Life's a Gas

It's early morning. I change Sadie, powder her butt with cornstarch and wrap her in a nice warm blanket. I carry my sleepy, squinty-eyed child over to the glider for a feeding. The house is quiet and peaceful; the only noises are her tiny sighs. When she finishes, twenty minutes later, she looks up into my eyes and smiles.

Then she unleashes a tremendous fart. It's immediately followed by a wetter, deeper fart, signifying that she has just crapped a giant load in her diaper.

"Good girl!" I say, thrilled, as she beams at me, and I know it's going to be a good day.

Not every day is, though. On other days, Sadie wakes up fussy and gets progressively fussier. When I try to feed her, squirms and squeals with pain. Her face screws up, turns tomato-red and she grunts and cries out and kicks. All I can do is rub her belly and bicycle her legs and wait it out. We tried Mylicon, which is a mild version of adult antacid and is supposed to break up gas bubbles in the intestinal tract. They had no effect that I could see.

We got ourselves into this child-having way with the basic knowledge that babies pass gas, and that for the first few months they often suffer indigestion. So when Sadie started having stomach pains at a few weeks old, I figured it was normal. I tried to combat them by cutting out certain foods -- sushi, chocolate -- if the day after eating them I noticed she was battling indigestion.

But this method seemed imperfect at best. Sometimes I'd eat a giant, spicy meal and the next day she'd be fine. Another day I'd eat nothing but bland food and she'd still be squealing in pain the following morning. One night I ate sushi for dinner but cut out the wasabi; the next morning she was happy as a clam. We decided that it was the wasabi that had been bothering her, but something about that didn't make sense to me. Why would wasabi upset her stomach, but a plate full of five-alarm lamb vindaloo go down just fine? How could it be that a few bites of chocolate could be enough to cause her 24 hours of pain? What was the secret to curing my daughter's discomfort?

The whole time, I was actively and purposefully ignoring one item on the list of problem foods for breastfeeding moms: dairy. There's a good reason for this: I drink a lot of milk. It does a body good, so sue me! It goes into my breakfast cereal every morning, and sometimes I enjoy a nice glass of milk with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and apple slices for lunch, and occasionally it accompanies dessert in the evening. It's a good substitute meal, too, which is what my mom used to tell me when I was snacky as a kid (sorry I didn't believe you then, mom).

The thought of cutting such an essential food item out of my diet completely was repellent enough that I just decided not to even try. Besides, Sadie's drinking milk, so why would putting milk into my body be a bad thing? I researched milk allergies, discovered that they are relatively rare, and made the decision that Sadie probably didn't have one.

But over the last couple of weeks, it became apparent that something would need to change. I could no longer chalk up Sadie's one-day-great-the-next-day-in-terrible-discomfort to everyday indigestion or fussiness. The difference was too obvious: on bad days she was irritable, scowly, prone to crying and unable to nap for very long. On good days she slept like an angel, and was nothing but smiles when awake.

So a week ago, I made a decision: I'd cut milk out of my diet for seven days. That was far long enough to see an effect or lack thereof.

The first day, she was fine.

The second day, fine again.

By the end of the week, there was no doubt about it: a milk-less milk-fed Sadie is a happy Sadie. She's been utterly great all week, with no discomfort when she feeds, no need to endlessly bicycle her legs and massage her belly and run around wringing my hands when she won't stop crying. So there you have it: no more milk, and one content baby. 

Endless Entertainment

Lest people begin to think that I've turned this blog into a place to rant about fleas and lack of sleep, here's some video to entertain you. I sent this to Scott while he was in New York working the New Moon premiere to remind him that he's missing crucial bonding time with our child.

Sadie in the bouncy seat 8 weeks

Baby Days

Sometimes the reality of what it means to have a baby really only sinks in when the typically mundane routines of your former life transform into something completely different.

Take today, for instance. Not much on the agenda. My cleaning lady coming from nine to one, and after that, the freedom to do whatever I liked. The biggest problem, typically, would be keeping the dogs from going crazy when the cleaning lady runs the vacuum outside the bedroom door.

As it happened, life threw a curveball today. You see, Scott's been convinced for the past week that King, our older dog, has fleas. I was convinced he was wrong. I chalked up the constant shaking and itching to the colder, drier weather. I chalked up the mysterious bumps on Scott's toes to mosquito bites. I chalked up the scabby bits on King's coat to a skin rash, and the little black bits of dirt that kept appearing wherever the dogs had last been, to the fact that I haven't bathed them lately.

Today, though, I couldn't deny it any longer. A flea jumped onto my arm and basically announced, "HI! Me and a thousand of my brethren have infested your house!" My husband was right and I was wrong.

So, this necessitated a change to the schedule. Again, were I baby-less, this wouldn't be a problem. Wait until the cleaning lady leaves, go to the pet store, pick up some flea shampoo and upholstery cleaner, throw all the bedding into the wash, and give the place a good vacuum.

But with a baby? It all changes.

Let's start with this morning. With the cleaning lady here, I barricade myself in the nursery with all the baby accouterments I can fit in there -- the yoga ball, the bouncy seat, the giant Fisher Price swing that weighs at least thirty pounds. I bring the dogs, too, because they are terrified of the vacuum cleaner.

The next four hours I alternate between feeding the baby, rocking the baby to sleep, and then soothing the baby BACK to sleep because she's woken up because the dogs have barked at something outside the door. NOTE TO SELF: Dogs + Baby = Chaos. Also, I get really hungry, which happens now because I breastfeed and am outputting a lot of calories so when I need to eat, I need to EAT.

So it's 1pm, I haven't eaten since breakfast (half a Pop-Tart rather than my usual cereal and milk because she's having digestive problems and I think milk might be the culprit so I haven't been eating any dairy for the past three days) and I'm hungry and mad at the dogs and the baby won't stop waking up and fussing. SO. I feed her for the hundredth time, and as I do, I see a flea on my arm right next to the baby's head and I FREAK OUT.

But what can I do? It's not like I can just run to the pet store for flea meds. For one thing, Sadie is now awake, and taking her out necessitates all this prep work, and besides which I have not taken a shower and there is barf on my shirt. Clearly I cannot do all the things that I need to do right now, so which do I forego? The shower? The change of clothes? Lunch? The dogs are going insane because they think I'm about to walk them and Sadie is thinking about whether or not she wants to fuss again and instead, as I'm trying to put on shoes, she barfs AGAIN all over my shirt and like it or not, I have become the Woman Who Goes Out with Barf On Her Shirt and I don't even care.

What could possibly make this afternoon more fun? Well, if you guessed "run into Stephen Toblowsky from the hit show 'Glee' while at the pet store comforting a screaming infant," you're right on the money.  I did. And I told him I really liked "Glee." I also learned today that people do not like you when you're in line behind them holding a screaming baby, but to his credit, Stephen Toblowsky was a perfect gentleman as I was telling him I really like him in the show and simultaneously jiggling Sadie to within an inch of her life.

Suffice it to say, today wiped out both of us. Sadie's now concluding what has stretched into a nearly four-hour nap, during which time I locked myself in the bathroom with the dogs and smothered them in flea shampoo. Picture this, if you will. I was wearing a bathing suit, in the shower, with two very wet and very miserable terriers, trying not to vomit everytime I rinsed King down and dead fleas fell off his coat and swirled down the drain. The whole time, I'm listening with half an ear for Sadie's yells, because they could come at any time and GOD FORBID HER MAJESTY NOT HAVE A BOOB WHEN SHE NEEDS ONE.

Life sure isn't boring.

7 Weeks

Sadie is trying to communicate with us as hard as she can. There are certain times of the day, like when I'm changing her or playing with her on the bed with her head supported by a pillow, when we lock eyes and she begins a steady stream of vowel sounds and the occasional consonant. If I talk back to her, she "talks" even more. It's incredible to think that this is the first stage of language development. They say babies study your mouth while you speak, possibly trying to figure out exactly how it all works. Unbelievable to me that she's only been in this world for seven weeks and is already trying to master the art of verbal communication. She's going to be like that baby in the classic clip from "America's Funniest Home Videos" who could name all the presidents so when her dad would point to a picture and ask, "Who's that?" She'd respond, "Eisen-howa."

But until she gets to that point she has other ways of expressing her personality, which is just now beginning to emerge. Everyone who meets her agrees on two things: she's very alert, and she's a mover. Both qualities are aspects I didn't realize were unique to my baby until they were pointed out to me, because, well, I don't hang around babies as a general rule. But apparently there are some babies that tend to just hang out, and Sadie is not like that. She kicks when she's excited and squirms when you hold her and fusses when she's bored. This can get exhausting (you can't imagine how fast I've got to take showers these days, aware that as soon as sitting in her bouncy seat waving her arms and flailing her feet stops being interesting, she's going to let loose with an angry howl), but I don't mind it. While she might be quick to fuss, she's equally as quick to settle down once her attention has been diverted.

And as active as she is when she's awake, it makes the simple art of calming her down that much sweeter. I love bundling her up in a warm blanket, holding her tight, and sitting on the yoga ball, gently bouncing up and down. Her eyes glaze over and she zones out into this alpha state where her body completely relaxes. She begins to stare into middle distance and one arm flops out to the side. Within a few more minutes, her eyes are closed and she's sighing softly in her sleep.

Oh God, I can't help it, I'm in love with my daughter. And, if you don't mind the detour into my own mindset for a few paragraphs, I need to confess that it wasn't an immediate bond.

I wasn't one of those women who gazes upon her newborn child at the instant of delivery and feels an overwhelming love beyond anything she's ever known. And this worried me, a tiny bit. At first, I didn't feel anything other than panic and, later, a niggling doubt that perhaps I had made a huge mistake having a baby because we don't know what the hell we are doing, who allowed us to leave the hospital with this child? And that first month was so terrifying and exhausting, and I didn't know anything, I was just desperate to do right by this thing, this needy thing, all the while studying her face for features that looked like mine or Scott's or my father's and thinking I saw them but also feeling like she was an utter stranger.

The love was something that grew, slowly but surely. It grew as we invested our time and attention and energy into giving Sadie everything she needed and trying new routines and new playthings and new brands and new bits of advice. It grew as that effort began to pay off, little by little. As she began to sleep longer. As it took less and less time to calm her down when she fussed. As I was able, on occasion, to meet her demands without first wondering what in the world it was that she might need.

And it grew as she began to respond to us, too. The smiling helped. The talking helped more. ("I'm in here! There's a person in here," she seems to be saying when she reaches her hand out to me and lets loose with a string of a-a-a-a-a-as.) And best of all was the moment, last night, when Scott was having trouble putting her down to sleep. Every time he tried to lay her in her crib, she'd begin to cry, and soon she was so upset that even picking her up couldn't make her calm down. I came in and picked her up. She settled into my arms, quieted down, and ten seconds later her eyes were shut and she was sleeping peacefully. It was the first time I'd ever truly felt like Mom, that magical creature who makes everything better. 

Hunting Babies

IMG_3304



Originally uploaded by AstroCry

I just configured Flickr so that I can post photos directly from there to the blog. That's going to save me a lot of time. Let's see how it works...

Looking Back

Smiling happy Sadie

Sadie's now comfortably into her second month of life, and she has become a completely different baby. It's mind-blowing to watch her grow and change every day.

She coos and gurgles, reaches out for our faces with her hands and kicks out her legs when she's excited. She's developing new ways of communicating other than crying -- a well-timed yell lets us know that she's cranky, and if she needs something, she'll test the waters with a little fussing and then pause briefly to see if we come running before breaking out in her usual pained howls. Occasionally she'll begin to cry, then seemingly decide it's not worth the effort and calm herself down without our help.

It all adds up to a baby who, for the first time, is becoming easier to read and understand. We still feel as if she speaks a different language, but we're beginning to decipher that language bit by bit, and she's starting to decipher ours. Now when she cries, I understand the difference between "I'm hungry, feed me!" and "I'm tired but I don't know how to get to sleep." Cries from gas pain are different from cries indicating she's lonely and just wants to be held. I can't tell you what a relief it is to hear her cry and think to myself, "I know what she's crying about. I know how to fix this."

I think that if there were any advice I would give to parents with a brand-new baby, it would be to warn them that the first month is really, incredibly hard -- harder than anyone warns you it will be. Those first thirty days were a complete blur; I barely remember them. Day and night blended together into one long, never-ending quest to figure out what Sadie needed at any given time and to give it to her. Sleep was fleeting. I cleaned obsessively because it was the only part of my life that had any semblance of normalcy.

In comparison, the second month has been a cakewalk -- not because she doesn't still cry and need things and deprive us of sleep, but because it all seems a little less scary and unfamiliar now. She occasionally suffers from gas pains, and those are awful. She screws up her face and turns red and kicks her legs and screams, and there's very little we can do, but it helps to know that they are temporary and the next day she will feel better.

She has been sleeping consistently for longer and longer stretches -- six hours, then seven hours, then six again. She recently discovered that, rather than hating the bath, she actually likes it, turning bathtime into a nightly routine for Sadie and me that we both enjoy. We've learned that she loves being placed on her back on the bed and having us lean over her and make silly faces: she talks back to us, making little noises and blowing raspberries and beaming that big toothless smile.

I feel like we are heading into a new kind of normalcy. While the life we used to have may be long gone, the life we're beginning will have its own routines and rhythms. Soon it will feel as if it's always been that way.

Local Infant Breaks Own Sleep Record

Valley Village, California -- Six week old Sadie M. shattered her own previously held record of five and a half hours of straight sleep last night at her home in Valley Village.

Sadie stunned onlookers when she fell asleep after a feeding at 9:45pm on Monday, November 2nd, and did not awake again until 4:15am on November 3rd. While the baby has been gradually increasing her sleep time over the past few weeks, the six and one half hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep went above and beyond all predictions.

When asked about her achievement, the brown haired, blue-eyed infant credited a grueling pre-bedtime regimen of physical activity, refusal to nap, and ear-splitting screaming.

"The trick is to allow Mom to rock you right to the brink of sleep, then whack yourself in the face with your fist to wake yourself back up," said Sadie. She then punctuated her sentence by ripping a long fart and blowing several raspberries.

Proud parents Scott and Amanda M. were not available for comment, having snuck away for a nap while their daughter was being interviewed, leaving reporters a bottle of expressed breast milk and a burp cloth. (AP)