My good baby

Sleeping on her Grandad's shoulder. Do I spy some errant snot coming out of the right nostril? Dang, I need to Photoshop that out...



Getting a baabaa (aka: bottle) from Daddy. (Yes, I am officially a stay at home mom - everything has a baby name. Shoot me now!) You can also see some of the rash on her poor little face here... more on that later. And YES, she is in pink. In my defense, someone else purchased this cute dress for her.



Enjoying the mobile on her swing- something that lasts for... ohhh... 5 minutes.
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Well, week 5 of Daisy's life has been an up-and-downer.

It started off pretty miserably, saying goodbye to Nan at the airport on Sunday. We took Daisy with us to wave her off and she did remarkably well on the 90 minute drive to-and-from San Francisco. BUT, it was one of the saddest days of my life to stand there holding her and watching my Mum get further and further away as she snaked through the security line and finally disappeared out of sight. On the way back to the car I clung on to Daisy, smelling her sweet little head for comfort and hoping that, by the time Nan returned, Daisy wouldn't have changed so much that Nan's immediate soothing tactics would no longer work.

The last couple of weeks Mum was here we had a really good time, heading out on little trips together with Daisy to build my confidence in going out with her and, of course, to get out of the damn house. After 15 years of being apart, except for rushed visits, Mum and I finally found our friendship groove again and that only made it even harder to say goodbye. She also taught me a lot about being with my daughter and, in uncharacteristic Carter style, without a single word of "advice." She just "did it." Meaning, I would hand Daisy over to her and she would play with her, soothe her, and get her off to sleep with such calm and ease that one couldn't but help pay attention and take notes. It's no exaggeration to say that almost all of the techniques I use to calm Daisy down when she's fussy or play with her when she's awake, come from watching my Mum do what comes naturally. One of the things I'll always remember from this time as I look back is how much I appreciated her help, her patience, her love, her sense of humor, and the fact that she never once told me what to do or not do. Even when it looked like I might be losing my marbles, she didn't coddle me OR tell me to pull it together, she just understood that I needed some time and took Daisy while I checked emails or took a shower. In all honesty, that's all I needed, just some non-baby time so I could "find" myself at some point each day.

The good-news footnote to this tale of woe is that she was so miserable back in the UK that she has already booked her flight back here and will be in the US on May 22nd. That gives us a whole week together again before I head back to work (at least that's the plan right now.)

In the meantime, I'm really lucky to still have my Dad around and he has been coming over for a couple of hours a day to look after Daisy while I eat, shower, and do some laundry (which is even more of a never-ending task now that we have hundreds of socks the size of pea-pods to wash!) Even so, I have been trying to push-out my boundaries each day to force myself to cope alone. Not that I'm trying to be a martyr or refuse available help but more, as I said earlier, to build my confidence and just to force myself to figure out how to get things done without having to hand Daisy over to someone else. Heck, single mothers manage to do it somehow, so it has to be possible and I need to know how to do it and that I can do it, even if I don't really have a need to do it all the time. Hopefully that makes sense. This is just something Daisy and I need to figure out.

And on the whole, we've had a pretty decent week. On Tuesday, Hubby didn't get home until 7:30pm and I had bathed her alone and already put her down for the night before he walked in the door. I was pretty proud of myself that night, especially when she slept five hours straight. Then I got up with her for just one hour and she went back down for another five hours. Overall, this has been her pattern this week - note that I'm always careful to use modifiers since we're constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop here: I'll breastfeed her, we'll bath her, she'll get another 2ozs of formula, one of us will soothe her to sleep, we'll swaddle her in her miracle blanket, wait for her to drop out her binkie and do the "open mouth" (as seen on first picture in this post) and then pop her in her crib and close the door. Then begins the process of cleaning the bottles, the breast-pump accessories, folding laundry (depending on the hour), and (if we're lucky) watching back our favorite shows on the DVR. (Here Hubby deserves Kudos - he is the bottle and breast-pump washer.) Usually we're in bed by 10pm, I'll get up once with her and then she'll sleep until around 7 or 8 o'clock. (Yes, note that Hubby is NOT getting up in the middle of the night right now, even though, if she got up a second time, it would be his turn. Lucky *%@tard.)

As I said ***disclaimer alert*** that has been the pattern this week - who knows what next week will hold. We're taking it one day at a time and appreciating the good bits because we know from listening to our friends that babies do the old switcheroo on you just when you think you've "got it down." Thus, we have promised ourselves never to consider our chickens hatched.

Yesterday I got a good reality check at a new mom meeting, held by my medical group in the hospital where she was born. It's a free open meeting for new moms to share their experiences and mediated by a certified child care expert (or something - she was really nice and not at all patronizing, so who cares?) I went with a new friend I made from our Lamaze class, Natalie. Hubby and I made friends with Natalie and her husband, Nick, during the 6 weeks of classes because we had similar outlooks on pregnancy and motherhood, and because we were the type to always make fun of the homely people on the educational videos they showed us - haha! (Seriously, do you remember my post about the 300lb guy with the shorts and black socks?) By a stroke of fate, Natalie gave birth to her daughter, Mackenzie, when we were still in hospital with Daisy, and their room was just four doors down from us.

Anyway, I digress, I'm at the meeting... There were about 15 of us in the meeting, that is 15 sets of moms and babies ranging from 4 weeks to 7 months, and each of us took turns in sharing our experiences or problems. As it happens, I was on the side of the room that meant I would be going one before last, so I got to hear everyone else speak before it got to me. (Well, I say I heard them speak - Natalie and I spent most of the meeting chatting amongst ourselves but, again,I digress.) I was at least listening enough to hear that the majority of moms in the room were having major problems with getting their kids to sleep. And let me tell you, so far, I've got it good.

Many moms, months into motherhood, still have their kids in their beds, sleeping in a swing, in their (parents) rooms, and were only getting a few snatched hours of sleep at a trot. Now, the whole co-sleeping thing or where you put your bassinet is a personal choice, if you like it there, who cares? I have a friend (probably reading this blog) who has her kids sleep with her in the first year or two and it works for her, but I'm talking about women who want to transition out of their current arrangement and seem unable to for some reason, ie the baby will only sleep in their bed or the swing, won't sleep in the crib, or some emotional attachment the mother is unable to break even though, rationally, she knows she needs to for her own sanity.

Honestly, I just can't relate and can't even imagine, so I'm counting my lucky stars. We got home and spent two nights with the pack-and-play in the living room while we slept on the couch (more because we didn't know if I could make it up the stairs with my incision than anything else), then two disrupted nights with the pack-and-play in our bedroom before I threw up my hands and said "This kid needs to sleep in her own room, her own crib... I'm going insane!" Every breath, every sound, and I would wake up and, I might add, visa versa for her - hey, even I can't sleep through Hubby's snoring! She would still be asleep but I would be up and then it would take 30 minutes for me to go back to sleep, usually getting into REM right as she was due to wake up again. It was insane! I figured she slept just fine in the horrid plastic bassinet in the hospital and in the nursery where other babies were crying, so her room had to be a step up, right? So, off to her room she went, and there she has (thankfully) stayed. Since her door and ours almost kiss one another in the hallway, I don't even turn up the baby monitor - we just have it on for the video part. We tried having the sound on for a couple of nights but it was just like having her in the room and was defeating the purpose. It didn't bother Hubby so much but, after a couple of nights, I got so sick of waking up to the slightest noise that I growled at him to "turn the damn thing off!" because I could have got another 30 minutes of sleep if it hadn't of been bleating static in my ear. Now, if he's on shift and gives it to me, I just turn it off and roll over. Clearly, the ability to hear her so much as cough or sneeze with our naked ears, even with both doors ajar, enables me to do this without worry... I'm not completely void of mommy anxiety, you'll be happy to hear.

Anyway, by the time it got around to me talking, I really just wanted to keep my mouth shut. Here was a room of mothers tearing their hair out because they were sleep deprived and frustrated, eager to share my misery with me, and all I really had to offer is that she's slept 7 hours straight 3x this week. So, I focused on the negative: TMJ, tongue-tie, rash, you know, poor me and all that. Inevitably, however, the question of sleep came up and I couldn't lie because I had Natalie right there and she would have known it. I kid you not that the room fell silent when I said we were getting 5-7 hours straight right now. I could almost feel the hate (I don't mean this literally, of course) and envy seeping out of their pores. Of course, I rushed to say that we didn't expect it to last (because there's always some downer mom who wants to say "Ohhhh... that will change!") Fortunately, the meeting was running long and I had to cut it short and leave because I had to drop Daisy home to my Dad so I could go for my massage. UNfortunately, that's exactly what I said to all those Moms. Yes, that went over like a ton of bricks. Here I am getting 7 hours of sleep AND a massage!!!!??? In all seriousness, everyone seemed very nice and I'm sure were just happy for me but there was definitely an undertone - if I was them, I'd be cursing the bitch that had THAT luck!

Needless to say, I came away with a newfound perspective on my mommy life right now. There will be bad days, bad weeks, bad months, I'm sure. It's still a ton of work, often frustrating, and it KILLS MY BACK but right now I can for sure say that I have a good baby and I'm very thankful for that.

On the down side, our little Daisy has a really rotten rash on her face. It started out at the end of last week with a few little pimples on her cheeks and, by yesterday, had progressed to a mad, red rash on both cheeks, around her ears, up on her scalp, around her neck, and a little on her chest. Thankfully (right now) it doesn't seem to be bothering her in any way, although it's bothering us to look at it - her beautiful little face!!!!! We went to the pediatrician yesterday and she told us it was Cradle Cap which, when it extends beyond the scalp, is known as Seborrheic Dermatitis. Yes, if you look at that link, it's pretty nasty looking; that photo of the baby is only a little worse than Daisy right now. Bottom line it's one of those baby things as their bodies figure out the right level of hormones etc... and adjust to life outside of the womb. I was going to say that these babies should stay in longer if they're not really "cooked" by 10 months but then I realized just how loooooong my pregnancy felt already.

In terms of treatment, there isn't much we can do except for keep it clean and avoid soaps, washes and detergents that may irritate it. If it does start to get dry and itch (at which point it would be considered eczema - a likely progression) then we can use Aquafor and a mild steroid cream for relief. The worst part is, this could go on for another three or four months before it clears up. Sniff.... all her baby pictures are going to look like she's 5 weeks going on 17 with bad acne! I guess neither Hubby or I should be surprised given that I had eczema as a child and his family has a history of skin problems, from eczema to psoriasis.

Finally, in closing, people have asked me many times in the last five weeks what has been the biggest surprise about motherhood. Up until now I haven't really had enough experience or time to reflect in order to provide a real answer. In reality, it's mostly been what I expected with a few curve-balls thrown in for good measure. It's not like I had a rose-tinted view of mothering a newborn or my anticipated abilities as a mother, so the bar was set pretty low! However, yesterday, as I was driving home too fast from my massage appointment, windows open, and the radio blaring rock music full boar, I had that rare moment of being completely turned off from my mommy self to reflect. What I realized was that the biggest surprise is how hard it is to be 100% present, in the moment for your baby and how there really is no other choice. For me, with a brain and body that likes to multi-task, this has been the hardest thing to surrender to. I want to hold her and eat, do the laundry with her in the Baby Bjorn, or respond to emails with her bouncing on my knee, all of which are only possible when she's happy and not fussing. Even watching your favorite show on TV can be a problem if she's fussing, you find yourself catching every other five minutes and getting to the end of the show without ever really having understood what happened. Thank GOD for DVR!

The second surprise is that, no matter how GREAT your husband (and let's admit, I have a GREAT husband) and how much help you have around you, as a mother you somehow wind up as the primary care giver. There's not as much a sense of 'sharing' the burden as I would have imagined. (This is not in any way a criticism of anyone else.) People help, provide relief so you can shower, pee, don't strangle her, that kind of thing, but the buck always seems to stop with you. They do their bit, even Hubby, then are done and return to doing or being themselves when their stint is up. There's always this sense that you only get to hand her over when you're at the end of your tether, or to do necessary tasks like shower or eat, and that you have to get your period of respite or doingness done quickly so that you can take her back asap and don't overburden the other person. There is very little ability to do the same and return to being yourself. I guess the reality is that this is your new "self" and that's a pretty hard pill to swallow right now. I really didn't think that I would feel this way, especially with as much support as I have, but I do and it's definitely a surprise. Based upon my chats with other new mothers, it's also not uncommon, especially if you're someone who had a pretty good sense of who you were pre-motherhood, enjoyed your life, your career, your independence, that kind of thing.

So, 5 weeks in, that's the news report over here in the house of Daisy McDaid, or at least as much as I have time to remember and/or report on. Off for a second cup of coffee before my little munchkin wakes up...