Uh-oh.

I walked into the living room, and found this:



Pulled herself up all on her own, and was cruising around. It's the beginning of the end for me, I fear.

Also, you may have noticed that a lot (I believe the technical term is "assload") of old posts have suddenly appeared here. That's because I have just caught up on two months' worth of not-blogging, and I figured out how to post pictures here. You see, I am extremely stupid about Zee Komputers and Zee Interrrnets and it takes me along time to figure things out. Due to my newfound time, energy, and know-how, many, many posts and pictures have appeared. So please, by all means, relax with a tasty beverage of your choice (an Orange Crush, perhaps, Nejyerf?) and prowl around.

32 Weeks

Counting off these early weeks of her life, I can't help but notice that soon we will be at the point where Piper has been out as long as she was in. I think that will be a big milestone for me. I'm not exactly dreading it, but I think it will make me a little wistful. I suppose every parent feels like this at some point or another; I wish we could slow down, or stop for a while, let me catch up and remember each thing better. I wish I could go back and take more pictures/video of her newborn days. One of things I remember most clearly about her when she was first born were her tiny, spidery, old-lady hands, and I do not have a single picture of those precious (albeit slightly creepy) digits. She used to make a certain squawk when she was hungry, and I do not have a recording of it. I wish I'd handled her colicky, screamy nights better (although that one is not entirely on me, as I got much not-quite-wanted "help" due to our living situation). I wish I'd been less stressed-out during her infancy.

That infancy, while technically not over, seems to be drawing fast to a close. She has always been resistant to a lot of the things a "baby" is supposed to do: being held cradle-style, lying like an inert lump, eating baby food. She has always wanted to be up, to be out, to make her own way in the world. She wants to be a big girl, I can see it. It's in the way she takes the spoonful of her favorite meal (chicken & homemade-from-scratch noodles) from my hand - no Mama I can do it myself. I want to do it. It's in the way she wants me to hold her hands and walk her around all day long - I have to get there faster! Right now! It's in the way she refuses almost all of the pureed gak that babies are supposed to dig and reaches instead for what I have - What is this crap you're feeding me?! Yours looks yummy. I want that! So quick to grow up, this little girl.

I have given up on most "baby" food - once in a while I can coax her through some rice cereal (only if it has applesauce and tons of cinnamon) or squash, but for the most part she steadfastly refuses the stuff that comes in jars and is so smooth and bland it hardly tastes like anything. She prefers foods she can do herself, finger foods like these things. I was foursquare against any sort of processed or packaged foods, but my mom brought these home for her one day and they were such a hit I haven't had the heart to outlaw them. She's so happy to be able to pick them up and eat them herself, and they're so airy they melt in her mouth and I don't have to worry (as much) about her choking like she did the time I gave her bits of my pita bread or chomping off a bite too big to chew, the way she did with a graham cracker. Not only that, but her preoccupation with feeding herself means when I need some hands-free time (like, um, right now), I can plunk her in the high chair with 10 or 12 little star-shaped puffs on the tray and she goes to town, happily (and, thank the gods, quietly) chowing down.

It's hard for her to feed herself other foods that she can/will eat - things like sweet potatoes, blueberry muffins, and the all-time favorite chicken & noodles mentioned above. I can mush them up a bit and use the spoon, but a lot of the time it ends up everywhere but in her mouth. She has four teeth, but they're all in the front (like a beaver, heh), and she can chew (erm, gum) things pretty well, but chunks of food big and solid enough for her to pick up are usually too big for her to chew without choking. I've been wanting to try Cheerios as a finger food, but I've been afraid they were solid enough for her to choke on. When we were out with some other moms and babies the other day, she tried some and seemed to like them, so we'll give it a go.

Her favorite activity is to have someone hold her hands and "walk" her around. She does most of the work - hold up her own weight, moves her own legs, picks the direction - she just doesn't have the balance down yet. I think she's gotten taller or stands more upright recently, because as of a week ago I don't have to stoop quite so far. She loves to chase the cats while she's walking, and when ever she sees one she will book in that direction. She doesn't do anything to the cat once she catches up to it, she just sort of stands there like "well, run some more, wouldja?" As soon as another cat walks by, we're off again. It should make for some fun times once she can walk on her own. I plan to let her chase the cats as much as she likes, all day long if she wants to. Hopefully they'll wear each other out and make my life a little calmer by day's end. Dream on, I know.

She can crawl, mostly. It's not the classic hands-and-knees crawling, it's more of an Army-crawl/scootch/inchworm, using her arms to pull and her toes to push herself along. It's amusing to watch and very, very fast. I cannot leave her unattended at all anymore. She can rocket to the edge of the bed, the top of the basement stairs, or the business end of the vacuum cleaner faster than I'd ever have imagined. I have had more mini heart attacks in the past two weeks than in my entire life up to this point. And she just keeps getting faster.

She eats paper. Really eats, like takes big bite out of it and chews them up. I am constantly digging soggy chunks of paper, cardboard, magazine pages, and wrapping paper out of her mouth. Anything even vaguely paper-like that comes near her, she will eat. She even bit chunks out of the plasticky-foil wrapping paper my sister wrapped her Xmas present (a baby signs book & flashcards) in. Earlier this week, I found her yanking books out of the book-case and chewing on them. She sucks on strings and unrolls balls of yarn. She picks at the carpet and puts any debris she finds in her mouth. Actually, she puts everything in her mouth.

All of these things have caused us to mark a very different kind of milestone here at Tragically Ordinary. Several weeks ago, I was puttering in the kitchen when I noticed a suspicious amount of quiet in the living room. I bolted around the corner to discover Piper, with soggy pieces of bank statement hanging from her mouth as she picked at a staple embedded in the carpet next to the basket of yarn she had dumped over and tossed about. I realized that it had happened, much sooner than I thought it would: I now have to worry when it gets quiet. I thought I'd have at least twelve months before this would happen. But no, here we are.

Aftermath

Meltdown

Baking With Grandma

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Shootout at the ZZZ Corral

What time is it? Why that would be 2:45 in the a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

I am still up.

I am still up because Piper is up. She woke up tonight about 12:30, screaming as though the Boogeyman himself had appeared to her, and since my husband has to get up at 5 a.m. to go to the airport, I took her downstairs with me. I figured it would be a few minutes, a half-hour maybe, until she dropped off to sleep again. I could snuggle her on the couch while watching reruns of Jon & Kate Plus 8 or something.

She refused to snuggle. She refused to sit quietly on my lap while I surfed the Internet. She didn't take kindly to playing alone on the floor, either. Then she went through three diapers in a series of rapid-fire pooping incidents the likes of which I haven't experienced since her tiny-infant days. She screamed and threw herself around in my arms when I tried to rock and shush her. She pushed me away when I tried to snuggle her. She screeched in indignation when I put her in the Exersaucer. She howled with fury when I laid her in the pack n' play, even though I turned on the "soothing vibrations" and "nature sounds." She twisted off my lap and very nearly catapulted herself onto the floor when I tried to tell her a soothing bedtime story.

Currently she is sitting on the floor next to me, playing with the straps and zippers on my diaper bag.* She is obsessed with straps, buckles, and zippers lately, as well as taking things out of their container/box/bag, so it fits the bill on all counts. Even though I'm tired and annoyed right now, I am still getting a kick out of watching her studiously test the zippers and chew on the straps and try to pull out the things tucked inside and finger the zipper-pull.

This is a battle of wills. I can outlast her. She barely took any naps at all today (two, less than 20 minutes each, instead of the two hour-plus ones she should have). This may account for my current, slightly crazed, state of mind, but it also means that she'll have to fall some time. She is a tiny person, she's a kid, she has to sleep. I logged less than eighteen total hours of sleep in the week after she was born; I can do it again if I have to. I will win this. I will stay up with her until she passes out while sitting up, if need be.

Edited, 2:55 a.m.: She's on my lap now, because I heard a small thunk and looked down to discover she was no longer playing with the diaper bag but instead taking advantage of the smooth hardwood floors here in the dining room to lay down and push herself around backwards. The thunk was her foot hitting the leg of her high chair - she'd scooted underneath it and gotten stuck. Much squealing ensued.

3:09 a.m.: Ha-ha! I have the power of boob. I win. She dozed off while nursing and I laid her on the couch so I could finish up a few things. Victory!

3:20: I win nothing. She woke up howling, apparently quite pissed-off at being tricked into sleep.

3:35: Dozing...dozing....

3:45: Asleep again on the couch. Complete with little baby snores. Which, while I find them adorable, probably mean that she is congested and has therefore caught The Plague, aka the sinus/respiratory misery that has plowed through everyone else in the house since last week. Well, this means the rest of my week is going to be a totally shit time...


*My diaper bag? Is awesome. Remind me to tell you about it sometime. And I mean that in an "I have a funny story" way, not a "hey, I'm a freak who thinks everyone should hear about idiotically mundane details of my life" way. Okay, well, maybe a little bit the second thing, because I am blogging here.

If I Were Smarter...

...I'd be in bed right now. Instead, I am up writing and blogging and reading and poking around on the Internet. I cannot do this during the day because Piper has decided that I must not be more than four feet from her at any point during the day, that naps are for suckers, and that the key to true happiness is to have someone hold your hands and 'walk' you around the house. She can support her own weight and has the walking motions down pat, but she can't get to a standing position or balance herself, so someone has to hold her up as she walks. I have to admit, it's pretty fun to have her chubby little hands clutch my fingers as she jaunts from room to room, toddling after the cats with delighted squeals and making a complete circuit of the first floor over and over. What's not fun is walking around hunched over for thirty minutes at a stretch, creeping around the house at a snail's pace, "walking" the baby through the maze of holiday-decoration-filled boxes my mom has dragged out in the past three days, trying to make sure she doesn't eat anything glass and every lap around glancing at the basement door and thinking about the 10 loads of laundry piled up down there.

It's hard to keep up with her from day to day, she changes so much. She's always doing something new, and it's difficult to remember it all, let alone write about it. I like to write about her, to try and record everything that's going on with her and put down the tiny moments that make up our life together. A few weeks ago, I read back through some old stuff I wrote when I was pregnant, and it seemed so very far away. Me? Pregnant? I was pregnant? It seems like a lifetime ago.

The truth is I love my baby, and I love being with her every day. I never thought I'd be one of those people. I keep talking about going back to work soon, and eventually I will have to, but right now the thought breaks my heart. It breaks my heart to think about not being with her all day. Even days like the past three, where most of the sounds issuing from her cute little mouth are whines and cries and howls and I drive myself crazy trying to either figure out what's wrong or distract her so that she will be quiet for five minutes before my head explodes. No toy is fun, no activity is amusing, even the once-beloved swing and Exersaucer inspire screaming and full-body thrashing whenever I take her near them. She cries if I put her down, she gags on her rice cereal and peas and sweet potatoes and looks at me as though I am trying to poison her. She fights sleep, throwing herself around in my arms as I try to persuade her to nap or at least go to bed sometime before midnight. My arms and shoulders ache from holding her all day, from picking her up and putting her down so many times. Yesterday I made chicken enchiladas one-handed.

Even on these days, when I am exasperated and tired and realize I haven't had a shower in three days and I just want to work on knitting Christmas presents and maybe finish a damned cup of coffee...even on these days I love her and I would rather be here than answering someone's phone or discussing user-friendly implementation strategies for the latest system upgrade.

I haven't been away from her for more than four hours since she was born. That was only because my mom dragged me out shopping one day when Piper was seven weeks old, and what was supposed to be a one-hour trip out for some birthday cards and Campbell's soup turned into a four-hour odyssey through first the dollar store and then Wal-Mart, with me dragging behind my mother as she perused every single greeting card they had and Max calling every half-hour to tell me that although he'd tried everything three times, the baby was still screaming and if I didn't come home soon he was going to float her down the river in a basket made of bulrushes. After the third call in forty minutes where I could hear Piper screaming in the background, I finally told her that we had to go right now, just buy your brother the card with the shitting monkey and get it over with before the neighbors call Child Services on my husband for stabbing our baby with red-hot pokers.

When we got home, I was out of the car before it had even stopped rolling, and I bolted into the house to find my stressed-out husband holding a red-faced baby who was shrieking so loud the neighbor across the street commented on it the next day. I took her and soothed her and nursed her (ahh, the power of boob) and promised my husband that we would take her with us next time, rather than disappearing into the great wide open and leaving him with a pissed-off infant.

I have been out a few times since then, Max and I have gone out to the movies or dinner once in a while, or I run errands alone. I don't leave her for long periods of time, partly because I don't want a reapeat of that day, and partly because I don't want to be away from her. There are, of course, times when my husband comes downstairs and I say "pleasewatchthebabyI'mtakingashowerrightnowokaybye" because I cannot put up with one more minute of listening to the ceaseless moan-whine and I don't want to dig chunks of soggy, chewed paper out of her mouth for a fourth time in two hours. It usually only takes thirty minutes of hot water and fruity shampoo and fluffy towels before I'm ready to go back downstairs and discover where the cache of oh-so-tasty paper is hidden or make another attempt at convincing her that smushed-up peas are really edible and not something to rub in your hair or grind into your clothes.

I like my little girl, and luckily she likes me right now. I treasure every slobbery kiss, every hug that invovles pulling my hair or poking me in the eye. I know that before too long there will be school and sleepovers and boys and iPods full of music I will call "noise." I'm enjoying this closeness with her for as long as she'll let me.

Six Months Ago

Here's to half a year with our beautiful baby girl.

24 Weeks

It's unbelievable to me how fast we are zooming up to the 6-month-mark. Every day Piper gets less and less like a baby and more like a miniature toddler. She is still changing every day, and every day she gets more fun and interactive. Of course, this also makes her harder to entertain because she needs more stimuli - simply plopping her in front of the picture window and letting her watch leaves blow around isn't cutting it anymore.

To that end, I broke down and let an Exersaucer enter the house. I tried hard to avoid it, but just couldn't hold out. She likes to stand up, but can't do it on her own, so someone has to hold her up. I love my kid, but I can't sit there and hold her up all day, I have other things to do (like eat, shower, and oh, I don't know, the 14 loads of laundry piled up in the basement). Hence the Exersaucer. It's not like she stays in it all day - I can get 5-20 minutes of stuff done once I put her in there, and then it's on to the next activity.

When we do hold her in a standing postion, however, she has the mechanics of walking down pat. She will happily march between the two of us or do little crazylegs-marching-dances in place. When she's playing alone on the floor she can spin herself in circles and creep towards objects. She's getting pretty fast at it, and I have to constantly patrol the living-room floor to make sure things like knitting needles, stray leaves, and people's shoes (she likes to suck on the shoelaces) are picked up. She pushes herself up on her hands now, and I feel that the legs aren't very far behind. Everyone's still betting she will be crawling by the end of the year.

She's gotten very vocal this week - enter screaming. She's been shrieking for a while, but has now developed that high-pitched ultra-loud little-kid scream of delight. Occsionally it is a scream of less-than-delight, but mostly she screams for the fun of it. Which is hilarious, except when it's 1:30 in the morning and she just wants to climb all over me and scream in my ears. And that kid is LOUD. If we're in the living room, she can be heard all the way at the other end of the house upstairs. I'm pretty sure they can hear her outside, even with the windows shut against the cold. Actually, I'm pretty sure they can hear her in Toledo.

Between the Exersaucer, the (3) baby gyms, all the bright-colored toys and books scattered everywhere and the constant screaming, the living room is starting to resemble a Chuck E. Cheese's.

When she's not screaming, she's babbling. This week it's "d" sounds, a constant stream of "a-da da da da...a-daadadaDADADA!!" Max loves it because it is that much closer to an actual "Dada" even though he knows she's not using it in context yet. She still makes the "mamamamma" noise when she's hungry or she wants me, so we are still counting it as contextual. She will sob "mamamama!" while holding her chubby little arms out to me, and of course it melts me into little puddles. The worst heartstring-tug came a few days ago, when I was trying to let her cry herself to sleep. I plopped her in the crib with a blankie and some toys, but she wasn't having any of it. She started to cry, and I had to practically sit on my hands not to pick her up. I tried patting her back and shushing, but she looked right at me and sobbed (with real tears dripping down her face) "nununononooo mama!" Just about broke my fucking heart.

Holding On

Today I said to Max, “It’s so strange to think about…do you realize a few months ago we didn’t even know her? We didn’t know anything about her, other than that she liked food. We only knew that because when I got hungry she would kick me every time my stomach growled. And now she’s a whole little person, with all her preferences and personality. She likes Cuban music, hates riding in the car, her favorite toy makes crinkly noises. A few months ago we didn’t even know her name was Piper.”

A few short months ago, we did not even know this strange and delightful creature. We did not know her name, we did not know the tone and pitch of her cries, we did not know the curves of her smile. She was still hidden deep in my belly, floating in the darkness and muffled noise. There are times I miss those days. I don’t miss the discomforts of being pregnant, but growing a child was the greatest mystery I have ever known. What would she be like? Who would she look like? What would her voice sound like? What color eyes? I also find myself missing the feeling of her there, swimming around in her own safe cocoon. I did not have to share her in those days. I happily shared everything my husband wanted to know, but when the house fell quiet late at night and I trudged off to the comforts of our guest bedroom with its sinkhole mattress just for me, we were alone. Nobody could take her from my arms, or insist that she missed them, or tell me they knew what she needed. I could put my hand to the place where my abdomen used to be, and feel her limbs thumping against the swell of my belly.

In the late months of my pregnancy, a friend told me to enjoy those final weeks, because it was the last time the baby would be all mine. It was the last time I would not have to share her or wonder where she was, and any decisions about the baby were still mine to make. I tried to do this as best I could, but I didn’t fully appreciate her words until after my daughter was born. When people ask me what the hardest thing is about being a new mother, my answer is always easy and always the same. Sharing. Sharing my baby is the hardest thing. So many arms reaching out, so many mouths talking, so many people laying claim to the child that was all mine until so recently. I can’t fault these people for what they do; Piper is their niece, granddaughter, grand-niece or pseudo-cousin just as much as she is my baby. But it can be exhausting, all these reaching arms and talking mouths. It is tiring to manage them, to try and make sure that everyone gets a turn and everyone feels special and everyone gets to dispense their own particular advice and know-it-all about my own child.

I am trying to be gracious. I am trying not to hold her too tight, because I know these people are the first of so many I will have to share her with. Teachers, roommates, friends, lovers, maybe even her own children one day. They will all know her and love her in ways that are different from the way I love her. They will all be parts of her life, each building on the last. I look ahead and I see this, the endless line of people waiting to love my special little girl.

But for now, I yearn to have her all to ourselves, away from everyone, just the three of us together safe and warm and loving.

12 Weeks

Twelve weeks old. Three months. This little person has been out and about for twelve whole weeks now. I looked at some pictures from her first three weeks, and could not believe how tiny she was compared to the robust little being who now fills my days and nights. In the past two weeks, she’s had a language explosion. There were a few noises here and there, a little cooing or babbling, and she loved it when we had “conversations” where I would mimic her, but her game is at a whole new level. She’s making noises now that resemble parts of actual words, vowels and consonants which we receive with delight. We’re pretty sure she says “hi” already, because as first-time parents we are convinced our baby is a genius. She says it to people when they walk in the room or come up to her, and she says it when she sees the smiley face on her favorite toy, so it appears she knows how to use it and therefore we count it as a real word and not mere noise. Even my skeptic of a dad, who politely laughs when I tell him my baby is a genius, is convinced.

In the past few weeks, her personality has emerged loud and clear. She has a “blankie” now, which is really just a cloth diaper, i.e. a square of white gauze material. Not the thick kind, but light and loosely-woven. She waves it around, she chews on it, she plays peek-a-boo with it. She has to have one wherever she goes, clutched in her chubby little fingers. She latched onto it over a month ago, during a phase when she was starting to grab things and loved to have fabric in her hands. Her quest to hold handfuls of fabric resulted in her grabbing the skirt of anything even vaguely dress-like we’d put her in, and hoisting it over her face. If only we could’ve taught her to say “free show!” while she lifted her dress, we’d be YouTube superstars right now. One day she grabbed the gauze diaper I was using to wipe spit-up off her face, and refused to let go. The free shows immediately ceased. While it would’ve melted the heart of a knitting relative if she’d latched onto one of the many hand-made blankets bestowed upon her by distant aunts and grandmas, I am happy enough with her choice. These diapers come in packs of 12, they are machine-washable and easily replaceable. I can only hope she chooses more comfort objects that make my life just a little more stress-free.

A development that has melted my heart in the past month is clinginess. Sometimes, she just wants her mama. No amount of “oh, Grandma’s baby needs ______” or “here, she wants to bounce” or “she wants _________” from the self-appointed baby experts will suffice. It has to be me. She can’t really reach for me yet, she’s not that coordinated, but when I hold her after one of these episodes she clings to my shirt like a baby koala. It doesn’t happen very often, because I am blessed with an easygoing baby, but when it does a tiny, selfish part of me smiles. You see, for the longest time I was convinced that Piper didn’t actually care who I was. I was also mostly-convinced that she actually preferred my mom to me. My husband repeatedly told me I was nuts, but I just felt like “oh, THANKS. I went through all that crap, crawling around on the floor of our apartment for two weeks because I couldn’t walk and then having a c-section and then getting raw, bloody nipples from breastfeeding and you don’t even like me best?! What the fuck?!” I know parenting isn’t all about getting what I want or rewards or whatever, but it’s nice to finally see a return on my investment. I’m banking these moments against the inevitable teenage “eww, stay away from me!” phase.

So now when she quiets down immediately after being passed to me, I hug her and smell her head (shut up, I know y’all are baby-head-sniffers too) and at last feel like her mother.

On Motherhood

A question I get asked a lot lately is "How do you like motherhood?" There are variants, like "So, how's motherhood treating you?" or "How are you doing with this whole mom thing?" or "How do you like being a mom/having a baby/having a kid so far?" I never know how to answer these questions. "Um, I don't know, how do you like breathing?" Because it is a lot like that. Things come automatically. She is here, she is my child, I care for her. These are facts, irrefutable and unyielding. I don't think about it any more than I think about breathing. She slipped into our lives like a key into a lock, all the parts falling into place as the tumblers turn. Besides that, there have been so many changes in our lives over the past two months that it's hard to ponder them individually.

Many times over the past ten weeks my husband has looked at me in wonderment and confessed that I am handling all this much better than he thought I would. These tiny confessions do not anger or upset me, because I know that these statements actually mean you amaze me and I love you fiercely. Children were never on my radar, and neither one of us knows exactly how he was able to talk me into this whole adventure in the first place. He thought I'd have more trouble coping, adjusting, getting into a groove - whatever you want to call it. But it all comes as naturally to me as breathing.

My brain has instinctually recorded and translated her cries, given me a crash-course in Piperspeak. I can tell from the other room when she is hungry, overtired, or scared. I almost always know what she wants or needs, and it is a way of knowing that goes to the very core of my being. This has led to a few crazy-making moments when someone else will be holding her and she starts to cry, and the other person will say "oh, she's wet" or "I think she wants to go outside" or "She just wants her Grandma" *coughmymomcoughcough* when I absolutely know that she's hungry. But I am nice, I do not snatch the baby out of the arms of the other person and say "You're doing it wrong" even though I really want to. I let the other person try their solution for a few minutes. I let them try and pretend that her red-eyed, real-tears-dripping, banshee-howl crying with Extra Vibrato For That Pissed-Off Feeling means she really did want to go outside or be hugged extra-tight or have an extra blanket put on or whatever it is the person thinks she needs that is totally the wrong thing. I let all the Amateur Baby Experts take their turn. And in the end, many of them hand her back to me and say "she needs to eat" or "she's hungry" in some super-authoritative voice, like I was the one holding things up in the first place. Which sometimes makes me want to cry, but I suck it up because I am a nice person and I know that everybody wants a little baby time and I'm trying not to be a bitch by refusing to share.

I love my baby, but I do not say things like "I didn't know what love was until she came into my life" or "I can't imagine my life without her" because they are not true. I was told to expect an overwhelming rush of love, something strangling and drowning-deep. I am still waiting for that. It's more a creeping kind of love, a growing sort of love that is as matter-of-fact as her existence in our lives. It is there, every day, just as she is.

Which is not to say it's all sunshine and roses. In the early weeks, I was so tired and in so much pain (psychological as well as physical) from getting her into the world that I sometimes wished I hadn't. It wasn't that I didn't love her or that I wanted her gone. I just wanted to feel normal again, not sore and exhausted and stressed, and I couldn't help thinking that my life would be much easier at that moment if I hadn't just had a baby. I knew what to do for her, how to take care of her, but that didn't mean I liked doing it all the time. I already felt pressure to be a perfect mom, and our move back to Michigan was looming, with all its attendant financial, familial, and emotional concerns. My C-section left me wounded in body and spirit and there was no time to rest and recover.

Some nights when I was up late watching Six Feet Under DVDs over and over because I was lonely and breast-feeding her every twenty minutes for six straight hours, I would question my ability to do this. If I was thinking things like Oh God, please don't be hungry again and shut up shut up shut up, please PLEASE PLEASE just stop crying and fall asleep already at two weeks, how would I handle toddler tantrums or teenage rebellion? And the thing about kids is: there is no break. Before this, I just had to get through finals week or tough it out until my benefits kicked in or finish that project or wait until we got back from our trip, and then I could rest. Then I would get a break. But with a child, there is no break. There is no done, there is no out, there is no over. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world, but when you are up late with a crying baby and wondering if you'll ever feel like yourself again, facing months until you can sleep through the night and years before you can take the plastic thingies out of every electrical socket in the house and many many years before your house will be cool, quiet, and nap-friendly in the middle of a weekend day...it can drive you mad. It can crush you if you're not careful.

When Piper was only hours old, I sat in my hospital bed and held her as she slept. I had just successfully breast-fed her and was riding the high of my new mama-hood. Oh, yeah, I thought. I can do this. She sighed contentedly, her belly full of warm milk and my arms wrapped around her. I looked down at her tiny face and then looked at my husband, and we spoke of how small things would now mean so much, how we would live for tiny moments. A smile, a laugh, an A-plus spelling test, a prom picture, first steps, watching a bicycle stay upright as she pedaled down the street. It would all start with this moment, sitting there in my shoulder-snap hospital gown, the place where the surgeon had separated her from me throbbing a little as I cradled her tiny body in my arms.

That’s what life is like now; a series of moments. Every day they come and go and I live each one and then try to remember it, hold on to it, keep it with me as long as I can.

7 Weeks

Seven weeks old. I can hardly believe it. She’s a part of our lives, but we still forget about her once in a while. Sometimes we’ll get out of the car and almost be walking away before we go “Oh, the baby!” We never get farther than the edge of our parking space, but we both feel crummy whenever we do it.

I was warned that “they change so fast,” but I had no idea what an understatement this is. The difference between now and her newborn days is amazing. She smiles when we call her name and tracks us with her eyes when we walk across a room. She loves it when I have “conversations” with her – I mimic her noises and facial expressions, which “they” say teachers her that she is important and I’m really paying attention to her. I’ve started playing peek-a-boo with her, which makes her laugh. She really likes motion games too, like patty-cake. When she’s really crabby, I play a “naming” game with her – starting at her feet and going up to her head, I ask her “What’s this?” and tell her the name of each body part. “What this? It’s your foot! What are these? Your tiny toes! And look, what are these? Your little baby knees!” I’m sure I sound like an idiot, but she likes it and it makes her laugh.

Our formerly quiet baby is now a fountain of noises: snorts, giggles, wheezes, coos, howls, laughs. And farts. Lots of farts. Farts that can be heard from across the room, farts that drown out the television, farts with surprising depth and resonance considering they are created by a person who weighs less than ten pounds. She is a noisy sleeper, too. The absolute stillness of her newborn sleep is gone. Instead, she breathes loudly, sniffs, smacks her lips, whimpers, grunts, moans, and of course, farts. She roams around the bed in her sleep, turning and rotating so she ends up sideways. She rolls from side to side, wiggling ever closer to me and snuggling in. Once in a while she will half-wake and wail for a moment, a noise similar in pitch and tone to a police siren. Then she goes back to sleep, crisis averted. I have tried to keep her out of our bed, because from what I can tell once you start letting them in there they never want to leave. I don’t know why, because she has a number of very nice sleeping places (a bassinet, a pack n’ play, a crib, and a Moses basket) when all we have at the moment is a metal futon with our Ikea foam mattress on it. My resolve to avoid a “family bed” cracked, however, when I was faced with the following choice: either put her in our bed and have her sleep for a minimum of four solid hours, or put her in her own bed and spend the next six to eight hours waking up every fifteen minutes to feed, hold and quiet her, beg her to go to sleep, then doze for a few minutes before she began to wail again. I was not so much a weak pushover as sleep-deprived and beginning to consider auctioning her off on Ebay. I had calculated a reserve price that was enough to pay off our car before I caught myself. She spent the night with us.

Thank God for Vibrators

The little kind that come in bouncy seats, of course. Well, I'm fond of several other kinds of vibrators too, but those are of no use when it's 3:30 am and your colicky baby is screeching like a banshee. The little bouncy seat with vibration that my mom bought for $2 at a yard sale has turned out to be the single most useful piece of baby equipment we own. I feel sort of bad because I've been putting her in it a lot these days, but it's been so hot she's getting heat rash all over her face from being held, and anything that makes her forget her stomachache long enough to stop screaming can't be all bad.

Taking care of a tiny baby is so time-consuming. You wouldn't think that'd be the case, since they sleep so much, but no. I finished my antibiotics and am breast-feeding again, which takes like 40 minutes every time and sometimes she wants to eat every 45 minutes so I spend entire days sitting around with my boobs getting gnawed on. When she falls asleep I am usually so tired I sack out right along with her or run around frantically trying to get household chores done, take a shower, or do some laundry so the two pairs of pants and three tank tops I have unpacked and accessible right now will be clean at least once a week.

Piper is five weeks old now. I have not taken nearly enough pictures; I have not written nearly enough words. So much information about her slips through my fingers every day. Every morning she wakes up different; every day she changes a little. There is always a new noise, a new facial expression, a new degree of control over her limbs, a wider smile, a deeper cry. The spindly little creature we brought home from the hospital has evolved into a little person with moods and preferences and expressions. She's gained nearly two pounds since she was born, and now weighs in at a robust seven pounds, six ounces. People still talk about how tiny she is but she seems gargantuan to me. She's nearly outgrown some of her clothes; the tiny onesies we made for her before she was born are getting tight. She loves to be outside and even the noise of a chainsaw deconstructing a mulberry tree doesn't bother her. When she is awake at night, she likes the lights on. She loves to snuggle and will happily sleep for hours curled up in someone's arms or resting on their chest.

At five days old, she rolled onto her side and slept, and she perfers to sleep that way most of the time. No amount of putting her on her back or stern talks about what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends has not changed her mind. At eight days old, she put her arm up under her head while she was sleeping, resting her head on it like a pillow. This is exactly the way I sleep. Max and I looked at each other in wonderment. Where did she learn that? She can roll from her back to her side and back again, and from her side to her front. The movement isn't fluid or practiced yet, but she does it enough that we can never set her down alone on the bed or couch. She takes a long time to wake up fully, like Max and I do, but she is at her most smiley and playful around 9:00 am, when she wakes up from what is usually a 5-hour stretch of sleep. She laughs now, too, tiny wheezes and hints of giggles. When she has colic at night, terrible gas pains that turn her stomach rock-hard and leave her red-faced and screaming with pain, she looks up at us with those deep blue eyes and her expression says why aren't you helping me? Why won't you do something? and it breaks our hearts.

We are her parents. We're supposed to fix things like that. She trusts us to take away the hurt. And there's nothing we can do.

"Help"

Things are...interesting. Living with the family has its pluses and minuses. There's always an extra pair of hands or a babysitter around when you want one...and even when you don't. Everyone wants to "help" and "help" usually means taking the baby from me, under the guise of being useful and giving me a break, but much of the time I just want ten minutes to be alone with my daughter. I am very good about sharing her; lots of people have remarked that I'm much more generous and much less paranoid with Piper than most first-time moms. But it is very hard not to explode/cry/snatch her back when she's sobbing and miserable and my mom either takes her right out of my arms or won't give her back. My mom just wants to help, I know, and I am making a great effort to see that she gets to be involved with Piper in lots of ways. I am frustrated, however, because every time Piper cries my mom comes running with a "what's wrong?" or "how is she?" or takes her from me. It makes me feel inept, and angry. I can manage my child, thanks. I'm not totally stupid. I am her mother. When I got married, my mom forgot whose wedding it was; I think sometimes she forgets whose baby Piper is.

Hello, Baby. Welcome to Earth.

Piper Reid was born at 9:33 am on June 2nd. She weighed 5lbs, 8oz and was 19 inches long.

It was an emergency c-section after 19 hours of labor. To say that things did not go as planned is an understatement, and to say that things did not go as we wanted is an even larger one. Everything about bringing her into this world was difficult and unexpected.

But she is perfect and healthy and I am doing well. We got home from the hospital late yesterday afternoon and so far the cats seem mostly scared of her, except Ellie who had to be informed repeatedly that you can sniff the baby, but you can't walk on the baby in order to sniff.

The second child

Last week, we finally got the long-awaited ultrasound and discovered the sex of the baby. It's a girl. I was pretty surprised by my reaction to the news. Which was no reaction at all. After all this time, waiting and waiting to find out and both of us wanting a girl so much, all I said was "Oh." I didn't high-five my husband. I didn't pump my fist enthusiastically and shout "YESSSS!" Nope. Just "oh." I know we've been saying for weeks that at this point it wasn't really that important anymore, but I wasn't entirely sure if it was true. Apparently it was.

As we walked across the parking lot at the OB's office, clutching our pictures of the grainy V that revealed a lack of boy-parts on the child inside my belly, we discussed the news. max said he'd felt like it was a girl, but he knew I'd had a strong hunch all along about which way the pendulum (or lack thereof) would swing, but I had steadfastly refused to say anything for fear of jinxing it. I am terribly paranoid about jinxing things, a paranoia that closely matches the superstition of wizened old ladies with herbs drying in their kitchens and horseshoes above their doorways. My husband asked me if I would, at long last, reveal honestly what my hunch had been.

"I knew thought it was a girl."
"What, like today? Before he told us?"
"No, the whole time. From the very start. Like how I had that really strong feeling we'd succeeded and I was pregnant on the first try, but I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want to jinx it. This was the same. I just really, really felt it was a girl. Even when your mom was running around saying that she was so sure it was a boy. I kept quiet, but I knew."
"I have another...feeling. I mean, the same thing that made me think it was a girl is telling me we'll do this again."
I stopped walking, in the middle of the parking lot. "AGAIN? Are you crazy? You want another one already?" I probably sounded panicked. We've been in agreement for a long time that one is plenty, and if we do get the urge for another we fully intend to pursue fostering or adopting. We debated long and hard about adopting this one, but didn't have the patience or outlay of cash needed to adopt an infant, and he really wanted the whole Infant Experience. So what the hell was this shit?
"No, it's not that," he said, tugging my arm and pulling me toward the car. "I just...have a feeling. I have a feeling that we'll do this again. And that if we do, that one will be a boy."
"You have a feeling I'm going to accidentally get pregnant? Because after all we've discussed, 'doing this again' would mean the next one really will be a surprise."
"No, it's not that, it won't be accidental..." He was floundering.
"We're going to do this again on PURPOSE? I'm going to get hit with those supposedly-huge post-baby hormones and beg you for another baby? Or you're going to beg me for one and I'll give in?" I was definitely starting to panic. Even in the supposedly-magical second trimester, I have not been a big fan of pregnancy. I spend a lot of time wondering if I'll ever feel like "myself" again, and as time goes by I have forgotten what "myself" feels like. On top of that, I often wonder how we'll manage this baby with everything else we have going on.
"No, it's not that I super-want another one already or anything, I just have a feeling."

I let the discussion fade away as we got in the car and went on our way, but he has mentioned it several times since then. After a commercial featuring siblings and cellphones: "See? See what we'd be depriving our kid of if it's an only child?" Veiled references to "the next one," "next time" or "when we do this again."

It struck me that when people become parents for the first time, there is always an assumption that there will be another kid somewhere along the way. The parents themeselves assume it, their friends and relatives assume it, everyone takes it for granted that there will be more than one. The only question seems to be "when?"

I'm not one of those people. I think that one kid is a good number, for us anyway. The assumption that there will be another has always somewhat mystified me. Why? If you like the one you have and things are going great, why throw another one into the mix? The responses I get when I ask this question always seem to involve women's out-of-control-hormones, men's manly desires for a son, or the woe and tragedy of the pitiful only child.

And when they don't cover those options, there's always "well, I wanted First Kid to have someone to play with." Which makes me think on all the times my brother and sister and I played together. Much of that "playtime" involved one of us beating the everloving crap out of another, or two of us torturing the third. I also think about all the times we nearly drove my mother to choke us out of sheer frustration. I remember how hard it was when I was responsible for the two younger ones, how hard it was to get them to shut the fuck up and stop bickering. We all love each other fiercely, but we still fight. When I'd come home from college on breaks, my brother and I frequently got into fistfights over control of the television remote control. When I was 25, I got into a screaming match at 3:00 am with my sister over useage of the word "bridezilla." And then I thought of my mother's siblings, how they cannot go three months without fighting and rumor-spreading and "I'm not talking to you"-ing. Even my grandfather and his siblings spent a good part of our last family reunion bitching about who got what when their mother died thirty years ago.

So when my husband talks about "the next one," I have to wonder about his sanity. I'm just not sure I'm up for hearing my kids fighting every day until I die, and then having to spend my afterlife listening in as they bitch about who got my collection of carnival glass.

The quickening

In the past couple weeks, I have started to feel the baby move. It has grown from "Hmm...is that gas or the baby?" to "What are you DOING in there?!"

It did not feel like "flutters" or "butterflies" or "bubbles" or any of the other froofy language the books used to describe it. It felt like tiny muscle spasms down in my abdomen.

Last week, I lay down with Max for a late-afternoon nap. I snuggled up to him, with my front against his back. I could feel the tiny spasms very low down. The baby was kicking just above my pelvic bone. I started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" Max asked.

"The baby is kicking you in the butt right now."

"Damn. Kid's not even born yet and it's already kicking my ass."

Baby-shaped

Had my 16-week appointment yesterday. I still have not switched OB's, although I want to. I like this guy, he's very nice and personable and all, but he insists on internal monitoring from the second I get to the hospital. If my water hasn't broken, he'll break it, and then they'll poke an electrode into the baby's scalp to measure heart rate and very probably stick a probe into my uterine wall to measure contractions. None of which I am cool with. So now I have to go through the pain-in-the-ass process of switching doctors. Sigh.

Anyway, yesterday the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat with the doppler. I was unconcerned; I've heard from a couple people that sometimes they're just hard to find. I had felt sick when I woke up in the morning, which meant my hormones were probably still working, and the doctor said he wasn't worried. My husband sure was, though. Max grew more tense with every minute that slipped by, every pass of the doppler wand across my exposed stomach. I could feel his anxiety as he stood next to the exam table; he was frowning and his jaw was clenched. Finally the doctor said "oh, it's just easier to see it, let's go into the next room and just do an ultrasound."

So he did, and the baby appeared right away. The first things I saw were legs. Two skinny little legs with feet, kicking around in the grainy grey window. The wand moved across my belly, and a head appeared. "See?" said the doctor. "Still there, everything's fine. It's perfect." He started to point out the various parts, but I blurted out, "Is it sucking its thumb?!"

It was. Not only was there a recognizable head, but there were arms and hands, one of which kept flying up to the mouth.

For the first time, I felt a little awww feeling. I have been pretty "meh" about this whole deal so far, even though it was a (meticulously) planned pregnancy and very much wanted, etc. I'm not overly sentimental about stuff like this by nature, and pregnancy is not very fun, so I have not been much for teary-eyed moments. But this was different; this was a person-shaped thing, not just blobs, and it was sucking its thumb. It was doing a thing that babies do all the time. So I felt a little "awww" and I felt a little "wow." It made it seem much more real; that grainy image of thumb-sucking sank in more deeply than all the barfing, all the insomnia and aches and strange feelings have.

Holy crap, we're having a baby.

16 Weeks

Well, I have now officially completed 16 weeks of pregnancy. I have 24 more to go. Which seems like a really long time, especially since I don't particularly like being pregnant. I'm not anxious to have it over with and have the baby in-hand (that award goes to Max, who would like to have his wee babelet arrive...oh, some time last week), I just don't like being pregnant. It's not fun. But more on that later.

The fetus: is about 4.5 inches long (crown to rump) and weighs approximately 3.5 ounces. It's about the size of an avocado right now, which should give me something more interesting to think about than "why the fuck are they charging that much for carrots?" next time I go to the grocery store. Anyway, the lower limbs are much more developed now. The head is more erect than it has been previously, and the eyes have moved toward the front of the head. The ears are close to their final position. Some of the body systems are working, including the circulatory system (the heart is pumping roughly 25 quarts of blood per day) and urinary tract. Yep, the baby is swallowing aminotic fluid and peeing it out, right inside me. Which does not gross me out as much as you'd think, since it's basically going straight through. There's nothing in there for it to collect on its way, so it's not like actual pee. The patterning of the scalp has started, although the hair is not recognizable yet. The eyes are still fused shut, but they are moving (though slowly). It's even started growing fingernails and toenails, which will continue to grow while it gestates.

I am feeling better, although I'm starting to get the "fuzzy-brain" feeling the books and other mothers have warned me about. I'm getting more forgetful and spacy (I know, scary, right?) and my ability to multitask has gone to shit. Formerly, I wasn't happy unless I was doing two or three things at once, like watching a movie while knitting and surfing the internet. Now it's very hard for me to even surf and watch a movie at the same time, much less do anything else too. Writing, even silly blog posts, has become harder. Sometimes I have to sit for a few minutes and search for the words I want before I can even start. I leave out letters and words when I type, or type nonsense words and it takes me two or three passes to catch them.

The cats are loving this new twist, because when we're watching something I have to pay attention to, I stop doing everything else and just watch, which means my lap and my hands are free for Kitty Comfort Time. I read something in a magazine that said the baby needs a lot of the nutrient Choline right now, a nutrient that's essential for memory and brain development. If it's not getting enough from the placenta, it steals mine. And I end up feeling like a first-class space cadet.

Other things: I can feel my joints loosening, and it feels like my tailbone is shifting around when I lay on the floor. Sometimes I feel like you could take my arms and legs and pull me like a Stretch Armstrong doll. I know that my whole body loosening up is necessary if the kid is going to make it out in one piece, but I thought I'd have a little more time. That whole thing comes off like a cruel joke anway - "Ha ha ha! Not only are you going to gain weight and have your center of gravity fucked with, just for fun we'll make you as loosely-jointed as a marionette! You'll have no choice but to flail wildly, lose your balance, and fall on your ass more times than you can count!"

I can feel my stomach muscles rearranging themselves too. When I turn over in bed or when we're engaged in activities of an intimate nature, I definitely notice that things are NOT where I left them. It's bizzarre, going to move and use a muscle but finding in in a different spot. It is definitely much weirder than losing your keys or finding that missing sock in the fridge.