cindy's world

Being a mom means discovering skills and strengths in yourself you never knew you had. They say you don’t know how strong you are until you have to be.

Last night, I assembled three separate breast pumps in the dark in minutes. That’s 8 + 5 + 5 = 18 little parts! =P

Now that my little girl is almost 15 weeks old, I realize there are some things I wish I knew before Allie came out into the world, such as:
* what growth spurts do to their eating;
* that it’s not only okay, but totally common, to supplement nursing with some formula while waiting for milk to come in the first couple of weeks, and it doesn’t mean your body isn’t or won’t produce milk;
* exclusively breastfed babies can go days, sometimes a week or more, without pooping once their digestive systems mature a little or when they’re going thru a growth spurt, cuz they use up all the stuff in the milk and don’t have any excess to make into poopies;
* babies need a LOT of sleep (like after every 1-2 hours of awake time), even when they’re not sleeping or napping on their own and need a little assistance;
* fussiness at night in a 6+ week-old could actually be a sign that an earlier bedtime is needed, and not just that the baby has colic or is generally crabby.

There have been things that have surprised me, too, such as:
* how much I resent anything that interferes with my baby’s sleep…loud gardeners (does that leaf blower need to be on when they’re just walking around the driveway?!), ambulance sirens (those drivers should find a different route!), screaming kids outside (it’s a SOCCER BALL, not a zombie chasing you for your brain!), careless door-slamming (you have fingers, use them to hold the knob and close the door instead of letting it slam!), the cat when he’s yowling all over the house (he KNOWS there’s a baby sleeping, he could smell it, he’s a cat!). That last one was a surprise; I thought NOTHING would come between me and my Dodo boy;
* the things I get ecstatic about when they come out of my baby…”Is that a toot? That’s a TOOT!” “*gasp* YAAAY, you POOPIED!” “GREAT burp, baby! GOOD JOB!” cuz any of these things trapped in her makes her uncomfortable, so we want them OUT, no matter how socially unacceptable it is for adults to do the same.

It’s been said many times that babies don’t come with instruction manuals. My therapist points out that all new parents at some point or another have felt bewildered, lost, scared, paranoid, and it’s not just me, because look at all the self-help baby books out there! There wouldn’t be such a market if I’m the only one who feels this way. So although the labor team that delivered Allie claims they didn’t leave her manual in there when they took her out, there ARE manuals out there available in a salad bar fashion. You pick the item(s) that work for you, and it could be a unique blend of techniques, tips, and education for each unique parent dealing with a unique baby. For me, after “Babywise,” “The No-Cry Solution,” “What to Expect in the First Year,” countless internet searches, countless texts to helpful friends, this is what I found worked for me:
“Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” – Dr. Marc Weissbluth
“The Wonder Weeks” – Hetty van de Rijt and Frans Plooij
These two go well together for me because they answer my most burning questions, which are: (Stage direction: picture me dropping to my knees with an open-mouthed anguished expression, fists in the air, and dramatically screaming the following)
* WHAT is HAPPENING to my baby?! and
* HOW do I FIX MY BABY?!
The sleep book, as I have come to dub it, tells me what is going on developmentally in Allie’s little brain through her early growth in life, and how giving her the opportunity to be fully rested in spite of her growing restlessness helps her mood, her ability to absorb learning, increases her ability to adapt and thereby sets her up for successful future learning and adaptability. Plus, it helps me sleep through the night since she’s been sleeping through the night. Good nappers make good night-sleepers! This book teaches you how to help your baby become a good napper and good sleeper.
Wonder Weeks explains what developmental “leaps” the baby goes through at what point in his/her life, and helps you anticipate the signs that show that your baby is now at week x, which means she’s hitting a fussy period due to her current ability to sense y and z, and she’ll be trying this and that and you can help her learn these skills by playing this game or doing that activity. Apparently a baby’s development isn’t a seamless progression, it goes in leaps and bounds (and not in the figurative sense), so the baby goes through phases of behavioral changes which SEEM like a regression into cranky infancy. These regression periods were distressing to me until I learned this behavior is normal, and the clinginess/crankiness/crying are just passing phases as the baby tries to acclimate to the new perceptions her brain suddenly learns to picks up. (I used to think “OMG, this is the way it’s gonna be from now on, forever! It’s horrible and I can’t do it!” and my therapist said that’s the postpartum depression talking, the inability to see beyond the misery of the moment.) I am seeing Allie’s developments hit right at the points the book says they would. Like now, she’s entering a fussy period because she’s seeing faces and recognizing people, and would cry suddenly for no reason, sleep less well, but in improvements, she prefers to stand up and walk, roll to her side, and work on skills like that, so she finds the awake time more interesting.

Okay, and now she’s woken up super-early, crying from her morning nap, so I’ll have to end my blog posts for the same reason I’ve been ending most of my blog posts since her birth. Another sign that Wonder Weeks was right about her current fussy stage.

Sometimes Allie unexpectedly takes a long 2 hour morning nap so that I can do all the stuff I need to, such as wash and dry pump parts and bottles, tidy up the house, eat, change, etc. And sometimes, like today, she wakes up from that long morning nap for an hour, eats and plays, starts yawning and then goes down for another unexpected 1.5 (and counting) hour afternoon nap. I’ve had lunch in that time so I sit online and catch up on emails, blog posts, etc. And then some more time goes by, and my inbox shows no new activity. Where is everyone? Oh yeah, at work.

And then the issue resolves itself. By that I mean I see a FedEx truck pull up and haul a giant box to my door. I don’t want the doorbell to wake up the baby, so I intercept him at the front door and pick up the giant box, lugging it back into the house. What the heck is this? It’s freaking heavy! It’s from…”muscle egg?” And then I remember…Mr. W ordered raw pasteurized egg whites that are, like, chocolate and caramel flavored and stuff. And the giant-ass box threatening to break my back is wielding multiple stickers yelling, “REFRIGERATE or FREEZE upon ARRIVAL.” Great, I have to open this box and refrigerate what feels like the egg whites of a million hens.

Meanwhile, I realize as I’m lugging this about that I can’t close the door while I’m being dragged down by the giant box, so the delivery truck’s very loud rumbling is pouring in the front door…and sure enough, the baby starts screaming.

Refrigerate egg whites, get screaming baby, or finish this blog post?

Finish this blog post. The damn egg whites can wait.

Susanne texted me to call her last night while I was putting Allie through her bedtime feeding (another night of sleeping all the way through, and another day/night of no poopies). When I did, I was nervous. Mr. W said he was scared, too. We quickly agreed that if she says no, then we’ll ask if there are any non-monetary benefits we could provide her that would change her mind, such as more paid days off, since Mr. W and I have a lot of vacation days and holidays we can relieve her of duty. If she declines, then we thank her and move on to someone who’d be a better fit.

But Susanne said yes! She said she thought about it, and decided that if the money were the issue and we really would like her to be our nanny, and she wants to work for us, then it shouldn’t be just about the money. I thought that was a very Christian way of thinking. A working situation between employer and employee IS mainly about the money, but a more holistic view of it is whether it’s in both parties’ best interest, whether you like the person, it’s about the baby, and love, and helping others, etc. We still have to get together and crunch some numbers to decide how best to do this, but we’re gonna do it! YAY! She said the only hitch is that a family she babysits for had an emergency-type situation come up and they need her to be there full-time this month. She said they have no other option. That means that she can’t do a part-time trial period with me before she has to take over in May. That makes me a little nervous, but she offered to come over on weekends to acclimate to Allie’s routine, get Allie used to her, learn her way around the house and neighborhood. I agreed. At least that saves me some money for April, I guess.

I guess the bottom line remains the same — Susanne just needs to keep Allie alive until we get on the same page as to her routines and such. My cousin Jennifer only gave her nanny 2 days to hang around with her and the baby, learn their routine, before she went to work, and that’s working out just fine. Susanne is more than capable, and she asked to borrow and read the sleep book I’d referenced to understand my parenting routine, which can be done on her own without her being here.

Now I have to let down all the other potential nannies, the toughest of which will be Fernanda, still waiting to hear back after her interview with us.

So I called Nanny Susanne yesterday and asked if we could meet to talk shop. She wanted to know what was up, so I ended up talking to her over the phone and spitting numbers at her instead of showing her the printed calculations and scenarios I’d prepared. She says she doesn’t need to see the calculations and breakdowns; she trusts what I’m telling her. She asked for the bottom line of what I can pay, and I said that her requested $600/week net comes out to my paying a gross of $763/week, which almost eats up my own salary, and I still have to pay mortgage and insurance and gas, etc. So I offered a compromise of paying her $700/week gross, which means she takes home $555/week net. She said she’d have to check on her expenses and accounting and call me back. I told her that she is our favorite candidate and that I actually feel secure leaving Allie with her; that we’re not saying we’re unwilling to pay or she’s not worth what she’s looking to be paid, it’s that we can’t afford it; that we have an interview with someone else scheduled for tomorrow (today) and that Mr. W said if Susanne accepts our offer, that we’ll cancel the interview immediately. She told me to go ahead and take the interview so I know what’s out there and I can compare, and she’ll get back to me once she does the accounting. I’m not sure that’s a good sign.

After we hung up, I felt like I had inadvertently made myself look like I was begging her to take the job or something, and I resented that. What I don’t want to have happen, is that she takes a lower amount than she wants to and ends up resentful of us, then quits to find something else and leaves us to have to start the nanny hunt all over again. And I also don’t want to feel resentful that we’re paying her more than what I’m able to without draining all my money and savings, too. I was feeling tired of the whole mess.

Nevertheless, because the interview for Thursday (today) with an older nanny was tentative, and because she’d emailed me anyway letting me know that we can schedule the interview for whenever, I asked her if it’s all right if we postpone it because we’re waiting for some numbers to come back. That way, if Susanne says she’s fine with $555/wk, we don’t have to THEN cancel an interview, or go thru with it knowing we’re wasting everyone’s time. But I hope Susanne doesn’t leave us hanging for long.

Meanwhile, thanks to a lead from Flip Flop Girl for an online payroll program costing just $20/month (www.paycycle.com), if Susanne does agree to come on board, we’re actually ready. We just have to enter hours worked and they’ll do the paystub, withholdings and accounting. They also do the quarterly tax vouchers and W-2s and stuff so whatever we need, we just go online and print, then print or write the checks (they also do free direct deposit for our employee) and mail to the government or hand to our nanny. So that’s one big thing off our potential plate.

For an Allie update:
She had her 4th consecutive night of sleeping straight through with no middle-of-the-night feedings. Since she dropped a feeding and is now down to 5 a day, I think that’s why she hasn’t pooped in 6 days now. Her body’s not producing poop cuz she’s using all the calories. She’s not in discomfort, her stomach isn’t distended or hard, and she’s tooting, so there’s no blockage. She’s just using all the nutrients (from what I read and from what pediatricians and nurses have told me in the past during her growth spurts).
After fighting the bottle last Friday and Saturday, she’s taken a bottle a day without protest from Mr. W, stepdaughter, and yesterday, my parents. Today, I was on my own during all her potential bottlefeeding periods, so I was nervous. I turned her facing out, gave her 3 ounces, and she took that from ME without protest, too. Whew! I think I need to give her more since she seemed hungry afterwards still. I gave her the next feeding an hour early because of that.

Allie helped us prepare for the tax appointment, made at the awkward time of 6p-7p (Allie’s bedtime routine usually starts at 6:45-7p), by deciding to take an extra long nap around noon. She slept for 3.5 hours, past her usual 1pm-ish feeding, thereby fixing the timing of it all by having her subsequent feedings around the time of the appointment. I called the tax guy before we left the house and learned he was running behind, so I fed her at home at 5:15p before we left. That would place her next (bedtime) feeding around 8:15p, way later than she’s used to, but at least she wouldn’t be crying from hunger while we’re there. That was a good move, since after we got there, he turned out to be more like 45 minutes behind. Ouch.

Allie cooperated and was in such a great mood after her great napping day that she charmed the receptionist. The woman literally gave us her phone numbers on our way out and offered to be our nanny. She was only at the tax guy’s job during tax season. Of course, once people heard we were contemplating a nanny charging $600/week net, tons of people, half-seriously, offered to quit their jobs and be our nanny. Yeah, okay, but are you certified in child-infant CPR?

We expected to get, like, ALL our taxes back this year because of our newest little tax deduction. (That was how I introduced her to the receptionist. “Hello, I’m Cindy, and this is our newest tax deduction, Allie.”) The out-of-pocket medical fees were a TAD on the high side. We didn’t get back what we expected, but it was close to 5 figures. Geez we pay a lot of taxes.

Turned out our tax guy does W-2s for a few clients who have hired in-home nurses, so he could do the same for us. He had another guy after us and since he was running so late and we finished in half an hour of the hour we had reserved, he gave our extra half hour to the next guy (making him just 30 mins late for the last guy) and kinda rushed us out, charging only for the half-hour we used. So we aren’t clear to our satisfaction on this, since this came up in the end, but he seemed to say that the taxes and withholdings and stuff we’d be adding to a $600/wk take-home would be something like $90/wk. $80/wk federal taxes, $6/wk state disability insurance, and social security would be $350/year. That’s so far off from the $600-becoming-$880/week total in the example we read online that we were baffled. I told him I knew the example came from a Maryland tax frame. He said, “Well, that’s why. It’s Maryland. They have county taxes, and separate this tax, and that tax…” He actually recited the taxes but he’d lost me already. He said the only state possibly worse or close to Maryland in these things is “Tax-achusettes.” I thought CA was one of the highest tax states. We still noted on our way out that he didn’t address CA tax withholdings and some other stuff, so we’re still not totally clear on total damage for Susanne’s asking price. I’m gonna try to call a domestic payroll service and see if they’ll help if I’m a potential customer.

Allie was such a trooper. She was so tired she actually dozed in her carseat on the way home (usually she can’t sleep in her car). She didn’t cry until the very end, when she was asleep and something her daddy said startled the bejeezus out of her. I rushed through her nighttime routine an hour late at 8:15p, she ate and was put to bed. She’s sleeping in just a tad this morning, although I see on the camera now that she’s awake, sucking on her hands, and laying on her side, kicking around. This is her “private time.” She hasn’t called me, yet, but I’m gonna let her have an extra half-hour or so this morning because she got to bed late.

By the way, today marks the third straight night she slept entirely through — no nighttime feedings between her 7pm-ish bedtime feeding and her 7am-ish morning feeding, when she gets up to start her day. *crossing fingers* It wasn’t “convenient” to plan my day around her needs, but I’ve been following her cues, guided by the sleep book to learn to recognize her needs as her brain develops. I feed her when she’s hungry, change her when she’s wet, and let her sleep when she’s tired. Some people assume I’m setting her routine, but I’m really not. I try very hard to be home at the times when I know she starts giving her drowsy cues (within 1-2 hours of being awake) or hunger cues (between 2.5-3.5 hours), and she decides when she’s going down for the nap (typically 8:45a-ish, 11:45a-ish, 3p-ish, and possibly a 5p-ish), how long she needs to sleep. The result is a baby who smiles at me from the crib whenever I go get her, an attentive and laughing girl during her awake and alert times, and a generally healthy girl based on all technical medical factors.

We had two nanny interviews this past weekend, the 31 year old German, Susanne, on Saturday and the 29 year old Brazilian, Fernanda on Sunday.

For me, it was love at first sight with Susanne. The conversation at the interview flowed for almost 3 hours. Allie was crabby and hungry by the end and I had to feed her in the car (we met at the Irvine Spectrum outdoor food court by the fountains both days). Susanne is WAY more competent and capable than her profile let on. She’s got tons of recent infant experience, is very knowledgable about child development and such, and has taken courses in it. Her CPR and first aid certifications are updated (as recent as February this year), and when she was a school teacher in Germany, she’d had to use a lot of first aid skills, such as giving CPR to premies who’d stopped breathing and turned blue, giving shots to babies, taking care of a boy who’d fallen on the playground and gotten half his teeth knocked out (as the other teachers ran around panicking, so she had to get rid of them before the boy himself started freaking out seeing their reactions). One of the infant twins she’d nannied for a decade ago had a lot of medical issues she’d tended to. She left Germany on a church mission trip to Mexico, and from there, she came to CA to found her church here. So she’s one of the original founders and is the current principal of a Children’s Ministry part of her church. She explained that she’d been delegating her duties and aside from teaching on Thursday evenings and something to do with the church on Sunday, she is free to nanny for us full time. She had amazing reference letters from families of 5 kids, families where the mom left her young daughter with Susanne (as a live-in nanny) for 6 weeks on a business trip. She has zero issues with the cameras all over the house and thought the technology was great, and was fine with getting her background checked, altho she said a local police department had already taken her fingerprints as she deals with teaching children for church. She majored in Child Education, minored in Psychology, and has a separate degree in Theology. She works out regularly, cooks, has no problem transporting Allie anywhere and said she would take her to Gymboree if we wanted, she’d done everything we need before, including managing sleep routines and making organic baby food. Occasionally cooking for the family if asked to. WE LOVED HER.
Here’s the crux. She asked for $600 weekly take-home. That didn’t seem like much, and we were happy and fine with it. Then we came home and Mr. W started researching online what it meant to pay this take-home, because she definitely doesn’t want to be paid under the table. With the social security, state and federal taxes, disability, unemployment, blah blah and blah blah crap we have to pay to the government, this means we’re looking at approximately $880 out-of-pocket for us a WEEK. That’s $46,000 a year. OUCH. I don’t think we can afford that, and I’m heartbroken. We’re going to talk to our tax accountant when he does our taxes on Tuesday evening to see what the ramifications are. Then I’m going to beg her to lower her cost a little.

The interview with Fernanda yesterday went well. She was less talkative because she was nervous, and I kept inadvertently comparing her to Susanne. She’s less experienced with infants this young; her youngest had been 6 months (which isn’t a HUGE difference in age, but developmentally, there is). I asked her what she’d do with Allie in Allie’s awake time, and she said sing, play peek-a-boo (Allie’s too young to understand peek-a-boo). Basically, she had no idea. She’s never dealt with a baby who’s on milk only, and had never dealt with frozen breastmilk. That’s not a huge deal, she’ll just learn once I show her. I’ve defrosted a pack of my breastmilk and put it in a bottle so how hard could it be? It was a little scary when her childrearing philosophy was that a baby shouldn’t be held too much because they need to learn to be independent. Allie’s still young; she’s able to go 15 mins or so on her own without being held, and she’s self-entertained in that time which is amazing for me to run around and get stuff done, like laundry or make/eat food, but after that, she should be interacted with. I suddenly pictured Allie lonely and crying, confused as to why she was feeling abandoned. She has no CPR or first aid certification, but said her au pair program from 2007 had taught them a week of classes in child care and American culture, and that CPR and first aid was addressed in one of the seminars. She’s also active and works out, cooks and cleans for the baby (and maybe somewhat for the family if requested). She left Brazil for the east coast to get an AA in Marketing and Masters in International Business. She currently lives with the last family (3 kids) she’d nannied for. They loved her so much they adopted her into their family rent-free. She still occasionally babysits for them in the evenings and for their friends when needed. The only reference she gave us was for this live-in family.
She’s asking for $400-$500 a week take-home, but doesn’t have a preference whether to be paid in cash or through the crazy W-2 style. Mr. W, after reading all the information on paying domestic workers under the table, is terrified to do it in cash. Apparently, all the employee has to do is apply for social security benefits later on at any time in his/her life, and we’re on the hook for being audited and we would have to pay all of the employee’s SS needs ourselves as punishment for not having timely paid them when the employee was under our employment.

So now is the dilemma. When asked for the online profile how much I’m willing to pay weekly, I’d clicked the categories from $300 to $700+. This is because how much I’m willing to pay, to me, means gross. Apparently when the nannies are asked how much they want to be paid weekly, they’re thinking net. There’s a HUGE difference (apparently, like 30%) between net and gross. Mr. W and I were madly calculating over the weekend. In order for me to pay Susanne what she wants and still pay half the mortgage on our house and all the mortgage on my rental property, I would have to give her the ENTIRE remainder of my work salary plus the small profit margin of rent on my rental property. That leaves no money to pay for my cell phone, for credit card expenses, for the gym membership, Gymboree membership, property taxes, gas, etc. unless I dip into my savings. I’m willing to do that, but Mr. W is very discontent over the idea that I’d be working for nothing in order to pay a stranger to care for our baby; he thinks I should just quit. My thought is that paying a nanny for Allie is temporary (maybe 2-3 years, depending on what we can afford) until we can put her in daycare, but the job is more than money to me; it’s interaction with adults, it’s sanity, it’s a sense of self-worth and independence. I’m willing to hand over my entire salary to a nanny that I can feel completely at peace with (like Susanne; I know that Allie will be in more capable hands than mine if I leave her with Susanne), but what Susanne has requested is still more than I can afford.

In case you’re wondering why I’m calculating this as my salary alone, it’s because Mr. W’s money has been pretty much been coming in one hand and out the other since his renters are still waaay behind in rent and because he’s still supporting 2 adult kids financially. There’s fat he could trim, but he’s already trimmed a lot more than he was ever used to trimming before. Plus, he pays way more of the household bills than I do.

So there’s the dilemma. Pay a lot more for the nanny I love, or less for a less experienced nanny that I’m gonna be a little nervous about? It’s kind of a like a you-get-what-you-pay-for dilemma. The two are similar in a lot of ways in that they’re both trying to get their US residencies established and are currently under a religious or student visa. They both seem wholesome and responsible, are into organic foods and not junk food (they both brought this up assuming we’d think they’re weird, but we totally embraced it cuz we’re like that ourselves).

Other nannies seem to have eliminated themselves; just stopped responding via email despite our being at the “let’s decide when to meet for an interview” stage. However, late yesterday, I got a phone call from the older nanny from Carlsbad who didn’t get back to my email about rescheduling her interview, and she left a vm saying she was still interested and would like to interview. And then I got a late email from another older nanny who wants to interview on Thursday. I wonder what their delays were; makes me think they have other things going on. Both appear to be professional nannies with amazing credentials on paper, but at this point I have serious doubts I would want anyone more than Susanne to be our nanny. The chemistry was just right, we all felt. I truly LIKE her, like I want to be her friend and hang out with her and have her teach me stuff like-her.

I hit a realization yesterday. My being a first time mom with zero baby experience is big-time screwing with me because I don’t have context to evaluate any issues to come up. Like yesterday, Allie rejected the bottle. She was given a bottle a day a few times a week to keep her bottle-trained so that when I return to work, she could take to the bottle. However, when she got sick and rejected the bottle (probably due to congestion and/or need for nursing comfort), I indulged her and we didn’t bottlefeed for 10 days. When Mr. W touched the bottle to her mouth yesterday at a feeding time, she wailed and screamed and cried like she was in pain. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be around so she doesn’t think, “Hey, mom’s right THERE, I’m just gonna scream until she puts her boob in my mouth.” So I hid out upstairs, afraid to pump because I may have to nurse her if she won’t eat. Listening to her crying downstairs, I felt miserable and scared, like this is The Worst That Could Happen. Eventually, Mr. W worked on her for an hour upstairs as I researched madly on the PC downstairs for a magical cure to bottle rejection (also emailing pediatrician, calling the lactation clinic which was closed for the weekend, emailing the 2 nannies we’re interviewing this weekend to see if they have suggestions which, btw, turned out to be a great test), and suddenly the crying stopped. Soon he presented me with an empty bottle. He said she’d drank all 4.5 oz in 10 minutes, after crying an hour and exhausting herself. She knocked out in a long nap soon afterwards. Mr. W said that he knew I’d be freaking out, which is why he tried so hard to get her to drink the bottle. If it were just up to him, he would’ve said, “No biggie, we’ll try a bottle again some other time, just nurse her.” (Altho apparently, after talking to lots of people and reading lots of suggestions, is the worst thing to do cuz then the baby thinks, “Hey, I just have to hold out and I’ll get a boob.”) Because to him, this isn’t the end of the world.

In response to a status message about this I’d posted on the social networking site, a lot of people online who are parents addressed the crying aspect, telling me it’s okay, babies cry. Don’t let the crying get to you. That confused me, cuz I was like, “How can you not see? It’s not the CRYING. She’s REJECTING THE BOTTLE! What can I do?! She’s gonna STARVE TO DEATH if she won’t drink out of a bottle when I go back to work! This is The Worst That Could Happen!” It wasn’t until a friend said, “Chances are good that even if she’ll never reliably take the bottle, she’ll adjust once you leave her with the nanny. I’ve never heard of anyone who had to quit work because of that :P”, that I got some perspective. I’d read that this is common at Allie’s age of 3-4 months; even college roommie Diana’s baby, 2 weeks younger and who never had a break from the bottle since she was days old, suddenly rejected the bottle a few days ago. They’re just at a point where they realize they have a preference, and the preference is mommy’s breasts. You just have to keep at it (and there are tons of suggestions out there with distraction methods to get the baby to take the bottle again), and the baby may miss 1-2 feedings doing a stand-off with you or rather, with the person who’s preferably not mommy who’s giving the bottle, but the baby will take to the bottle instead of starve. So it’s the first of many battles of wills, I guess, and persistence wins out. Allie, in the case of yesterday, held out an hour. Today, after Allie again cried in a standard cradle hold once the bottle nipple touched her mouth, Mr. W held her facing outward and walked her around and fed her the bottle from behind, as she was distracted looking around. The crying lasted minutes, if that. Hopefully she’ll get used to the bottle again very soon, no more than a few days of rejection. I’m not going to take any more breaks from bottle-training.

Apparently, bottle rejection is NOT The Worst That Could Happen. It’s just foreign to me so I assume everything that’s unexpected and troublesome is The Worst That Could Happen. I’m sure there are people who are as ignorant of baby issues as I am but who don’t assume that every new thing is The Worst, but instead, don’t think or even realize how bad something is until someone, like a pediatrician, tells them so. “What? Our baby needs to be hospitalized? We just thought it was a little cold!” I think those people have it easier, mood-wise. I’m told that I instantly jump to The Worst because I’m a perfectionist (Mr. W) and because I don’t do well being taken by surprise (Rebecca) and the pessimistic fear is a product of postpartum depression (doctors). I used to roll with the punches more easily, but I’m unable to now, thanks to this biochemical imbalance crap going on. Everything feels like it rests on the moment being perfect. That’s a lot of pressure on each moment.

So, I need to remind myself of the bigger picture. She will survive this, and that, and even those things I still don’t know could happen cuz people don’t talk about it (which I’m pretty ticked about, btw). I am not going to be prepared for every complication that could/will happen, but I’m going to try not to assume each of those complications is The Worst That Could Happen. Most likely, it’ll just be a step-by-step resolution, like bottle rejection. Oh, she’s being stubborn about eating from a bottle? Okay, we’ll just keep trying the bottle for awhile, comfort her in between bouts of crying so it doesn’t become traumatic, and try different holds and distractions, and when she gets hungry enough, she’ll take it. She won’t skip more than 1-2 feedings (according to lactation nurse advice given to Diana), even tho it may happen each bottle for a few days. Then after that she’ll be accustomed to the bottle again. No biggie. No kid has ever been refused from a college because this bottle didn’t go down easily. And an even bigger picture than that — this is about the evolution of Allie’s soul; she’s here as my daughter to learn some things about life and my job is just to make sure she’s as safe, healthy and happy as I can reasonably control as she walks her life’s journey. Her choices and growth are independent of me; I have influence, not control. Her soul is not mine to control. Her paths and footsteps are not mine to map out. So this one too-short nap, this one irregular night, this one off-moment, is just that: one nap, one night, one moment. Nothing in the overall course of her existence here.

So stop worrying about every moment, Cindy. She’s healthy, bright, and seems mostly happy. That’s all the positive influence you need to and can give for now.

I *just* realized Allie’s 3 months old today!

*Now she wakes up pretty regularly on her own between 6:45a-7a, and just lays there looking around and kicking, smiling, until I go get her. She greets me with a big smile and sometimes a laugh.
*Dr. Weissbluth’s sleep book says around 12-16 weeks, the “morning nap” is developing (due to brain maturity), and we should see this happen at between 9a and 10a. I would put Allie down for her morning nap when she starts showing drowsy signs of rubbing her eyes and yawning, but after about 10 mins of serious soothing (which she fights now cuz she wants to play) and she konks out, she’d been only staying down for half an hour or so. Her long naps had been the later morning one, around 11:30a, when she’d be out for almost 2 hours or more. However, yesterday and today, after she fought the morning nap a little, it’s gotten long. Yesterday’s morning nap started at 8:30a and went till 10:30a. Today, she got up a bit later (7:30a) for having gone 11.5 hours overnight without waking for a feeding (whoa! …and, ouch for my boobs! I got up at 5:30a to pump a little) so she didn’t go down for her morning nap till 9a, but she’s still sleeping. It’s been over an hour. So this might be the morning nap draining from the late morning nap that she’s going to start to minimize or eliminate. The late afternoon nap (1pm-ish) is supposed to develop on its own around 5 months.
*I was concerned the past few days since she’d been sick, since she doesn’t stay at the breast long. Flip Flop Girl suggested yesterday that she is just more efficient at eating, so what may have taken 10 mins before now takes 5-6 minutes, doesn’t mean she’s starving herself. What Allie does is pull off my breast, turn her upper body to face up (and away from her food source), and smile at the ceiling. Or, she talks to me, as she’d been doing the past few days. “aaaAAAAAaah! Gggkkkkk!” She’s practicing her gutteral sounds. Sometimes it sounds like she’s saying “milkkkkkkk.” She waits for me to do the “ggggkkkkkk” back, and when I do, she laughs. Then she does it again. “Aaaal ggggkkkkkkkk!!” And I do it back. She laughs. I tell her I’m going to stop playing with her now cuz she needs to eat. Then I find myself doing it again. “Ggggkkkkkk!” Allie laughs. That trickster.
*She found her thumbs yesterday. Since then she’s been happily sucking.

*She loves to stand. She sits like a big girl in the hole of the Boppy, but she’ll reach for my thumbs, one in each hand, and wants me to pull her to standing, slowly. She kicks up against the couch she’s sitting on to help me. If I don’t help pull her up and I’m too busy entertaining her with songs, she’ll start leaning forward and kicking up and down with her feet, eager to get up.
*Yesterday, I watched Mr. W do the funniest thing with her. He had her laying on his lap vertically, her head at his knees and her feet on his chest. He leaned forward, pushing her knees into her chest and bringing his face to her face. “Aaaah-aaaah!” she’d say to him. He leans back. She stops. He leans up. “Aaaah-aaah!” Back. Stops. This happened over and over, like his leaning up was triggering her sounds. Two separate occasions they played this game, and both times I ruined it by laughing so that it distracted Allie and she turned to look at me, and stopped responding to Mr. W’s movements.
*She says “Ell” the most, which sometimes sounds like “Allie.” Since most of the questions I ask her are things like “Who’s that pretty girl in the mirror?” “Who’s sitting like a big girl?” “Who’s got a big diaper full of pee?”, it sounds like she’s answering correctly.
*She grabs cloths, brings them to her mouth and leans her head down to greet her hands so she’s curled forward, and I guess it works cuz it helps me hold the burp cloths in place and she ends up wiping her own mouth and chin.
*She’s started drooling.
*She bats at toys that dangle over her hand and face. It may be accidental, though. But she definitely grasps things from the high chair’s table and pulls them on her lap.

For the most part, she seems recovered from the RSV infection. She may cough a couple times a day, but no crazy spasms, no vomiting. We’ve stopped using the nebulizer, and lowered her mattress back down. The inclined mattress was a pain, making her slide down to the rail when she’s kicking around during/after sleeping. I still run the humidifier in her room for most naps and overnights, but not all naps.

I’ll respond to your awesome comments in the last post later on…I just need to blast this out.

Day before yesterday evening, I started getting physical stress symptoms of lightheadedness, nausea, throat tightening, and cried a lot. I put on the social networking site that I needed a hug. Next thing I knew, I got tons of cyber hugs and Coworker Sandy and her husband Rich stopped by after work to physically give me a hug. Since Mr. W had also gotten home shortly before, the 4 of us plus baby went to Claim Jumper for a quick bite. She started fussing just a teeny bit in the restaurant, but Mr. W was able to rock her to sleep for half an hour in her carseat. I had a great time and felt much better.

Yesterday morning, it happened again. I was thinking about all the crap I had to do and remembering being woken up at 10:30p by stepdaughter’s return (I was asleep in the baby’s room and the garage door opening and closing woke me up) and having to deal with…stuff. I started feeling dizzy and faint again, the nausea came back even as I tried to eat a waffle for nutrition’s sake holding the baby. I called Mr. W and left him a vm just to tell him what I was feeling in case something happened to me (like passing out) while I’m caring for Allie. He was concerned and immediately got the rest of the day off and came home mid-morning.

He pushed me to get an appointment that day with a doctor or a therapist, asap. I managed to get one with someone who’s not my doctor, but is in the same building, and after that, Mr. W dragged me and the baby to San Clemente beach for lunch.

Allie didn’t sleep much during that period, but did take a quick 20-some minute snooze in her stroller. We had lunch waterside, and a nice hilly walk to and from where we’d parked. I felt immediately much better. Oh yeah, while I was feeding Allie before we left the house, Mr. W went downstairs and had a private talk with stepdaughter. When he came back up, he said he could think of a few options: we hire a nanny to help right away; I go to my parents’ house on weekdays, or he drops me off in Vegas to live with his parents for awhile so they could help me care for the baby. I was unhappy with the solutions that suggested I leave with Allie; I feel like I’m the least portable person there due to Allie’s needs. He also thought I should go on medication. That means breastfeeding is over. The one thing I thought I could do sorta right was breastfeed; if that’s taken away, then I feel totally useless as Allie’s mother. At least the consistent thing from pediatricians and baby nurses was that Allie is very healthy and her growth is excellent and they credit BFing for that. The last pediatrician said I must’ve been giving her good antibodies in milk or she’d have been a lot sicker with the RSV infection.

Before leaving the house, I popped in stepdaughter’s room where she was watching a show on her laptop. I said I just wanted to give her a hug, and she hugged me and told me she didn’t leave because of me; she left to see if it’d be better for everyone if we weren’t living together. She was reassuring, saying now that she knows what’s going on, we can figure out how to do this living situation thing, and she knows it’s hard, but it’s not my fault. We hugged again as I kinda lost it in tears again (all day). Yesterday I was in the baby’s room when she came home and I didn’t even know because she used the front door!

Anyway, the appointment went well. Dr. House (yes, it made me nervous, too) was very sympathetic, also felt I have postpartum depression and that I’m physically healthy. He urged me to keep my therapy apptmt next week, and when I asked if he were comfortable doing all my therapy documentation in a note for work, he looked up my info on the computer, saw all the prior diagnoses by my primary care doc AND the therapists, and immediately did an off-work note from the date I gave birth to the end of March. When I got home, Mr. W immediately scanned and I emailed it to my timekeeper person at work. She said it was perfect, and immediately passed it on to payroll downtown. She said this note will change all the vacation and other time they’d been using for my being off to “sick” time. Yay! Two things off my plate. The doctor also ordered a blood test to rule out any possible random physical reasons for my physical symptoms. The lab results were all within the range of “normal.”

I DO feel better. I didn’t want living with the stepdaughter to start off with both of us tiptoeing around each other and resentful, but it started off fine. The work issue is resolved. AND Allie slept through the night last night. 7:40p and still down now. I’m gonna go back to bed.