Off-topic

I got an i*Phone last week. I don't think I've been an early adopter of any sort of technological whizbangery since about 1995, but I had to get a new phone because my old one was SO outdated that AT*andT would no longer support the Whatever Technology it ran on. And my friend works at App*le and gave me her 25% employee discount, so I went for it. I love it and carry it with me around the house and spend hours updating my settings and contacts and watching "Di*ck in a Box" on You.Tube. I am sort of afraid someone will steal it, though - something that was NEVER a danger with my old phone, which is approximately the size and shape of a microwave oven.

The best thing

You know how when you're enduring infertility, the worst thing that people can say to you (other than that perhaps you weren't meant to have children) is that they'd never do IVF (or IUIs or whatever)? Well, it turns out that the best thing someone can say to you when you're having breastfeeding problems is that they never would have been able to stick with it if they'd faced your hurdles. One of my friends (who breastfed her daughter for 18 months) said this to me the other day, and that made me feel better than just about anything I've heard or thought.

In other news, So.ren's napping is a complete catastrophe. He often resists going to sleep, and when he does, he'll wake up and not be able to go back to sleep. And then he's crotchety because he's tired. There are hours of crying each day now where there used to be maybe one in total. The baby nurse returns on Thursday - I just hope I can last until then. I am having massive anxiety about all of this and can't eat or sleep well. I just have no idea how to get him back on track. I sit outside his room (as I am doing right now) and listen for peeps or cries so that I can soothe him before it escalates to the point of no return.

This may be like showing a photo of your own urin*e, but hey...

Here's a photo from a couple of weeks ago of my best pumping output of the day (usually 3+ ounces total...after 8+ hours of no pumping). It's gone down since then, for I'm only pumping twice a day, and I currently have a plugged duct or twenty. But I thought I should have a record that there were occasional pumping sessions when, if you didn't know that it had been all night since I had last pumped, it looked sort of like a normal person's pumping output.

In other news, I am feeling great anxiety. You see, So.ren's naps had, in a word, gone to shit. He would wake up after 30-40 minutes and then work himself into a lather, thereby making it very challenging to get him back to sleep. So we moved away from the self-soothe model and returned to the parental-soothe model in the hopes that he'll be better rested and will re-learn how to fall asleep (and get himself back to sleep if he wakes up). This, in turn, means that I sit right outside his room, listening for peeps. There is no sleeping while the baby sleeps, since I am too nervous to nap since I'm sure he'll cry at any second. I would not do well in Iraq, I'll tell you that. So far, he does seem better rested, but I'm not sure he's learning anything about getting himself back to sleep. (Note, though, that he is totally able to do this at night, for some reason.) The newborn specialist returns late next week, so I hope she can get this on track. In any case, we'll have childcare starting in mid-August, so at least I won't be stuck in the house all day long. And tonight I plan to have my husband on duty while I take a Uni*som in the hopes that I won't wake up like I did today at 3am, after which I was unable to go back to sleep, despite the lack of a crying baby. (The baby was there, just not crying.)

I think I am also anxious because this is the time of year when people leave town, either for good or on long vacations. Summer is so lovely around here, but it's also always a bit sad since friends move away. The current culprits are TLB and Brando, though we wish them the best of luck in Northern Michigan, where they're headed!

Photos galore

This is a post of many photos. First, Susanne asked in the comments of a couple of posts ago about getting back into shape post-c-section. Here's a shot taken of me a few days ago. I definitely still have the post-pregnancy pooch and about 5-10 intransigent pounds. I looked and weighed the same at about two weeks postpartum, which I thought was sweet, but it seems less sweet seven weeks later. I know that some people retain about that much weight to breastfeed, so we'll see if it comes off now that I am starting the weaning process. In terms of training, my OB was fine with whatever exercise I want to do. For the half-marathon, I'll be following this schedule, though I am not starting it until next week at the earliest. It looks manageable. (As an aside, at my podiatrist appointment last week, they kept me waiting for ages, which meant I finished the New Yorker that I brought. I was then left with what was in the room, which included a home-design magazine from 1996! 11 years old! I felt quite altruistic when I left my July 2007 magazine there for the next waiting patient.)

Here's a photo from So.ren's two-month birthday on Saturday. Apparently, he thinks he's four, five, or six, depending upon how you want to read his hands. As you can see, he got to wear an outfit for the first time. Until now, it's been all onesies and sleepers. Check out that plaid! And that smile! He's also started to laugh, though not always at what we think is funny.


And today he had his two-month checkup, which included shots (and an hourlong wait, since the pediatrician didn't realize she was supposed to be in - pfffft). The beleaguered little fellow is currently sleeping, and we hope it continues until his appointed wakeup time at 1pm. He was 11 lbs, 13+ oz, and came in in the 50th percentile for everything - length, weight, head. What a champ!

Now that he's had his first round of shots, I'll be tapering off the breastfeeding. I'm already down to pumping three times a day. I'm hoping to cut one today, leaving two (in case you couldn't follow that math), and then I'll start cutting feedings. I have mixed feelings about all of this, but I am focusing on the pros of the situation, which include the following: (1) no more feeling like an abject failure every time I pump a measly 3/4 ounce, (2) new ability to leave the house for more than an hour or two at a time, (3) no more plugged ducts, thus allowing for jogbras and, relatedly, jogging, (4) caffeine!, (5) booze!, (6) sleeping on stomach, and (7) shortened feeding times, resulting in more playtime. (Note: I know many people do drink caffeine and booze while breastfeeding and that it is no big deal, but I just haven't done so, and then I decided to make them prizes for getting to nine weeks.) I have also decided to feel proud for getting to nine weeks (and probably ten total, since I'm just starting to drop nursing sessions) instead of lame. Yay!

We've also been interviewing nanny candidates. Around here, that means college students. We've seen some good ones and hope to make a decision soon. Since the pool is mostly college students, we may need to get two, given class schedules, etc. One nanny candidate did do something rather dumb - she had a 1:45pm interview with me and called at 1:45 to get directions. Then, in the interview, I asked what she could point to in her experience to demonstrate that she's very reliable, and she said punctuality. Ha!

Really? Fayemus?

Jane sent me a link to Gawker's Most Pretentious Baby Name Contest of 2007, and my darling little boy's name made the list of runners-up. But, c'mon, look at the names it's with! Are any of these real names, other than the one we chose? Pffft.

I look forward to finding out what the finalists and winners were. They must be doozies!

Pictured above is my pretentiously named son in his pretentiously hipster CBGB onesie, taken at an unpretentious barbecue over the weekend.

I would like an adult-sized one of these

This papasan swing is the coziest thing ever - that pod is lined in fleece and a synthetic suede-y fabric. It looks quite relaxing to me. So.ren isn't allowed to fall asleep in there anymore, but we do stick him in at the end of playtime as a kind of soothing mechanism before we go upstairs and he screams and screams about being put to bed.

In other news, I need a goal, and getting into shape seems like a good, not-mentally-taxing goal, so I am thinking of running a half-marathon in October. Really, I'd like to run this marathon in April, but that's easy to say from my position on the couch. I've run two half-marathons in the past, but I was younger then, and I also lived in an area where I could train on lovely trails, whereas now I do not. Also, the reason I've never run a marathon before is that my knees and feet are shoddily constructed. Still, I harbor delusions of grandeur, and by grandeur I mean intense pain, blisters, and chafed and bleeding nipples (and I'm not referring to breastfeeding, for once).

To further these foolish dreams, I am visiting the podiatrist today to get fitted for orthotics. I was fitted for them in the past, but then it turned out that my podiatrist was a boob. In addition to my delusions of grandeur, I harbor delusions that orthotics will solve not just my physical ailments, but also global warming, the Iraq war, and the problem of evil, by which I mean Dick Cheney. We'll see how that goes. In the meantime, I'm walking daily and plan to start more high-impact, jog-bra-requiring exercise once I'm done breastfeeding. A week from today, So.ren gets his shots, and that's when I've decided I'm free to quit. Until then, I'll keep nursing and pumping, though perhaps not as rigorously as I have been.

Late-onset colic?

Our darling little boy has become a really large pain in the ass the past few days re: naps. For a few days, he didn't want to go to sleep. Today, he's gone to sleep well enough, but then wakes up and is totally inconsolable. I've spent hours attempting to soothe him while still keeping him in his crib, with little success. I'm hoping he'll rethink his new policies and return to the old routine. He's still sleeping pretty well at night at least - let's hope he doesn't dispense with that, too.

We have a sitter tonight so we can go out to eat with my brother, who's visiting. We're going to put the baby to bed for her in the hopes that he'll then snooze the whole time we're out. Fingers crossed....

Travelin' man

Have you ever noticed how many baby clothes label the baby as such? Like, just in case you were wondering why this guy was so short? Oh, I get it now: he's a baby! Anyway, you can't tell it from this photo, but that baby was visiting some friends a couple of hours away. This was our first experiment in deviating from our schedule, though we stuck to it pretty well - he napped in the car at roughly his normal naptimes, and he had an eat/play/nap/eat/play cycle at our friends' house while we all sat around observing him and eating snacks. Good times. And get a load of that fat baby belly!

Here's a photo from today on a foray outdoors. The dog seems to have accepted the baby into the household, or he's at least become resigned to his presence.

This week, my brother arrives for a visit and a crash course in infant care. If we spontaneously combust, my brother will get So.ren, so he needs some education in the basics.