog of divorce cases the clerk’s office is distributing like crazy so I’ve been working like mad to try to get rid of the ones they’re assigning to me. I’ve made a sizeable dent, but not good enough. I don’t want anyone to have a reason to say I can’t leave work on time because of workload unfinished. It’s really hard to concentrate on each file’s details, however, when my anxiety level is so high about what’s going on at home. I think that may be affecting my (lack of) letdowns, too.

This work week has been trying on everyone. Jayne has to get up earlier than she’s had to in many years of being a stay-at-home mom; Mr. W has given up his 4am gym runs; I’ve had to leave my baby and sit on my hands at work trying to calm myself between pumpings and processing backlogged divorce cases and settlement conferences. For Allie, as much as people say babies are more resilient than adults, it’s been “off” as well.

Monday, she had one shorter nap but over all it was a good day. Ate on time, slept on time, played well. I’d even made it home to nurse her for what would’ve been her third and last bottlefeeding, because she’d slept extra long that afternoon. Tuesday, all her naps got short, but they were still on time as with her 3 bottles. Yesterday was pretty bad. Looking at her sleep/eat chart that Jayne kept up with on the app (so that Mr. W could see it on his sync’ed app on his iPad at work), she took FOUR catnaps instead of 3 long naps, which was rather distressing to me because that would mean she’s not getting restorative sleep when they’re under an hour each, AND it means she’s cat-napping at a time when she ought to be awake, so that throws off her routine and sleep/wake rhythm. I was afraid it’d mess up her night sleep organization, too. If she developed day/night confusion, I would be frantic. Things got weirder when Mr. W observed that in addition to her 4 little naps, she also got a 4th bottlefeeding when she should’ve had 3. She was eating every 2 hours instead of every 3. What was Jayne doing? Was she aware she’s completely gone off Allie’s “norm?”

I was also concerned that Allie wasn’t napping long enough because she kept waking up and being unable to fall back to sleep when she’d roll to her side and then roll to her back. I called a few friends whose babies I know have started rolling over to ask how they handle those naps. The only person I got a hold of was Flip Flop Girl, who called me back and I spoke to her on the drive home. She wasn’t at all concerned about Allie’s extra feeding and “off” naps today, saying babies do go through these adjustment phases and it’s fine (so that made me feel better); she was more concerned about my communicating effectively with Jayne to see why she chose to do the things she did that day. “Just ask her, and find out what was going through her head. If she did something you’d rather her not do, just let her know that you would’ve preferred her to handle it another way, and in the future, to do it the other way. Hear her out. Who knows, you might go, ‘Oh, I see now. Thank you for doing that for Allie.’ ” As for the rolling in the naps, Flip Flop Girl said Allie is just going to learn to go back to sleep after her extra mobility, just as Allie has learned to go back to sleep after waking up to noise (which she’s better at now).

After we got back home, Jayne immediately told us it was a very peculiar day and informed us of the super-short naps, and the extra feeding. She was actually more frazzled about the baby falling off-routine than I was (which made me feel better). Jayne was stressed not knowing what was wrong because Allie was so tired and was rubbing her eyes and fussing and impatient, and Jayne tried everything to distract her, play with her, and nothing worked. I asked what was behind the extra bottle. Jayne said because Allie was actually screaming, on top of giving cues of hunger. Even as Jayne made the extra bottle, she was telling Allie, “You can’t be hungry, you’re completely off the routine today, and now you’re off on the feedings, too.” She was so concerned that we’d worked this hard at establishing a good rhythm and then suddenly it all went out the window. Jayne made a perfect imitation of Allie’s desperate hunger sounds and mouth motions, explaining that even as Jayne tried to be discreet in making the bottle, Allie kept lunging for it and sucked it down as if she were starving. So there was nothing I could tell Jayne that she didn’t already know (which again made me feel better). And she was clearly feeling very bad and concerned about both us and Allie, and she knew Allie well enough already to say this is not Allie’s normal personality. I reassured Jayne as best I could and she went home. I put Allie to bed early and she zonked out easily (all night).

At Flip Flop Girl’s earlier request, I called her back and gave her an update. I had mentioned that given that Allie’s a little over 15 lbs, her daily ounces of milk intake is 1.5 times her weight for 22.5 ounces daily, divided by 5 feedings, so that’d make it 4.5 ounces per feeding. I was concerned she was being overfed yesterday and wouldn’t be hungry for her bedtime feeding. Flip Flop said, “Are you sure it’s not 2.5 ounces per pound of her weight, and not 1.5 ounces?” I was pretty sure and didn’t consider anything beyond that.

Later, Flip Flop Girl texted me. She’d looked it up. The proper formula for what an exclusively liquid-fed (breastmilk or formula) baby is indeed the baby’s weight times *2.5* oz per pound of their weight, divided by the number of feedings a day. Allie was very underfed. So she wasn’t sleeping long because she was hungry and would wake up to ask to eat, and was screaming and cranky because she wanted more food (like a newborn). This wasn’t an issue before because she drank whatever she needed from me directly and I didn’t have a way of measuring what she’s taking out by nursing, so if a bottlefeeding wasn’t enough, in giving her one bottle a day, she’d just make up for the rest of the caloric deficit by getting more out of me in her nursing feedings. However, when I returned to work, she didn’t have 4 other nursings to make up for the insufficient bottle; she had 3 bottles in the middle of the day consecutively. So the caloric deficit had been building until day 3 when she reacted how she did. This explains so much — the fact that she didn’t have enough nutrients to poop since last Friday; the middle-of-the-night feeding she started toward the second half of transition week (when she was bottlefed more); the earlier wake-up times in the mornings. And of course, all of yesterday’s daytime crankiness and sleeplessness. With an extra feeding under her belt, she slept very soundly last night and this morning.

I’d called Jayne last night after Allie went down to check up on her and reassure her that she didn’t do anything wrong; Allie was just going through her own thing. This morning, I was happy to tell her we think we figured out the issue. It may not make everything perfect today because Allie is still going through teething, new caretaker, mommy being gone all day, new developmental milestones in the rolling over, BUT it should resolve one big issue and things will smooth over on their own after that over time. I certainly feel a lot better, and my confidence in Jayne (who read Allie’s signals all correctly yesterday) is much higher.

I must’ve known it was weight x 2.5 oz / number of feedings at one point, but it didn’t stick with me. I looked it up myself after Flip Flop Girl’s text. Typical ounces of intake a day is between weight x 2 on the low end, weigh x 2.5 for the high end, so for Allie, daily intake should be 30-37.5 oz, and all feedings being equal (which I know it’s not given that she still gets her first and last meals in a nursing), that’s 6 – 7.5 oz per feeding. We’d been giving her 4.5 – 5 oz in her bottles. *facepalm*

This is why I was an English Lit major. =P