Can you not, tho?

        I've taken care of children for a long time, so there are many, many things that I was prepared to face when I became Mommy. But, in a trend that I'm certain will continue, there are many more things for which I was entirely unprepared. Here are 5 that come to mind immediately:

1) You'll never walk alone. 

     I mean this quite literally. You will never. Ever. Be alone. Now this is doubly true for me because I have a dog who get sad if I go into the bathroom without letting him join me. When Baby is brand new, you're with them so much of the time because they need so much around the clock care (feedings every few hours, mainly), but now that Penelope is becoming more aware of her surroundings and forming attachments, she not only needs me nearby...she's figured out that she WANTS me nearby, too. If I put her in her exersaucer and dart to the kitchen (which is a pretty open space 30 feet away from her), she very quickly looks around, sees I've "left" and either A) Objects to this in a sad little tone or B) Looks around babbling then says what is starting to sound more and more like "Mama!", which is sure to make me appear immediately, because I will. not. miss. the first word.

        Now to borrow a phrase-to be fair, she is pretty good about me walking away, considering the fact that I've been quite the orangutan mommy (more on that later-just picture a mommy holding her baby all the time), but the fact remains that she wants me by her side, at all times. She's even started reaching for my hand as opposed to always wanting to be picked up, in an attempt to keep playing where she is, but still be in contact. It is in turn a lovely, bonding, ego-boosting thing, this clinging, and a phase that makes it nearly impossible to get things done. Okay, I admit it...this section was just to explain to Josh why we had pasta roni last night instead of, y'know, a less boxed, more elaborate dinner;)

2) You will talk to your child like they are an adult.

     I don't just mean saying things like "Oh Nicholas, how you DO go on!". I mean that at some point, you will turn to your baby who is fussing and say something like "Can you not? For like, a minute? Can you just not?" I mean...I've heard. I've never..done...that...

     I've totally done that. Our Penelope is an incredibly easy baby, and we are not prepared at all for what a difficult or even particularly fussy baby is like, but yeah...there have been a few times when the "eh, eh, eh, eh" sound starts to grate, and I've turned to her and actually said "Can you just not?". Of course, this serves a very important purpose. The moment I heard myself say it, and saw her blank "But eh though, Mommy.", stare, I was reminded how much she really doesn't understand yet, and how  point...and the pressure valve is released, and we can start over. Saying "You're a baby, you're a baby" out loud helps too-reminding yourself that they absolutely in no way whatsoever can help or change what they're doing, makes it easier.

    3) You're probably not going to "sleep when the baby sleeps".

          I understand that this it's important, if not essential, to get rest and sleep when you can. But here's the thing...it is also important that I eat, shower, go to the bathroom, load/empty the dishwasher, wash the bottles, wipe down toys, make dinner, make phone calls, FINALLY PUT THE LAUNDRY AWAY INSTEAD OF GETTING DRESSED OUT OF A BAG/OFF THE DRESSER, organize the diaper bag, and a million little things that go about a billion times easier when the little Chicken is curled up sleeping. <3

         There certainly are times when I've laid down because she was asleep, and those little naps are delicious-but equally valuable, and essential, are those things that I stay awake to do, even when sometimes those things are eat nachos and watch My Strange Addiction on Netflix. We parents need to remember that alone time, and zone out grownup time can be just as rejuvenating in some circumstances, and we should rejoice in it:)

    4) It is really, really hard not to compare and compete with other parents.

        Every week, I get an email from a baby website that gives me a synopsis on where Penelope should vaguely be, developmentally. We've been getting them since the pregnancy, and they're very useful, and a good time. The scary place though, is in the forums; in that place where the other mommies talk about where THEIR baby is, developmentally, in comparison to all the other babies. The comments range from the worried ("Why doesn't he have teeth yet?!) to the adoring ("He is such a joy"), to the hyper competitive ("Well, our little prince has 8 teeth, he's been rolling over for MONTHS now, and he's not even applying to a safety school!")

          As much as I laugh at those entries though, it's hard not to go to that place, and I'm not sure how much we should fight it. Why shouldn't we secretly feel extra proud of our babies for doing things all babies do, just because it's a little early? Why isn't it something to be proud of, that Penelope has two teeth when some babies have none, and also she hardly cries when she gets shots, as opposed to the kids we hear who cry for whole minutes, and she LIKES vegetables an-see? We walk a line between just being proud parents and competitors, and damn it if that's not a hard line to walk. Still, I'd much rather compare in her favor, than end up doing what all kids despise-the hated "Oh but (insert friend's name) got an A, so it's not like the teacher doesn't give them, so what happened?" From the outside, it's a ridiculous habit, but from the inside, it's coming from that place of fierce love-and yes, your baby IS the first to ever do that thing all babies do, and yes, they are better at it than any baby ever. 

    5) Your relationships will change.
         It's fairly to be expected, that the relationship you have with your partner will change once Baby is born, but what I didn't truly anticipate, was how much my other relationships would change. This has ranged from from the very good with my mother-in-law (it takes me a while to feel truly close to someone, and having Penelope made it simpler and easier for me to do that faster with her, for which I will always be grateful), or the reconnection with an old and dear friend, to the not-so-good, as with the disconnect with other friends who, due to distance and being Mommy, I just don't see or talk to as often as I used to.

          The fact is, when you have a baby (particularly during a time in your life when most of your peers don't have babies yet), maintaining your old dynamic with the people in your life becomes almost impossible. This can be a good thing; a shift in priorities can lead to letting go of old grudges, hurt feelings, and shyness. But it can also mean that you won't have as much in common with them anymore, and you may find that some people pull away, making you feel a bit like...they've moved on from the friendship. It's usually not something they or you is doing on purpose, but there are those in your life who won't come around, and will move on, just as there are those in your life who you will realize..you may not have room for anymore. This can hurt-a lot.

        As a mommy, I've had to make sure that I'm not forgetting that just because my life has changed, it doesn't mean that friends don't still need to have those long talks about boyfriend drama, and crazy hookup stories, because it's easy to get tunnel vision as a new Mom, but when you do take a breath and look around, you don't want to have forgotten your people so much that they're gone. Except sometimes, they will be gone. You will and should have a shift in what you will be mainly focused on, at least for a while, and there will be those in your life who have no interest in being a part of that. So be it. Let them go.

Trust me, there will be other more patient people who will get on that ride with you, pretend it's not silly when you weep on the phone (thank you, Nidhi!), look your baby in the eye and greet her every time they come over (thank you, Uncle Judd!), and make you understand, with all the little things they might not even know matter, that they are there, they're in, and they're not going anywhere.

     Well, I started to babble a bit, didn't I? What I was taking a looong time to get said, was basically that, yes, life changes drastically when you have a baby, in funny, sweet, tiring, tiny, huge ways, but that it's all for a good reason, and at the very least, it's an adventure!

Whos body IS this?

     I have always taken great pride in being healthy. In knowing what my body was going to do at any given moment. I've known for a long time what food it likes, doesn't like, how much it needs to sleep, even when-sorry boys-THAT time will be, practically down to the minute. But then along came a pregnancy, and low and behold, I no longer knew a darn thing about this body of mine.

     It started during the first trimester, with the mood swings. I know Josh remembers quite vividly, the night we saw a shopping cart abandoned in the parking lot at Walmart.

Me: Who would leave a shopping cart out like that?! All alone!
Josh: I'm sure someone will come out and put it away soon, don't worry!
Me: YOU DON'T KNOW! YOU DON'T KNOW!!!! ::hysterical sobbing::
Josh:...I....don't know what to do for you right now.

    I suddenly became more of a crier than I'd ever been. Commercials made me cry. A guy friend teasing me about some nonsense, made me cry. I cried, and cried, and then after that, I cried some more. In all seriousness, I also was pretty down for about 3 weeks, which if you've ever had serious mood swings, is rough; you know you feel bad for no reason and intellectually you want to climb out of it but it's not always so simple. It passed quickly though, thank goodness, and the swings became more varied-a relief of sorts, because bouts of hysterical laughter over the smallest thing was one of the perks.

     I. was. so. TIRED. I, who has always taken a staunch stance (say THAT three times fast!) against napping, started napping every day. It got to the point where if I didn't nap in the middle of the day, Charlie would become unsettled, and try his best to cajole me into the bedroom to lay down with him. It started when I fell asleep constantly in the middle of the living room out of which Josh was running the campaign he was working on at the time, and didn't let up until the mid-late part of the 3rd trimester, when I was just too darn big to really get comfortable. I never in my life took as much pleasure from sleeping as I did during the first two sleepmesters of the pregnancy.

     Childbirth. So as you all probably know by now, we had one heck of a time having Penelope. They induced for days before the c-section, and during that time I took meds I swore I didn't want, cried in front of strangers, and was turkey-ed (think about it...) more times than I care to count. My body took some kind of beating that week, and waiting on the other end of it was almost 3 months now, of my brain and my body getting to know each other again. Much like a new couple, there were the unexpected and fun surprises my body gave itself.

"Oh, we lost 26 pounds in two weeks without even trying? Aw Body, you shouldn't have-it's really too generous!"

"Wow, we're actually creating food for the baby-that's pretty freaking cool."

"I honestly don't have as much of a desire for fried food? Well, good for me!"

     The other side to this new-couple coin was however, the bad surprises. The "Oh his adult movie collection is more extensive than his book collection" kind. The "Oh she and her cat not only sleep together but they share a closet in which more clothes are for the cat than for her", kind.

"Ah, so the weight came back, did it? NEAT."

"Really, so we're having that for the third time this month? GREAT."

"Hypothyroidism? You shouldn't have! NO REALLY. You SHOULDN'T have."

"I love you so much SO WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME STOP CHEWING SO LOUDLY LET'S PLAY BANANAGRAMS!"

    So yeah, my body and I are getting to know each other again. Taking things slow, as it were. I was blessed with good health and a very predictable body for the first 29 years of my life, and (gasp!), having a baby changes all that. It turns everything upside down, and it can take months for your body to get back to where it was. I do have hypothyroidism now, but I'm taking medicine for it. Penelope is sleeping for up to 6-7 hours at a time at night now, which is helping with being tired, and HOLY COW YOU GUYS I GET TO BE A MOMMY! 

    The biggest thing I've had to get used to, is the fact that we actually, really, truly made and had a baby. That she's really here and really ours. I look at her, and as cliche as it sounds, she is a little miracle. She and the way she makes me feel, is worth every second of unpredictability. Every ache I'd never had before, every downward than upward than downward again swoop of my desire to eat cake and dance around and also rest for 4 hours. After getting to the point where my brain was trying to talk itself into maybe never having babies at all, I have one, and she is glorious and the light of my life, and my treasure-I just have to get used to the idea that this body made her:)

MY doctor said Dilaudid!

About a month ago, Tina's mom came to our place.  The night before, she was staying at her son's house in NYC, and he lit some incense.  Tina's mom, Lani, has trouble breathing.

"That's killing me," she said.

"So leave," he said.  She did.

We were happy to have her out of harm's way, at least.  She's been great - Charlie, the dog, dotes on her (Lani was his first caretaker).  In fact, today he had his head in her lap.  She even does the dishes.  She's a little weak to pick up the baby, but they still like looking at each other.

A few days ago, she ran out of these opiates she takes for pain from a botched stomach surgery, several years back.  I just picked up new ones today from CVS, but it's been a hell of a time.  People can get cranky when they run out of opiates, and I'd be lying if I said this time has been easy on Tina to begin with.

Don't get me wrong - all told, we have a job, a supportive family, and a supportive community.  So our "struggles" have to be seen in context.  But damn if it didn't rain-pour-monsoon life changes, and we're still trying to figure out what it all means.

I'll let Tina speak for herself - she can probably speak more eloquently (and amusingly) about how this has been for her.  But some parts of it have just not been that funny.  We've had to learn and grow really fast while taking care of these two new people, one very young, one old.

The lesson for me has been that the fabric of community weaves itself tighter as you dive in.  The more threads you pick up, the more follow you.  We're all grabbing blind at all these threads, and frankly from up close they kind of look like a mess.  But the split end you pick up and carry with you and find a place for now, might be the one that ties two more threads together tomorrow, and makes you a little swing to kick back on.  My life is full of wonderful, colorful fabric, and I've never fallen so hard it didn't catch me.

Speaking of which, I have to go fold our laundry.

A Letter

A letter I wrote, before Penelope was born.  (Originally addressed to Paige, which is what we were pretty sure she was going to be named.)

------------------------------
Dear Penelope,

This is my first letter to you – ever. Tina, your mommy, told me she heard that girls become mothers when they get pregnant, and boys become fathers when they see their child. Other than a little ripples in mommy's belly, I haven't seen you yet. So I'm sure I'll know more what to say then, when I watch you literally come into the world, from... not nothing, exactly, but from your pouch where you're growing right now, inside mommy's womb.

I love you. I know that I love you with all of my heart, and I know I'll look back after you're born and wonder what I ever meant, because now I'll really love you in a way I could never have felt or described before – but already, I love you more than I can figure out how to put in words. I don't know what you look like – I've only seen pictures of your bones and your little, lumpy, curled-up body, still growing into a full human being. I'm sure you'll be the most beautiful girl I've ever seen.

You were made, literally and figuratively, by mommy and daddy loving each other, very much. As soon as I saw your mommy for the first time, it was only minutes until I was so comfortable with her, my whole body and soul just relaxed and just became happy and okay with everything around me. I've never been really relaxed before – you'll learn very soon that your daddy has a lot of energy, and that he's very restless. Your mommy makes me – not calm, exactly, because I'm just not calm, and mommy would never change who I am, just as I'd never want to change her. She makes me content, though. I'm still full of energy – but the worry is gone. I just am who I am, and mommy is my best friend for life, and we can be ourselves with each other for that long.

I hope – I believe deep within me, but I hope – that you, and someone else who does that for you, and that you do that for, will find each other someday. Part of you and that person finding each other is just being a beautiful, brilliant, and amazing person – which I know you will be. But part of it is hard work. You'll probably have some relationships that start out really nice, and then hurt really bad because they end. That's just the work we have to put in. It sucks, but it gets SO much better. In the end, it's so worth it!

And you'll be amazed how easy every day is, from the day you find that person on – not easy as in no work, but easy as in simple, like you've found your right place and you can just be you. The work never stops in life, at least not that I can tell. Life is all about feeling really good about the work you're doing. A great partner is a key ingredient of that, if and when having a partner is something you want.

For now, you have so much to learn and explore and discover. Me and mommy will try with everything we have to keep you from pain, to fill you with happiness, to make the growing-up process fun and rewarding for you. Babies aren't born able to do everything – humans evolved to make us into a mostly blank slate when we're little, so we can learn things from our mommies and daddies based on the lives they've had so far. Me and mommy will be helping fill some of that blank slate in for you. But there will never be anything you can't think. There will never be anything you can't do, as only you can do it. In other words, you'll always be the best at being Penelope, out of anybody in the world.

I hope we do really well for you, like you deserve. I hope we help you to find your natural strength, and give you some of our own. I want to be a father you can always look to as an example – not that you have to do everything the way I do it, but rather that looking at me helps you figure out the way you want to do it. You'll be your own person, and mommy and me are lucky enough to help you take the first few steps, and to be there as your mother and father for as long as all three of us live.

You can always ask anything – there's no such thing as a bad question. You can always count on us to love you and to support you. And you can always trust that we'll do everything we can to give you the best life we can give you – and then, increasingly, you'll take it from there. But there's a long way to go until you need to take over completely, and I'm so excited to have that time with you to start you off!

I'll tell you more about my own feelings about growing up, and why I was so excited to have a little girl, and why we love you so much. I'll tell you all of that, soon, and then more after that, and, I'm sure, more, forever after that.

But for now, get some sleep – you still have to get a little bigger before you come out and join us! Not too much bigger – poor mommy, she still has to give birth, which is really challenging – but as big as you want and need to be. We'll take care of you the second you're here. So will your really wonderful aunts and uncles, grandparents and great-grandparents, and all the great family and friends mommy and daddy have for you. I can't wait to meet you, I love you, and have as easy a birth as you can!


See you really soon,



- Josh (aka Daddy)

Always eat breakfast...cause you might end up having a baby.

   

        Well, we started this blog to write about what being pregnant and then having a baby was like, and then promptly got too busy having a baby, to write about it! Josh covered the basics in his last post, so I'll just fill in a bit here and there, starting on the morning of December 18th...

       I went in for a sonogram, because our little Blueberry had been breech. It turned out that she had flipped back over, and all the technician had to say, was that my fluid (Baby's swimming pool) was a bit low. I left in good spirits, and went across the street to the Labor and Delivery floor of Albany Med, to pre-register us, since we knew we were due very soon, and  I'd been told that pre-registering saves you from having to bother with it when you come in, and are in labor. I passed by some guys working on fixing hospital beds in the hallway, and one asked me, sounding quite shocked, if I was in labor, and remarked upon the fact that I was walking by myself. I reassured them that I was not in labor, pre-registered, and then headed to my doctor's appointment (they'd scheduled the sonogram for the same day so the doctor could see the results, and me, in the same day).

       I walked into the office, sat down to check in, and the doctor came over to me. This is the point at which things started moving very quickly.

      "Do you know that your fluid is low?" she asked me.
       "Yeah, she mentioned that, actually-is that bad?" I hadn't thought much of it, but clearly from what she said next, the doctor very much did.
        "Well, your water broke! I'll take a look at you to be sure, but we'll probably send you over to the hospital tonight or tomorrow."

WHAT.

       I sat down to wait, not believing the doctor was actually going to do that..my disbelief was unfounded, because after a very brief exam, she left the room, and came back to say "My friend, you're going over to the hospital now. You're having a baby today!"

       I'm pretty sure my face looked something like this-

       After repeatedly asking different forms of the word "Really?", and being told that no, I could not eat lunch first, (hence the title-I didn't having anything but "clears" for the next 5 days). I started making phone calls and hopped the bus. We walked back into the very part of the hospital I'd left not hours ago, and were led to my (private!) room. Even at this point, they weren't sure they were even going to keep me (there was still some debate about whether or not my water had broken), but eventually, they determined that I was staying.

         To make a long story shorter, that was the beginning of 3 days of inducing labor, asking (screaming) for pain medicine, and finally, on the afternoon of Saturday, December 21st, 2013, the doctors decided to give me a c-section. Within the next two hours, our little one came into the world, and at 4:40 p.m., we became parents!  Josh was not embellishing when he said that the staff at Albany Med was wonderful. They are some of the best people in the world, and I will be grateful to them for the rest of my life. They were helpful, knowledgeable, efficient, and most of all, kind to me when I needed it badly. We couldn't have chosen a better place to have our baby!

       I'll stop here for now, but I'm bursting with stories from that week-we stayed in the hospital for the customary 4 days after the birth-be back later!

December, Penelope!

Look at this face.  Just LOOK at it.

Hi, readers! I'm Penelope Malala Miller-Hyman.

This is why people HAVE babies!  She's tiny, she's healthy, she looks like a little cross between the two of us - in other words, she's beautiful.

As I type this (at 5am on a Sunday into Monday), that perfect little creature is several feet to my left.  She was fussy tonight (because the landlady still needs to fix the heat in here), so we fed her, changed her and put her in the carseat, which she loves to sleep in, though we almost never put her in it to sleep. (NOTE: That's because infants sleeping in car seats is not generally recommended, which is why we're taking turns being awake and why we have her right next to us.  Their little heads sometimes aren't able to stay up really well unless they're flat on their backs, which then could impact their breathing.  So every breath is not only adorable, but a nice reassurance that we haven't harmed our new daughter.)

In the background, we have a (very softly playing) mix of nice music, from Natalie Merchant and Fiona Apple to Cornershop, Gotye and Nick Drake, Vince Guaraldi, Dave Brubeck and the Wailin' Jennys.  I can't imagine little Penelope not growing up with eclectic music taste, unless her mother gets too much up in her play list.  Then she might get so much Gaga in her ears, there won't be room for aught else.

This is Penelope Malala Miller-Hyman, named for my troublemaking, wonderful, brilliant grandmother Pearl, and a sixteen-year-old girl who is possibly the bravest person in the world.  She is sweet-tempered, friendly, loves to stare at people and things, and is one week and one day old as of this past four-forty in the afternoon.  Her birthday is December 21st, as per the wishes of her auntie Sonali, who wished very strongly to share a birthday with our new baby, and had no problem delaying her birth by putting that wish out in the Universe several times on Facebook.  (Love you, S!) :)

Penelope was delivered by C-section, after three excruciating days of attempted labor inducement.  Birth, it turns out, is a somewhat inexact science, and no one could quite figure out whether Tina's water had broken slowly or was still intact, until it burst two days after she was admitted to Albany Medical Center.  The staff at Albany Med were truly excellent, a term we don't use lightly here.  They were good-natured, knowledgeable, big on explaining everything, and really big on making sure everything happened as quickly and cleanly as possible.  Even the best staff, the best woman and the best little baby in the world can't always make the perfect birth happen.  Sometimes God / stork / time / whatever ($5 to whoever gets the reference first) decides that a baby's route into this world will be circuitous.

Other than a small, rapidly-healing scar on Mommy's belly, though, we have nothing to complain about.  Literally, nothing.  Mom and her new husband, Stan, the baby's Opa (German for Grandpa), brought us furniture from downstate, helped Tina through a very trying time, babysat for a few days, and even photographed the whole venture.  I have a job, the Albany community made sure we had spiffy clothes and great gear for little Penelope - and we're home, settled and just learning to love sleep deprivation.

We love you, Penelope, very very much.  We hope you don't mind that we wrote this blog to tell the world all about your beginnings, and who knows?  If it's successful enough, someday you may be able to type an entry yourself!

In the meantime, here's some more warm baby fuzziness for the folks at home.  Enjoy, and thanks everyone for following along with our new adventure.

 

It's jiggling...NOT shaking.

        We've learned a lot over the past 8 months; what we REALLY needed to buy vs. what looked pretty and wouldn't be used for more than a year, how long mothers really should be breastfeeding, how to put a bassinet together, etc. But in Infant Care, we got a Very Special Lesson. We talked about how important it is not to shake an infant, and how to safely swaddle and calm a baby. The teacher mentioned that she had a video about soothing babies that she wanted to show us, and that the other couple in the class had already seen, so at the end, we stayed behind to watch.

          I should give the teacher credit at this point, btw, for very openly taking this video with a grain of salt. It was made by a pediatrician who'd worked on techniques to soothe babies, for years, and then went on to make what he clearly meant to be an ode to himself; the man could not have been more obviously in love with the sound of his own voice. Some of what he said was valid (I've heard enough about swaddling at this point, to believe in it), but other stuff, not so much. A big core principle of what he does, surrounds 5 steps you can take to soothe Baby. There's the swaddling, but then there's the soothing. It's the soothing and then the shushing, that I would like to discuss.

      Dr. LoveThyself (so nicknamed for the deep affair he's surely involved in with himself) says you should hold Baby on her side and-his words not mine-jiggle her. This means turning her on her side and doing what looks a lot like shaking to me, only with minimally more support to the neck and shoulders. He clarifies what he's doing in a voice that doesn't at all make me think he's going to demand that I either put the lotion in the basket lest I get the hose again, he says,

"It's not shaking...it's JIGGLING."

     Oh. Well then that makes it so much better. Meanwhile the babies DO quiet down..probably because they've become frozen with fear and/or are plotting their escape. Some still continue to cry though, and for these babies, the good doctor recommends continuing on with something he calls "shushing". This is not as gentle and lullaby-esque as you'd think. It involves loudly making a "SHHHHHHH!!!!!" sound at about the decibel of basketball player sized mosquito, while being super close to Baby's ear, and doing the jiggling. Almost every baby who was at this point still fussing, almost immediately goes still and appears to be "asleep". Smart babies; if it were me, I'd pretend to be asleep too. The video rounds itself out with a few more tips, then testimonials from parents who say it works like a charm, etc etc...probably because from the way the video is edited, the good doctor is in their homes UNTIL IT WORKS, and they'd really really like to eat dinner without him trying to soothe anyone who raises their voice.

       Suffice it to say, I won't be using this method on our Blueberry-yes, we'll rock her, and yes we'll make ACTUAL soothing noises at her, but we won't be doing anything that resembles this "tried and true" method. I think I'll stick with things that won't make me worry that my baby hates me and would love to make her first words "Put me down, you spaz-and for the love of God, why do sound like a white noise machine filled with elicit amphetamines?!"