One day I will blog again. Currently jeni + 19 month old + job = GOD HELP US ALL. So sad.

I’ll take it this year because I feel like a Mom this year. Even though I was a Mom last mother’s day, Colin wasn’t even 2 months old. I still didn’t know what I was doing, and I still felt sad and scared. But this year is different. Now I know I’m doin’ it. I’m trying and I think I may be doing an okay job. The kid seems to love me – he says “Momma” and really means it! He demands me – ME. Holy cow, what a feeling that is. I am loved and needed and he appreciates me. It’s the most fulfilling job I’ve ever had. I am lucky. I am a Momma. I am Colin’s Momma. I can do it.

Happy Mother’s Day to all ya’ll Mommas out there doin’ it, too!

Foodie

I am a foodie. I’m never sure what that term is supposed to mean, but I can say wholeheartedly that I love good food. I love to cook it, shop for it, buy it, read about it, talk about it. I could go on and on about food and how it relates to my childhood memories and how I can get lost in a cupcake when I’m sad – but that’s just depressing and not the point. I may not have the healthiest outlook on food (I guess I shouldn’t LOVE it so very much), and how I feel about food was greatly shaped by my upbringing in the South.

In my family, food = love. My parents made no effort to bring my sister and I up with healthy eating habits. For one, healthy Southern cooking probably cannot exist. Secondly, they simply didn’t know any better. I’m not saying my parents were stupid, but I am saying they were young and had no real understanding of nutrition. My Mom loves to tell everyone how I “refused” baby food and would only eat bacon gravy. She made it every day for me AS AN INFANT! Why on earth she thought this was a good idea, I’ll never know. But, damn – it did not set me up for future success! My parents never tried to get us to eat better. It was simply not a part of our lives.

And man, it should’ve been. I’ve been a chub for as long as I remember. I have tried and tried and have worked really hard at developing healthy eating habits. Obviously, years of eating poorly makes converting to eating right somewhat difficult. And I surely don’t get it right all the time. I have my comforts – a good cake, nice bacon, carne asada, fluffy bread ‘n butter, chicfila. But, all in all, I have come a long way from how my family raised me. I try. I make vegetables and grains. I avoid the blatantly disgusting stuff. I at least think about  things.

So, because I feel like I got such an assy start from my parents, I have vowed to ensure that Colin starts off right. And so far he has! The kid LOVES to eat – and he eats great food. We are lucky that the home daycare he attends actually feeds amazing foods. He eats better than we do half the time. He’s getting black bean burgers and lentil and rice casserole. And he loves it! Give him a bean and he’s happy. He’ll gobble up brussels sprouts and asparagus. At home we try to cook healthy meals for him and, in turn, cook healthier for ourselves (usually).

That being said, my parents think I’m crazy. They don’t understand why I would deprive Colin of “the good stuff”. My view? Why give him a cookie if he’ll happily eat strawberries and bananas? Why offer neon orange cheese poofs when he totally digs avocado? I struggle with my parents on this issue. My Dad asks me if he can have Kool-Aid. When “why would he?” was my reply he answered, “it’s just flavored water!”. Yeah, with an ass-load of sugar. Come on, Dad!  Their view is if I eat it, he can eat it. Yeah, I eat ice cream sometimes. If I don’t give him ice cream, my mother says “Well, you’re eating it – why can’t he?”. Maybe it’s because he’s a BABY!

I am happy that my kid can eat lentils and veggies and love it. I feel like I’m giving him good building blocks for later in life. I’m not going to deprive him of all things fun (of course he got a cupcake at his birthday party! And yes, he’s had a small nibble of ice cream), but I am going to show him that the good for you stuff is fun and tasty, too. My parents never did that for me – I had to learn on my own, as chubby-ass adult. I owe a lot to my husband and his family, who were all vegetarians when I met them 11 years ago. They had lots of healthy food that I didn’t even know existed. Like hummus! What the hell?

I was going to write more about when you start feeding your baby “table food” and what to do when other people (grandparents) are in charge and are feeding them awful crap, but I’m tired. And I think SNL is coming on. I will say this: I think it’s nuts when I hear about people feeding their baby rice cereal when they’re only a month or two old.  That is all.

It’s a Boy! What up, Gender?

It’s no secret that I wanted a girl. However, in retrospect, I can’t really pinpoint why that was a big deal for me. Being a girl I guess I wanted a girl? It just seemed weird for me to make and raise a boy. Main reason: I didn’t now what it was that boys did. So, of course, finding out that I was growing a boy was a pretty big shock. What was I going to do with a boy?

As it’s turns out, I’m probably doing the same things with Colin that I would’ve done with a little girl. Colin’s being a boy hasn’t made my interaction with him any different and I’m buying him things I would have bought any chid of mine – boy or girl. I’ll admit, I don’t typically purchase girly clothes for Colin, but that’s not because I don’t want him to wear “girly” things, it’s because I don’t really like them myself. I look at clothes intended for girls and think “Thank the Lord I don’t have a girl”. Granted, some of the boy stuff kills me too. I generally hate cars, baseball (all sports actually), and trucks. When purchasing toys or clothes, I typically gravitate towards naturey type things with animals. I only recently bought a truck for Colin because, as it turns out, he has some sort of interest in trucks that I didn’t introduce – it just happened. The same thing goes with balls – I didn’t try to get him to like balls, but he does. His Dollar Tree Incredible Hulk ball is maybe his most beloved of toys. Thanks, Papaw, because I probably wouldn’t have purchased that. Not because I don’t like balls, but because I also have some weirdness about having “branded” stuff, like things from TV or a movie. Yeah – I’m weird.

Although he enjoys things like trucks and balls, the kid loves him some play kitchen and pots and pans…mostly because he really loves opening and closing things. Putting stuff in pots and lids on the pots may be his most favorite activity. I don’t see these things as “girl” toys, but I know there are some old school types that do. Last year, we attended a kid’s first birthday party and he got a play kitchen. The Grandpa was chastising the mom and dad about the kitchen being for “girls”. Who cares? And, moreover, really? Have you watched Top Chef?

I guess what I’m saying is – I don’t really care what Colin decides to like as long as I don’t find it irritating and horrible. Granted, I’m going to find a lot of things irritating and horrible, but I’m certainly not going to not let him have something based solely whether or not it was intended for a girl or a boy. I can see this running into some trouble down the road when it comes to my own father. I saw this myself growing up – my parents had my sister and I in dance classes, little kid cheerleading, and girl’s softball (My Dad wishing he had boys there). When I became a rebellious teenager, I listened to bands like Bikini Kill and was heavily into the whole “riot grrrl” line of thinking. I think my parents were a bit “uneasy” by my challenging the norm. They expected something different from me because I was a girl, my dad in particular. I remember many, many arguments about being a “normal” girl and feeling pretty distraught afterwards. I felt I was a normal girl..I just didn’t want to put on a dress and go to the prom. So what? Having had that experience with my parents, I know that I want to do whatever I need to do to ensure Colin is happy and expressing himself as he sees fit (within safety and reason, mind you). As he grows and finds out who he is, I’ll support him. If he’d prefer to play with dolls – ok, whatever. If my own father has issues with that, I guess we can add that to the list of reasons he thinks I’m crazy (in a loving way, of course).

Thinking about this with Colin makes me wonder how I’m going to feel if I actually do have a girl. I feel like I would probably go out of my way to ensure she isn’t limited to just “girl” things whereas I’m not really going out of my way for Colin. Maybe because I do have a boy, I approach gender differently. With him, I want him to feel like he can do/play with whatever he wants – no matter what – and I’m not going to try to shape him one way or the other. With a girl, I’d want her to actually want the boy things because it’s stupid that they’re “boy” things in the first place.  But, if she decides she likes princesses and unicorns then man, we’ll do it up. I like unicorns, too, future daughter. Colin, you can play with our unicorns if you want, but don’t tell Papaw.

Look, here’s my guy at about 3 months old in his pink tank top, giving you a “look”. I didn’t buy this, it was a gift from a color blind scientist. (That was the excuse – I think they thought I was having a girl!)

]]> http://themotheringlife.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/controversunday-what-up-gender/feed/ 2 jeni jh badges pink colin http://themotheringlife.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/one-year-photo-shoot/ http://themotheringlife.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/one-year-photo-shoot/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:45:26 +0000 jeni jh http://themotheringlife.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/one-year-photo-shoot/ ]]> We attempted our own photo shoot at Oakland Cemetery this weekend. Here’s one of my favorites of the boy examining some grassy substance.

I can’t blog. It’s hard. My day consists of waking up, going to work, coming home, cooking dinner, cleaning up, putting the kid to bed. 9 times out of 10, I fall asleep while putting him to sleep because we have to set a mood for sleeping. Lights off, sleep sheep going, twilight turtle projecting stars on the ceiling – it’s perfect. For a while we were getting him to sleep, moving him to the crib, and enjoying some “adult time”. Now, I lay on the bed with him and am asleep faster than he is. I have to force myself out of bed to perform my nightly dental routine (that now takes an eternity due to the fact that I’m about to spend 1000 more dollars on dental work and gotta do whatever it takes to keep the teeth from revolting against me).

It’s a shame, dudes. The only time I have to blog is when the boy is asleep and I can’t even do that. Don’t ask me how I’m managing this entry…I’m going to have to do a double ControverSunday this week because I missed last week and there’s something I actually wanted to say.

I write lots of blog posts in my head, but no one has an RSS feed to those thoughts (thank god). I just can’t manage time to sit down at the computer and do it. Between work, baby, sleep, and dental hygiene, I’m lucky to read all the great blogs out there on my phone while nursing the boy.

Wait, is this a confession or a complaint?

Other confessions for the week:

1 – On my day off, the boy went to the sitter’s while I stayed home and cleaned for 6 hours. I felt so terrible. BUT IT HAD TO BE DONE, WORLD!

2 – I paid $16 for a CD. I know, it’s INSANE!

3 – I’m really excited for the Chicfila spicy chicken sandwich.

Oh, well. Forgiven?

ControverSunday: Child Spacing

I think the fact that I’m posting on a ControverSunday topic on the following Friday is proof enough of this fact: I don’t know how I could possibly handle two babies and a full time job.

For this reason, baby number 2, will not be around until baby number 1 is a functional little dude and Mom (that’s me) can take a good, long maternity leave without going broke. That requires my old man to be finished with his PhD and making actual adult money instead of grad school stipend money. I figure he has 2 semesters until that elusive PhD and then at least 2 years of post-doctoral research before he gets a “real” job. If all goes well and this happens as planned, we’ll get started on baby number 2 in maybe 3 years. Colin will be 4 and able to do most things himself (minus chopping up his own avocado) and I’ll be 33, still a totally fine child bearing age. I gots time, it seems.

Immediately after Colin was born I didn’t want any more children. Mostly because childbirth sucked and having a newborn while recovering from a C-section doubly sucked.  However, once I was well again and once I sort of knew what to do, I started to miss being pregnant and I really wanted a labor d0-over. I can see how someone would want to have a baby shortly after the birth of another, until you consider actually caring for two tiny beings so close in age. I have a good friend who has a 2.5 year old and a 9month old and I simply do not know how she does it. There’s just so much logistics involved in having children that close in age…two sizes of diapers, double strollers, stuff, stuff, and more stuff. I thought it was hard to pack up to take Colin out and about, but when you’re doing it for two pretty small children you probably have to bring the entire house as well as a helper. I can’t always remember to even bring a bib when we go out, so remembering to do twice that would destroy me.  To my friend’s credit, she manages pretty well! I would flip my shits. I guess you could sum up my reasoning for the 4-5 year space as such: I need more moneys to have more kids, I would flip my shits if I had two really little kids at once.

I guess some people need to have kids close in age. My aforementioned friend had her first kid around 35 so she had to get that next one in pretty soon. Reasonable enough. I don’t know how the Duggars keep it up kid after kid.  Listen, Michelle, you must tell me how you actually muster up the desire to do it so soon after childbirth..cuz I’m a year postpartum now and I can’t figure that part out.

It seems relevant to the topic to give you all a brief overview of our breastfeeding “situation” and how we’ve managed to make it work for this first year and how that has impacted my views/decisions regarding extended breastfeeding. I had a pretty (very) difficult time getting rolling with breastfeeding. I am unsure whether this is simply because I had to have an unplanned C-Section and didn’t get to nurse the boy until 3.5 hours after he was born or if the swelling I experienced afterwords for many, many days somehow impeded my milk production. Either way, the milk wasn’t there. Our first night home was one spent in general agony. He was hungry, I was tired/in pain/defeated. He lost a great deal of weight and I had to supplement with formula. I started pumping immediately, trying everything I could to produce more than a tiny amount of milk. It took over 2 weeks of pumping, supplementing with formula, weight checks, smelling like a pancake house by taking fenugreek, and visiting a lactation consultant to actually get just enough milk moving to actually somewhat support the little dude. Also included: sleepless nights, feeling ravenously hungry, people grabbing at my boobies, raw nipples, and lanolin stained t-shirts. Not pretty, right? At some point, maybe around the 3 week mark, I was able to sustain Colin on 90% breast milk and an afternoon or nighttime bottle. When I returned to work, his formula intake had to increase because I couldn’t pump enough milk. It’s easy to feed a baby every 2 hours at home, but I couldn’t pump every 2 hours at work. I tried at first, but it was simply too hard. So Colin got a good mix of formula and breast milk during the day and then it was a nursing party when I got home and throughout the night.

Last month I stopped pumping at work. This kid is eating such great food at his Daycare that he doesn’t even care so much to eat a bottle while  he’s there – maybe 3-4 ounces a day, max. He loves food, I tell you. He eats things that I’m even a little grossed out about (like lima beans and tofu!). He can eat solid food like a pro. Tonight he had curry with us and loved it. The rice ended up all over his pants, it was chaos. Now that he’s 1 year old, we’re using yummy organic whole milk in a sippy cup and he seems to be getting it down. The bottle is a back up if the snot really hits the fan at Daycare or when he’s home with Dad.

But he still nurses. I thought we’d be done by now and it wasn’t until his first birthday started creeping up on us that I realized that maybe I should start thinking about weaning. People would ask me about it. My answer was always “We’ll start trying around his first birthday”.  Well, last week was his first birthday and I realize this: I don’t know when/how to stop breastfeeding. When I stopped pumping at work, the desire to completely wean Colin from the breast lessened. The annoying part of breastfeeding (pumping in a cold bathroom stall) was over and the good part (cuddling with a cute baby) still remained.

My mother-in-law breastfeed both her sons past the 2 year mark. I think my husband was a little over 2 years and my brother in law was 3. Before baby, I thought this was odd. I don’t know what her reasoning for nursing that long was…whether she just couldn’t let go or whether they were just happy to nurse for that long. I guess it doesn’t matter because I can see how both may be the case in our situation. I see that it will be hard to let go and Colin seems to really need to nurse sometimes. When I picked him up from Daycare today, he was practically trying to nurse through my t-shirt. He was beside himself, whining and flailing about. We got home (I live one street down from the Daycare, luckily a short trip) and he nurses for about 3 minutes and then is as happy as a clam. Tonight at bedtime, he nursed for 5 minutes and was out. I don’t know how to argue with that. At the same time I realize that he needs alternative comforting methods and different ways to fall asleep. Dad can put him to sleep, but Colin knows I’m around, he’s like a zombie for momma. The point is this, I don’t have a problem with breastfeeding past the 1 year mark. I feel like he needs it and I do enjoy the time we spend nursing. He’s really sweet and rubs my tummy or my chest. I figure as long as we both are happy with it, then we’ll do it – to a point. I think 2 years would be the cutoff for me for a few reasons: baby is HUGE and SQUIRMY. Besides this, I have no real plan for weaning because it seems to me that he’s weaning himself by his love of eating yummy “table food”.

Breastfeeding was a BFD (big fudgin’ deal) to me during pregnancy. It became an even bigger fudgin’ deal after being unable to give birth normally. I attribute my breastfeeding half-success to having been so extremely disappointed by my birth experience. I feel I worked so hard to make our version of breastfeeding happen that I don’t want to give it up to an arbitrary timetable or number.I think when it feels right to stop, we’ll both know.

The Culture of Pregnancy as it Relates to My Experience

As I write this, I am less than 1 hour away from marking 1 year anniversary of my baby’s birth. This time last year, I was being prepped for an unplanned C-Section. I was cold, excited, scared, and maybe vomiting. Now, I’m in my bed, the little man is snoozing next to me and the sleep sheep is creating the best ambiance of ocean sounds. How did we get here?

I came to become pregnant after an ongoing inner struggle of not wanting to admit I wanted a baby. I was back and forth and back and forth about it, the husband and I both were. In fact, on the occasion I’m pretty sure can be tracked back to “conception”, I said to him “if this doesn’t do it, we’re going to stop trying”. We hadn’t tried for very long, maybe 2 months, but I just couldn’t commit. I couldn’t bring myself to say “IT’S BABY TIME” although apparently it was.

I wanted to have a baby for 3 reasons. 1) I love my husband and wanted to have a baby and family of our own 2) I wanted to experience pregnancy and 3) I wanted to give birth. Note: I had little to no interaction with babies. Ever. I held/knew very few.

In my experience, the culture of pregnancy had many aspects. One of the biggest I dealt with was the treatment of pregnancy as a medical problem. From the start, I was pegged as “high risk”. The ass of a Doctor I saw for my first visit actually told me that although I wasn’t “healthy”, I was apparently healthy enough to get pregnant. Unhealthy = having high blood pressure at the onset of pregnancy and being overweight. I had to go to the Doctor all the time. I saw them every two weeks, had to see a kidney specialist (because the high blood pressure made for protein pee), had to see a Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialist once a week in my 3rd trimester. It was OVERKILL. Long story short, the high BP went away in the 2nd trimester, along with the proteiny pee, my kidneys were fine (no kidney disease for me, thanks for freaking me the fudge out!) and the trips to the MFM Specialist were agonizing. I had an ultrasound every week during my 3rd trimester and we’d look to see if baby was “practice breathing” and sit forever and change positions and drink cold water to wake him up just to see the little flutter of his lungs. They’d measure him every 3rd week to make sure he was growing properly and even gave us a bogus measurement around 34 weeks, stating that he was over 6lbs already and I was about to give birth to the jolly green giant. I am 5 ft tall exactly. Turns out they just measured his belly wrong and at the next measurement he was right on track and no reason to freak out about having to get the baby out when he weights 11lbs.

The worst part  came when they were measuring his brain and decided his ventricles were measuring on the “high end” of normal. Oh, what could that mean? Well, he could just be one of those kids in the “high end” of normal and that’s just normal for him and he’s just rollin’ that way, no big. Or he could have some developmental delays or maybe a godawful neurological problem like a blockage or Hydrocephalus – you know, water on the brain. Luckily, I had a cousin who was born with severe hydrocephalus and died while she was still a baby. So, yeah, I freaked the fudge out like nobodies business. I was a wreck. It destroyed weeks of my life with worry. Each week we’d remeasure, each week it’d remain the same. Finally, the doctor expressed she didn’t feel it was anything to worry, that it’s still within the realm of “normal” and all was well. She suggested he get an ultrasound on his head when he was born “just in case”. I declined because he is FINE.

My point is this. I did not have a life threatening disease. I was pregnant. My baby was fine. He was growing like he should and was born with no problems. But man, did these medical professionals do everything they could to ensure I spent 9 months worrying and beating myself up for every possible thing I’ve ever done in my life. EVER. So I ate as healthy as I’ve ever eaten, I tried so hard to ensure that things would go well. I gained 7lbs. The MFM Doctor actually said to me “We are surprised at how well you’re doing, we couldn’t ask for better!”. My thought? Maybe it’s because there was nothing wrong with me in the first place and I should be chillin’ at home instead of having goo all over my belly. D-U-H.

Labor was an extended medical nightmare that I’ve been reliving all day today, in memory, so I don’t want to delve into that.

The non-medical aspect I observed has more to do with how I felt about being pregnant and how other people treated my while I was pregnant. I liked being pregnant. Minus the bullmalarky medical aspect, it was fun and so interesting. I felt like I had a pretty awesome secret (before it was obvious I was pregnant, of course) and I had constant company. It was so much fun to feel him move and kick and hiccup. It was awesome having a belly that I didn’t have to worry about hiding, the clothes were roomy and forgiving. And man, do people love a pregnant lady. Granted, I didn’t get a lot of strangers rubbing my belly so I may have felt differently if that were the case. But everyone I knew had such excitement about the baby. They’d ask questions about the process, about the baby, about how I’m feeling. It was nice to know people cared. People love pregnant ladies, but once you’re a mom, that’s history. Now people love the baby and you’re left crying in the corner..which is fine (the baby is awesome, love him!) – minus the crying part. My (childless) friends loved me as pregnant jen, but all but abandoned me when mom jen came around and that was kind of a shock. It seems that our culture reveres the pregnant woman, but not the Mom. I don’t need to be revered, mind you…I just needed (especially during those first few weeks) to feel like I had some support. Because it’s damn hard to watch everyone be so excited about the baby while you’re in the next room crying over your plate of pancakes..and no, you can’t always just say “love her heart, she’s got the baby blues”. That’s just mean.

On a lighter note, I loved buying baby stuff. I made his nursery all fantastic and had his clothes washed and folded. It made it more real. I briefly thought about “the worst” that could happen and wondered how I could come home to a nursery without a baby, but I just couldn’t allow myself to think that way. I had to have faith – in something – that I’d be coming home with my healthy little dude. There really is this whole crazy consumer culture side to pregnancy, but the crazy shopper, stuff lover in me thought it was big fun.  I did notice a lot of older family members and coworkers make the comment of “they didn’t have that stuff when my babies were growing up!” which made me realize how baby misc is big business now. It seems like half the crap out there is not necessary for baby rearing, but you bet I’m gonna buy that wipe warmer only to use it for a month because this is how we roll, right?

Anyway, I had to take a break from this at midnight to cry with the husband when 12:03 rolled around, the time Colin was born. Needless to say, I’m distracted now and don’t remember where I was going with this post.

happy birthday to my colin..a birthday post should follow tomorrow.

]]> http://themotheringlife.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/belated-controversunday-the-culture-of-pregnancy/feed/ 6 jeni jh badges