Yeah. Me Neither.

Ever get so wrapped up in your "issue of the day" (like poor napping, in my case) that you miss the obvious? Like, when your baby wakes up from a one-hour nap (which is definitely on the short side) and acts all cranky no matter what you do with him... and you decide that clearly he just wasn't done napping... so you take him back upstairs and nurse him... but he doesn't fall asleep, so you're like "great, now what?"... and then you go back downstairs and remember that it's been a while since you last changed him, so you take off his diaper to find that he's completely covered, belly to back, in poop...?

Yeah. Me neither.

Parenting can make you feel like a total moron sometimes, though, right?! Like, if something like that were to happen. Not that it did. Because I'm not a total moron.

Poor kid ;-)

The Little Stinker...

You see, my Mommy thinks she knows what's up. She thinks that I can only roll from my belly to my back, and that I'm not even all that good at it. After all, I've only done that twice (that she knows of, anyway!). So when she laid me down on my back on my play mat and walked away to go finish up her meatloaf, I showed her. When she looked out through the pass through to check on me from  the kitchen, this is what she saw... 

Heh heh heh...

Better put up some gates, Mommy. I'm on the move!

Rice Cereal: A Success Story

Here goes nuthin'...

This evening, I spoke with Eli's pediatrician (who I absolutely adore, by the way) regarding our great bottle battle. She suggested that we go ahead and get started with rice cereal, as it often serves as a "bridge" for babies who really hate the bottle - once they learn to take food from a spoon, they're more apt to take it from a bottle as well. Even if it doesn't help with the bottle problem, it would be something to feed him when I'm not at home, so that whoever is watching him doesn't have to deal with a starving, screaming baby. For reasons I've mentioned in previous posts, I knew that rice cereal was just around the corner anyway, so we decided to go for it. 

We weren't terribly optimistic, given his bottle feeding antics. I figured that since he was refusing breast milk from a bottle, he would surely reject rice cereal (which, at this stage, is mostly breast milk) on a spoon, which is completely foreign. At least the nipple on a bottle is meant to approximate (however poorly) the "real thing"... But then again, maybe something completely foreign is just what he needed. Perhaps the key is not to try to substitute for the real thing, and just use a completely different delivery system that's new and interesting.

He was skeptical at first, but never got fussy and never completely rejected the spoon. He evaded a little by turning his head, but once we got a few spoonfuls in his mouth (which promptly oozed back out onto his bib, of course), he started to show some interest. He allowed us to stick the spoon into his mouth and sort of pour the cereal in - though most of it came back out with his tongue thrusting - but before long he was swallowing and opening his mouth for more! He even started making excited noises between spoonfuls :) Perhaps I should just share a little video footage...

The Aftermath... he took down the whole bowl (about 5 tbsp)!

He did such a great job, and we're so proud! Naturally, we're simply ecstatic about this success in light of the bottle issues. We'll keep on working at it this week so that hopefully by Saturday (and my first lengthy absence), we can be confident that if he won't take a bottle, he'll at least eat some cereal. 

Phew. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but I'm starting to feel like a weight has been lifted :-)

More on the Great Bottle Battle

So I've mentioned our bottle issues on several occasions, but I haven't been all that specific and I've been getting a lot of "have you tried this?" and "what about that?" kinds of questions. I think it's high time for a more detailed post on the topic, don't you? Well, you don't have to agree with me... I'm writing one anyway ;-)

What exactly do I mean by "battle"? I mean all-out war. This kid is serious about his demand to exclusively nurse. As soon as we put it up to his lips he tightens them up and starts shaking his head back and forth to evade it. Every now and then we manage to wiggle it into his mouth, to which he responds with incessant and forceful tongue thrusting. He never even comes close to latching, much less sucking. We try to be gentle with it and give him frequent breaks to calm down so as to avoid getting him all fired up, but the next inevitable step is always crying and flailing. It progresses rather rapidly from crying to full-blown screaming, at which point we'll usually take a 5 or 10 minute break, calm him down and try again. Rinse and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. This has gone on for as long as two hours without success (by which point he hadn't eaten in 4 hours and should've been pretty darn hungry, as he has been nursing at least every two hours). That is what I mean by "battle".

We've tried just about everything we can think of, and we're nearing the point of taking the "he'll take it when he gets hungry enough" stance and just waiting him out. You can imagine how excited I am about that. Talk about going against every mothering instinct you have... try starving out your own baby. I just don't know what else to do. We've tried offering it between meal times when he's not hungry, we've tried when he's hungry, I've tried, Ben has tried (when I'm in the room, when I'm in another room, when I'm out of the house entirely), we've tried various times of day, we've tried a more breast-like nipple (the Tommee Tippee), we've tried playing games with the nipple for a few days (we even got him sucking on it happily!), we've tried taking a break for several days and then trying again, we've tried frozen breast milk, we've tried fresh-from-the-tap breast milk, we've tried waiting him out for as long as four hours... I'm telling you, this kid is adamant. I even tried pulling the ol' switcheroo on him when he was groggy and finishing up nursing before bed (but still actively sucking and swallowing), and the little stinker just pulled back as soon as he felt it touch his lips, eyes still closed, and clenched his lips and stuck his lower lip out. He just laid there - lower lip sticking out, eyes closed - until I offered my breast again, which he happily latched onto and continued to nurse for another couple of minutes. At that point, I just had to laugh at him. He knows what's up, and his resolve appears to remain unshaken despite our best efforts.

Any other ideas? I'm willing to try just about anything at this point! There's another bottle I've considered (Breast Flow), the mechanism of which more closely approximates the action and flow of nursing, but I really don't think it's a flow issue. He doesn't even know what kind of flow or release mechanism his bottle has, because he has never sucked milk from it! A little bit of milk always leaks out into his mouth during the struggle, so I know that he knows what's in there, but he has never removed milk from the nipple willingly. I think the core issue is that he'd just really rather nurse, and he is proving to be quite strong-willed.

"Try me, Sucka."

HELP!

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

This week has been exhausting. I've found myself working very hard at maintaining a positive state of mind! Lately it seems as though everything is a battle with Eli. From nighttime wakings, nap time issues and bottle battles all the way down to dressing him, he seems to always be testing us! I feel like I'm always forcing things on him, and it feels so icky and unnatural, not to mention frustrating for all three of us. I hate that I have to press this bottle issue. I hate that I have to "work on" transitioning him into his crib. I just want to peacefully co-exist with my baby!

According to many of my mommy friends, this "phase" is apparently typical for babies his age. It is an age where parents are often working on various transitions, as we are. He's starting to want to do things on his own terms and develop some independence, but the world is still a confusing and scary place for him. I also think that life is getting progressively more frustrating for him as his cognitive development speeds beyond his physical capabilities. I'm sure it's terribly frustrating to try to carefully manipulate and study objects in your environment with hands that just aren't quite dexterous enough to grab that dangling toy as it sways back or forth or hang onto it long enough to get a good taste! He has been more fussy in general, his nap schedule is less predictable and he's not napping very well, he's all "two steps forward, one step back" with the nighttime wakings, he's going through very clingy periods throughout the day... he's just not the "easy baby" that we've been accustomed to caring for all these months! I've said it many times and I'll say it again... change is the only constant!

I think I need to renew my commitment to a "baby-led" parenting style. I've always tried to let him lead in many ways, but when I take a step back I can see that lately I've been making little power plays and trying to seize control little by little. That's just no way to live in peace with your baby. There are certain issues that I'm forced to press, like the bottle. Others, however, can wait. I think I need to let myself focus on one thing at a time. It may seem like 4 months is a good time to start transitioning him to his room, but maybe it's just not. Maybe it's not working because we're trying to "work on" too many changes at once. We've been "working on" the nighttime wakings and self-soothing, "working on" bottle-feeding, "working on" figuring out a nap schedule, and "working on" getting him to nap in his room all at that same time. Soon it will be time to start introducing solid foods, too!

I think it's time to prioritize...

• The bottle has to be number one. I have a little over one week before my first scheduled shadowing experience (of sixteen that I'm supposed to complete by May!), during which I'll need to leave him for at least 4 or 5 hours. He simply must take a bottle. 

• Nighttime sleep and the nap schedule must be number two. I think they go hand-in-hand - the better he sleeps during the day the better he sleeps at night, and the better night he has the better next day he'll have. These issues have been plaguing us for a while now, but I think that the friction could be greatly reduced by just letting him do what he needs to do. Nighttime sleep has been getting better, little by little, and I'm fine with just continuing along the natural course that we've been on (natural with a little encouragement toward self-soothing, anyway). I think I've decided that I need to go back and spend a week or two letting him determine his own nap times during the day, and hope that allowing his natural rhythms to dictate his sleep schedule will eventually yield a more regular pattern. I thought that I had figured this out already, but it seems like he gets tired at different times every day and trying to get him to go down for a nap at any predetermined time is a bit of a joke. Maybe if I just let him do his own thing for a little while he'll work himself into a more regular routine. Part of the problem is that he wakes up for the day at different times every day. I'm sure that that is influenced by the amount of wakeful time he's had overnight, which still varies. When he wakes in the middle of the night and how long we fight determines when he'll wake up for a feeding in the early morning hours, and that in turn influences when he's ready to be up for the day. You can see how this becomes one big vicious cycle when any aspect of his sleep schedule is disrupted, so making all of these pieces come together is key!

• In favor of taking it one step at a time, I think I'm going to move his swing back to our room for his naps and put off trying to transition him to his room until his sleep patterns are more regular. I thought that we had him napping pretty well when we moved him (he was taking two good long naps every day), but the timing has always been irregular and I think it's important that his body and mind be set on a regular sleep schedule before we go introducing any other changes to the sleep routine. 

• I think that we need to prepare to introduce solid foods soon-ish, but it will remain a lower priority for now. I feel like he has been nursing a lot lately (at least every two hours, where as a month ago he was going more like three and sometimes four hours between feedings) and it may be that he's ready for a little more bulk in his diet. That is certainly important, but I still get the sense that it's not super-pressing for him and I'll keep putting it off as long as I keep getting that vibe from him, in favor of getting some of these other issues resolved. I do wonder, though, if perhaps getting him started on alternative food sources might make him a little more willing to give the bottle a try...? Our experience with the bottle leads me to believe that he may not be ready to accept food from a spoon yet either, but we'll give it a try in due time and see how it goes. I've been trying to feel him out on this issue for a few weeks now and am paying close attention for signs that he's interested.

Well, I think that's about all I can muster for this evening. I'll leave you with a video of our big boy's most recent milestone... TODAY, he rolled over for the first time! I caught the second time on video :)

Contraception in America

I am SO. Sick. And tired. Of the "Why should we pay for women to have sex?" rhetoric that the conservative 24-hour news station which needs not be named here has been spouting so incessantly. It's so flipping degrading to women, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. The Rush Limbaugh mess makes the entire discussion even more absurd, but I'm pretty sure that most thinking people already know that he's a giant ass so I won't belabor that issue here.

Like it or not, the Pill is a commonly prescribed medication, and one that is prescribed for a whole host of reasons that go far beyond some slutty college coed's insatiable desire for sex. Whether it's excruciating ovarian cysts, anemia-inducing menstrual flow, or an underlying condition which makes pregnancy life-threatening, there is a long list of alternative reasons that the Pill is used. But what I really want to know is when it became acceptable to label women who use contraception as sluts...?!?! God forbid a woman (who has no moral convictions to the contrary) use modern medicine to help prevent unwanted pregnancy. It is not at all outrageous, in the modern world, for a woman to expect that she ought to be able to have sex without getting pregnant. That doesn't make her a whore - it makes her a naturally sexual being, as God created her, who happens not to be prepared to have a child at the present moment.

Now, I have written a lot about the harmful side effects of the Pill and the reasons why I believe that the medical establishment ought to be far more cautious with it, but the reality is that for some women, the medical benefits outweigh the risks. That's a judgement call that we must make with any medication that we choose to take - they all have side effects to consider. The reality is that the vast majority of women will never experience most of the scary side effects that the Pill can cause. That doesn't change the fact that women should be much better educated when it comes to what those side effects might be, and that there are far healthier alternatives about which we should also be educating women. HOWEVER, the media has no business lambasting a woman who has chosen that route for herself.

As far as whether contraceptives should be considered a part of "preventative healthcare", it is undeniable that the insurance system in this country (and the federal government, via medicare) is overburdened with the high cost of prenatal care and labor and delivery expenses - not to mention the ensuing pediatric care - when women who would otherwise choose not to have a child get pregnant unexpectedly. Some women experience very costly complications during and after pregnancy, children are often born prematurely or with special medical needs... the business of pregnancy and childbirth can be very expensive for insurance companies. From a public heath standpoint, contraception has the potential to be tremendously beneficial if it is made more universally available. It makes logical sense to include it as part of what is considered "preventative care" when the larger goal is healthcare reform that reduces the overall cost of insurance and medical care on a national scale.

There is a very important discussion to be held when it comes to the impact of the contraception mandate on the Catholic Church. To be honest, I'm not quite sure how I feel. On the one hand, the Church employs non-Catholics, and the Church receives federal money (and doesn't pay taxes). They would be paying for an insurance plan that covers contraception in the event that the subscriber chooses to use it, just as they provide a salary to employees that may choose to use it to purchase contraceptives. I know that's not exactly the same thing, but if it is becoming the nature of insurance plans to include contraceptive coverage, and as an employer the Church must offer their employees insurance coverage, it seems like one of those "necessary evil" kind of issues. Just as a cash salary can be used for Church-disapproved activities (because it is the nature of cash that it can be used to buy anything), so health insurance can also be used to pay for things that the church may not approve of. Perhaps that's just becoming a reality of modern health care that the Church must accept. On the other hand, I can appreciate that this is a change in policy that the Church would rather not see applied to them, and for very good reason. There is a serious moral conflict there. I certainly don't have an answer and I don't pretend to be prepared to issue an opinion or an argument for either side of this debate. I tend to be more liberal in my politics than many Christians, and I tend to err on the side of greater liberty for the general population (as opposed to protecting or promoting my particular religious convictions). I believe that religious freedom gives all Americans the right to conduct their lives beyond the confines of any one religious ideology. I believe that the first amendment was meant to protect Americans from becoming subject to any one religious majority, not to exempt a religious institution from the laws of the land. I know that many of my friends will respectfully disagree with me on that point, but that's where my point of view on this topic originates.

At the end of the day, my main concern in this debate is the blatant degradation of women that is suddenly being perpetrated by the conservative media. I'm all for empowering women with information regarding the risks associated with the Pill and the alternatives to chemical contraceptives (which ultimately bring women into closer harmony with their fertility, further empowering them to respect and cherish their femininity). HOWEVER, it's just not OK in my book for contraceptive users to be labeled as sex-crazed sluts. I'd be SO interested to see how different this discussion would be if men could get pregnant too ;-)

Impending Doom

Honestly, I have it pretty darn good. Ten months at home with my baby is considerably more than I ever thought I'd have. When we started trying for Eli, "the plan" was always for me to take a 12-week maternity leave and then return to my research job at Johns Hopkins. Having lived through the twelve week mark, I can't tell you how grateful I am that I wasn't forced to return to work at that point! No measure of time with your baby ever feels like enough, but the reality is that twelve weeks truly is not enough. I would have been a complete basket case, to put it mildly! By the sheer grace of God (and after much prayer over the subject), I was able to put together a financial solution that allowed me to stay home until my return to medical school, giving me ten glorious months to enjoy my precious little bundle :)

At four and a half months in, the countdown has already begun. Who are we kidding... I've been acutely aware of that ticking clock ever since he was born. At one month I thought, "I can't believe he's already a month old! Oh my gosh, I only have 9 months left." At two months I thought, "Oh my gosh, where does the time go - two months old! Ugh... only 8 months left." It's such a downer. The idea of being without him... the idea of him being without me... the idea of missing out on moments of his life... the idea of committing my time and attention to something else... it's all so overwhelming and upsetting. Throw on top of that the fact that I'm not just returning to a job (where I get to leave my work at the office) but returning to what is arguably one of the most challenging educational endeavors on the planet! I'm sure you can imagine the kinds of challenges that I'm anticipating. Just the thought of it is a lot to handle (or not handle, in my case).

I know that one day when my kids are in school and I'd otherwise be home all alone, this is the career that I want to have. I also know that staying home long-term is not a financial option for us - come August, I have to go back to school or find a job. While a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology may sound fancy, it doesn't get you very far in the job market, and it certainly won't put me into a job that will make me happy for the long haul. Going back to school obviously puts me in a better position for the long term, and at the end of the day it is what I want. It's the short term that haunts me... the sacrifices I'm having to make in order to set myself up for longer-term happiness.

I suppose this is a universal struggle. I'm not the first person to ever be forced to come to grips with delayed gratification. I'm certainly not the first mother to have to leave her baby in order to go back to work or school. The reality is, it sucks no matter who you are. We live in a culture that all but forces women to work, and if I have to work (and I do), I know that I want to be a doctor. Getting there just hurts. I knew all of this when we made the decision to have a baby, and I was aware that we would face some truly daunting challenges. The only difference now is that the reality is creeping up on me, and it's starting to weigh on my heart. But, I'm determined to enjoy this time with my sweet little boy to the absolute fullest, and that means I have no time or energy to waste on the impending doom that awaits. So long as it's still out of sight, I will do my best to push it out of mind.