A Fresh Start

Ok. Discipline for a bright not-quite-18month old. Lay it on me. It seems too early for time outs. The only thing we need to discipline for is hitting. He is my child so this is not surprising at all. If my mother knew she'd be overjoyed. He loves to throw things and waves sticks around and hit. It definitely seems more out of energy and love of the action than out of malice. He's just as quick to hug and kiss and he doesn't hit other children, just me and Adam. But now some times we get whacked with whatever it is he's carrying around. We give him lots of attention, play time and room to be loud and active.

Any suggestions? Right now we say No firmly, say he may not hit, and if he keeps doing it we hold his hands or arms. He doesn't see us hit nor do we have tv, so it's not by example. I'm sure tired of being hit.

Does any one have a good and relatively healthy carrot cake recipe? I'm thinking of making a whole wheat carrot cake for Bennett's first birthday. It's not the full on cakefest that most people do, but seeing as how B hasn't had that much refined sugar or flour, I don't want to overload him on his first go!

Any ideas? Maybe a great vegan recipe?

ETA: I think I might try this unless anyone has better ideas.

It's coming back. I've had creative impulses. I want to read again. I've actually remembered stuff and had the occasional graduate level thought. IT FEELS SO GOOD.

But of course, I still have some holes in my brain. Sometimes I am flabbergasted at what I no longer know.

Today was a slight triumph for Adult Self. Bennett stayed home for 5 hours with a friend while I went to work and had meetings and phone calls and Did Stuff, all without having to worry about flashing my boobs (mostly - I am grateful no one needed the bathroom while I was pumping), or crying fits or drool or spit up or naps.

Better yet, when I came home it was clear that he was well loved and cared for and having a great time.

This bodes well, although I know my mental health is not out of the woods yet.

Sometimes it is still difficult having a premie. I hate having to explain why our baby is so small when we go out. It's hard to hear how fast other babies are growing. Bennett is finally packing on the weight and it seems that each morning he is a little rounder, has a little more heft. But he's still small: probably over 8 lbs, maybe 8.5, and he'll be 12 weeks on Sat. Weight and feedings were so fraught for so many weeks. I feel like my confidence was undermined. My capitulation to the nightly bottle of formula comes from this. In all of Kaiser's determination to support breastfeeding, they actually intimidated me: did I need that much help? Doesn't the body produce enough to me the child's needs? Our nightly bottle/s of formula are doing good things for Bennett and for us, but I know that if B had been born "on time" we wouldn't be doing that.

I've been told not to compare my baby with others, since he's on a different schedule. This seems true. I don't see any signs that he is slow, struggling, sickly, etc. Still, I wonder if his lack of smiling at me and Adam is just his chill personality or a developmental problem. He's so chill around other people too, that I do long for him to smile just for me, just some recognition that I'm a little bit more special than other people. [ETA: He is smiling, there's just no discernable pattern, it's not gas. Maybe it's a me? Hard to say.]

I'm still harboring resentment for Bennett's month in the NICU. I joined a premie group on LJ and one mother who had her baby 6 weeks early only had to spend 6 days in the NICU! I feel cheated. I feel cheated, even though circumstances necessitated the NICU. B contracted a UTI, which in premies usually means that there is a valve that hasn't fully developed (50% of cases). But after doing some reading, two rounds of tests, and talking with my midwife and the pediatrician she consulted, it appears that Benn just got sick from the NICU. B is STILL on prophylactic antibiotics and Kaiser still has not called to arrange his final test so we can get off these meds. I am grateful that antibiotics exist, but I am very much against the overuse of them. My delivery, recovery and our time in the NICU had too many elements of ass-covering for my liking. These meds smack of it too.

Oh man. The voices are loud in my head today.

And I feel like rthe worst mother ever. Adam is taking B this afternoon and he even made me lunch. But I head B making noises and the first thing I thought was "Oh please don't wake up! I don't want to feed you!"

But of course, when he wakes up I will.

Gentleness. It's all about adjusting and gentleness. Being gentle with Benn, even in the middle of a crying jag, is easy. Being gentle with myself, at 4am, trying to change a diaper when all of my fingers have turned to thumbs and I can't stay awake long enough to even keep B on the boob is much harder.

Last night should've been a triumph: B slept for 5 hours straight. No shit. And then he slept for 3 more hours. I was so exhausted, but kept waking up to make sure he was alive. I've had it drilled into me that he needs to eat every 3-4 hours. But I've also been told repeatedly to let a sleeping baby sleep. Ack! B went nearly 10 hours with out a substantial meal. ....And he survived. I barely did. I think getting so much sleep at once only highlighted my exhaustion. I have done nothing all day. And felt worried about that all day long.

How am I ever going to do all the things I like doing? Work, my degree, yoga, my spiritual practices, cooking and being domestic, sing - all while having an infant?

Right. Gentleness and adjustment. Adam reminds me that I'm only in the middle of my second week of having B home. We've hardly settled in and we're still decompressing from the 4 week ordeal that was the NICU and my mother's 2 week stay. Gah. I'm an overachiever. I don't want to be the woman who has a child and turns into the person who doesn't shower for days on end, only wears sweats (I don't own any of those, so I'm safe there), and neglects all her friends and ambitions, watching reruns of Oprah and then waking up at 40 and wondering where her youth went. Catastrophizing? Me? No.....

Still, it's hard not to be depressed when I'm sitting at the dining table, with B in my lap, eating a Safeway frozen dinner of lemon chicken (Adam's mother bought us a freezer full of frozen, factory meat filled, safeway dinners. Thoughtful, but, ew). Basically it's like some one threw up chicken chunks and pasta and then doused it in lemon juice to disguise the smell. The meal is coupled with a glass of the blandest chardonnay, a bottle of Weston chardonnay (avoid this) that Adam's aunt got us. Adam's family, generous, but lacking any interest in food whatsoever.

I just didn't have the desire to cook tonight and Adam is out. I think the rest of the evening is going to involve me smooching my baby and watching Scrubs.

I know I can find a balance in my new life. I am even more inspired than I was before to do things that I really want to do. But gentleness, patience, and adjustment - I must keep reminding myself of these things.

Overall though, for all of my fears (I thought I had choked Benn today when I gave him his vitamins, and I fear sometimes that if I don't wake him every 3 hours to force feed him he'll never gain weight), I love being a mother. Really. It's way more amazing and lovely and inspiring and beautiful than I ever expected.

Little B was supposed to come home Saturday morning, but he bradied again. (Bradycardia) The earliest released date, as of yesterday morning, is Thursday. But whatever. I haven't been to the hospital for two days. After finding out Thursday night that he wasn't coming home I had a bit of a breakdown and decided I needed a break from the 9 hour days at the hospital. I feel like a bad mom - I know babies heal, grow and develop best when curled up on their parents' chests, but I cannot handle the hospital anymore. I have spent more time at the hospital in the last two weeks than I have at my own home. I am exhausted from the constant platitudes of the nurses and the constant checking in when I'm there:

"How's everything going? Is he latching? How many minutes [of breastfeeding] has it been? You know, this is just his way of saying he's not ready to go home. You wouldn't want your baby to go home if it's not safe, would you? It'll just be a few more days. Any day now he'll grow out of this. It's just a developmental issue common to premies." Seriously, I get those statements EVERY time I'm there.

I am going to go in today for one feeding and to hold him for a couple of hours. And that's it. No more. Just one feeding a day. For my own sanity. I am so grateful that he'll never remember this time, although I fear his time in the hospital, time mostly left on his own, swaddled up and left to sleep in a crib by himself, will be imprinting on him. I don't want him to feel or perceive to be abandoned. He is used to hearing my heartbeat every moment of his life - then he gets born and is whisked off to a plastic bed without me.

Another reason to be pissed at Kaiser: Adam went the day before yesterday and I gave him a big swatch of fabric from a t-shirt I wear to bed, a t-shirt I've had since I was 12 (I haven't grown very much since then). Cut up for a good cause. I was hoping Benn could snuggle up with it. Yesterday it was no where to be seen. What nurse didn't give it to him? I'm so disappointed.

Actually, it's just days on end of disappointment.

I have decided that when I go in today I am going to tell the nurses I do not want them to talk to me, that I will get them if I have questions. I do not want any information about him. All I want is a 12 hour heads up that he is coming home. I can read his chart if I want to know what is going on. I'm tired of getting my hopes up. As far as I'm concerned, Kaiser has custody of my child and I've only got visitation rights.

These mothering hormones are crazy. I feel like I have been taken over, reprogrammed, invaded. I am not my own person anymore. Adam cannot relate to how I feel. This is the first time I felt a huge biological gap between me and him - or between women and men. This Mama Bear urge in me is powerful. It would be amazing if I wasn't in a position to have my heart broken every two days.