Barren Mare

Pack mentality

I realise that it's been awhile since I have written anything about the family dog, Little Guy. Poor Little Guy. Sidelined on the blog as much as in real life.

Before Botany was born, I began to worry a little bit about how LG was going to take her arrival. Everyone kept saying to me, "He's a dog, he'll adapt."  But prior to the birth, the dog was undoubtedly the centre of attention around here.  E. and I lavished his furry little self with love, attention, time, energy not to mention those squishy doggie treats he likes so much. At night, he slept like a small person, in a spoon-like position with me in bed.

A few months before the baby was due,  I tried, with marginal success, to distance myself somewhat that the transition wouldn't be so stark. I knew though that no matter what I did, LG's small wet nose was going to be put firmly out of joint when the baby came home. Since as far as he was concerned, he was the baby.

To be fair, he has coped with his demotion in the pack rank with considerable grace. We introduced the new member of the family gently, giving LG time to become familiar with Botany's presence while at the same time trying to provide some reassurance that he is still loved. Happily, Little Guy has become even more firmly attached to E., who in addition to taking on the responsibility for walking and feeding, continues to devote as much time and affection as possible. But in consequence, my formerly cosy bond with LG has undergone an alteration. 

Part of the change is the creation of a certain amount of necessary physical distance. Both E. and I are very careful that LG and Botany are never, ever left alone together, even for a minute. He's a sweet natured dog, and I think he will be very good with her some day but there is no way I am taking any chances. Presently, when we allow LG near the baby under supervision, he mostly just wants to sniff her nappy and to try to gently lick her head (the latter being rather discouraged). However, because we've already been far too lenient with LG about stuff like getting up on the furniture, I felt it was important to reinforce from the outset that Botany and her room are off limits to Little Guy. So when we first moved in, I installed a baby gate to the nursery so that he can see in, but not enter.  The nursing chair faces the door, and during the first couple of weeks, I found myself sitting there for hours on end, rocking and feeding with Little Guy sticking his forlorn little nose through the gate bars. Eventually, he dragged his doggie bed into the hall and parked himself outside the nursery door. That broke my heart a little bit.

After a couple of weeks, he gave up sentry duty. Now, when he is not out for his daily afternoon adventures with the dogwalker, he flops out in the the living room with his toys. Whenever possible, I try to pop in to say hello and pet him.  At one point, I tried to nurse Botany at least once a day in the same room as LG so he didn't feel so isolated, although I pretty much gave up on that since the sofa is nowhere near as comfy as the nursing chair and I can never seem to get the cushions positioned correctly.  And inevitably, as soon as she finally fell asleep, LG would stir, run to the window, spy the neighbour's dog or a pigeon or a swirling leaf or perhaps the rubbish bin appeared menacing- and his piercing BARK would jolt her awake.

Oh yes, the barking thing. The barking is basically a complete pain in the ass. When we lived in the old flat, LG very rarely barked- mainly because we were on the top floor and he couldn't see out the windows, which were quite high. He was usually well behaved on walks as well. Therefore, like dumbasses, we rather assumed he was not much of a barker and never worried about it.  Then we moved.  Unlike our old flat, this house has plenty of vantage points and lots of glass doors and accessible windows, all of which have proven extremely difficult to cover up.  So now he barks frequently, at everything. This is annoying at best and rage-inducing during those moments when the baby is suddenly woken up from a hard-won nap by his shrill little yelping. We've been trying to train him out of him with various methods but frankly, my hands are full just now and I have very little spare time or energy to devote to dog wrangling.  At least I am alerted when the post arrives through the letter box (and have to run downstairs before he eats it.).   

There are times when it feels like I have a noisy, mischievious toddler on my hands as well as a baby.  When I can hear him shredding something unauthorised while I sit out of reach, nursing. There are days when I get back to the house after a long walk with Botany in the pram, and as soon as we get to the door she wakes up and starts screaming, then the dog needs to be let out of his crate, wiggling with frantic joy at being reunited with the pack and jumpjumpJUMPforjoylickylicky. And he wants to be let out, getting underfoot as I am trying to drag the pram up over the back stairs into the kitchen and then he runs over and noses his metal food bowl rattling across the kitchen floor, FEEDMEMUMMYFEEDNOW while the baby also cries for the boob. 

Such chaos in a previously calm, well-ordered life is...well, an adjustment. If I am being honest, I would have to say there are moments when LG's antics simply add to the sense of being overwhelmed. But then...the other day, we came home, and LG did his customary wiggle of delighted greeting to both E. and myself. Then he ran out to the pram and wagged his tail at Botany.

"Look," said E., "he's saying hello to the baby. He knows she is part of the pack now."   And I bent down to stroke his furry little head- this irreplacable, invaluable member of our new expanded family.

How to win friends and influence mothers

Aw, I heart you, nice peoples for saying the nice things and expressing an appetite for more minutaie- bless you. Minutaie you shall have.  But...eeep. Having just finished saying it was OK with me if people didn't want to read any more, I was slightly dismayed at the sudden drop in bloglines subscribers.  Was it something I said?  Or didn't say?

(Actually, it really is OK- it's just that for awhile, I've been slightly perplexed about the subscriber numbers. It always seems someone is going out the revolving door just as someone else comes in. Maybe it is just the ebb and flow of the great river of the internets.)   

To be honest, I am finding my self esteem occasionally teetering toward the low end of the spectrum at the moment. Aside from feeling the constant vertigo of the parenting learning curve, another daunting aspect of new motherhood which I hadn't quite reckoned on is the extent to which one is suddenly thrust into social!group!activities!with!other!new!mothers!and!our!babies! This should really not come as such a surprise- after all, before I managed to get pregnant, it was hard not to notice that the local village was clogged with hoards of pram-pushing women, all of whom have extended maternity leave and appeared to be intent on finding somewhere to sit to feed the baby while slurping a latte.  What I hadn't previously grasped is that baby-feeding latte drinking is a Team Sport and that I would be joining the pram-pushing ranks.

Before getting pregnant, I was the sort of person who, while up for the odd bit of socialising and hanging out with friends, quite often preferred my own company much of the time. But it quickly became evident to me in the early weeks of Botany's life that if I was going to survive her infancy with my sanity intact, I was both going to have to get out of the house on a regular basis and make contact with other women who were undergoing similar sorts of experiences in baby bootcamp. Essentially, since doing endless laps of the park on my own was not really an appealing option, this meant joining groups for baby-related activities. This means making new "real life" friends.

Unfortunately, I am not exactly feeling my shiny, witty, sparkling best. I am usually pretty exhausted lack of sleep. When I am tired, my verbal skills are the first thing to go; I often have trouble stringing together a coherent sentence. I hate the way I look at the moment- I only get about 30 seconds to slap on some make-up in the morning; I can't fit into any of my pre-pregnancy trousers; most of my tops and shirts strain to contain my nursing bosom. Winter coat situation?  Bad. Can't even get it buttoned across the chest. And most days I am covered with a fair amount of dried milk (another side effect of crazy spraying boobs). So while I make a big effort and put my best foot forward, I often come away from these group encounters feeling like...a bit of a goober.

Example: first visit to my new Mother and Baby Playgroup on Thursday morning. I think I may have rolled the pram through some mud or perhaps dog poo because there was something yukky all over the wheels, and the brake is sticking again so I crashed into the door on the way in.  I was wearing my only clean trousers, slightly unflattering former IVF fat pants with a bedraggled hem. I also wore a stupid shirt over tank top ensemble which turned out to be very fiddly and constraining so that the only way to feed Botany was to get my entire boob out.  Which shouldn't be a big deal, except that I am not really "an entire boob out on first playgroup day" kind of girl. In trying to wrangle a blanket out of my bag, I knocked over a cup of coffee which had been placed by my feet. Botany kept tossing her head back and forth violently to combat the boob spray while clawing at my chest, then she did a big loud messy poo which went right up her back. I realised I had forgotten to pack a change of clothes for her. While changing her nappy, I manage to kneel in the damp coffee patch, leaving two big wet splodges on my formerly clean (though bedraggled) trousers.

Next to me sat a young trendy yummy-mummy type, with long flowing stylishly tousled hair, wearing a groovy knit mini dress and knee high suede boots. She was discussing a dinner party she planned to attend later, and reviewing her recent trip to Amsterdam with her five month old son, who was dressed in a cute little striped ensemble and burbling angelically on the playmat. 

Ugh.

However, at coffee afterwards, I got to chatting with another woman who I had clocked previously in my postnatal group. Her baby is also of the crankypants variety and on a couple of occasions, I detected the slightly deranged look of a colic survivor in her eye.  Over the obligatory lattes, we swapped a few war stories, in particular Nightmares Experienced with Screaming Infants on Public Transport. Then we agreed to make a joint venture to pram-push on foot to the nice department store in the town centre. 

"Yeah," she sighed, "I could really do with some new clothes. Nothing fits."

"Oh," I said. "Me too. I'm such a lard ass right now. But you always look really nice."  (And she does- matching sweaters/scarfs, fetching tweedy skirts, again the knee high boots).

"Oh, thank you very much," she said blushing prettily. "Actually," she went on, "I was thinking that you look really thin."

Maybe this making friends thing won't be all bad after all.   

What I had been intending to say went something along these lines

I hadn't been posting much because my parents were visiting and we were extremely busy with a number of activities. Including getting them moved into their new flat and extended baby shoogling.  Prior to their arrival, I had misty visions of long, leisurely afternoon naps (mine) while they walked Botany to the park in her pram, but somehow this didn't seem to happen. Probably because when the opportunity arose I was inevitably too busy gabbing to my mother and would end up accompanying her on said walks; arriving back at the house hours later all floppy and weary and un-napped.

Yesterday, even though I didn't really have time, I sat down and wrote a longish account of how Botany isn't anywhere close to sleeping through the night in apparent contrast to AllthePerfectBabies in my postnatal group, AllofWhomSleepLikeAngels.

And then Typepad ate the post. 

Oh well, I guess it wasn't that interesting, except from the standpoint of seeing how many grammatical errors I tend to make in a state of continual sleep deprivation. Other than being made to feel like a failing chump at times in contrast to the AllStarMothers, I'm actually not all that bothered about the sleeping thing at the moment. I kind of figure that she is only just three months old and given that she is exclusively breastfed and still relatively small, she's basically not going to sleep through. If I start having any sort of expectations of long nights of peaceful sleepity sleeps, I am only torturing myself. Or at least this is what I tell myself at three a.m when she wakes up. And then again at 5am.  And occasionally in the hour in between.

The other part of the missing post is where I discussed my intention to keep this site going for at least the immediate future, even though I had to confess to having some doubts about whether to continue, in light of my transition from infertility to mommy blogger (I use the latter term not to be derisory, but it is an easy categorisation). In hindsight, it's maybe all for the best that I lost the post because it possibly strayed into navel-gazing.  To paraphrase: I appreciate the direction has veered considerably from where I started out, and I am well aware both that not everybody wants to read about the minutiae of my parenting experiences from now on - but I'm cool with that.  Ultimately I like writing it for the sake of writing. And I feel often feel better and more connected (comments! so many helpful comments of late!) for having done so during these first few postpartum months which I have unexpectedly found quite isolating, anxiety-provoking and frequently pantwettingly scary.  Hopefully you can take what you like and leave the rest.

So, onwards. 

Botany and the boob

After nearly 11 weeks, it feels like we have maybe begin to turn a corner. Most days, she's more delightful than not.  Yes, she still has screamy meltdowns and spells of general pissitude, particularly at the end of the day but nothing like before. And the now frequent cooing, gurgling and grinning? I am floppy with love at the sight.  So you were all right- it does get better. It's still damn hard work and there are plenty of ups and downs- but I am beginning to think maybe I can do this.   

I'm conscious that on the breastfeeding front, we have a relatively charmed time of it- and for that, I am extremely grateful. Sure, I confess I had my doubts at certain points; for example, during the first couple days in hospital, I was the only woman in my room who was breastfeeding, and I really felt like the odd one out as my baby screamed all night while the others lay in a contented stupor. I flailed a bit as some of the nurses were less than helpful in answering my pleas for advice about whether I was doing it right.  Luckily, the day I was discharged, l had some terrific support from one of the midwives who took some time to help me with positioning and assist with expressing some colostrum into a syringe (an experience I am not particularly desperate to ever repeat) so that we could see that Botany was in fact getting something to eat.

I wasn't too crazy about the first couple of weeks when every latch-on was initially accompanied by exquisite searing pain; and when it seemed like that latch-on had to occur every other hour or so. But by then it was confirmed that Botany was gaining weight well and I could see she had gold medal champion breastfeeding potential, so I was determined to continue. And it did eventually improve- to the point where I apparently developed nipples of steel and can now basically let her gnaw away on me for hours on end without batting an eyelash. Yay.

However, it wouldn't be a rose garden without a few little thorns; one in particular causing a certain amount of inconvenience (a term I choose carefully, because I don't think it's entirely accurate to classify it as an actual problem.)

Back during the colic days, someone commented about the possibility of my having an overactive letdown/too fast flow. I sort of shrugged it off, because I didn't really see any signs of it, other than a little bit of occasional spraying. But then over the weeks, the spraying became more like a fire hose in action, the milk going everywhere in a strong, unstoppable stream and poor little Botany gasping and choking. She'd pull herself off and the spray would keep going all over her face, clothes, me; eventually I'd stem the flow with a cloth before we could resume. Recently I've gotten in the habit of keeping a bottle by the nursing chair, to catch the output (figuring why was I wasting my time pumping when all this bounty was soaking my shirt without prompting.) If it's really going crazy, I nurse her uphill to calm things down, and during the night feeds, I routinely lie down with her to keep her from getting a gobful when she's half asleep and unprepared. 

So, fortunately, there doesn't now seem to be any major adverse effects other than soggy clothing and a bit of occasional fandango in that she sometimes copes with it by doing by latching herself on and off repeatedly in order to catch her breath. It's a slight pain in the ass if I am nursing her in public; there was one day when I began to fear that people sitting next to us in the cafe were going to look down to find they were were now drinking cafe au lait instead of black espresso. It also makes for nursing activity which is a little more athletic than I'd prefer when trying to discreetly shield my boobs from passers- by. And I do now wonder if in fact it was a contributing factor to the colic symptoms experienced earlier. But I try to ascribe to the theory of too much a of good thing can be wonderful, and so we manage.

The other issue is that she won't take a bottle. Or, rather, she may drink about an ounce, with considerable teary thrashing, wailing and protest. I sort of blame myself; you see, on the health visitor's advice, we did initially give Botany a bottle once a day so that she could get used to it (and not become too fixated on the boob).  She wasn't exactly wild about it, but she'd drink it, as long as somebody other than me was feeding her.

But then we hit the colic weeks. Prior to that point, the logical approach was for E. to give her a bottle, either when he got home from work or the last feed before bed. However, given that it suddenly took very little to work her up into a lather, I was keen to avoid anything and everything that might contribute to her apparent digestive discomfort. Particularly at 6pm- which was the time most likely E. would return home but which was also the Prime Witching Hour.  And 10.30pm? Forget it. All I wanted to do was collapse into bed after a peaceful dreamfeed, not deal with a screamy windy baby.

So Bottle-Time lapsed for awhile. And when I finally worked up the nerve to reintroduce it, she had totally gone off the idea and refused outright to have anything to do with it. ever. again. 

Being a solution-oriented kind of girl, I tried everything I could think of to get her back on track. I have tried: heating the milk to very warm, heating to lukewarm, not heating it, heating the teat, not heating it, giving her three different types of formula, giving her only expressed breastmilk, giving her a mix of the two, having E. give her the bottle, having his mother give her the bottle, having my mother give her the bottle, me giving the bottle, giving it in different rooms in the house, giving it in the morning, giving it at night, giving it when she was very hungry, giving it when she was not so hungry; trying FIVE different types of bottle and teat- slow flow, fast flow, medium flow, upside down doing the conga flow.

NOTHING WORKS.  She hates it and she cries cries cries, before the beloved boob appears as a peace offering, because I can't stand to see my darling baby so distressed over anything, much less food, especially when it is freely abundant courtesy of yours truly.

At this point, I've pretty much given up and am resigned to it. Indeed, although I initially panicked (and had the sense that the prison doors were clanging shut around me until she is weaned) I am not going to go so far as actually complain about it. I do feel a little wistful sometimes when I hear other mothers discussing how their husband does the last feed of the night so they can go to bed early, or out to dinner, or do something that involves being away from the baby for more than a couple of hours at a time. I sometimes feel a little weary with the responsibility of being the sole food source. And I do worry what would happen if I ever, say, fell under a bus.  It'd be nice if she would take just one bottle a day so I could occasionally have a break.  But- so be it. If I had a choice, I wouldn't trade one second of those peaceful moments of feeding her, with her warm little body snuggled up next to me, her little hand in mine.