To be filed under Random Acts of Weirdness:

There's a headless Statue of Liberty in my neighborhood.

California is weird.

A random snapshot of life, and grad school, and wishing I could sleep more than 3 hours at a time

Below is an email I wrote to a friend this morning - it's a sampling of what life for me has become based on a 14 hour snapshot from 7:30 last night to 10 this morning.  Read it and, if you don't have kids yet, make sure you're taking the pill religiously until you're really ready to live life like this; and if you do have older kids, read it and think back to when you had a newborn, and laugh and laugh and laugh because you don't have to do this anymore.

On an up note, I am starting to get myself ramped back up to go to grad school.  When I was 23 I sat down on a Saturday night and planned out my life and all of the things I wanted to do by a certain time.  Some of them I have completed (live in another country).  There are two big ones that are still sticking out at me that I haven't even touched.

The first is to publish one of the myriad of books that are floating around in my head (so I'm going to kick NaNoWriMo's ass this year as a jumpstart).  The second is to get three advanced degrees; a something (masters? phd?) in medieval/early modern European history, a MBA, and go to Seminary for a M.Div.    I want to get started on one of these in 2014.

I was ready to start Seminary last year, but then the whole pregnancy thing happened.  I'm pretty convinced that Seminary is something I want to do in person, not online, so I'm checking out online courses for the other two right now, because I don't think I'm going to get to go to school in person for quite some time.  I was looking at online courses in different universities and found that Cambridge has an online continuing education department that offers really cool online courses (not the masters I want, but it's a start).  So starting in January I'll be taking an online course from the university in my favorite British city on the early Tudors.  How cool will that be?

Speaking of the early Tudors, I checked out the download statistics on my English Renaissance podcast today, and I'm seriously pissed off at myself.  Over 2000 people download that sucker each day and I can't get my ass together to do a new episode.  Seriously, what is my problem.  That's a rhetorical question.  Note to self: publish new English Renaissance podcast within the next two weeks. (I know some of you got here through the link on that blog - welcome, and I apologize for my habitual suckiness, and I promise to get my shit together here soon).

Ok, so without further ado, here's the snapshot of my life last night into this morning.  Given that I spend so much time pumping, I was thinking I should have some kind of TV show: The Pumping Diaries, and it would be all about the things I do while I'm pumping.  Like pluck my eyebrows.  And chop carrots.  And take a bath.  Fold laundry.  Seriously, the list is endless.

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7:30: start to put H down.  Bottle,  story,  cuddles.  Hoping for a bath at 8.

7:45: H screaming with really bad gas.  Babies don't understand gas obviously and it really freaks them out and scares them.

Put h in the big bed and lay with her,  burping her,  pumping her legs to help get the gas out,  rubbing her belly.

8:15: h still crying and upset. Put on the white noise machine that soothes her,  bring her back out into the living room to put her in her swing, which also helps.

8:45: h falls asleep in swing.  bath

9:20: 20 minutes of pumping.

9:45: wash all bottles and pumping parts.  Set out fresh pumping parts for overnight pumps. Get her first overnight feed ready so we can just grab it  (breast milk can be left out for up to 4-6 hours.

10:00 put h down in her bassinet.

10:15: I go to bed

1:15: wake up to h making hungry noises.  Feed.  Then go out to living room and pump for 15 minutes.  Wash pump parts and get second feed ready and fresh parts laid out for next pump session.

2:00: back to bed

4:30 h hungry.  Same as earlier... feed,  pump, wash stuff,  get next feed ready.

5:15: back to bed

5:45: h starts making wake-up noises.  Doze through it for a while.

6:45: get up with her when she starts crying for real.  Sit and help her with her gas.  Bicycle her legs.  Massage her belly.  Talk to j about calling the doctor since she hasn't pooped in a day and might be constipated.  Feed her.  Spend 20 minutes burping her.  Change diaper.  Play goofy games to make her smile.

8:15 put her in swing so I can pump. Wash parts. Etc. (Pumping is every 3-4 hours to keep supply up).

She fell asleep in swing so I nap on couch for 40 minutes.

9:25: she starts crying again.  Get j to handle.  I sit in a bath for 15 minutes with a cup of coffee.  Bliss.  Keep hearing her cry so put my head under the water.
 
10am: I start work.

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Yep, this is life.  We tried for years to get this, so I ain't complaining.  But I sure would love to feel rested again in this lifetime.  

Trying to raise a bilingual kid

One thing I've been doing a lot of recently is re-learning German.  It's been fifteen years since I've studied it properly, and I really want to raise Hannah to be bilingual from birth.  I've read lots of research on how growing up bilingual gives kids a huge head start in brain development, etc., so I've been kind of immersing myself in German for the past few weeks.  The more I do it, the more I remember - words come back to me that I had forgotten I even knew in the first place. And I looked up the phrases I use the most with her (such as "my, what a dirty diaper you have, little lady!") so that I can speak at least 10% auf Deutsch to her now, and that will only continue to grow as I learn more.  I figure that by the time she's really speaking, if I do this right, she'll be pretty much bilingual.

I am using the DuoLingo app each day, and have bought German children's books to read to her, which will also be good for me, but a few other things that are helping in the "immersion" goal are:

The Slow German podcast at SlowGerman.de - a podcast of German information and news read very slowly so that non-natives can easily follow it.  This is great!

I also found MySpass.de, which streams German comedies, full episodes, for free.  This serves multiple purposes.  First, since I'm feeling old and tired and sore, and eating lactation cookies and drinking fenugreek tea (I'd never heard the word fenugreek three months ago - now I'm obsessed with it), laughing at German comedies I can't understand is awesome.  And of course, it's helping me learn the language.  But the laughing at weird German stuff I can't understand is really the highlight right now.

In addition to the fact that growing up bilingual will help her brain development, and make it easier for her to learn new skills as she gets older, I just plain like the idea of having a second language that I can speak with Hannah, kind of like our secret language.  Not too many people in Southern California speak German, so we can have secret conversations, and I can't think of very much that's more awesome than having mother/daughter secret conversations.

Imagining 6000 people virtually naked

So I moderated a panel today on our ebook project in an online web conference for Library Journal.  I did this from my bedroom with our baby in the living room, and J on standby in case she freaked out and needed to be taken for a walk.  My new home office isn't heated yet, and it's chilly outside, so I was in the bedroom.  The computer was on the dresser, which is a good standing height for me.  I put on real clothes, and even some make up...being dressed in real clothes made me feel a little bit more professional than being in my pj's would have. Over 6000 people had registered, which made me really nervous, so I pretended that they really inflated the numbers and there were only 80 people listening to me, max.  From the twitter feed, I think I may have underestimated it a teeny bit, but it got me through the 40 minute time slot, and that's what was necessary.

My mommy-brain only reared its ugly head once at the very beginning, which probably had more to do with me being nervous than actual mommy-braindom, but it's easy and useful to blame everything on either hormones or being tired.

Yesterday was Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day, and we went to the lake with Hannah and put some of Baby T's ashes near "his" bench (where I used to sit when I was preggo with him).  We lost him on October 12, 2010, so every year we have that anniversary followed immediately by the remembrance day and all the walks and ceremonies that people have around this time of year.  It's like a week or so that is heavily devoted to Baby T, and I like that.  Sometimes I feel like the Mustard Seed Baby misses out because we don't remember her as much (I think it was a her).  But when I say Baby T I kind of lump them both together, and we had TMSB for such a short time, I'm sure she understands.

One thing I've been happily surprised by is how much time I still have to read books.  I had expected all book-reading to go out the window when I had a baby.  But she spends so much time sleeping now, even when she's sleeping in my arms I can read on my kindle easily enough.  I don't get deep reading periods of, say, an hour or two uninterrupted - the same way I don't get deep periods of uninterrupted sleep - but it's enough to keep me happy.  I'm almost done with the JK Rowling mystery, The Cuckoo's Calling.  I will admit to reading it just because it's JK Rowling.  I've never been a big mystery reader.  But I think after this I'm going to have to try some good mystery writers now because I'm totally addicted.  It's all starting to become clear now, and I'm on pins and needles waiting to see who the killer is.  I sure hope Hannah is quiet tonight because I need some good reading time.

7 more working days until I start back full time.  I'm exhausted, but I'm going to enjoy using my brain a little bit more each day.  

I'm on a roll with taking Hannah to the lake, too.  I still get hella scared each time, but I can't live my life in fear of her freakouts.  The more I do it, the easier it will become.  On Friday I'm taking her to a hospital 45 minutes away for a breastfeeding clinic.  I'm petrified at the thought of her wailing in the car for the entire time, but then I remember that the 80's station is a great resource for dealing with screaming babies.  She can scream, I can sing along to Duran Duran, and eventually she'll stop, and so will I, and all will be well again.

Mundane and Getting-Old Angst

I wish I had something to write about besides the regularity with which my Hannah has a wailing fit; mostly because that would mean I had other stuff going on in my life, other than being a feeding and diaper-changing machine.  Alas, the highlight of my days right now are Tummy Time, and playing with the Fisher Price Piano Gym (which is really super fun - don't knock it till you've tried it).  

That's going to be changing here in a few weeks when I go back to work full time, starting off with going to Internet Librarian and then the following week, the California Library Association conferences.  I'm speaking at both, which means that I need to start digging through my closet for a Professional Outfit.  I've been wearing yoga pants and maternity jeans almost exclusively for the past 7-8 months.  

I did have fun Me Time on Saturday when I went to the mall by myself and bought new non-elasticated jeans.  

Is this seriously what my life is?  Getting excited by going to the mall by myself?  

The other thing that has me really excited is the new Bridget Jones book that came out today.  It appeared on my kindle when I turned it on this morning; and when I started reading it, I was suddenly 24 again, riding the Northern Line to work, exhausted (and possibly hung over).  For about three weeks I picked up smoking, and being a nonsmoker I didn't know what brand to get, so I bought Silk Cut because that's the kind Bridget smoked.  Like Bridget I obsessively logged units of alcohol logged, and carbohydrates consumed.  

Like Bridget I was a klutz (I regularly came dangerously close to getting caught in escalators) and would make overly-dramatic gestures (I was nursing a broken heart, and one of my favorite things was to walk along Old Compton Street in Soho in the rain, hugging my chest, feeling the rain on my face and then standing outside Patisserie Valerie's where I had once eaten quiche with the boy who caused the aforementioned broken heart, looking in through the wet glass at all the happy people eating cake, and thinking that I really would be perfect in a Dido video).

So it's weird reading an older Bridget, who is still a lovable klutzy narcissist, and wondering where the past 13 years have gone.  I feel old.  I blame hormones (I blame most things on hormones these days).  But I don't like it.  I'm looking forward to getting back out into the world, having a reason to wear makeup and nice clothes, and exercising with regularity again.

But to end on a happy note; Babygirl and I went to the lake yesterday, just the two of us, and for the first time it didn't end in wailing.  She woke up midway through our walk, and quietly rode and made faces at me.  A definite improvement over the last time I tried, a few weeks ago, when halfway through our walk she decided she needed to be held or else she'd scream bloody murder; so I wound up pushing the empty stroller with one hand and carrying her with the other the rest of the way.  Maybe it's more confidence, or maybe it's me not caring as much as I did at first, but I'm becoming ok with her screaming.  I don't like it, and I always try to soothe her, and hold her, but sometimes it seems like she just needs to scream, and really, there are times when I do too, and I didn't just go through the traumatic experience that she did.  Even a week or so ago, I was held hostage at home because I was afraid that I'd set off her wailing when we went out.  But I'm becoming more ok with it now.  And I think that as I become ok with it, and become more confident taking her places, she'll be ok with it too, and maybe not wail so much. 

Here's hoping.  Because as much as I'm a homebody, I'm really not hip with spending this much time at home.

3am feeds just got a lot cooler

Two pieces of awesome happened to make nighttime feeds a lot cooler (which isn't actually saying as much as I'd like, considering nighttime feeds aren't very cool to begin with).  So here's where I'm at with feeding:

Hannah won't breastfeed.

My girl likes to eat (she's like her mom that way).  And she likes to eat a lot very quickly.  You could say she scarfs down her milk.  In the NICU when she wasn't even 48 hours old, they were already changing her to the slow-flow bottles because she ate so damn fast and kept spitting up.  Plus, speaking of the NICU, she got hooked on bottles and pacifiers there.  So then, when I tried to feed her, she was all, "hey, this is more work, and it's slower, and I'm not a fan of more work and slower when I can get more faster for less work."  She's clever and into efficiency like that.

So I'm pumping.  8 weeks tomorrow of pumping 7 times a day for 15-20 minutes at a shot so I can give my girl my milk and not have to give her formula.  And it's not because I'm preachy about breastmilk.  I'm not a Boob Nazi like some of the lactation ladies at the hospital.  No, I'm just cheap.  Have you seen the price of formula lately?  They keep that shit locked up in stores because it gets stolen so much.  At my breastfeeding class they said that the average formula fed baby costs their parents $3000 the first year.  We've got a wedding in Sweden to go to next year - ain't no way I'm spending $3000 on food when my boobs make it for free.  Plus, it apparently burns 20 calories an ounce.  30 ounces a day = 600 calories = pass the cheesecake.

But I digress.

The point is, nighttime feedings are a bit tricky because when babygirl cries (her sweet little "ah-waeh! ah-waeh!") I gotsta feed her with a bottle first (I always keep an extra one out - I've read all kinds of stats about how long you can keep breastmilk out, ranging from 4-10 hours.  I average somewhere in the 5-6 hour range personally).  So babygirl eats.  Then babygirl burps.  

That's when Mama should be going back to bed.  But no.  Mama hooks her boobs up to a machine looking like it could have come from an episode of the Jestons, and sits in the dark for 15 minutes feeling like a cow getting milked (moooo).  Then Mama goes out to the kitchen to wash her pumping crap (though I recently got smart and now I have three sets of pumping crap so I don't have to wash overnight - I just store it all in a ziplock in the fridge), and then makes a fresh bottle to have on hand in another two hours when babygirl wakes up hungry.

The whole process takes about 45 minutes.

We live in a small house, and our bedroom doesn't have a lot of extra space, so up until now we've been sitting on the bed when we feed her, and when I pump,  This is horribly uncomfortable, forces us to slouch, and is generally an inelegant solution.

First bit of awesome: an amazingly comfortable upholstered rocking chair with stool we bought at an antique place in town over the weekend.  It's in the room that will become the nursery, so when babygirl cries, we just take her in there, sit down in back-and-arm-supported comfort, and rock away.

During my 15-20 minutes of pumping I can do whatever thanks to the hands free pumping bra I bought when I realized that this could very well be my life for the next few months (we still try breastfeeding regularly - my lactation consultant - yeah, I have one of those - thinks that as she gets older and her muscles get stronger, we might have success).  So I've been reading a lot.  15 minutes at a shot, 7 times a day is a lot of reading.

I have two apps on my ipad that are getting a ton of time right now.  The first is NextIssue, which is kind of like Spotify for magazines.  I have about 20 magazines in regular circulation there.  Some are intelligent ones like the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. But there's also Us Weekly with some Oprah, Real Simple, and Rachel Ray thrown in for good measure.

The other one is also like Spotify, but for ebooks.  Oyster just launched, and is only in an iphone app right now (which I use on my ipad) and they don't have a ton of publishers yet, but they seem to be a good effort in how to solve the problem of granting people unlimited reading at a price point they can stomach ($9.99/month).  Yeah, the library is free, but as we all know (me especially from our ebook project at work) the hold times on the popular titles are ginormous, and if this works, they will have a much bigger selection.  Right now the biggest publisher they have is HarperCollins (the only one of the Big 5 I believe they have), and they have a bunch of midsize ones like Houghton Mifflin, Workman, etc.  So they have a bunch of great titles.

The reader is pretty crap - instead of using one that's freely available (ie Bluefire) they went with building a dedicated one.  You scroll up to turn the page.  That's just weird.  They also don't have a ton of flexibility with changing the fonts and colors.  For example, there's a font I really like, but the nighttime setting has its own font, so I can't use the font I like with the nighttime setting, which seems stupid.  Let me pick the font, and the background.  The searching and browsing isn't great, but it's designed to be an app to use on your phone, so I can see why they are trying to keep it simple.  You can search on their website and add titles to your reading list online, so that makes it easier, I guess.

Anyway, on an average night I'm reading on my Oyster app at least twice, and I can definitely see it being worth the money for power readers.  It's available only through invitation right now, but if you sign up requesting one, it doesn't take long for it to arrive.

So between Oyster and the rocking chair, 3am is looking a lot less intimidating these days.  It's funny, the things that have become important to me.

The Birth of Hannah Zen

So.  I gave birth.  To a living baby.  6 weeks ago.  Without an epidural.  But with forceps.  After 6 hours of hard purple pushing and 25 hours of labor.  Yeah, I'm tough like that.

Anyway, here's Hannah Zen, looking all cute and sweet and stuff.

Her birth wasn't really what was in my birth plan, but it was still completely perfect.  To start with, I was induced when she failed a non-stress-test at my 38 week checkup.  At the NST they look for a baseline heartrate, and then accelerations.  She showed a baseline and decelerations.  They did a biophysical ultrasound, which she also failed - lack of limb extensions.  So they sent me to L&D for prolonged monitoring, and my doctor, who just happened to be the head guy in L&D that week, mentioned the I-Word.  This had me really freaked out because I had always heard that induced labors were worse than natural ones; it's forcing your body to do something that it isn't ready to do.  More epidurals and C-sections supposedly come out of induced labors.  

Also, I was alone during this time.  J always left my NST's to go to Trader Joe's because they were boring for him to just sit there, and this way he could get groceries.  When I first realized that the test was going to go long, I texted him to tell him that he should take the groceries home so the frozen stuff didn't melt, and then come back for me.  At first the ultrasound nurse said that they'd probably send me down to the cafeteria to eat something, and then have me redo the test.  She even offered me peanut butter crackers, which I wanted because I was really hungry, but I stupidly went to the bathroom first.  My OB showed up to look at the test while she was handing me the pack of crackers, and when he mentioned that I might need to be induced, she yanked those crackers back so fast.  It broke my heart a little because I knew I wasn't going to be able to eat for a long time if I was induced, and dang, I was really hungry and those crackers looked really good.

So anyway, J takes the groceries home, I go to L&D, and proceed to get checked in.  At some point the doctor came in and said I probably was going to need to be induced..  I text J and start sending him my requests of things I need - laptop and charger, birth ball (deflated - I'd been bouncing on it the entire previous weekend trying to get labor to start naturally), my essential oils, etc etc etc.  He was at home running around like a mad man, completely freaked out thinking they were going to start it without him there and he was going to miss everything.

  

Eventually he comes back to the hospital, carrying my labor bag.  The OB confirms that they are going to induce because something had fundamentally changed with Hannah's heartrate, and while it wasn't an emergency yet, he didn't want it to turn into one.  I call work, J calls his parents, and we're all set to go.  Then we wait for the orders to come in to start the pitocin.  And we wait some more.  And a little longer.  

Eventually the pitocin drip starts at 3:15.  I'm having a great time.  Seriously.  I'd been studying self-hypnosis through hypnobabies, and I'm peaceful and chilled out, and I don't even think we need to call our doula.  We're doing fine on our own.  I'm crampy, but hey, it's labor, who isn't, right?  I get a lovely dinner of 3 kinds of juice and broth and jello, and life is pretty darn good.  Even into the night; I'm tired, my back hurts, but hey, it's labor, right?  J really wanted to get the doula in, if for no other reason than to support him, and so she comes around 1:30.  His mom is there, and we're watching funny cat videos on youtube.  I call my best friend in London, Sandor, who is on holiday in Sweden, and we chat for a while.  I'm thinking that this is cake.  

And then they broke my water.

All of a sudden the world started spinning.  My pelvis was being yanked out of my big toe.  There was a wrecking ball trying to come out of my ass.  This was serious. fucking. pain.

I screamed.  I grunted.  I begged for it to stop.  I said I couldn't do it anymore.  I squeezed J's hand so hard I nearly broke his fingers.  When my doula kept forcing me to drink water I thought she was crazy because how the hell was I supposed to have the energy to drink in between these ridiculous contractions?

I begged for an epidural.  Doula and J tried to talk me out of it.  I said I really wanted it.  My eyes were closed and I screamed, "I don't hear anyone doing anything."  So J went and ordered the epidural.  I was 4th in line.  By the time the Traveling Anesthesiologists with their rolling cart of numbing goodness arrived, I was fully dilated and it was too late.

Oh, a burst of energy!  It's time to push!  I'm dilated!  Yippeeee!  It's going to happen soon!

At some point I don't remember they brought in a cart with all the baby tools on it, and sat it in front of my bed.  It was supposed to give me strength or something.  They turned on the lamp on the table where the baby would be weighed, and started heating up blankets.

Sadly, they had plenty of time.  I pushed hard for like 6 hours.  Purple pushing, counting to 10, take a breath, do it again, in sets of 3 during each contraction.  I was apparently really tough.  Nurses kept saying what an awesome job I was doing, and what a trooper I was, and how amazing it was that I was pushing for so long. I don't remember any of it.  Apparently midway through my IV stopped working and they had to set up a new one, and my veins were so bad it took three nurses multiple tries till they found a good spot.  I had bandaids down my entire arm, and J said it was the most painful thing to watch them doing it during my 30 second rest breaks from each contraction.  I just barely remember someone poking me.  They wanted me to move from my side to my knees, leaning on the back of the bed, and I can't even begin to explain the herculean effort it took to get rolled over and up on my knees because of the pain.  It was really awful.

I've been told that if my OB hadn't been the doctor in charge, they would have called an emergency C-section from all my pushing.  But my doctor knew how much I wanted to be as natural as possible, and how important that was, and he let me push as long as I could.  During the peak of it I was contracting every 2 minutes and each one lasted 90 seconds.  So I had about 30 seconds off.  That went on for hours.  And hours.  And hours.

They kept telling me they could see the head.  If you can see the head, why can't someone just reach up and pull her out, I wondered aloud.  I was really serious.  How hard could that be?

Eventually my OB finished up another delivery and came in to check on me, and saw that I really was reaching the end of my rope.  He asked the Traveling Anesthesiologists with their rolling cart of goodness to come back in and give me something called a saddle block, which basically numbs all your parts that would sit in a saddle for 2 hours.  It's designed to give you a break to rest before you gear back up to push again.  It was only supposed to take 10 minutes to administer it, but because of all the pain I was in I couldn't sit still, and it wound up taking closer to 45 minutes (my doula stayed with me, and apparently J was having a fit sitting outside freaking out thinking that something horrible had happened because it was taking so long).  But when it took, it was awesome.  Life was good again.  The sun was out.  I felt human again.

The nurses told me to rest after my ordeal of the past 8 hours.  But the doctor ixnayed that idea.  He wanted me to push more.  He was confident that we had 2 hours to work with, and he thought for sure that since I was relaxed and out of pain, I'd be able to push her out.  So he repositioned her and back to pushing I went, this time in sets of 4.  We did that for an hour, and still no baby.  She was just well and truly stuck in there.

So after 25 hours, it all ended quickly with forceps.  The room became a flurry of activity; suddenly there were nurses, assisting doctors; I swear some of the cleaning crew stopped by just to watch too.  But after all that, I got my babygirl, a giant 8 pound 11 ounce ball covered in goop,  crying and gasping, placed on my chest.

After being stuck behind my bone for all that time, and being pushed up against it, she was blue and looked like she'd just fought Mike Tyson and lost, and so she was taken to the NICU where they discovered a little infection (which is probably what made me fail the NST).  So she stayed there for a week getting antibiotics, and we brought her home on August 14.  While she went to the NICU I ate dinner.  I was hungrier than I've ever been in my entire life.  I could have eaten an army of horses.  Food was really awesome after that.  J went to the cafeteria and brought me cartons and cartons of lovely hot food, which I relished.

So that's my birth story, which, like I said, for being completely not my birth plan, was still awesome.  I avoided a C-Section that probably would have been ordered if my OB hadn't been the one in L&D that week.  I didn't get an epidural, even with 6 hours of pushing and an induced labor.   I got a healthy girl.  I had interventions, but they were medically necessary, and I am grateful because if I'd been going through that a hundred years ago, it would not have ended so well, that's for sure. I got to test myself and see how tough I really was, and I know now that I am one tough cookie.  If I can do that, I can pretty much do anything, right?