A Grain of Salt

My mom has told me more than once to STOP READING. I can't help it. I hear about something that might affect or is affecting my baby, I want to KNOW STUFF. Polyhydramnios. Group B Strep. Fifth disease/Parvovirus B19. Jaundice. Gas. "Why the heck won't my baby wake up?" (Seriously, I've never seen anyone sleep like my baby slept the day after we brought him home from the hospital.) I've read about all that stuff. Sure, a lot of it's scary, but it's also good to know.

The thing about my reading is that I know how to take things with a grain of salt. I've done a lot of investigation into feeding babies, teaching babies, getting babies to sleep. I don't accept any one book as a "bible." Rather, I've gotten a lot of different ideas. If you read enough, every once in a while you come across something that totally makes sense to you. You'll also come across stuff that makes you think, "There's no way I'll ever be able to make that work." What's cool is that there's no absolute Right Way. But if you read enough, you can find techniques that can work for you.

I know I still have a lot to learn. I'm a total noob when it comes to babies. At the same time? I have a ten week old baby who puts himself to sleep without crying when I lay him down in his bassinet, and stays that way for ten hours. There is definitely something to be said for reading.

Someone who I respect a great deal as a mother, teacher and disciplinarian told me the other day that she is convinced that all babies start out good, and it's parents who cause the bad habits. I totally agree. Oh, sure, there are things you probably can't help. Colic comes to mind. But babies learn from day one, and I am bound and determined to make sure my baby stays a "good baby."

Next into Google: "How do you teach a baby to swallow cereal?"

Summer Days, Driftin' Away

Once again, I have to wonder how I got so lucky. I really do have an awesome baby. He smiles a lot. He sleeps through the night. He hardly ever cries. He loves to snuggle.

Every summer I run two week-long summer day camps for my martial arts students. This year I am doing so with baby in tow. My little Wormie spent the morning alternating between napping and watching kids train and play in a gym with no AC. When he slept, I let him do so in his stroller in my office, which has a window-unit AC and was considerably cooler. There were times, though, that he simply wanted to be held, and I as I had to supervise ten other children, I had to let him snuggle against me in the 90+ degree heat of the gym. It could have been a horrible day -- but he never fussed. He just ate, slept, played and snuggled. Alex rocks.

Even as miserably and oppressively hot as it's been, I don't want summer to end. The more time I spend with my son, the more I'm dreading sending him to daycare in August. Every day, he does something just a little cuter, or a little cooler, or a little better. I don't want to miss any of his "firsts," and I'm afraid I will.

What I wouldn't give to be a stay-at-home mom! At least I'll have next summer to look forward to...

Pregnancy is Beautiful

Pregnancy is beautiful -- at least, that's what I've always heard other people say. To be honest, before I was pregnant myself, I didn't really care. Now, having done it, I must say I do appreciate the process more, but I still don't consider it "beautiful."

Admittedly, there are some women who pull it off really well. They stay in awesome shape, and sport a tight little sphere in their tummy, and after the baby is born they look ready to throw on their Asics go run a marathon.

That was totally not me. I remember trying to climb into my husband's truck at only 4 months and asking him if I looked as big as I felt. (He told me no, of course. He was wonderful.) I remember being about 20 weeks (only half as pregnant as I was going to be) -- the teeny little filipino moms at school would ask me when I was due, and when I'd tell them, their eyes would get really big and they'd just reply in awe, "Oh."

My pregnancy was not beautiful. I put on 50 pounds of baby and fluid. I had a near constant cold from August to April. My ankles were about as big around as my thighs. I had heartburn like a mofo, and I had to eat my supper around 4 pm or else the baby would kick it back up into my mouth in the middle of the night. I bought Tums in bulk. Every time I'd sneeze, I'd pee a little, too. Most days, I felt like I was leaking from every orifice of my body.

I recall a day near the end of my pregnancy -- I was climbing the stairs of the 5th-8th grade building at my school to eat lunch in the teacher's lounge. There is a set of double doors at the top of the stairs. A class of 7th graders was coming down the stairs for lunch, but one boy remained at the top to hold the door for me. However, another boy, seeing me coming, ran back up to open the OTHER door.

Pregnancy for me was definitely not beautiful. What I did decide was that it was absolutely amazing. Amazing, that something like this:


could become this:

and eventually this:




And even though not all pregnancies are beautiful, all babies are. Even though they sometimes look like this:

Baby Classes

For years before my son's birth, I have been planning activities for him in the hopes of someday raising the Most Awesome Child Ever. One of the things I was absolutely set on was some sort of dance class. Oh, I don't expect my son to wear tights and frolic about. But I'd like him to learn to move to music, and not feel self-conscious about doing it. Neither of his parents are dancers, but we both wish we were. A lot of men I've spoken to agree that dance lessons are a good idea. Chicks dig guys who can dance, right?

However, my little Wormie can't exactly dance until he learns to walk, so I'm looking for other alternatives to help with his physical and mental development in the meanwhile. A Spaz Mom like me could go nuts with all the choices available! Swimming, gymnastics, music... SIGN LANGUAGE! I found a baby signing class for 6 month olds. How awesome.

Swim lessons are a must, especially in Florida. Those start at 6 months. It'll be October, but the pool is heated. By that time, Alex should be big enough for swimmie diapers.

Baby gymnastics would be cool for developing strength and coordination. Plus, the class at the Little Gym is called "Bugs." I'm looking forward to saying, "Time to take Wormie to Bugs class!" That starts at 4 months, so it'll give me something to do until we start swimming!

In the meanwhile, I guess I'll stick with our daily activities of singing, playing 1-2-3-Jump! and the Baby Einstein play gym.

Nighttime routine results

After being put to bed at 7 pm, Alex slept -- or at least was quiet -- until 5:30 am. A new personal best!

When I was pregnant with Alex, I would count kicks like a good new mommy. I read that he should make ten movements per hour. Sometimes he would go a few hours without moving at all! But when he did move, he really moved, so I never worried that anything was wrong. I figured he was sleeping, and I predicted he would have a good sleep cycle when he was born. I was right!

Nighttime routine

There are so many things I want to write about, as I have two months of mommyhood to catch up on, but I'm doing this one while it's fresh.

I want to be the best mom I can be. As a teacher, I have had plenty of examples of what not to do. As a daughter, I've had an awesome example of parenting from my own mom and dad. I've done tons of research, and I have my own ideas as well.

I am a firm believer in routines. Children like structure. So far, I've been so overwhelmed by, well, everything that I've neglected to actually start any routines with my son. We have "things we do," but we don't have a schedule. So as of tonight, I'm starting a bedtime routine.

So far, I've been really lucky. Alex is an awesome sleeper. Once he got off the bili-bed (which had Alex and me on a very strict 2-hour eat-and-sleep schedule), he instantly slept four hours at a time at night, and that time has increased gradually. By the time he was a month old, he was sleeping six hours, and by six weeks, he'd sleep from 9 pm to 5 am. As far as I'm concerned, that is "through the night," but I know babies need more sleep than that.

Up until now, Alex has started dozing around 7 pm, so I'm pushing bedtime up. Here was tonight's schedule:

6:15 pm -- Bath time, lotion, PJs (this part of the routine is also for me -- sometimes I procrastinate putting on the PJs, and I end up waking him up to do it. Not good.)

6:30 - 7 pm -- Quiet time and nursing in the recliner. Tonight it was just nursing and singing the alphabet, but once I get into the routine, I'll start reading to him as well.

7 pm -- Bedtime. I laid him down and said prayers, even though he was already mostly asleep, then kissed him goodnight, turned on his lullaby music and turned out the light. Unfortunately, it's still not very dark in the bedroom. Once I get the nursery finished, I need to make sure I have good, heavy shades on the windows.

He has been in there 45 minutes so far. He has woken up at least once, because I could hear him cooing to himself, but he never cried, and now he's asleep again. Tomorrow's update will tell how things went.

Labor

When I was about six months pregnant, a friend of mine asked me if I was worried about labor. I was worried about everything, of course, but I knew he was asking if I was afraid of the pain. I told him I wasn't, not really.

In my life, my exposure to babies and pregnant women has been limited. I'm a teacher, though, on a faculty that consists almost entirely of women, so my workplace is chock-full of mothers, and all through my pregnancy I'd gotten lots of advice. I knew that the pain I would feel would be like no other pain I'd felt before. But I was pretty sure I could handle it.

I'm no stranger to pain. I competed in a combat sport for over a decade. I've fought at least four different Olympians. I've fought men. I've had countless bruises, scrapes and sprains. I've dislocated my hip. I've had ACL surgery. And I've never been a huge fan of pain medication. I figured, if nothing else, I was just tougher than a lot of other women.

I had initially wanted to go a childbirth class with my husband. I wanted to do this for him, not for me, so he could meet other dads and bond and stuff. My husband pointed out to me that, at 49, he would be twice as old as many of the other men who were becoming fathers for the first time, and he thought trying to bond with them was silly. He had a point.

My mom is a veteran Labor & Delivery nurse, so instead of going to a class, I just asked her lots of questions about what to expect. About a week before I was going to be induced, she brought home some videos for me to watch. I watched clip after clip of these women with their husbands petting their faces and feeding them ice chips, and their midwives and their birthing balls and their doulas and their birth plans. It all looked so ridiculous, and I warned my husband that when I was in labor, there would be zero petting.

I was delivering at the hospital at which my mom used to work, so many of the nurses there knew her, and therefore knew who I was. My husband and I checked in at 6 pm to the chorus of, "Oh, it's little Sharbo!" My mom arrived shortly after, and asked me loudly in front of the nurse, who was an old friend of hers, if I'd already handed out copies of my birth plan. The nurse looked at both of us, determined we were joking, and looked vastly relieved.

And so it began. The first night was uneventful, and incredibly boring -- one can watch only so many episodes of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" on late-night TBS, after all. I was strapped up to so many monitors and IVs that getting up and walking around was not an option. All I could do was sit and wait -- and Facebook! A tray table, my laptop, and the hospital's wifi were my best friends, and through Facebook, friends and relatives all over the country were receiving updates from me like "Sharon hopes she doesn't deliver during American Idol" and pictures of my husband sleeping on the uncomfortable little cot.


It wasn't until the following afternoon that things really got rolling, and I was tough, just like I hoped I'd be. Oh, I was grumpy because I hadn't eaten in over 24 hours, but I never complained about the pain. As it turned out, I was a little too tough. Whenever I had a contraction, I'd just close my eyes and take deep breaths and wait for it to pass -- because I knew it would pass. After this had gone on a while, a nurse asked me what my level of pain was on a scale of 1 to 10, and was shocked when I told her, "Oh, seven or eight." Meds were ordered up, but after the first dose, I realized that all they did was give me that foggy, blurry feeling that I hate about pain meds, and I vowed I wouldn't have any more.

That evening, the anesthesiologist arrived to give me my epidural. I can see why people consider that a godsend, but in the end I decided I didn't like that either. I hated not being able to move my legs, or feel whether my injured knee was supported properly. Most of all, I hated having to wear the oxygen mask because the epidural was so strong I had to work hard just to breathe.

So when the epidural started to wear off, I wasn't sure whether I ought to tell anybody -- and again, because I wasn't crying and carrying on, the nurses had no clue. Then suddenly, I was informed it was time to push. I'd been told that pushing usually lasted about 3 hours, but since at this point I was essentially "natural" and could actually feel to push, it only took me about 35 minutes. I don't remember too much about those 35 minutes. I remember that yes, it was indeed the worse pain I'd ever been in. I remember being embarrassed because I thought I might throw up, and my husband had to hold a little pink tray under my chin in case I did (I didn't). I don't remember telling the nurse in no uncertain terms that I didn't want her mopping my face with a cool washcloth, but apparently I did.

My doctor made it there for about two contractions before my son was born -- he spent more time stitching me up than he did delivering Alex. By that time, I so wanted to be done that I didn't bother telling him that I could feel the stitches, too.

How It All Started

2008 didn't start off as the best year ever. In February, I was approached by my principal and told that I was going to be cut back to four days a week for the 2008-09 school year. In April, I tore my ACL completely playing volleyball. Later that month, our family dog died. Things were NOT going well. I could only hope that the law of averages would kick in soon.

We got a new puppy. She was a lot of work, but she's a really good dog. In June I had ACL construction surgery, and that went really well. Our principal at school retired, and the new principal informed me that there was no possible way they could not have me work five days a week, and had me sign a new contract. Things were looking up.

I had no idea how much.

From 1994 to 2004, I had been a nationally-ranked taekwondo competitor. I competed at the Olympic qualifiers in 2000, and I was on the AAU national team from 2002 to 2004. In 2004, an ankle injury compelled me to retire from competition, and it was then that my husband and I started trying to have a child. My body had other ideas. Oh, it liked to make me think I was pregnant -- then I'd take a home pregnancy test, and everything would go back to normal. People kept telling me, "It'll happen when you stop worrying about it."

With everything that happened in the first six months of 2008, the last thing my husband and I were thinking about was a baby. Then on August 18, tired after six of weeks of waiting for my period, I took an HPT to kickstart my monthly routine and this happened:


As you can see, that second line is not very dark, so -- like Juno -- I remained unconvinced. I took the second HPT in the pack, with the same result. A little research on the internet revealed that there is no such thing as a "false positive." If the test showed two lines, however faint, I was indeed knocked up.

I called my husband. His response was a bland, "You're kidding." My mom's? "Don't joke about that." Nobody believed me! There were times I didn't believe it myself. I never had morning sickness. I could chalk the exhaustion up to the start of school. I didn't really feel pregnant.

There would come a time, and it would be soon, that there would be no doubt.

By 20 weeks, I looked like this:And I was only half as pregnant as I was going to be!


By Easter 2009, I was ready to burst. I had already been having weekly nonstress tests and biophysical profiles for a few months because of my elevated blood pressure and the ridiculous amount of fluid I was carrying. Finally, after nine months of increasing hugeness and all the scares the medical profession can lay on someone of Advanced Maternal Age, my doctor scheduled me for labor induction on Monday, April 13, at 6 pm.

At 3:07 am on Wednesday, April 15, I became a mommy!


What will follow are the adventures of a first-time mom.