But I do not know yet what that can be

          When he had finished, Alice would say, "When I grow up, I too will go to faraway places, and when I grow old, I too will live beside the sea."
         "That is all very well, little Alice," said her grandfather, "but there is a third thing you must do." 
         "What is that?" asked Alice. 
         "You must do something to make the world more beautiful," said her grandfather.
         "All right," said Alice.  But she did not know what that could be.
                                                        --Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney 

Not long after my early August post, I got my period and we decided to get serious about trying for number two.  I sort of started charting (I say "sort of" because I periodically forget to take my temperature in the morning - it's just not habit yet.), used some OPKs, and I even went back to acupuncture.  Things went pretty well, I ovulated, we timed things right.  And then last week we were on vacation and I didn't take my temperature at all.  

I wondered if we could possibly be so lucky to get pregnant on the first try this time.  I could see that Jeeves was feeling a little hopeful when he asked when I'm supposed to get my period.  Yesterday was our first full day back from vacation and even though it was a Sunday, Jeeves had to go to work.  I was feeling depressed, but quite energetic and not tired at all thanks to some extra sleep.  I wondered if my depression was cause-based or maybe PMS?  Or maybe pregnancy hormones?  But I knew I wasn't pregnant.  I just knew. The lack of tiredness was a dead giveaway. That night I wondered again if maybe it had worked?  I decided to take my temperature before I went to sleep, just as a baseline.  It was 97.6.  My temp was never that low when awake while pregnant with Max.  So there was my answer.

This morning it was 97.3.  Definitely not pregnant.  A couple of hours later, my period came, a day early.  Jeeves and I were both a little bummed.  It's silly, really.  Most fertiles don't get pregnant the first month they try, so what's the likelihood that an infertile couple like us would?  I knew that these couple of months of trying are just to cover the bases before going back to the doctor and the logical part of my brain knew that we would be going back to a doctor.  But another part hoped we'd be that urban legend (not so much a legend - aside from the fact that I personally know 6 women who got pregnant naturally after IVF, I read a study recently that suggested up to 20% of previously diagnosed infertile women experienced spontaneous conception after live birth of a child conceived through ART).  

My mind raced ahead to the doctor and what would happen if our tests this time indicated we were worse off than 3 years ago when we were originally tested.  A friend of mine from my infertile moms group did IVF and now has a son a couple of weeks older than Max.  They had a diagnosis of male factor.  When they were testing years ago, he had low count - usually around 2 million.  They had a frozen sample but decided to destroy it because frozen isn't usually recommended.  A few weeks ago they went back for testing and he now has zero sperm.  Zero.  In typical Megs fashion, my mind can't help but think of that story.  Sure, my numbers were good 3 years ago.  But I'm 37 now.  What if my eggs have gone to shit?  What if they tell me that IVF isn't even recommended because my numbers are so bad?  What if Jeeves goes from 1% morphology to 0%?  

Well, the answers to those "what ifs" are that we will probably walk away if a doctor tells us that treatment is unlikely to work for us.  I know families who have used donor egg or sperm or have adopted when a second child can't happen with their own gametes.  Or some couples who decide they want to foster or adopt for a second child anyway.  And while all of those possibilities would have been considered if we had been unable to have Max, now that we have Max we are more limited in how far we're prepared to go.  And I personally feel that I cannot dedicate years of my life to this endeavor again.  So even though I think it is usually very silly to draw a line in the sand when it comes to family-building, for now I need to draw a line in the sand and say if a doctor tells us we are unlikely to have a child through ART, we will stop.  We will move on with our lives.

The thought of being told that we are done makes me sad.  And I do realize that I have jumped way, way ahead of myself.  But I think back to the first month we tried before we knew what was coming, and I just need to make this leap right now.  I needed to scratch that itch.

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, it is probably apparent to you that I am a planner and I need contingency plans.  

It was a hazy and very humid day in Brooklyn today and I decided to take Max down to the swings by the water.  It's a good stretch of the legs.  As we were walking, my mind went to that place wherein a doctor tells us that medical intervention is unlikely to give us another child.  And after feeling sad, I started wondering what I would do after we decide that we're done trying.  I didn't know.  I remembered a children's book called Miss Rumphius.

My friend Meg gave me a copy of Miss Rumphius for my birthday at some point in my 20s.  Miss Rumphius tells the story of Alice, who as a child listens to her grandfather's stories of his life.  And, as the quote above explains, she decides to do three things in life: travel to faraway places, grow old by the sea, and do something to make the world more beautiful.  Alice grows up, becomes a librarian, and becomes known as Miss Rumphius.  She's able to accomplish her first two goals with ease, but struggles to figure out how to make the world more beautiful. (Spoiler alert - she figures it out, and passes along her words of wisdom to her great-niece).  It's a really wonderful story - I highly recommend it.

At each point in her story, Miss Rumphius doesn't map out and plan every little thing she is going to do.  She has a general idea of the goals in her life and when the time feels right, she works on a goal.  

I do not know yet what I want my life to be if we are done building our family.  I think I want to go work in a library.  And I want to resume traveling to faraway places, something that will be easier as Max gets older.  And I want to do something to make the world more beautiful, though I do not yet know what that can be.  And that is okay.  When the time comes, I will move forward, I hope with enthusiasm and alacrity, but I'll settle for grace.  And I will accept that right now I am working towards one goal.  I'll try not to leap too far ahead or make up contingency plans if we are ultimately unable to have a baby.  I'll let myself feel whatever I am going to feel about it.  Today, I felt a little disappointed that this cycle didn't work out.  I felt a little sad to remember the taste of that disappointment when my temperature drops, and to realize I may have many more cycles of that ahead.  I will remember there are many good things ahead too, not the least of which was my son's giggles as I pushed him on the swing.

Constantly remember more and more

Why hello!  Look at me, blogging twice in one month!

Based on the comments I got last time, I thought I'd talk about some books I've read this year that I loved, my experience with weaning, and I'd finish up with a couple of thoughts about life in general, in particular my parents.

Books!  My absolute favorite book that I've read this year is Uprooted by Naomi Novik.  I wrote a long and involved review of it to my BFF, Kate, so I'm just going to cut and paste what I said about it:  Ahhhh-mazing.  I am so fucking tired this week because I have been staying up till 1am to read it.  I'm actually somewhat resentful of my child for keeping me from it.  I'm not going to send you any of the (glowing) reviews because there are too many spoilers in them.  The short version of the plot (and this happens in the first, like, 5 pages so it doesn't ruin it to tell you).  Agnieska lives in the Valley in a country called Polnya.  Her village is not far from The Wood, a place of dark magic that periodically threatens the villagers.  Anyone who enters the Wood is inevitably corrupted by its evil.  The lord of the valley, The Dragon, is a wizard who holds The Wood at bay.  Every ten years, as fealty, the citizens of the Valley must allow The Dragon to take one girl, who becomes his servant.  No one knows what goes on in his tower, except that after the ten years are up, the girls never want to return to live in the valley - they go off and live somewhere else.  The Dragon always chooses a girl who is super special - either the most beautiful, or the best musician, or whatever.  Everyone knows that this year the Dragon is going take Kasia, Agnieska's very best friend.  Kasia is beautiful, smart, fun, humble, a good cook.  Agnieska is a disaster, always grubby and climbing trees and getting into trouble.  Then the Dragon takes Agnieska instead of Kasia, though he seems pretty grouchy about it.  Of course, we realize why he took her, but it takes her a few pages to figure it out.  It's like if a combination of Neville Longbottom and Hermione Granger had to go live with Snape.

 

This book scratched my Harry Potter itch that has not remotely abated since book 7 came out.  I loved its treatment of magic.  Loved it.  It heavily featured a strong, beautiful female friendship.  A terrifying villain.  A flawed, relatable, brave heroine.  Folklore.  A kickass magical duo.  It's such a great feminist work - I wish there were more fantasy novels like this.  As much as I love Name of the Wind and others of its ilk, they are usually focused on a man with a woman or women playing back up.  And then sometimes if we're lucky we get stories like Graceling, but characters like Katsa are lone wolves, beyond tough, damaged by their childhoods.  One of the things I loved about this book is that it highlights how Nieska is different, but still very powerful.  It doesn't feel the need to make her stereotypically masculine, and it doesn't feel the need to give her a little sister to explain her motivations.  Nieska can be steely, but she can also be vulnerable and those traits don't feel remotely incongruous.  In other words, she gets to be a whole person.

Right after that, I read Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, and it was completely delightful.  Very funny.  I also loved Station Eleven by Emily St. James Mandel, which came out last year.  Interestingly, it's a post-apocalypse book that takes placed 20 years after a plague that kills off most of the population, and the primary characters are members of a traveling theater/symphony.  It also jumps around in time to observe what happened to a variety of connected characters at the time of the plague.  Riveting.

Weaning.  I knew that I didn't especially feel like nursing for much after Max's first birthday.  I was eager to sleep on my stomach again (something I couldn't do while nursing because I was plagued with plugged ducts from about 5 months onward) and I was really, really sick of pumping.  And the plugged ducts - I was ready to be done with them.  For several months, Max had only been nursing 4 times per day, and his nursing time had gotten quite short.  So I felt like he would be okay with weaning.

I weaned very slowly - over the course of 6 weeks.  I wanted to try and prevent any sort of engorgement and plugged ducts for me and I wanted Max to have plenty of time to adjust.  I dropped the afternoon nurse first, which he never cried for and never seemed to care about - I was just picking him up at a certain time and sticking him on the boob.  He handled it well.  I didn't replace the afternoon nurse with milk or anything like that.  He pretty quickly started eating more at dinner.  About 10 days later I dropped the late morning nurse.  Again, he handled it very well.  When I weaned him from the evening nurse, which was part of our bedtime ritual, I replaced it with a bottle of either pumped breast milk (until I didn't have any left) or formula (he wasn't a year old yet).  A bottle instead of a boob was no big deal to him.  When he hit a year, I put whole cow's milk in the bottle instead and he took that just fine.  I know some babies struggle with constipation when they switch over to cow's milk - we did not have that issue.  Max also didn't seem to mind that the milk was cold.  After a few days, I started putting the milk in a straw cup (and also offering him milk late morning and mid-afternoon).  He's been drinking water out of a straw cup since he was about 10 months, but he did struggle a little with the transition at this point.  Still, it went pretty well.  The only difference I observed was that for about 3 days after I dropped the late morning nurse and the evening nurse, he was maybe a little more cuddly, trying to make up for the physical closeness we had during nursing.  

The toughest was dropping the morning nurse.  Our morning routine up to this point: Max would wake up and we'd hear him over the monitor, anywhere from 6:30-7:30 a.m.  Jeeves would get him, change his diaper, and would bring him in to nurse.  I used to do side-lying, but he eventually stopped willingly nursing on both sides, which I really needed (he'd get so distracted, for some reason), so I started sitting up for nursing, and he'd nurse both sides.  Then we'd all hang out in bed for awhile.  Sometimes Max would fall asleep while nursing - that was the best.  Extra sleep!  When we dropped the morning feed, I started giving him a bottle in bed.  He wasn't a big fan.  He wouldn't ask to nurse (don't think I would have refused him), but he just wasn't interested in milk.  He wanted to play!  We ultimately switched him over to a straw cup and he started crying, hard, in the morning.  It turned out that with the change in our routine, Max decided he didn't want to hang in bed - he wanted to go straight to the living room for playing, and slowly sipping on his milk.  No more snoozing in bed for Mom and Dad.  One of us gets up, hangs out with him while he plays, and he drinks his milk in a leisurely fashion for about 45 minutes, at which time he crawls to the kitchen and demands his breakfast.

The last time I nursed was when he was very sick over 4th of July weekend.  He now has a cup of milk in the morning before breakfast, sometimes a little milk late morning, a cup of milk mid-afternoon with his snack, and a little milk before bedtime.  I still miss those sleepy mornings in bed with him, but I try to look at it as just another part of his development that he's happy to now putter around the living room, chatting at me and playing with his toys.

I should add that in order to prevent plugged ducts, I pumped when I dropped the evening and the morning feeds - 10 minutes, then 9, then 8, etc., until I got down to 4 minutes.  This definitely helped alleviate engorgement and plugged ducts.  I was getting very little milk from it.  Perhaps three times during the process, I became very painfully engorged (usually only on one side at time) or I got a plugged duct.  On those occasions, I would pop Max on and have him nurse (the pump has never, not once, cleared a plugged duct for me) - he usually only nursed for 5-8 minutes, and it was tremendously helpful each time.  

June was the one year anniversary of my dad's death.  I still miss him a lot, but it's manageable, and in many ways my experience of his loss has been more manageable than when I lost my mother. That's not a commentary on my relationship with either of them.  I was very close to both of them. I'm not sure if it was because of my age at the time of their deaths, the fact that my dad's death was expected while my mother's was a shock, or that I had just become a mother when my dad died and a squalling newborn is pretty distracting.  It was probably a combo of all three.

Anyway, a few years ago I found a quote from a letter that the French writer Marcel Proust had written to a friend on the occasion of his [the friend's] mother's death.  Proust knew a little something about the topic, having lost his beloved mother years before:

Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power . . . that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.

I love this quote because a) it's beautifully written; and b) YES.  YES, THIS IS JUST HOW I FEEL.  When I originally read the quote, it was the first time I had read something about the death of my mother that perfectly encompassed how I felt as time passed.  It's been true for my father as well.  In particular, I have been thinking about the "you will constantly remember more and more" part.  I have at times, many times, lamented the things that I never asked my parents about - their childhoods, their years before I was born.  Things I never asked them about what parenting me was like, how they handled certain situations.  I regret that.  But I also find small, lovely memories popping in my mind, from nowhere, and they are cherished.  

Jeeves, Max, and I are on vacation in the Hudson Valley this week.  While rushing around to pack, I had this silly memory of how much my father used to love watching sitcom repeats on Fox when he would come home from work - he watched the entirety of The Nanny, Home Improvement, and Third Rock from the Sun that way.  And there was this commercial for the clothing store Mandy that used to always play and he would sing it at random times and do a little dance.  I don't know what made me think of it, but I love it.

And then yesterday, at the rental house we have been grilling a lot after Max goes to bed.  I had brought some eggplant from our CSA and I was obsessed with grilling it a certain way, with garlic powder and Italian seasoning, and olive oil.  Jeeves wanted to bail on the Italian seasoning, but I was insistent.  That night while feasting on eggplant, which tasted like my youth, Jeeves remarked on how great it had turned out and I remembered - "It was my mom.  My mom taught me to make it this way every summer."  And I remembered so many other kitchen tips that I had used in the last few days that she had taught me.

We're getting close to distributing the rest of my dad's estate, but I have work to do.  My sister has been kind of crummy about it - asking repeatedly when she's getting her money.  I have felt stressed and sad and alone about it.  I was having a hard time letting go of it yesterday and even though I am a non-believer and thoughts of an afterlife are questionable, I sometimes talk to my parents in my head.  I asked them to help me, please please help me, tell me if I'm doing the right thing and just... help me.  This morning I took a nap when Jeeves woke up (we trade off with Max in the mornings on weekends and vacations) and when I came downstairs I found a ladybug on my laptop.  I don't believe in signs.  But I sure do love ladybugs.  And she was a beaut.  I promptly escorted her outside with Jeeves' help.  And I thought of my parents.  Even though I don't believe in signs.

This week would have been my dad's 80th birthday and my mom's 77th.  They would have liked the place we're vacationing.  Quiet, with a view.  And some wine.

Sorry I dropped off the face of the earth

I was texting with Adi from The Second Bedroom the other day and she asked "so are you ever going to post again?"  I've been really bad about blogging, as you can clearly see.  I have a variety of excuses, but it basically comes down to prioritizing other things over blogging.  Mostly reading.  Sometimes television.  Sometimes cooking or sleeping.  And of course there's Max!  So here's an update on where things are.

 

Max!  Max turned 1!  I can't believe it.  He's a little person, not a tiny baby anymore.  He's such a happy kid.  He says Mama (though it sounds more like Mummum), Dada, Yes, and Buff (we have no idea what "buff" means, but he says it when he's busy or happy).  Sometimes he says "yummm" when he's eating.  He's not walking yet, but he uses the furniture to cruise around.  He weighs a bit over 20lbs now, so he's still small for his age, but he's average for height.  After rocking the purees for awhile, he started wanting real solid food.  He's a little pickier than I'd like, but I'm working really hard on being patient and not freaking out about food with him.  I struggle with this a lot.  It should probably be its own blog post.  It's the first time in my life that I have worked hard at cooking a nice nutritious meal for someone and he occasionally rejects it without a bite, OR takes a bite and then rejects it.  Of course this is totally normal.  It's just hard for me to not get upset about it and to keep giving him a variety of food without resorting to just giving him stuff I know he likes over and over again.

 

We weaned around the one year mark.  I simultaneously miss it and don't.  I miss the cuddles and the closeness and the feeling that no matter what, I can soothe him.  But I don't miss the plugged ducts or the pumping or the not fitting in most of my pre-pregnancy shirts and dresses.  My boobs did shrink, but wound up a larger size than I was pre-pregnancy.

 

In April, I started working out with a trainer.  It has made a huge difference for me both in my overall strength and ability to keep up with Max and how I feel about my post-baby body.  I still struggle with my body image a bit.  I gained some weight after weaning, and when I shop for clothing, I can get kind of down on myself.  I'm working on it, trying to focus on the fact that I'm in much better shape than I was before I had a baby, even if that's not reflected on the scale yet.

 

I am tired a lot.  I daydream about sleep.  I'm trying to go to bed earlier, but it's hard.  There's a lot to do between Max's bedtime and my bedtime, but damn, that kid wakes up early!  He was sleeping till 7-7:30 (so civilized!) for a long time, but lately it's been pushed to 6-6:30.  No likey. 

 

I've been reading a lot.  I even joined a book club.  It's no where like when I read 52 books in a year, but I'm hoping I might hit 25.  That would be a huge accomplishment for me. 

 

Work is work.  It's fine.  No complaints.  We finally got raises (after 4+ years without a raise) so that was exciting.  On the two days I am at work, E continues to take care of Max and she continues to be an amazing gift for us.

 

Max went on his first flight back in May.  He did really well.  We were super nervous, but he was a champ.

 

We're at the point where we are planning on a second child.  We had a talk and agreed we'd like another (most days.... on days where I am especially tired and Max is crabby or sick, I'm not so sure).  In typical infertile fashion, this required a lot of planning and mapping.  Do you know what I'd really like?  I'd like to wait till Max is 2 or 3 and then maybe start trying.  Do you want to know the reality?  I am 37 years old and before Max we had to do IUI and I had two miscarriages.  I actually know about a half dozen women in real life who had to do IVF and got pregnant with their second kid by accident.  I know it really does happen.  But I feel like there is no effing way we will be that "lucky." [I'm using snarky quotes there because I don't like saying that it's lucky that you didn't have to go through IVF to have a second kid].  Anyhoo.  My point is that we don't have the luxury of waiting a few years to have another kid.  We aren't being serious about it now.  We're not preventing, but I'm not charting or peeing on OPKs or anything.  I'm enjoying way too much iced coffee and rose wine for that right now.  But soon we'll get serious and if it doesn't happen within a couple of months, we'll go back to the doctor and see what they say.  We're uncertain how far we're willing to go for another child.  IUI again?  Sure.  We're not sure about whether we'll try IVF.  Most of the time, I would be game for trying IVF.  But I don't want to plan that far ahead just yet.  Max is a wonderful child and if he is our only child, we will be a happy, fulfilled family of 3.

It's funny to think about how much had changed in one year.  When I look back on myself one year ago from now, I remember a woman who cried every day and who ached and struggled with breastfeeding and felt like she was in over her head.  I love looking at pictures of Max when he was so tiny and needed me so much.  But I'm glad that time has passed too.  

I'm really hoping to write a bit more soon.  Fingers crossed.  Here's a picture of my cutie to thank you all for reading.  

Mean girl

Ugh, I am the worst!   I seriously wrote a blog post two weeks ago and then never posted it because I don’t like to post without proofing and I was too lazy to proof (and also too busy watching The Americans – this season has been amazing!).  Maybe tomorrow I will actually post it - I think it was about my baby carrier obsession.

Believe it or not, I actually have something to share other than my usual blah blah about Max and daily life.

Back in the days of when we were still trying to get pregnant without help, Jeeves and I went on an awesome trip to Portland, Seattle, and points in between.  While we were on this trip, we got a very annoying call from his parents that we were being invited to a wedding that was only 3 weeks away. 

Let me back up a little.  Jeeves’ family has a rich network of friends who also emigrated from India.  Jeeves grew up with a bunch of other first generation kids.  These people are like extended family.  They are “Aunties” and “Uncles.”  It’s very different from how I grew up, but it’s lovely.  One of these kids, R, was getting married in the September of that year.  We had invited him and his fiancée to our wedding, but they couldn’t make it.  We heard through the grapevine that we weren’t going to be invited to R’s wedding because there were just too many people, etc., etc.  And it was totally fine, we absolutely understood.  Then three weeks before the wedding, R’s parents called up Jeeves’ parents and said, “Good news!  Jeeves and Megan can come because we had a lot more people say no than we expected.”  Ummm… thanks? So Jeeves’ parents called us on our vacation and wanted to know immediately if we were coming, and if so, did we want the chicken or the beef?

We went to the wedding, which I honestly didn’t want to go to.  I thought the situation was handled poorly, and it was out of state and required a lot of schlepping.  And it was black tie!  I only have one dress that’s black tie appropriate and I gained too much weight on our trip, so I had to starve myself to fit in it. 

So we go to this wedding, and guys, I kid you not, I have never heard future children mentioned more than I did at that wedding and I really don’t think it was just that I was sensitive to the subject at that moment.  It came up several times in their vows, during speeches, and then, when I was sitting at a table with the bride’s friends.  I didn’t even ask – the friend sitting next to me just volunteered that the bride (who was a med student at the time) was going into her chosen specialty because the hours would be better for a mother and that they planned to have several kids, and soon.  Barf.

I was resentful.  At this point in my journey, I didn’t know we were infertile, but we were having problems and I had a bad feeling that something was wrong.  I fumed over their presumption that having children wouldn’t be an issue.  I thought mean things about them.

Last fall, Jeeves’ parents told us that R and his wife were expecting in the summer.  That’s nice, I said.  And I mostly meant it.  I have to be honest – even though having Max has been incredibly healing, I do still sometimes feel a small pang when I hear that someone else is pregnant without issue.  I thought back to their wedding and how hard it was for me and everything that happened after that and I just thought, well, some people are lucky.  Some people don’t have to struggle. And then I promptly forgot about it.

A couple of weeks ago Jeeves’ mother emailed him that R’s wife had the baby, and he weighed less than 2 lbs.  She phrased it in a way that made us think the weight must be a typo, and I thought to myself, “wasn’t she due in the summer?”  After some clarification we learned that she had started having contractions at 23 weeks, had been admitted and kept at the hospital and then delivered the baby via c-section at 25 weeks.  The baby is alive.  They obviously have a very, very long and difficult road ahead.  I felt terrible for that moment of meanness in my heart years ago.  I hugged my big 9 month old baby (who wriggled away and wanted to crawl to his toys).  I thought about how having a micro preemie was going to completely change this couple’s life in ways they never expected.  I tried to remind myself that my resentful thoughts at their wedding did not magically create this situation. 

Lately I’ve been emailing with a couple of women who are going through IVF cycles.  They are family/friends of friends and because I’ve always been a big mouth about my experience, I’ve been set up with these ladies to offer moral support. Which I love doing, and which was the entire reason I’m such a big mouth about our experience.  I think being alone in infertility is horrible, it’s the only way to make a crappy situation worse, and I don’t know what I would have done without the support of other women who had been through it.  We talk about all sorts of things, and I have these memories about feelings, but I did something today that I hadn’t done in a long time because Max.  Max has made me forget some of it.  So I read a bunch of my old posts.

I read those old posts from after my miscarriage and D&C, the summer off, the treatment, my early pregnancy.  I remembered and felt those feelings for that moment.  Oh god, guys, it hurt.  I was so, so scared.  And jealous.  And filled with self-loathing for being so jealous.  But even though we went through what we went through, I’ve got Max and so every part of it feels worth it to me now. 

I think it can be easy when we reach our goal for there to be fuzziness in our memories about what happened before.  It’s not that we forget.  It’s just that we’re in a new phase and we’re so wrapped up in the happily ever after.   I do hope that that notion is soothing for other infertiles still struggling – that notion that it really will be worth it.  I still completely believe that you can have a wonderful, fulfilling life if you decide not to pursue treatment or an alternative means of parenthood.  I just mean to say for me that Max has healed a lot of those negative memories and feelings.

And if you’re still in that crappy place, that scared place…. I’m thinking of you.  Everything you feel – please let me validate it for you.  It is real and it is terrifying.  You won’t always feel this way.  And please don’t be hard on yourself for feeling whatever you feel.  

Late winter, hoping for spring

On Monday I bundled Max up in his bunting suit, stuck an extra hat on his head, popped him in the Britax carrier, tied on the windbreaker blanket cover that I put over the carrier, and ventured out into the cold to find a notary public.  Amusingly, I am a notary public, but notaries can’t notarize their own stuff, so there you go.  It’s been frigid this month in New York.  Many days, Max and I only venture across the street to the grocery store, just so we can get out of the apartment.  Anyway, it’s time to pay the state estate taxes for my dad, and the forms have to be notarized.  The whole process has been extra, extra stressful and even involved a family trip out to a Bank of America branch in New Jersey last week.  I’m hopeful that the tax debacle is over, and if it is, we’re one giant step closer to finishing things.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, there will still be a ton of work left to be done.  But a giant hurdle will be crossed and that’s something.  All I can say is that being an executor is very time-consuming and is, in many ways, a part-time job that occasionally turns into a full-time job.  I do not recommend it.

It was bitter out Monday, so I kept the walk short after I got the forms notarized.  I don’t like winter, generally, though the stress I used to feel about snow is happily gone.  I used to fret so much about the snow because of Dad, but now it’s just kind of pretty (and then annoying when it turns to gross black slush).  And while I enjoy the changing seasons, and winter makes me appreciate the other three seasons all the more, and it’s kind of fun to be cozy and warm inside, at this point I’m just done with it.  Done done done.

On the other hand, in some ways it’s appropriate that the weather has been crummy.    This week marks 9 years since my first date with Jeeves and my mother’s death.  I never know how I’m going to feel on the anniversary of her death.  Some years it goes by and I miss her but I do not feel particularly sadder or different on the actual date.  Other years it is very hard and I cry and cry and cry.  I’m not sure how it will be this year.  On the one hand – wow, it’s been 9 years.  It’s been a long time.  I am used to the feeling of missing my mother.  It lives with me every day.  On the other hand, there are so many firsts, even 9 years later.  This will be the first anniversary without my mom where my dad is also gone.  And it’s my first anniversary with a baby.

And then there’s Dad, who’s always at the front and center of my brain.  Last week Oliver Sacks, the famous neurologist, wrote a beautiful op-ed piece for the New York Times revealing that he has been diagnosed with metastatic cancer.  The piece talks about how he wants to spend the time he has left. My dad knew Dr. Sacks – they worked together from time to time at Bronx State Psychiatric Hospital where my dad was a social worker.   Dad said he was a lovely man.   Sacks wrote in his op-ed piece: “There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.”

Then I learned that Wil Smith, a gentleman who did a lovely piece on StoryCorp with his daughter, whom he raised as a single dad while also attending college, died from colon cancer.  I remembered listening to his daughter interviewing him for StoryCorp and he talked about how difficult it was for him to reverse roles with his daughter.  “You watched me at my weakest point where no father wants to be and you didn’t shed a tear. . . . When I was going through treatments, one of the things that helped me through was knowing that had I not been there to help you through this process, you would have figured it out by yourself. But now I'm grateful that I am here and with you.” 

Then JK Simmons won an Academy Award on Sunday and in his speech he said, “Call your mom, call your dad. If you’re lucky enough to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call ‘em. Don’t text. Don’t email. Call them on the phone. Tell ‘em you love ‘em, and thank them, and listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you.”

And so, I leave it at that – I am 36 years old and my parents are dead.  It has been 9 years since I lost my mother and 8 months since I lost my father.  Even though they are gone, they remain the two most important people in my life after my husband and my son.  If you are lucky enough to have a parent left, talk to them.

Max just turned 8 months.  He has five teeth and he can now army crawl around to grab his toys.  He acts like a rabid spider monkey when I’m trying to change his diaper or his clothes.  Solid foods are still kind of a struggle, but it's getting a little better.  Hugging him is my favorite.

It's been too long

As more time has passed since I’ve blogged, I’ve become more and more overwhelmed by catching up and writing.  So I’m just going to be scattershot here, do bullet points, and hope that by breaking the seal on this blog I’ll get to writing more.

• Max makes every day better. 

• Max is over 7 months old!  He’s such a happy little guy.  I can’t believe I get to say that – when he was two months old the words I would use to describe Max after “cute” would have been “suspicious” and “grumpy.”  Now he’s just so pleased by so many things.  Likes: jumping, sitting, tummy time, his mailbox toy, chewing on things, doing an impression of a motorboat, when I take toys and tease him by keeping them just out of reach, sleeping through the night, fruit purees, plain Greek yogurt, his dad, the weatherman Lee Goldberg, splashing in the bath, being carried facing outward in his carrier.  Dislikes: napping, mashed avocado.  Mixed bag: diaper changes, vegetable purees, cuddling with Mom, riding in the car (likes it just fine for a couple of hours, then haaates it).  

• I started introducing Max to solid food at 6 months.  I thought he was going to love it.  He…. didn’t.  In fact, he really, really hated it at first.  Even bananas!  I thought all babies loved bananas!  After a couple of weeks, I discovered that he really did like plain Greek yogurt, so I started just mixing purees into that.  Now he’ll eat the plain purees too.  I’ve tried giving him some Cheerios, a piece of bread, stuff like that.  He doesn’t really get it yet.  He’ll get there with time.  But he’s turned into a very good little eater of purees.  Except for the aforementioned avocado which he spits out and glares at me when I try to feed it to him.

• Work is fine.  Nothing especially exciting to report there.  I think about switching jobs, trying to get a job in a library, but it’s hard to leave something comfortable and flexible.  I’ll get there eventually.

• The estate and the house.  I agreed to let my sister take the house as part of an early disbursement of the estate.  She was getting a deal – I agreed to her “as is” price and she told me that she and her husband were going to do a whole bunch of work on it, including widening the driveway and adding on another bathroom.  In mid-December I signed the deed over to them and they started ripping out carpet… and to make an interminably long story short, my sister told me a week after I signed the deed over (on Christmas Eve) that they had changed their minds about doing any work other than ripping out the carpet and painting and they were just going to sell it.  It’s still a little hard for me to talk about because I feel like my sister cheated me out of a large amount of money.  Obviously she was not required to do any of that work under contract, but I do feel like they took advantage of me in order to make more money.  I eventually calmed down when Wendy reminded me of all the reasons I wanted to walk away from the house and that there’s a big difference between Sissy saying she’s selling the house and actually being able to sell the house (at least for whatever price she wants).  As for the rest of the estate, it’s stressful and annoying and it moves very slowly, but it is moving.  I’m going to drink a bottle of champagne by myself when it’s all done.

• We spent New Years down at the Delaware shore with Kate and Bart and their little girl.  It was lovely, except that Jeeves had a lot of work to do while there.  I brought some of my mom and dad’s ashes with me – they loved it there, and actually my mom died down there.  I scattered them on the beach on New Year’s Day.  It was hard. 

• I've been struggling since I gave birth with my body image.  I know that may seem silly or ungrateful.  I’m very happy that I got to give birth and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  But I look very different than I did before I got pregnant and it’s been a little hard.  I gained about 30 pounds with my pregnancy, which is a normal and healthy amount.  When I came home from the hospital, I was down only 12 pounds.  Over time, I lost a little more, and I’m about 10 or 11 pounds away from where I was when I got pregnant.  I know that’s not bad.  But my body is so different now – everything is thicker, saggier, etc.  My boobs are still enormous.  I had to buy new pants because I didn’t want to wear maternity pants anymore and I’m too big for my own pants.  I tend to just cover everything up and hide.  I’ve totally lost any sense of style.  My face looks pudgy.  I had to buy a new dress for a wedding we’re going to and figuring out what would look good on this new body…. Ugh.  So I decided to start exercising again and be really careful about what I ate, but without counting calories.  My goal was to lose the last 10 pounds by Max’s first birthday in June.  My milk supply immediately plummeted.  I started eating more and my supply went back to normal.  I am attempting to eat healthy, whole foods, but I’m not limiting myself at all.  Also, it’s really hard to exercise.  Max does nap, but his naps are short and I have a bajillion things I need to do when he’s napping.  I could try and wait to exercise after he goes to bed at 7:30, but by then I’m exhausted and I have to cook dinner.  I haven’t given up, I’m just still trying to figure out where to fit it in.

• Jeeves and I are starting to talk about maybe not leaving Brooklyn.  For years we had always planned to move to the suburbs once we had a kid.  It’s still a work in progress, but now we’re not so sure we want to do that.  Even though the inheritance I’ll get from my dad’s estate is not a crazy amount of money, it’s enough that we could buy a place here and not have a huge mortgage.  There are a lot of reasons to stay, and only a couple of reasons to go.  But we'll see.  

• I've been thinking a lot about how being Max's mom has changed me, is changing me.  I've never for a second believed that you have to have children to understand true love or to have a purpose in life.  I have many friends who don't have children, won't have children, and they have wonderful, full, meaningful lives and they are deeply loving people.  But Max has changed me.  He's sent me back to a time when I was more idealistic and less selfish.  Please note that I do not for a second believe child-free people are selfish.  My friend Meg spends every day advocating for the poor.  She's one of the least selfish people I know.  She doesn't ever plan to have children.  I'm only speaking for myself.  Max makes me want to be a better person.  He makes me want to get involved in changing the world.  He makes me want to learn more and talk more and listen more.  But I'll write about that more another time.

• I haven't been a good blog commenter.  I do still read.  Commenting requires that I be on my computer instead of reading it on my phone and usually these days I'm on my phone.  So many of the women I follow are pregnant or parents now.  A few are still in the trenches.  Sometimes I feel very removed from my infertile life.  But then something will happen that snaps me back - I wonder if we'll have another kid.  Unlike a regular ol' fertile girl, I don't just think "well, if and when we want another kid, we'll just start trying and that will be that."  Instead I wonder about trying and what tests I'll have to do again and whether IUI would even work again and how we'd coordinate morning monitoring and whether we'd have to do IVF and blahblahblah.  That's when I'm like, "oh yeah, still an infertile."  The one difference is that being infertile doesn't leave me bereft the way it once did.  Because of Max.  If I only have Max, that will be okay.  I may hope that we have another child someday, but I really will be okay if I only have Max.  And I didn't feel like that before him. 

• I'm trying to get back into the things that define me outside of Jeeves and Max.  I'm making a concerted effort to actually finish a book that's not about babies.  And Jeeves and I are watching TV and movies again (since Max goes to bed at 7:30 we have a lot more opportunities to watch stuff again).  We actually saw a movie in a theater even!  Crazy, I know.  

I guess that's it for now.  I will close by once again saying that I really do hope to be better about blogging.  Writing is one of those things that makes me feel like me and I should make a more concerted effort to do it.  In parting, here is my dearest darling, sitting up:

I judge the judgers

Well, things got easier and I thought I'd blog more and then I didn't.  Because even though things got easier in some ways with Max, I wound up trying to do more stuff, and also I got really tired.  And I just couldn't figure out what I should even write about.

So here's the quick and dirty update and then I'll go into what I really wanted to write about.  Max was an elephant for Halloween.  He was very excited when we put him in his costume and he looked adorable.  Halloween has been a sad holiday for me for awhile because I really consider it a children's holiday and I love the idea of doing it with my children.  I used to tease my cat that if Jeeves and I couldn't have children, I was going to dress him up as an octopus and push him around in a stroller on Halloween.  Abbott never looked particularly thrilled with that idea.  Halloween this year was a lot of fun.

We sprung an enormous leak in our ceiling in Max's room.  We're on day four of the repairs.  Turns out it was a shower a few floors above us but the a-holes who live up there didn't think to call the super and tell him they were having issues with the shower EVEN AFTER THE SUPER CALLED THEM AND TOLD THEM ABOUT OUR LEAK.  I'm sorry, was I shouting that last part?  I hate them.  So right now there's a huge hole in the ceiling, an industrial dehumidifier running, and Max has been sleeping in our room again.

I went back to work!  It's part-time, but it still required figuring out childcare.  We hired an amazing nanny, E.  We love her and more importantly Max loves her.  Makes being at work a little easier, although I really do hate pumping.  But I have yet to meet anyone who's like, "I love to pump!  It's so fun!  It's not uncomfortable or awkward or boring at all!"  I also find that being at work has generally made me a happier person.  I feel like I got a part of my identity back, and it's actually fun to use a different part of my brain.  And I enjoy being home more on my off days - I find I'm more focused and patient.  AND!  Guys!!!  It gives me an opportunity to listen to the podcast Serial on my commute!  Have you been listening to it?  Well, you should.

My epic battle with DMV has finally concluded and Jeeves and I are now the proud owners of my dad's old car.  It's nice to have the car, and even nicer to be done with DMV.

What I really wanted to talk a little about today was sleep training Max, or more specifically, how everyone has a very strong opinion about every single parenting decision you will ever make and apparently there is only one right way to do anything ever.

For his first 3.5 months of life, Max was a pretty great night sleeper.  Terrible napper.  But at night, he would usually fall asleep after we (usually Jeeves) rocked him, then he might wake up around 11pm to eat, or I might give him a dream feed (where you wake your baby up to eat but they aren't really awake and they go right back to sleep after eating).  After the dream feed, he'd go back to sleep and wake up one more time - between 3am and 5am, eat, go back to sleep till 7 or 8.  Around 2.5 to 3 months, he stopped waking up at 11am and we stopped doing the dream feed, so he was only waking up one time.  It was awesome.

Then, around 3.5 months, things changed.  He stopped going to sleep easily, it was taking 30 minutes to get him down.  He started waking up two times a night to eat.  Then three times.  I can't necessarily say that he really wanted to eat, only that he would wake up, cry, and because it was the easiest way to get him (and therefore me) back to sleep, I'd nurse him.  And sometimes he'd wake up, crying, but it would only have been an hour since he had eaten, so I knew he wasn't hungry.  On those occasions, Jeeves or I would try to rock him back to sleep.  I became sleep deprived and ragged.

I started looking into "sleep training."  I had read Weissbluth's book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, and I agreed with his central premise - that sleep is really, really important and kids need to get enough of it.  But I felt super squeamish about rapid extinction (where you put the munchkin down awake, close the door, and let them cry it out until they fall asleep and you don't check on them or anything).  Thanks to a friend, I landed on a book with a somewhat gentler approach, but it did still include letting the kid cry while they figure out how to comfort themselves and fall asleep.  The method suggested waiting till 1) the baby is 5 months and/or 15 lbs; and 2) recommended not doing any sleep training in the weeks surrounding a return to work (also, the book said not to do it when the kid is teething, or sick or when you're traveling, etc.).  So even after I found this method, we waited another couple of weeks before we implemented it.

I'm not going into what method we used because it's not really the point of the post.  Here's what I will say - the method we chose worked really, really well for us when we finally decided (after checking with our doctor) that it was time for us to sleep train Max.  I would be happy to discuss our experience with anyone who's interested.  And maybe at some point I'll actually go through what we did step by step.

No, the point is that I cannot get over how goddamn judgey everyone is about a family's choices in child rearing.  I made the mistake of using the Google when Jeeves and I were hemming and hawing about sleep training and trying to decide what method to use and when to use it.  The method we used, which is really quite moderate in my opinion, comes from a book.  The comments section of the book on Amazon is peppered with snotty comments about how sleep training your kid means you're a lazy parent who doesn't really want to take care of your kid.  An attachment parenting site said you shouldn't do anything to prevent your child from waking up and needing to be held at night unless you are dangerously sleep deprived.  Pro sleep training sites talked about how people who are opposed to cry it out should stop whining about how tired they are.  In other words, everyone was completely convinced that their method was the only right  method, and everyone who did something different was a Terrible Parent.

I talked about it with Kate and she sighed loudly - "I never judge other parents' choices.  Except those people.  Those people who are judging everyone else.  I judge them."  I have a friend who let her kid cry it out every night for 35 nights until he was able to fall asleep on his own.  I have a friend who has to lie down in bed next to her 4 year old every night until she falls asleep because she tried letting her cry it out one night and it wasn't for her.  I have a friend who has a family bed - toddler, baby, husband, dogs - everyone in the pool.  I'm not into doing any of those things.  All of their kids are fine and healthy.  All of those moms are good moms who love their kids.  I wish we could all just chill out a little bit and be a little more supportive of each other's choices.  This is hard!  I doubt myself all the time!  When I make a decision about how to parent Max, it's after careful deliberation and research and soul searching.  Maybe not everyone does the same amount of research, but I am pretty sure that the majority of moms just want to do right by their kid and put some thought into what they're doing.

In conclusion, here's a picture of Max in his Halloween costume.

Thank you thank you thank you

The Whopper is supposed to be napping right now.  I finally managed to get him to sleep (no small task, I tell you), popped him in his swing, went to wash some dishes, came back 10 minutes later and he's awake and chatting away to himself.  Sigh.  I'm ignoring him in the hopes that he will fall back asleep, but that seems unlikely.  We had hoped our kid would enjoy sleeping as much as Jeeves and I do.  But apparently not.

Anyway, Max's sleep habits are not the point of this post.

The day Dad died I called my old college friend who also happens to be the attorney for Dad's estate.  I'm the executor of the estate, and after a couple of weeks in which I had to plan Dad's memorial service, I started the probate process.  Executing an estate is a lot of work, and my dad's estate isn't even that complicated.  It's definitely giving me food for thought on how Jeeves and I should structure our will.  But anyway.  A part of the estate is my dad's house, my childhood home.

The house is in suburban New Jersey.  It's an old house, over 100 years old and it has a lot of character.  My parents lived there for over 40 years.  To put it mildly, the house needs a lot of work.  A lot of work.  The kitchen is pretty good, and sure, the house is livable, but in this market to meet the desires of most buyers, well, it would be a tough sell.  The bedrooms are small, the closets are small.  The doors are old.  It's carpeted and the carpets were installed in the 1980s.  There's lots of terrible wallpaper.  No central air.  A scary unfinished basement, which is where the laundry hookup is.  A very nice, large yard which needs some serious TLC.  Only one full bath.  A tiny half bath on the ground floor.  A difficult to navigate driveway.  And it's on a busy corner (when my parents bought it, it was a sleepy, quiet corner, but now it's super busy).  And worst of all - an underground oil tank.  The house doesn't use oil heat anymore, but the oil tank was never removed.

We had the house appraised as part of the probate process and frankly, I was surprised it came in as high as it did.  My sister, on the other hand, thought the appraisal was too low and had grand ideas about what we could get.  We argued over the oil tank.  I emphasized that no buyer would take the house with the tank in - we would have to remove it (which can be very, very expensive if there's contamination).  My sister generally agreed with me.  But then there's good old brother in law (BIL).

Where do I start on BIL?  I think I've mentioned before that I am not a big fan of his, and my mom and dad weren't either.  I'll just sum it up by saying that the day after my dad died my sister texted me saying that BIL was concerned about my dad's stock portfolio and thought we should liquidate it right away.  Yeah.  The day after my dad died.  Anyway, BIL's position on the oil tank was that we should not tell any prospective buyer about it.  Let's ignore the fact that as executor, I would have to certify that I don't know of anything on the property that would negatively impacts the condition.  And I in fact do know that there's a condition on the property that presents a problem.  Buyers usually hire inspectors and inspectors in NJ know to look for oil tanks.  Ugh, whatever.  Lying about the oil tank was never going to happen.  I ignored him.

I should add that BIL's current employment is buying properties, fixing them up, and renting them out.  He's been doing it for a couple of years now and seems to like it.  Rather than going into all the nitty gritty details, I'll just say that we got some "as is" offers on the property, my sister spent more time at the house cleaning out Dad's stuff and seemed to realize that in this market we weren't going to get what she thought we should for the house, and BIL spent a lot of time there with her and he has perpetual dollar signs in his eyes when talking about the house.  Eventually, BIL talked my sister into the idea of buying out my share of the house, fixing it up, and selling it for a profit.

So a couple of weeks ago they made me an offer.  It's definitely a discounted offer.  But on the other hand, they're willing to take it with the oil tank still in which relieves the estate of huge liability.  And I feel that any buyer would probably want a decent amount of credits on the house.  So while they're getting a discount from me, I feel it's a fair price.  My estate attorney required me to talk to an attorney who represents me as a beneficiary.  And I talked with my bestie Wendy, guru on all things financial and property and Sissy related.  After mulling it over, I decided to sell them my share.  I hate dealing with the estate, and I especially hate dealing with this house.  I just want to be done with it.  Seriously, the dealing with settling an estate where you and your sibling are the sole beneficiaries?  It's a lot like being in business with your sibling.  And while I love Sissy very much, I have no desire to be in business with her.

Jeeves and I went out to the house last weekend to get Dad's car jump started and take it to my in-laws who could keep an eye on it until we transfer title.  Sissy and BIL and my nephews were all there working on cleaning out the house.  BIL told me about his plans for the house (ripping out carpet and painting over wallpaper, widening the driveway, adding a second bathroom) and I just felt sad.  His plans for the yard include cutting down a beautiful flowering tree that my mom and dad loved, planting bamboo, and ripping out Dad's beloved burning bush so he can widen the driveway.

On the drive back to my in-laws', Jeeves groused about it.  My father was forever suspicious and skeptical of BIL.  And now Jeeves feels he needs to take over that role.  We talked about how Dad would have hated the idea of BIL benefiting from his death, he would have hated BIL's plans for the yard.  And Jeeves pointed out that BIL probably intends to try to lie to any prospective buyer about the oil tank.  I felt badly, like I was letting Dad down.  But at the same time, I really want to extricate myself from this house and I want to settle the estate as quickly as possible because it really is like being in business with Sissy and I don't enjoy that sensation.

But what I really thought on that drive?  Thank goodness for Jeeves and Max.  Thank goodness I have my own little family and I'm not all alone.  Yes, I would have had Sissy.  But the idea of just having Sissy and BIL as my only family?  That thought makes me very sad.  I asked Jeeves, "What if Dad had died and I was single and didn't have Max?"  He acknowledged that that would have been a very sad situation for me.  I'm not a religious person at all, but I just kept muttering "thank you thank you thank you" to the universe that I have my own family now and so many things to look forward to.  

Max keeps me so busy, and when I'm not busy with him, I'm busy with Jeeves and the estate, so I have very little time in my own thoughts anymore.  The other day Max and I were out for a walk and there was nothing there but my thoughts.  And I have to admit - I'm a little depressed.  Not about being a new mom, which has gotten progressively better and easier.  Not about going back to work part-time in a few weeks.  No.  I'm depressed that my parents are gone.  When I look to the future with my little family of three, I feel hopeful and happy.  But I miss Dad so much these days.  And losing Dad has brought up all the old issues of missing my mom.  I wish they were here to see me now.  I wish I could tell them about everything that's been going on and seek their advice.  Honestly, that feeling of missing them will never go away.  I'll just get used to their absence.  

So that's it for the downer news.  Max turned 3 months over the weekend and he's become a very smiley and giggly baby - he's still the Angry Whopper from time to time, but much less often.  Here's a pic of the happy guy.

The Angry Whopper

Max is 11 weeks old now.  Which is pretty crazy, because it feels like we're still on a steep learning curve, but also that it's hard to remember what things were like without him.  So what can I tell you?  Well, things are getting better.  I've got a lot to say, but I'm struggling with how to start.  So I think I'll start small and just try and blog more often to cover it all.

So for today: a confession.

Max is a totally normal baby, at least as far as I can tell.  But the first 2 months were so very hard.  My confession is that I didn't love every minute of being a new mom.  I feel weird confessing this.  I think it's probably a pretty normal sentiment.  But because it was so hard to get pregnant and because of my previous miscarriages, I'd like to say that I was always grateful and happy every minute.  Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful and happy.  But the first 6 weeks?  I cried.  A lot.  And I felt like I lost my identity.  I remember crying to Jeeves one day that I felt I had become simply an udder.  I spent prolonged periods stuck indoors with an angry infant.  Aside from the sleep deprivation, and the breast feeding problems, I think I was just caught off guard about what a baby is like the first 6 weeks.  And that in and of itself was a shock because I have 5 nephews!  I was intimately involved with the kids when they were tiny.  Maybe I forgot, or maybe it's different when it's your own kid and you don't get to hand the baby off when he starts crying.

So yeah, Max cried.  A lot.  Usually for no reason.  Things that I thought babies were supposed to love - walks in a stroller, car rides, baths - he hated all of those things with a passion.  In fact, he seemed to hate most things, except for my boobs.  You know how Burger King has the angry whopper?  It's basically a whopper with jalapenos on it, I think.  Jeeves and I were walking Max one day, and we passed a Burger King.  "Max is the angry whopper," I said.  The nickname stuck.  Even now, when he mostly only cries from hunger or tiredness, we call him The Whopper.  

The Whopper, first month, crying for no discernible reason.

Max would only catnap.  I had heard that newborns spend most of the day sleeping, but Max barely seemed to sleep.  And when he did sleep, he would only do it on me or on Jeeves - he would wake up the second we put him down.  He had a set of lungs on him from day one and he seemed to have only one volume - loud, loud, louder.  The first week he was home with us, someone in our building gave away a swing - we snatched it up, and thank goodness we did.  It's still Max's favorite place to nap. We were finally able to put him down and have him nap somewhere other than on us.  I know that there are worse things than having an adorable baby sleep on you... but when you yourself cannot fall asleep (or eat, or go to the bathroom) because you are worried about dropping and hurting said baby, well.... you really want to put the baby down after awhile.

At his one month wellness check (a horrible day all around - it was Jeeves's first day back at work, so I was on my own and terrified), Max screamed for the entire visit (and for the whole walk to the doctor and most of the walk home).  I could barely hear the doctor.  But she said something important.  When I asked her if I should be concerned about colic, she said to me, "Newborns, especially from 4 to 6 weeks, are the most miserable people on the planet.  Nothing makes them happy.  It will get better after that and it'll be a lot better when I see you at the 2 month appointment.  In the mean time, do what you need to do to help him stop crying, and if you're at your wit's end, it is completely okay to put him down in a safe place, close the door, and let him cry it out for a bit."  And she was right.  I'd say around 7 weeks, things started to improve and by 2 months, the crying/screaming was significantly diminished.

And that's the thing - Max's behavior wasn't colic.  It was completely normal newborn fussiness.  I guess no one ever told me that - that your baby can spend a large chunk of the day miserable, but he doesn't have colic.  He's just fussy.  Fussy because he has an immature nervous system and he doesn't know how to process anything.  Fussy because he's really confused as to why he's still not snug as a bug in the womb, and pretty damn upset about it.  Fussy because you spent a good chunk of the day with new people and now he's completely overstimulated.  

Soothing Max was successful, but it was also a full time endeavor.  Jeeves and I became pretty big Happiest Baby on the Block devotees.  The 5 S's (swaddle, side, shushing, swinging, sucking) were in heavy rotation in this house and never failed.  In fact, I still have to use the swaddle and the white noise (shushing) to help Max fall asleep for naps.

I kept asking my friends who went through this right before me (and therefore had a clearer memory of how rough the first few months are) if it would really get better.  They kept assuring me that at 3 months there would be a vast improvement.  I didn't entirely believe them - what if I just have an angry/fussy kid who never changes?  What if Max is just miserable forever?  But it has gotten exponentially better and we're not at 3 months yet.  Some mornings Max is grumpy because he has gas, but most mornings he greets me with a big smile.  He's starting to giggle when I sing goofy songs to him.  He still cries on walks, and in the car, and in the bath.  But he has a wider range of cries now, and sometimes a day passes and he hasn't had a true Angry Whopper cry.

So there you have it.  The first couple of months were rough.  It's getting better.  I don't freak out anymore when Max cries, partially because I'm used to it and partially because his cries don't usually reach that fever pitch anymore and partially because he's usually crying for a reason now.  Now if I could just get him to really enjoy our walks, I'd be made in the shade.

Tales of a Breast Feeder

I've missed you!  I wrote this post, like two weeks ago, but am only just now getting around to proofing and posting.  Please know I'm still following my usual bloggers and pulling for all of you in your cycles and your pregnancies and your lives.  And I'm going to try and get some commenting in today too to prove it!  Here's the post.

Hello!  I am so excited to be writing.  Max is napping for the moment and I found myself, for the first time in a long time, with no chores to do.  Usually I will elect to nap, or at least "rest" when that happens, but this morning Jeeves took care of Max for two beautiful hours while I napped and so I feel great and don't need to sleep right now.

So, I thought I'd share my breast feeding story in the event that it might be useful to someone else.  Max just turned 2 months and I'm still breast feeding him, which I consider a really huge accomplishment on both our parts because it was a bit of a challenge for us.

At the hospital, we had a lot of help from nurses and lactation consultants. From day one, Max has been a great little latcher.  I would say my initial problems were that a) breast feeding every 2 hours (and in the early days, it can even be every 1.5 hours) was exhausting; and b) my boobs hurt between engorgement and nipple pain.  Look, that's the first thing I would say - your nipples are probably going to hurt.  It's not horrible, and it's temporary, but I feel like people who tell you that breast feeding should never hurt at all are kind of lying to you, or at least speaking about a minority of people.  I feel like we should be honest - in the beginning, your nipples might hurt.  Sometimes that can mean there's a problem like thrush or bad latch.  But it can also be normal and will improve over time.  My nipples are still sensitive and it doesn't feel great when Max yanks on one or kicks one (yes, this happens), but mostly they feel fine now.

Initially I thought things were going well, other than exhaustion and general soreness.  I did note that Max was a very slow nurser - he would sometimes take up to 40 minutes to nurse on one breast, and even then he would keep going, but I broke him off because I felt like my boob might fall off.  We went to the pediatrician for a weight check when he was about 2 weeks old and his weight gain was normal, so I felt confident that breastfeeding was going well.  Our pediatrician said that for the time being, it was normal that Max was nursing for 40 minutes.

Then at the 1 month wellness check, we learned that Max had only gained 4 oz in 2 weeks - he was a month old and had only just gotten back to birth weight!  Not good.  Our pediatrician was unconcerned, but I knew that even La Leche League considers such slow weight gain to indicate a breast feeding problem.  So, I reached out to a lactation consultant.  Oh, and for the record, at this point I was feeding Max on demand, around 10 or 11 times a day.  

The LC, Sarah, was a lifesaver, and was definitely more concerned about our breast feeding issues than our pediatrician was.  She came to the apartment and weighed Max, then watched him nurse, then weighed him again to see how much he was taking in.  She agreed that his latch was great, but ultimately found that Max was a "disorganized sucker" and that my supply was low.  Basically he was easily distracted and he wasn't sucking in a way that was giving him enough milk.  And another part of the problem was that because he was not gaining appropriately, he was a bit weak and therefore unable to efficiently get milk from me.  So she set up a treatment plan - I was to limit Max to 10 minutes per breast and vigorously compress my breast while he ate to help him get more milk.  Then I would pump after every feeding for 8 minutes.  This was rough.  At that point, I was not used to letting Max fuss or cry at all.  So it was tough to feed him and then put him down and sometimes let him cry for a few minutes while I pumped.  Lastly, we supplemented Max with 4 oz every day - if I could pump enough breast milk, that's what we would use, and if I couldn't we would have to use a small amount of formula.

I got really bent out of shape about the formula supplement.  I felt like it made me a failure.  But I would pump after a feeding, and frequently I got just a few drops of breast milk.  Sarah, the LC, reminded me that the point of pumping was not to build up a bunch of extra breast milk, but to signal to my body that my breast was completely empty and needed to be refilled (since an empty breast refills faster than a partially full breast).  I knew Max needed more sustenance than what I was providing, but the whole thing felt so disheartening.  For several days I would pump and so little came out.  I couldn't remember the last time I had worked so hard at something and still felt like I was failing.  A lot of people, Kate chief among them, reminded me that I was doing a great thing for my kid, that formula is not poison and is perfectly good for babies, and that he was still getting breast milk from me. 

 I took Max for a follow up weight check a few days after we implemented the new plan and Max had gained 6 ounces!  Success!  So we've kept at it.  Two weeks ago I took Max for his 2 month wellness check and he gained over 2 lbs in one month.  This is a huge improvement - Max has gained over an ounce a day.

Since the implementation of the plan, I don't strictly limit Max's nursing to 10 minutes per breast.  But I do now know when he's actually done eating and is just "hanging out" on the boob (sometimes I let him just hang out for comfort purposes, but more often than not, he pops off when he's done within 15 minutes).  Most of the time it only take 20 to 25 minutes total to nurse Max, sometimes less.  Mentally, this has made breast feeding a lot easier on me.  I've been tracking breast feeding on an app from the start - in the beginning I was spending up to 6 hours a day nursing Max.  Now it's down to 3 hours per day, sometimes more like 2.5 hours.  Max has gotten better at getting milk.  And with all the pumping, my production is way up.  I'm still supplementing him with 2 oz of breast milk and 2 oz of formula, but I think we'll start tapering down on that.  

So that's my tale.  Breast feeding is hard.  But honestly, it's really getting easier, and it completely feels worth all the hard work.  I had set a small goal for myself from the beginning - get to 3 months and then reassess whether I should keep breastfeeding.  Max is 10 weeks old now, so in a couple more weeks I'll have reached my goal.  But because it's gotten so much easier, I'm pretty sure I'll stick with it and set another goal - get to 6 months.

I have to say I completely understand now why so many women switch to formula.  There are so many issues that spring up with breastfeeding, and I will never again judge anyone for any of the decisions they make on how they feed their baby.  But for me, I'm really proud I stuck with it and I'm grateful that our issues were "fixable."  A lot of people can't stick with it and don't have the resources that I've had to make it work.  And if you're planning to breast feed your baby and you have troubles - please know it can get better.  But whatever choice you make, you're doing what's right for you and your family and that's what matters most.