Mommy Must Have’s
April 25th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
When I was making up my baby registry I was lost. It reminded me of the first time I ignorantly purchased my first car off the lot when my most pressing question was, “what colors does it come in?” Knowing what stroller to purchase, what glider or swing to buy, how many diapers or bottles I would need all were much too confusing a process to navigate. Paired with the hormones, I was paralyzed with indecision. Now that I am a seven week old mommy, I don’t claim to be any less ignorant, but I am much more educated on what my little guy likes and the items that were all but wasted purchases. So, I thought I would share some of my mommy expertise on products I have come to love thus far:
Top 5 Mommy Must Have’s
It’s humbling to admit the amount of times that my post-pregnancy body nakedly bounced Logan around his nursery when his cries called me away from the middle of a shower. Let me tell you there is nothing worse than standing naked in any room, populated or not, when you are recovering from pregnancy. Add bouncing to that equation and there is a whole lot of shaking happening. We recently purchased this swing after trying bouncers and gliders only to be met with crying and fussiness. Once we put Logan in this swing he is in heaven. It not only swings forward and back, but it can also convert to a side to side swing too. The mobile moves in circles, which once your baby hits the 6-7 week mark and tracks objects, is a really nice addition. We love this swing, but most important, he loves this swing. Which keeps him happy and it keeps me free from naked bouncing.
2. Brest Friend: 
Not all nursing pillows are the same and nursing is no joke. The first few weeks of learning to breastfeed is a bleary eyed mess you’ll fumble in the hospital bed with pillows propped and stuffed into every crevice, trying to maneuver your new baby. The Brest Friend is the perfect shape and firm surface to help ease the difficulty of breastfeeding. Save your money, you may quickly find the Boppy is too soft and pillows just won’t do.
3. Mother Love Nipple Cream: I am not a fan of Lanolin, its thick and hard to spread and when your boob already feels like it has been razored off, the last thing you are going to want is to spread some chunky goop on it. Mother Love Nipple cream is soft and easy to spread and will provide great comfort to tender nipples.
This tub is brilliant! Soft, foldable and easy to store it beats all other tubs hands down. It folds up to fit in your sink and props babies up nicely so you don’t have to fumble with balancing a wet slippery baby.
5. Cloud B Giraffe or White Noise Maker
Every watch Shark Week on Discovery channel and see those crazy divers who touch the tip of a shark’s nose and it immediately puts a snapping ferocious monster in a trance? That is exactly what white noise does to babies. We take the Cloud B giraffe when we go out and put it in the stroller with Logan and it seems to always calm him down when he gets fussy. Have and iPhone? Download Sleep Machine, the white noise on this app sounds like a TV with bad reception but it is MAGICAL. If Logan is having a super code 3 meltdown, a little bouncing and some white noise from this app. calms him down and puts him to sleep. There is nothing like it!
Welcome to the Jungle
April 24th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
I’ve sat down to write about my first 7 weeks of motherhood at least ten times. Nine out of those ten times I was called away by an angry customer, upset their lunch wasn’t ready or that they pooped themselves for the second time in a row, and the other times I literally fell asleep while typing, I know this because the sentence went something like this, “Motherhood is amazing in so many ways and exhausting in so many otherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr3opruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuosfdlgh….”
Needless to say for someone who thought, “how hard can this be?” The universe is punishing me for being a pompous self-righteous jerk. Weeks ago I was nine months pregnant, balancing like a hippo on the back of my couch while precariously hanging hand-made curtains. I was running to Ikea picking up a mirror two times heavier than anything I had any business lifting and then hanging it over my couch. These are both tremendous tasks mind you, when your belly hits the wall before your hammer does. I reasoned that if I could remain stubborn and self-capable throughout my entire pregnancy, nothing would change a great deal once Logan entered this world.
And then he entered this world.
On March 3, 2012 in the wee hours of the morning, after trying as best I could to push a very unwilling and unyielding baby out of my lady parts, Logan was born after an anesthesiologist, OB and several nurses went in to get him. My suspicion that he was inclined to take up permanent residency in my uterus was correct. After 9 or so hours of labor the doctor told me that while I was 6cm dialated, the baby was still lodged somewhere between my throat and my chest. What started as a routine trip to the hospital for monitoring because he was a week past his due date, turned into a Pitocin hazed, unmedicated flurry of pain and hell. My hope for a non drug, no c-section, no Pitocin labor turned into a trifecta of everything I never wanted. It ended with me crying under fluorescent lighting in a stark white room with a team of 10 medical professionals and my husband all gazing at my exposed lower regions which were swollen, dimpled and glowing under horrible lighting as Logan was born via c-section.
The next few days are a blur to say the least. The first night I stayed up most of the time staring at Logan in his see through plastic hospital bed, watching his chest rise and fall, convinced that my staring was the only thing that was keeping it moving. Then there was breast feeding, which was more an exercise in torture and make-believe. The nurses assured me if I put him to my breast he would get colostrum, which from the best I could gather was invisible fairy dust that only he could see. Breast feeding is just as magical as they say, if magic is a nail that is gently driven into your boob. I cried and agonized over breastfeeding, worried I had already failed as a mom because I couldn’t produce any sort of liquid to provide my baby nourishment. I felt broken; worried that I missed some sort womanhood right of passage thinking maybe I just stood in the Period line and didn’t see the Magic Milk Lady line. I always hated lines.
Luckily, by the third day we struck oil, and while it was in limited supply…we had milk people! It was around this time I began mourning the life my boobs once had. Regretful they had never seen Spring Break, that they had never earned any beads, sad they had never gotten a free drink at a bar or flashed a passing truck on a road trip. I had taken them for granted when they were free to live a reckless life. Now, almost without warning, they were adults and they had adult jobs to do, like provide nourishment and be man handled by tired nurses who treated them like raw bread dough and a baby who sucked them like he was the nozzle of a Hoover vac.
No one talks about breastfeeding when you are pregnant, no one prepares you for the Boot Camp of Breastfeeding. One thinks it is natural and easy, but let me be the first to tell you it isn’t as easy as polar bears make it look on the Discovery channel. Your cute fuzzy blind baby doesn’t clumsily nuzzle up to your breast and begin suckling while you are none the wiser eating a mulberry bush. Your adorable, sweet, innocent new baby reluctantly and recklessly chomps down on your breast with the same clumsy way a junior high boy does the first time he goes up your shirt to tune into Tokyo, and with the same jaw force as a Great White Shark.
Breastfeeding is not easy. I never expected that my first try would set me on a 6 week journey through pain, fire, infection and tears…but if you are able to stick with it…it does get better and once it does, it will be night and day from the start.
Still Counting…
February 25th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Tomorrow is my official due date. Before you get excited, I should tell you that statistically, I have less chance of delivering tomorrow than I did last week, or than I do next week. I actually have 4% chance of delivering this baby tomorrow. Come Monday, my chances jump to 20%. I have Google to thank for these abominable statistics. These statistics mean that most likely, I’ll be pregnant on Monday. The frustration this fills me with is great. I agreed to 40 weeks, 40 weeks of pregnancy was what my mind was calibrated to. In fact, I was convinced my baby would be early. They say 37 weeks is “fully cooked”, and I hoped for a fully cooked 37 week old baby. This statement, I know makes me terrible. I know this because the people I’ve told this to shake their heads, look down their noses and remind me that the longer my baby stays in the womb the healthier he is. Translation: Soccer mom thinks I have already failed at being a mother because I can’t handle 3 more weeks of discomfort. I thought a completely healthy baby was implied in my 37 weeks statement. To clarify, if in this hypothetical situation, were he to be unhealthy, I would prefer he stay in my belly for 72 weeks or however long it would take to make him the healthiest baby on the planet.
Here’s what they don’t tell first time mom’s: 40 weeks is a long time, your due date is actually an estimated due date and most likely, you will be pregnant 42 weeks. Filling your brain with any information that give false hopes of a shorter pregnancy only leads to despair, trust me on this one. If you are pregnant, wrap your head around 42 weeks. Hindsight tells me that I should have always prepared myself for a March delivery.
Last week, my doctor told me I was 70% effaced and 1cm dilated. She found this out by shoving her hand way farther up my lady parts than I ever thought possible, causing me to deep breath and clench my toes tightly around the edge of the examination room table. I allowed her to treat me like a dairy cow, because I thought it may be a sorority hazing of sorts to see if I could handle childbirth, I wanted her to know I was a ready and capable candidate. Even with my stellar exercise in willingness and ability, unfortunately I left without going into labor. Apparently she felt I needed more time to train, so I left her office trying to conceal the waddle that became necessary to compromise for the pain that still lingered.
I’ve been training for months, and the longer I’m pregnant the more my plans go to waste. For months I have been “show ready”. Every morning when I leave the house it’s spotless, the pillows arranged on the couch, the sink free of dirty dishes. Every morning I leave the house with freshly shaven legs and perfectly polished toes, ready to be on display at a moment’s notice. However my ability to sustain show ready diligence is dwindling. The more bending over is accompanied by searing pain in my sides, the less I care about stubbly knees. The harder it becomes to see my toes, the less I notice how unkempt they are. I’ve nested thirteen times in the past 2 months. I’ve organized my garage three of those times. I have my receipts in order to file my taxes, the baby announcement envelopes are stamped and ready to mail. Now, if only this baby would cooperate and fill me in on the last bit of details I need to mail them; time of birth, day of birth, length and his weight. With each passing day I become more of a shadow of who I once was. Today I walked the mall, hoping to throw myself into labor even if it meant my water breaking in the middle of the Nordstrom’s shoe department. I waited in line at Sephora hoping that $25 mascara could transform my lashes into amazing and luxurious ones with so much beauty that I would forget my thighs have now grown together or that my chin is growing another chin.
I have been diligent in looking for all the signs of impending labor. Turns out that there are no true signs beyond regular contractions or your water breaking. Some say that nesting is a good sign, unfortunately nesting is not a recent development for me. I pride myself on cleanliness and efficiency. I live my life filling the day with accomplishment. Checking things off my “to do” list, gives me as much pleasure as a massage gives a normal person. Which is probably why I feel like I have let myself down by not being able to grow a baby efficiently. Somewhere along the line, I became convinced that I could make a baby a few weeks sooner than the average person. It only seemed obvious given that I can do most things quicker than the average person, a baby seemed within my realm of super powers.
Quite possibly this is my first lesson of motherhood. Turns out, I’m human. Something I have always been suspicious about, seeing as I lack the ability to fly or look decent in head to toe spandex. It seems as if I am unable to control everything, even the things going on inside my own body. Patience has never been my strong suit and the first lesson my little boy is trying to teach me is that loving a baby means practicing patience and finding comfort in the loss of control on a daily basis. He’ll come when he is ready, it may be tomorrow or possibly next week. But when he does come, regardless of how clean my house is or how chipped my toe nail polish may be at that very moment, I’m ready for him!
