Saturday, April 28, 2007

Tummy time

DSC_0504

Friday, April 27, 2007

Triumph

It is quiet in the house, but in my head, it's like a fucking parade. Ruby slept for an hour and 15 minutes this morning, and a short hour later, went down for another nap and has been sleeping for 2 hours, and I hear no whimpers from ye olde monitor.

This may seem unremarkable, but yesterday starting at 6:30am, she slept 1.5 hours, 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, and 15 minutes. And then an hour to get her to bed at 9:30. That's 3 hours during the day as opposed to the 6-7 hours of average naptime hours for a 2 month old. Not that I believe everything I read, but you know, those tiny little naptimes are not enough for my personal hygiene, much less any kind of housework.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Hmm

So does anybody have any strong opinions on infant vaccinations? *ducks and hides* Ruby is due in a week for her 2 month appointment and is scheduled to get a huge cocktail of vaccines. Hepatitis B, Hib, Polio, Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Conjugated Pnemococcal, Prevnar (for meningitis, I think). Most of these, to make things worse, are combined together in one big jumbo shot called Pediarix.

I am all about protecting the baby from scary diseases, but have you seen the stuff they have in these vaccines? Everything from Mercury and Formaldehyde to MSG. The ones with no heavy metals still have questionable ingredients like ammonium sulfate or sorbitol. And I've only started digging.

Anyway, I'm leaning towards at least putting a bunch of these off until she is older and some I don't want to give her at all. I feel like the issue is so polarized though-- I'm afraid I'm going to be defending my choices to everyone, either way.

Oh and Ruby is doing great. She's a sweetie pie. I love her.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Better sleep

It feels like spring for sure. Ruby gets to wear some cute onesies and dresses now, so that's pretty exciting. Every day Jonner and I drool and go all mushy over her cute little smiles. She has this fetching way of shrugging her shoulders and turning her head to the side when she's particularly thrilled.

And yes, I'm able to enjoy it now, since I'm getting better sleep. It's still not perfect, but I've been having her sleep with me, and it's beeing working pretty great. When she wakes up, I latch her on while I'm lying down and go right back to sleep. I assume she eats until she's done and goes back to sleep. So even though the sleep I get is a bit lighter, I hardly need to completely wake up in the middle of the night. I have no idea how often she eats or when, but you know, I don't really care. The only drawback is that because we're touching, Ruby and I sweat like mad, and if she spits up or I leak (you know, from my boobs, not anywhere else), I don't notice. So I guess it's a good thing I went out and got that waterproof mattress pad.

She's up again.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Always Awake

So I thought Ruby's sleeping patterns are normal, but apparently, she's the baby that never sleeps. Supposedly, babies sleep 16 to 20 hours a day. Ha. That's ridiculous to me. Ruby never sleeps more than 2 hours at a time, and probably sleeps a total of maybe 10 hours a day. And of course, 10 hours would be great for me if it was in longer chunks, but an hour here, 45 minutes there, a half hour there, is just not cutting it. I can't just drop off every time she does. On top of that, she gets little naps while she nurses-- time I don't get to sleep. It's not fair.

Last night, she was awake for almost 4 hours from about 2 to 6. She nursed, got changed, screamed, cooed, pretended to sleep, but never actually fell asleep. I thought I was hallucinating near the end of it all. And then when she did fall asleep, it was only for an hour. Then she was up all morning again and didn't fall asleep until 11:30. Someday I'll remember this and laugh.

I like to think that this makes Ruby an exciting baby, but I wish she was more boring and slept more. It would make me a more exciting mom.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Plugged duct, plugged sewer, hell

The last week I've been battling a horrible clogged milk duct. Basically, the milk backs up and my boob becomes a hard, painful, lumpy mass. Then there's nothing to do but hotpack it, breastfeed/pump like mad, and massage the lumps through gritted teeth. And it seems to do nothing except make it more painful. Then last night, after a full depressing day of doing nothing but work on the problem, suddenly it came unclogged and a teeny stream of milk came shooting out and it kept going for almost 10 minutes. I can't guarantee that it's completely gone, but I feel worlds better. I can't even say.

On top of the clogged duct, it turns out our main sewer line is in terrible shape. A plumber came out and worked on it for 8+ hours. Since we pay him hourly, we've basically paid out a fortune already, and the job isn't even completely done.

Besides the glorious unplugging of my milk duct, the only other light-hearted moment I had yesterday was snickering with Jonner over how our plumber couldn't shut up. He's a good guy, but boy was he a motor mouth. He's the kind of guy that would keep talking to you even if you were slowly backing away from him. "You know, the last time I saw a sewer this bad was, well, this is the worst sewer I've ever seen. And I've been doing this for 8 years. Usually a job takes me 45 minutes to an hour. A bad one will take 3 to 4 hours. This one's already taken me a lot longer, and I've only got a 2 inch blade through. And we're talking about a hole 6 inches in diameter. I first started with my one inch blade, and that's only for emergencies. This sort of thing happens a lot in houses that are up on a hill, like yours. Hey how old is your dog? I could tell she was older because she's got some gray around her face. My buddy has a dog, but you can't tell how old he is because he's all white." And on and on and on.

Oh, and there are new photos up on the flickr site (the convenient link on the side was created by Jonner a while ago if you didn't notice).

Saturday, April 07, 2007

She's in her second month now

Let's see. What's new... Ruby's getting fatter and bigger faster than I can believe. Her focus is getting better, and now when she nurses she looks around suspiciously, like a spy. She also has fairly long happy awake times in the morning where she coos and screams just to hear herself. Her signature move is where she swings her arm straight up in front of her like a salute while putting the other fist over her tummy. I call it the triple axle. It's a triumphant gesture to signal that she's done eating.

On the not so cute side, she won't stay asleep once I detach her to put her in the crib. It drives me nuts. She'll look totally asleep and as soon as I put her down, she starts to rub her face back and forth and freaks out. So I'm going on the 4th night in a row where I've been up so much, I can't even remember how often or how long I've been sleeping or awake.

Other than the baby, there's not much going on. I've been feeling a little panicky about my life. I've been under the vague impression that I'd be able to resume some of my other activities a couple months after the birth, but then I think about the fact that all she's eating for the first six months is coming straight out of me. It's probably not worth it for me to go back to the cafe before she starts on solids. Then I start wondering if raising Ruby's only going to get harder from now on instead of easier. Maybe all my activities are going to have to be on hold until she starts school. I mean, sometimes I feel lucky to have found a minute to quick pee. Whenever my hands are free, I have this wild moment where I look around and wonder what things I have to do and have time to finish in the time I have. These tasks are things like putting some laundry away, do maybe two dishes, pee, grab my bottle of water, locating her pacifier, brushing my teeth, replenishing my stack of clean rags within easy reach, and so on. Painting a picture or doing a costume design is so far beyond my scope, it's not even funny.

Well, it sounds really corny, but despite all that, I'm still glad she's here and she's mine. I'll be ready to cry and keel over in the middle of the night, and then in the murky darkness I spy a quick smile as she wakes up to nurse, and then I don't feel so quite so tired.