The nanny February 17, 2009

Amelia will spend 4 hours with our nanny share nanny, Janet, today: from 8 am to noon.  Both Tom and I drove in to drop her off at the nanny share house in South Austin, but we left a 7 am and hit nearly no traffic, so we got there way early.  I took Amelia and drove her around the neighborhood for 30 minutes and Tom went on to work.  Amelia was really good in the car – even though she woke up repeatedly from my rush hour stops and starts, she didn’t cry at all.
Janet is a nice older woman who retired from a job at an accounting firm quite a few years ago and discovered that she wanted something to do, so she decided to take care of babies.  She had 5 kids of her own and has cared for Seville, the other baby in the nanny share, from when she was 3 months old until now, when she is 7 months old.  Seville is a sweet girl, just getting into crawling now, and her mom is very nice as well.

It’s a lot less expensive to do a nanny share, I’ve learned, than hire a full-time nanny to come to our house, which we could never afford even if we were both working full time.  And this way, Amelia gets cared for by one person reliably, and that one person only has one other child to care for.  We’re only doing part-time, 8 to noon 5 days a week, with the thought that this way whoever is working from home can actually get a little work done in the morning.  Of course, whoever is working from the office will be late to work (dropping off at 8 in South Austin translates into arriving at work around 8:30 or 8:45 on a GOOD day of Austin traffic).

Our current plan is that whoever’s working from the office in the morning takes Amelia into town and drops her off with Janet.  Then whoever’s working from home drives into town and picks her up at noon.  We can manage the cost of the nanny share if Tom can pick up another 10 hours of work a week, which should be easy enough as they’ve still got him running jobs right now and there always seems like there’s more work for him to do.  Also, he always has deadlines at the end of the day (when Amelia is at her fussiest) and that just doesn’t work at all.

I’m still a little numb about it, though I do feel some sadness about leaving our daughter with a stranger, no matter how dedicated, kind and loving that stranger seems.  It’s just SO difficult to be even slightly productive when you’ve got the baby with you home alone, and we’ve both been run very ragged in the last 6 weeks.

So we’re trying this out for a week to see how we all do.  I hope it works and I hope it doesn’t.  I’m worried that I’m giving up my principles re: “I don’t want to have a baby and give her to someone else to raise,” and that soon we’ll be leaving Amelia with Janet full time.  Which we might just barely be able to afford, with one of our salaries going directly to pay for childcare, matching the prevalent  paradigm of middle class parents of young children.  One of us staying home full time would NOT pay the bills, unfortunately, and in this rocky economy I’m loathe for either of us to voluntarily give up a good job.

It’s just very disappointing that we couldn’t make the working-from-home/caring for baby synchronized swim work well enough.  And we both worry that we’re failing our daughter.  Sigh.

Janet called with an update around 10 am:  Amelia had spent a very fun morning playing with Seville!  She loved the buzzy chair that Seville has outgrown and hadn’t cried once all morning.  She had drunk a little milk and was fast asleep in the chair when Janet called.  Oddly enough, her phone call brought me to tears more than driving away from the house did this morning.

Scared Wheatless February 5, 2009

It’s been 2 weeks of yellow poop with little straining, and this would be the time for me to start re-introducing possible allergens back into my diet.  I even bought some shredded wheat, so I could see if wheat bothers her by eating it in the morning – it takes about 4 hours for what I eat to hit my milk, and then another 1-ish hours for that to bug her, one assumes. By eating the possible offender in the morning, I should be able to see if it’s the offender bothering her if she gets fussy, and not just her normal afternoon fussiness busting out.  Babies are hard to experiment with – no wonder we don’t do a lot of clinical trials with them!

Anyhow, I keep putting off the experiment because I don’t want to handle that fussiness any more than I absolutely have to.  Coward mom.

Did I tell you about my recurring nightmare that I eat dairy without realizing it?  I have this nightmare about every 2 nights – I am eating something, get about halfway through, look down and realize… Oh MY GOD!!! I Just Ate Cheese!  What Do I Do??? I Need To Make Myself Throw Up!  WHere’s the Ipecac?  Then lots of running around happens and I wake up.

It’s kind of fucked up that I now have nightmares about eating cheese.

Working from home February 4, 2009

I am stealing time from work to write this.

It never seems like stealing time from work to check my Gmail, reserve a library book, pay bills online, or IM with my pals while at work.  It just seems like a pleasant break from the grind, something that will make me more efficient because I’ll stop worrying about whether we paid the cell phone bill last month.

But because I am sitting on my couch and the baby is ASLEEP, this is prime working time for me, and it’s very guilt-inducing that I am not writing an email right now.

This is how working from home goes, for me:

5-ish am, wake up and frantically put in contacts, pee, and change out of pyjamas as I keep an eye on the baby I left alone in the bed with all sorts of pillows that are just waiting for me to turn my back so that they can suffocate my child.  But we’re supposed to elevate her because of the reflux, so you tell me what I’m supposed to use to do that.  All we have is potentially murderous pillows, so I maintain constant frantic vigilance.  Keyword for the day is: frantic.

5:30 am. nurse Amelia back to sleep, put her in the buzzy chair with a blanket over her. Worry that I overheat my child on a regular basis, also a SIDS no-no. Put her in the pink buzzy chair, which lets her lie straighter and not crunched up into a C like the blue buzzy chair does, but turn on the “womb” sounds of the blue buzzy chair because Tom just discovered that she’ll sleep to that for a long time.

5:35 am, make oatmeal with froz. blueberries, flax meal and brown sugar (no dairy, bah) and eat it as fast as possible.  Take vitamin & probiotic (so I can digest possible allergens better) with water.

5:45 am, pull end table in front of couch and set up work laptop on it.  Set up baby supplies on & around couch: boppy pillow, blanket to tuck under one end of boppy pillow (to incline her as we nurse), 2nd blanket to lay over baby in case she gets cold (and because she sleeps better when warm), spit-up rag, remote control, glass of water, rattle.

6:00 am, start replying to work emails ridiculously early in the day to prove to my bosses that I do indeed work from home and I get up early to do it besides.  Keep eye on kid as I do so – the pink buzzy chair turns off its buzz after 5 minutes and sometimes that wakes her up. Womb sounds also turn themselves off, not sure if on same timing.

7-ish am, change/snuggle/nurse awake baby as I type work emails with one hand and check my gmail.  Read multiple Yahoo mommy group digest emails and dread the day I have to deal with colds, separation anxiety, crawling/walking, etc.

7:30 am, carefully slide sleepy baby onto couch, still propped up on boppy pillow, with blanket over her, and start typing with both hands (heaven!)

8:00-10:00 am, juggle emails and baby.  Don’t answer cell phone while baby is awake because having a crying baby in the background is slightly unprofessional.  Use Skype with headphones to make calls out ONLY while baby is nursing or COMPLETELY asleep.  Roll shoulders back when possible because 2-handed typing over your nursing baby will make your shoulders hurt.

10:30 am, eat a little something if baby will let me

11:00 am, continue to juggle laptop and baby.  Try to calculate how many hours actually worked that morning to see if working after noon (only 5 hours of work from home is needed per day, as I work 10 hour days at work 3 times a week).  Look forward to being able to shut the laptop and just attend to baby.  Start strategizing for this afternoon’s outing (probably doctor’s visit or diaper pickup/dropoff in town).

12:00 pm, decide that even if 5 hours of work were not accomplished, there is no more energy for any more work.  Chill with the kid while watching some DVRed Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares or The Daily Show. Think that you might get an hour or so of work done this afternoon.  (This never happens.)

That is on days that I do NOT have a deadline.  Twice this month I have had a proposal due on a day I work from home, and that’s infinitely more tense.  I will say that I am much more able to work efficiently since I got work to buy me an iPhone so I can email while in the pediatrician’s waiting room – it’s much easier to type one-handed on that little screen, too!

Many days I don’t know if it’s really better for Amelia to have me caring for her with half (or less) of my attention, or if a stranger who was actually able to attend to her full time would do a better job.  I don’t think we can afford a nanny, honestly, and I don’t know a better way to do any of this right now.  She’s what Dr. Sears calls a “high-needs baby,” who hates being put down unless she’s asleep – and frequently will not even let you sit down while holding her if she’s awake.  Hoping the magical age of 4 months (only a month away!) will ease some of this needyness, but what if it doesn’t?

Tight-ass January 14, 2009

Sorry for the long-time-no-post, but it’s been a little tense and busy around the place for the last week or so…

Amelia has been struggling for weeks now with ever-escalating problems including:

green, foul-smelling, liquid, frothy and occasionally bloody poop
constipation (painfully straining for hours to poop or fart)
increasingly frequent spitting up
nasal congestion
coughing
tight tummy that’s painful to the touch
bouts of colic

With both Tom and I trying to work from home and care for her simultaneously, it’s been a real struggle to keep her comfortable and still get work done during this trial period our employers have both given us.  As an example, I’ve had to interrupt the typing of this post 4 times so far to comfort her as she wakes up from unsuccessfully straining to poop/fart.

Make that five.

We saw our pediatrician, Dr. Parr, yesterday – on the bright side, she’s not brushing us off.  She took some blood & an x-ray because of the stool sample we gave her last week with blood in it.  She requested more stool samples to test for salmonella & rotovirus, etc.  Dr. Parr’s rough diagnosis is that we’ve got a combination of reflux, colic and maybe something else. We’re using a combination of simethecone drops, gripe water and glycerin suppositories while feeding her on an incline, burping frequently, and trying to keep her vertical for 30 minutes after eating.

I’ve already cut out dairy, soy, wheat, nuts, legumes, chocolate, spice, and all gas-causing vegetables and fruits from my diet, as well as all high-acid fruits & veg. (If you’re wondering, that leaves rice, meat, oatmeal, potatoes, zucchini, apples, and Hagen Daz sorbet.)   Dr. Parr now wants us to try a special colic formula for a couple of days to see if that makes any difference. But not until I collect another stool sample by laying Amelia’s butt on plastic wrap and inserting a rectal thermometer….

Upon seeing the x-ray yesterday, Dr. Parr got very worried about possible bowel irritation and rushed us to see Dr. Josephs, a pediatric surgeon up by Dell Children’s.  They worked us in that same afternoon, so off to the surgeon we went, trying not to panic all the way there and while in the waiting room for an hour after being told I shouldn’t nurse her until the doctor saw her in case we had to rush her to surgery!

Dr. Josephs was not at all worried by the x-ray but confirmed Dr. Parr’s observation that Amelia has “anal stenosis,” which means her anus is unusually tight – hence the inordinate straining to poop.  ( It is generally agreed that she gets this from her father.)  His instructions were that we needed to “condition the muscle” by sticking an 11 mm “anal dilator” stick up her butt twice a day for 2 weeks, then return to his office for a bigger stick.  This can evidently take a number of months.

The buttstick hurts her, and quite frankly, it feels like I’ve just been told to anally rape my infant daughter twice a day for 3 months. Between the drops, the suppostitories, the buttstick, the painstaking feeding, the restricted diet, and the thought that perhaps it’s just my breastmilk that’s poisoning her despite my best efforts, I’m at the end of my tether.

I really want Amelia to be well and free from pain.  And I hate to admit that I really want her to be well so I can just enjoy my precious baby without having to keep all these obnoxious, exhausting balls in the air all the time.

I guess I’m feeling sorry for myself, and I really do feel sorry for her in her pain & discomfort, but it’s so hard when NOTHING I do seems to help and all the treatments we’re given only piss her off or make her more miserable!

Anyway, if you have a little extra strength to send suffering parents and baby, please do.  We’re miserable and tired (and I’m hungry) and the light at the end of the tunnel seems really, really dim.

wiggle worm November 18, 2008

One of the most beautiful things about my baby today is how she moves when she’s alert and (mostly) awake. She loves to kick her feet and wave her arms and stick her tongue out.

Amelia’s jaundice is starting to recede (according to Tom who hadn’t seen her all day and is thus a more reliable source than I am), and she’s starting to get on a more reasonable nursing/sleeping schedule. Though, I will say, she does occasionally binge on breast milk: she’ll nurse and nurse until she’s spitting up, and then she still insists on hitting the booby for more-More-MORE!

We went to the grocery store together today. I thought a small outing would be a good way to get ready for our bigger outing tomorrow afternoon, when we’re going to drop off the used diapers and pick up clean nice ones. (We’re too far out of town for the service to come pick them up.) Driving was a real trip – I was all hesitant and nervous, and felt rather checked out. Grocery shopping was equally trippy; it felt wrong to be attending to Things Not Amelia. The whole world seems way too big for my little girl… how do all those other parents do it?

my precious October 4, 2008

Scene: I am driving to work, listening to NPR as I always do. StoryCorps comes on. Yay! I love StoryCorps. The interview is between a young woman and her brother-in-law, about how she met her husband and started dating him, then what happened when his cancer came back and he died. I tear up. There was this touching moment when she shows him the dress she wants to wear to his wake. I start to sob, and must pull off into a little condo complex to cry. (There’s a put-baby-to-sleep methodology called Cry It Out, and I frequently feel that the universe had instituted a CIO program on me.)

Does it ever feel to you, when you reflect on the people in your life, what a terrible risk it is to love? Lately I am hormonally obsessed with how deeply I have wandered into this dangerous ocean of emotional attachment. So much of my psyche was terrified of loving and committing to Tom; the even more permanent commitment of motherhood sometimes seems impossibly perilous.

Don’t get me wrong: I know, in my blood-choked brain, that the risk of loving is far outweighed by the rewards thereof. But my heart has floated far away from logic on this tidal wave of hormones, and lately I am dogged by fear of the love for my daughter that grows within me just as she does.

What do you do with that?

ridiculous, hold the sublime September 29, 2008

My midwife had recommended last week that I take some prenatal yoga classes, mostly to get me meeting other pregnant women and stop feeling so fucked up. Sounded like it might help.

I looked up the classes at Yoga Yoga, marked them on my calendar, and finally found time to make it to a class this afternoon. I left with plenty of time, even though I had never been to this studio. I had all my yoga clothes. I had researched the route.

And then I confused Burnet Road and Braker Lane. I travel both of these roads, not often, but often enough. I drive Burnet rather frequently – there are various print shops that I use for work on Burnet, as well as my new favorite Indian restaurant.

By the time I realized that I had taken Braker and not Burnet off of Mopac, it was 20 minutes until the class started – which was not enough time to find the studio, buy a card of ten classes, and change clothes. So I just headed home and went grocery shopping instead.

These are the moments that I feel completely unqualified to be a mother. I’ve lived in Austin for over 3 years now. I should be able to find my way to a yoga studio located just 10 minutes from my office after looking up the route on Google Maps. The only thing keeping my fingernails on that last shred of sanity is the shaky belief that this is still the hormones working. That, and the rather less dramatic realization that getting lost in my own backyard is not the worst thing that could have happened to me today,

Ya! September 23, 2008

I have found myself obsessing on “enough.” Am I getting ENOUGH protein, ENOUGH fiber? Am I getting ENOUGH done around the house?  Am I getting ENOUGH exercise?  (Definitely not.)  Am I resting ENOUGH?  Are Tom and I talking ENOUGH?  Am I reading ENOUGH?  (Not usually a worry of mine.)  Are our finances going to be prepared ENOUGH?  Did I get ENOUGH done at work today?

I am constantly worried that the answer to any and all of these questions is no.  And while I understand in (what’s left of) my brain that everything I’m doing probably is enough, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m wrong.  There must be, the feeling says, something more that I should be doing, if I only knew what it was and could manage to do it.

In Spanish, at least Mexican Spanish, there are a number of words to communicate this concept of “enough”:  there is suficiente, roughly meaning “sufficient;” there is also ya or basta, as in “Enough!  Stop!  Quit!”  A very parentesque thing to do in Mexico is to tell your kid “Ya!” when he or she is doing something annoying or inappropriate.  You hear it a lot from teachers, in fact.

Perhaps I can alter my English understanding of the word “enough?”  Because I have it on good authority that I have never felt, in my whole life, that anything I have ever done has been “enough.” And this parenting thing seems to be a huge gaping black hole of enough-ness.

In fact, I wonder if there’s a “too much” warning buzzer built in anywhere?

free time & failure September 6, 2008

When Tom goes away for a couple of days (usually not more than a night and a day, to be honest) and I have some time to my own, a couple of things usually happen: I read a lot and listen to the classical music radio station – classical gets on Tom’s nerves, one of our sharpest incompatibilities – I usually eat weird shit and watch bad tv, and I frequently exercise in the living room in front of the tv.  (I don’t know why, but it seems embarrassing to do sit-ups or lunges in front of the tv with Tom sitting on the couch.  What an odd thing to be self-conscious about, right?)

What also usually  happens is that I plan to do all sorts of household chores and I very rarely do them, feeling guilty about it when he comes home.  This is especially common when he goes away to do something like help his dad out in Cuero, like this weekend.  I feel like I ought to be at least able to do all the dishes and laundry and maybe even clean the bathroom for once (Tom’s cleaned the bathroom about 95% of the time, ever since we moved in together and yes, I am aware what a freakishly lucky woman I am.  I hate doing bathrooms.)

This weekend has not been any different.  Sure, I did the laundry and ironing, but Tom’s 2 hours away from home and the kitchen and living room are as much, or more, of a wreck as when he left and all I want to do is keep watching The Riches on DVD (Netflixing tv is awesome) and surfing the webosphere.  I love my time alone, and I always have – I savor the freedom from the strictures I put on myself in the presence of others, even my most trusted partner in the universe.  And yet, the dishes are still disgusting and no one here is going to wash them while I sit around, resisting the ice cream in the fridge because my midwife tests me for gestational diabetes tomorrow, and watch Eddie Izzard try to talk Merkin.

Sigh.  I fear for myself as a mother sometimes, I really do.  Lately, as we’ve been getting so much done around the house, I feel like I’m getting more efficient and capable than I’ve ever been… and then times like these show up and I wonder if I’ll even be able to cope, when the placenta stops babysitting and I have to care for Amelia with my own two hands.