Barely promoted

Reclaiming territory

Everything feels new with the baby. I've always tended towards agoraphobia in new places. But now tiny Granolaton feels strange and must be re-explored.

We've been going out for walks in that grumpy part of the afternoon, after she's been sucking for an hour and a half and is sloppily milk-drunk but grunting and punching my slow-flowing boobs. Into the sling and off to campus, or downtown, or maybe even a little into the woods. Even the students do little double-takes and smile at us: everyone likes tiny babies. She's asleep after the first block, always, but sometimes wakes up 45 minutes or so later. Especially if it's a hungry day. And I still get tired pretty easily, so we don't stay out long.

One particularly adventurous day, I got myself a bagel at a coffeeshop. She slept in the sling and let me eat it there. I felt blessed.

Yesterday she went to the supermarket for the first time. Out cold in her car seat as we filled the cart with more convenience food than I've eaten since leaving my grandmother's home. The checkout clerk was about 17, and was totally charmed. (But did she have to ask, "Is she your first?" with such a note of skepticism?)

Today is a sleepy day, not a suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-snore-no-wait-I-meant-suck day, and I left Tabby with Beaker during one longer nap and headed off on my bicycle. First time I've ridden since probably last October. And oh, did those 20 minutes feel free: I'd forgotten how much of how I experience the seasons here is about bike rides on back roads. Right now is asters and goldenrod and grasshoppers and maples barely starting to turn—just like it was when we bought ourselves nice new bicycles two years ago, as consolation prizes after the second failed cycle. As I rode, the clear cool air carried me back to where we were mentally, then, and it renewed my sense of wonder that it did all oh my God work, and life is so different now.

Next summer, perhaps she'll be riding along behind me, snug in a seat with her own little helmet, and we'll look in the hedgerows for baby woodchucks and apple trees gone wild.

Work scuttling in corners

I. Things move of their own momentum, or perhaps other people just get more done than I do. The workshop proposal associated with the Dr. Wow book project has been funded, so we'll have to have a good chunk of manuscript and a web site up and running by early June (early June!). My two co-authors were in the same place for a couple of weeks in September, and I know that the joint archive has been updated, but I haven't gone to look. I suppose I'm too afraid that the 7 or so pathetic pages I produced in late August have been torched.

II. Just because you're better than me
Doesn't mean that I'm lazy
Just because you're going forwards
Doesn't mean I'm going backwards (Billy Bragg)

Meanwhile, my department has been pondering some difficult personnel actions. We're not a happy department anymore. Really not happy at all. I've even been to two meetings, mostly 'cause I can't believe the extent to which everyone went stark raving mad while I was away. No one listens to me, because I was gone for the crucial happiness-destroying events last spring: that I'm not holding the same grudges is seen as blindness, not objectivity. Ms. Mentor (whom I hold in somewhat higher esteem than do many academic women bloggers) has recently written about meetings; go read her, and I'll spare you my efforts at satire.

Somewhere under the paranoia and random personal viciousness there's a true debate over what direction the department, or, heck, the college should be moving in: towards scholarship, or towards pedagogical excellence and student happiness? (Swarthmore or Carlton? is one shorthand version.) This is, of course, the tension always inherent in the liberal arts college model of education. Around here most seem to believe that the only way to really resolve the issue long-term would be to double the endowment, and not have to compromise (all the sabbaticals you want! half the teaching! three conferences in Europe per year! and a pony!). Those with this belief don't tend to worry much more about the issue—awfully convenient for them.

In the foreground is a false debate: when someone new asks for something that the veterans gave up asking for years ago, and then a three-generations-later dean says, "Maybe, yes, we can consider doing that," how should the veterans react? Especially when the dean points out how "recent hires" have been "stronger" and have "higher expectations"? Of course, the insulted veterans are digging in their heels to oppose the possible improvements in our collective lot as inimical to the Granolan spirit of cooperation and self-sacrifice.

Fuck 'em. And yes, the new hires are stronger, actually, and we have to get used to it.

III. Bad news on the day care front. There are two centers in town, with a total of 15 infant places. Nothing's forecast as available for January, and there's already a list for the one space open in February—they won't tell me how long, although I'll try to beat that out of them when I visit for a tour next week. I am shitting bricks and hoping that everyone else signs up with both places. What will we do? (And why were they so unhelpful when I called last April? Why didn't they put me on the damn lists then?) For now we tootle along hoping it all works out somehow, but oh am I going to need a real plan soon.

Not that it's really imaginable that she'll be going to day care that soon. But she will.

IV. My challenge for the next couple of days: can I referee and wrangle cluster feeds at the same time? Actually, I think the paper's bad enough that one-handed typing will suffice to produce the report. (And, actually, I've been harassed by the editor, who's presumably been harassed by the authors, so I really should get the report out.)

Her first cosmetic procedure

Yesterday the county nurse came. She was a garrulous busybody, only too happy to spend hours talking about her own four children and the teenage mothers she'd visited this week, but she wasn't so bad. I managed not to explode when she delivered a pious little lecture on how not smoking around the baby would mean she'd have higher test scores later ("I WAS RAISED BY SMOKERS, YOU DUMBASS! IF THEY HADN'T, D'YA THINK I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN A 1600 INSTEAD OF A 1580? HEY, DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT STATISTICAL CORRELATION AND INDIVIDUAL VARIATION? ANYTHING AT ALL?!! AND HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT WE DON'T SMOKE?!") And I didn't browbeat her with my own education history, or point out that we don't have a television—even after she told me to do kegels during commercial breaks.

Later I found out that one of my friends was visited by a county nurse who smoked herself. My friend was so distracted by the stench and the (indirect) hypocrisy that she wasn't able to actually hear anything the nurse said.

However, she was a little concerned by Tabby's navel (her stump fell off on Tuesday), so off we went to the pediatrician. Again. No, it wasn't a herniated chunk of intestine sticking out: it was an umbilical granuloma, and it got chemically cauterized. Of course, now I find out that there are people who think you should leave them alone, or perhaps salt them occasionally. Whatever.

We're up to 7 lb. 12 oz. Still far from birthweight, but putting on about an ounce a day. Tuesday she fed ravenously all day. Yesterday was sort of normal. Today she's sleepy. And her cheeks are a little chubbier.

Little cosmic jokes, and gratitude

I. Note to babies born with head hair: if your parents are clumsy enough to trigger the Moro reflex during a handoff, it's just never a good idea to grab your own hair. Try for Mommy's hair, or for Daddy's shirt, or something. Not your own hair. If you do end up grabbing your own hair, please, please, please let go.

II. So, I can find things to worry about on my own, too. I worry sometimes that Tabby isn't making as much eye contact with me as she does with other people; mostly I blame my huge glasses, but... so, this afternoon, when she pulled off after a moderately long feed, and was sitting peacefully, she turned the fulll force of her tiny little gaze on me and I was overcome, absolutely overcome by sappiness and joy and all that. Kissed her little forehead and cooed back.

And then she went a little cross-eyed, and I heard some quiet little plorps. Yes, readers, she was producing her first poop since THURSDAY. Just two hours after I'd broken the advice moratorium and called the pediatrician's office—the nurse recommended cutting back on dairy (a stab in the heart!) and calling again if she still hadn't pooped by tomorrow.

------------------------------------

Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone for your sympathy and for your "been there, and my baby did that too!" responses to my last post. There are many ways for things to turn out okay in the end. Yes, when I can stand it, I'll go back to kellymom. (And Moxie, you'll be glad to know that the only oatmeal we had around was a Bob's Red Mill mix with flaxseed, too!)

I'm still watching the clock, mostly because I'm worried I'm lazy and because Beaker is trying perhaps a little too hard to protect me from the baby's demands at times. But we've hit some weird rhythm where she sleeps a long time at night, feeds deep then goes back to sleep for a couple of hours, cluster feeds, long nap, cluster feeds, and gradually settles towards evening. I'm still pumping at 4 am, and Beaker has been giving her an ounce or so (in a Dr. Brown's bottle—we couldn't take the syringes anymore) late in the cluster feeds. She takes the EBM about half the time. She's making lots and lots of wet diapers. Weight gain? I may go to LC5's group on Wednesday, or I may give it a miss. But her little cheeks seem chubbier.

My current worry, now that the poop issue has been resolved (for the day, at least): asymmetry of production, of suck time, of size. Sigh. But I think I need a bit more of a breather before hitting the books, even, again.

The fifth lactation consultant made me cry

The first three were at the hospital. (I'm not counting the nurses, all of whom had opinions too, of course, although they at least all jammed the mouth onto the boob the same way.) The very first was cheerful and charming. She must have come in before phrases of doom (weight loss! lazy mommy!) got transcribed in our file. The second was a bit more officious, and started me off on pumping for 15 minutes after every feeding attempt. To mkae my milk come in faster, see. Never mind that it was less than 36 hours since I'd given birth and NOTHING ABNORMAL WAS HAPPENING YET. The third was part of the team that tried to keep us at the hospital longer. GRRRRRRR.

So we went home. My milk came in. I engorged violently and really painfully and panicked. One evening Tabby could not latch on to my plasticky boobs. I was smart enough to stop pumping after the feeding attempts, and to find this random web page. Thank you, anonymous author, thank you. Brief pumping before, with aggressive massage, saved the day.

We went for weight checks at the pediatrician on Saturday, Monday, and Thursday. Monday we spoke with the lactation consultant (number four, if you're keeping track) at their office. She was not helpful. Most telling comment: so Tabby latched on in front of her. "Your toes didn't curl! Mine always did, with my kids." Uh, thanks. How many times did I tell you that nipple pain is not the fucking problem?

So, what is the problem? Tabby sleeps. A lot. Six hours at night, and really can't be woken to feed. Everyone has been telling me to have starts every two hours during the day. For several days I had to wake her up for many of those, too. But now she's on continuous feed, more or less, for most of the day. An hour and a half or so on, and maybe 20 minutes, or half an hour off. Her suck is often pretty lazy; pause, suck suck suck, pause. She'll look asleep, but any effort to remove her from the nipple wakes her and she sucks again. Every now and then she'll have a maybe 2 hour nap: after the first big feed in the morning, maybe around lunchtime. But those are not very predictable. Sometimes she sucks long enough that she gets annoyed at how empty things are and starts fussing, or punching my boob. If I take her off and lay her in the middle of my chest, though, she lifts her little head, roots hard, and sort of newborn-crawls over to a nipple, usually the one she just left.

She's clearly much better hydrated than she was back before my milk came in, and she's switched to breast milk poop.

I had high hopes for the fifth lactation consultant. She comes highly recommended by both local friends and my doula. Sadly, her visit only left me more panicked. She got to see the second hour of a two-hour long feed, bad latch, grumpiness and all. She got to see that nothing other than more boob time would actually comfort the poor babe (I think she was embarrassed that her highly honed baby-soothing skills failed to put Tabby to sleep, after a ful half hour of walking and jiggling). And she was left flummoxed, and with no specific advice beyond: try taking her off afer 45 minutes sometimes and see if you can calm her. Maybe craniosacral therapy would help with the suck intensity? And have you though about fenugreek?

She's not convinced about the weight gain (even though the pediatricians are, at last) and thinks there aren't enough poopy diapers. (One per day, except there hasn't been one yet today.) When I said she latched better lying on her right side, regardless of nipple side, LC5 brought up the possibility of torticollis. And, finally, after repeatedly poo-pooing actually feeding Tabby the milk from the nighttime pumping I'm doing, she finally allowed that, well, it might be good idea to try. Just, you know, she's worried about the lack of poopy diapers, and the lack of apparent curds in the mustardy poop we see.

I started zoning out as she picked out handouts from her big folder and tried to explain how to get my insurance to pay for her visit. I needed to disconnect. After she left, I cried. Oh, I cried, as Beaker and I syringe-fed Tabby an ounce or so of expressed milk—all she'd take.

I've never leaked, it's quite hard to hand-express, and, the middle-of-the-night pumping gets only about 10 ml on the left, although 40 ml on the right. The right is clearly larger, but Tabby prefers to suck on the left.

Many friends tell me their milk didn't really fully come in for two or three or perhaps even four weeks. But none of the LCs seem to buy that as a possibility. Hence supply panic.

I feel: I feel like, however this was supposed to get working, it hasn't, and I don't know how much is me and how much is Tabby and how much is our trying to follow too much of the advice we were given. Did forcing her to nurse before my milk came in get her used to sucking when there's not much there? Did the aggressive pumping early on force the excessive initial engorgement that made me panic? What would happen if we tried letting go of the clock and feeding when she wants to feed? But no one wants me to do that, no one at all.

Labor Vignettes

Yes, it was the 6th. Oh dear. I wasn't very awake when I typed the last entry, and I'm probably less so now.

And thank you for all the complements on the blog version of Tabby's name: the real thing is, well, perhaps a bit more outrageous (I promise we didn't make it up, or change the standard spelling, though), but I'll have faith that you'd all love it, too, were I willing to risk the Google-a-bility.

We had our third (third!) post-hospital weight check this morning. After bottoming out at 7 lb 2.5 oz on Saturday, she was at 7 lb 6.5 oz Monday (good job peeing after they clicked "lock" on the scale, girl!) and 7 lb 8oz today. No more pediatricians for us until the one-month check.

The whole breast-feeding thing is, well, difficult, but not for the reasons everyone told me it well be. I need less advice, not more. I may make it through the day today without talking with a lactation consultant. Boy, do I hope so. But that rant is for later, when I can laugh about it. (I hope.)

Capital letters are hard with one hand, eh? And I'm so scattered. But I'll try. Avoid what's under the jump if you're at all squeamish.

The short version

Tabitha Jane Maple was born at 10:59 p.m. on Tuesday, September 26. 8 pounds 3 ounces, and with a full head of hair. The labor maintained its steady pace the whole way through; it totalled some 31 hours from the point where it started to hurt... 14 at the hospital. No drugs, in the end. (Which almost makes me feel like I don't have a birth story: no drama along the way! It was long and slow, and it hurt, and Tabby and I were both fine.)

We spent an extra day at the hospital, held captive by renegade pediatricians concerned with number of feeding attempts and weight loss. (It was a fine chance to finally hash out the name argument in a neutral location, actually.) Today they tried to hold us again (she's lost 11% of her birth weight) but we promised to hold to the lactation boot camp program that had been prescibed and to see a local pediatrician tomorrow morning. And to consider supplementation: she was awfully groggy the last time I tried to feed her, I have to say. My boobs are ginormous, but not yet shooting out fluid.

But we're home! My God, we're home, with a lovely little baby.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law has gone into full preeclampsia. Yesterday they started trying to induce her; today, just a couple of hours ago, they decided on a c-section instead, after she'd spent 3 hours at 7 cm. (Um...) (Actually, um...)

Mid-Monday update: 41w1d

Labor Day! Ha, ha, ha!

Actually, it might be. Just got off the phone with one of the midwives, who says my wimpy, but less wimpy than yesterday, contractions, 3–4 minutes apart when standing or walking, 5–8 apart when lying down, sound like they might be "early labor." No back pain, and I can still talk through them easily, but I should keep in touch. If/when they get more regular, drive in.

The NST on Friday taught me what contractions felt like. Saturday evening I was having them every 8–15 minutes. Sunday they were stronger and I had them every 8–13 minutes all day. Today they're stronger, although shorter, and much more frequent. They haven't stopped altogether at any point during these three days; thank goodness I was able to sleep both nights anyway. Lots of reassuring kicks, too.

So: how does one politely address a midwife? In the practice I'm going to, everyone seems to use first names. But there was a little confusion with the answering service who just paged one for me, 'cause they can't bring themselves to call any medical professional anything but "Doctor." So I'd thought they'd said they'd page a doctor, rather than my midwife, and got all hot and bothered about it.

(Not that I'm irritable or anything.)

Late Friday update: 40w5d

Well, I still don't feel like much is going on, but after my appointment today there are some new stats at least. 80% effaced, 2 cm dilated, station -2, and lots of little contractions on the (appropriately reactive) NST. What's in there does not appear to be inappropriately large; best guess was 7 1/2 pounds. The hematocrit last week came back fine. The midwife offered to strip my membranes; I politely declined, but reserved the right to change my mind next appointment.

Midwife: Perhaps you'll go into labor this weekend. But make an appointment for Tuesday.

Doula: Sounds like you're close! I'll make sure to get plenty of sleep. You should too. And carbo-load!

Mother-in-law: It'll be this weekend. I'm sure of it.

Me checking at Jo's: gee, that's about where she was around her due date, and, um, TWO FULL WEEKS before, um. (Also, my mother-in-law spent like three weeks at 3 cm with her first.)

Phone call from my father-in-law 8 years ago: Hello? Hello? HELLO? Well, did you finish your thesis yet?

Phone call from my father-in-law today: Hello? HELLO?! What, no baby?