home, home again

well, we survived the trip back home from sarasota. e was a ham on the plane, and thankfully we weren't seated next to anyone who really wanted to be left alone--because that wasn't happening. e targets people in the area and says 'hi' with increasing urgency and frequency until he gets a response. he's not above flinging a hand onto your arm and saying hi really really loudly if more conservative attempts to get a return 'hi' haven't worked out.

the plane ride sucked a little besides the obvious because i'm now home for the duration sans hubby. and traveling alone with the baby inevitably leads to some kind of 'where's the husband type question' usually it came up this way:
well meaning person--where are you flying back from?
me--sarasota. was lovely.
WMP--oh, what were you doing in sarasota?
me--i went to a conference.
WMP--OH, how did the baby do at the conference/who watched the baby during the conference etc.
me--blarg.
don't feel like getting into hubs just left but was around during the conference, but the lie would be so extensive. so i did get into it, and it went fine but was tiring.

tomorrow is back to work and e's first super long day at daycare.
tue he has his 15mos checkup which is good because he's somewhat behind his age peers with both language (one word--'hi' though lots of babbling) and gross motor skills (not standing independently, but will cruise holding onto furniture). it'll be nice to either hear not to worry about it, or get an early intervention referral.

pictures

today went somewhat better. for dinner he had oyster crackers because he would.not.try. the chowder that he would have greatly enjoyed. seeing has how he had mac and cheese the last 4 non-breakfast meals i thought i'd at least attempt something else. mind you, we had to leave the beach two days ago because he wouldn't stop eating sand. and today i had to fish both mulch and rubber playground chips out of his mouth. so for those of you keeping score at home: sand, he'll eat. sweet potatoes/corn chowder/hamburger he won't. what a weirdo.

they know more than they let on?

either demons possessed E this afternoon, or he sensed something was up. his daddy left around naptime, and E woke up from his nap like a baby possessed. when he wasn't whining, he was hitting (a troublesome new "skill" he's picked up this week) and when he wasn't doing those he was screaming or wailing. of course, it rained today during our sunny fla vacay no less, so our go-to-the-park plans were scrapped in favor of just crawling around the hotel. of course, i had grand plans for myself tonight after e was asleep (gym, hot tub) and executed a grand 0 of those. all i did was hang out in the darkness of the hotel room plunking away on my computer. computer:1 me:0. maybe i'll do things tomorrow.

resurrected

well, after a long hiatus i may be recharging up the old blog. my hubs just left for a stay over in the desert, and i thought this blog would be a good way of keeping in touch with our day-to-day life in addition to everything else: email, skype, carrier pigeon, etc.

i guess not much is new and everything is new. baby is napping and i'm blogging to keep my heart from breaking. how do you look into the face of a 6mos separation and keep going? well, right now i'm not. i'm kind of looking at it sideways and an hour at a time.

am contemplating big job change: move to maryland! another fqhc, but hopefully better than the one i'm at currently. second interview is next week, wish me luck!

pictures to follow, i promise!

a question for any random person that might happen to read and have some tech savvy: this blog is associated with my yahoo email, and i want to change it to be linked to my gmail. blogger will not allow. any ideas why?

should i move?

we currently rent a house in a neighborhood we greatly enjoy. we're about 2 blocks to the library, 4-5 blocks to the local Y, and maybe 4-5 blocks to a big playground. during the summer we walk to the park every day, and take ez to the library play group twice a week. we've lived here almost a year and i'm just starting to make friends with other local parents with baybeez. the problem is the house. for one it's old (built in 1917) and dark--the carpet here is dark green and there's lots of dark wood trim. the house is also in need of repairs which our landlord is too broke to accomplish. some are annoying (i.e. none of the doors to rooms stay shut when you close them, incl the bathroom; our fence is falling down), some are even more annoying (some genius prior tenant nailed shut all of the windows on the first floor and then painted them closed for good meaure. so, we can't open the windows on the first floor). and some are downright blecchy (the sink and shower drains are reaally sluggish; drano has not helped).

there's a house for rent near here that i found out about through work. the house is beautiful. it was built in 2003, has three (THREE!) bathrooms (current place has one), three big bedrooms, all the doors stay where you put them, all the windows open, the drains function like drains ought, etc. it has a two car garage attached to the house which will be a great benefit in winter for lugging in the baby and groceries and it has tons of closet space. it has a second floor laundry room! the problem is the house doesn't have a neighborhood. it's like the developer was drunk when he drew up the plan. there's no sidewalks. the house has barely any yard, and there's no playground anywhere within walking distance. the closest library is only 1.8mi away but you'd have to drive to it because it's off a main highway. the closest park isn't that far away but you'd have to drive to it. the closest Y is five miles away.

i just keep going back and forth. on the one hand, in the winter when it's two degrees, it's better to have a nicer house because you have to drive everywhere anyway. and the house is so loverly. otoh, it has been so nice just to plunk ez in the stroller and go for long walks...there's no where to go in the other neighborhood and we'd have to walk in the road.

rent for both houses is the same.

to contracept or not to contracept? that is the question...

so, firstly i'd like to point out that ez has recovered from the manhandlings of yesterday. he spent his day today as normal: drooling copiously, jamming his hands and anything else unlucky enough to cross his path as far into his mouth as possible, and practicing his new skill--shrieking. his mama, i fear, has PTSD. oh well.

anyway, as a veteran IVF'er, now post baby, i find myself in the odd position of deciding whether to proactively contracept. on the one hand, i would like another, but i'd like to wait until this one is no longer up 3x/night, every night. if the next one is also up 3x a night...well, that's 6x a night, at which point you might as well just give up entirely and enjoy the sleep-deprived visual hallucinations that creep in around the edges of your non-functioning state. maybe keep a thick pot of coffee on hand at all times. i believe i'd go slightly mad in relatively short order. so: yes to a second and yes to not now please!

but actively trying to prevent pregnancy seems odd to me right now. essentially, using bc means one believes that random, untimed, non-charted, unknown CM, non-ovarian stimulated, no-turkey-baster-in-sight type of s.ex could get them pregnant. and i'm not too sure about that. could random s.ex get me pregnant? it never has before. hell, even lots of timed/turkey baster style s.ex didn't do the job. using bc seems wasteful at best and smack full of hubris at worst. so, i dunno.

and i'm still waiting around to get the first baby AF yet, so who knows?

poor ez

about an hour ago i was upstairs in the bathroom doing stuff. i had ez seated on the countertop/sink area facing me. he's not an independent sitter yet, so i was holding both of his hands in one of my hands to provide sitting support while i futzed with things with my other hand. of course, ez decided to suddenly arch backwards while aiming the back of his head at the mirror and i put ***SLIGHT PRESSURE*** on his hands to keep him from ramming his noggin into the glass.

i think i felt a little pop, but what isn't in dispute is that ez started screaming. panic crying. tears falling. wailing. i scooped him up and started singing to him and walking him but he just kept crying. i thought somehow i may have broken his wrist. when i was able to get my wits about me somewhat, i realized that i must have given him a nursemaids elbow. and, it did pop back in when i reduced it. and he did stop crying shortly thereafter. but, i feel like a giant shithead.

i guess on the upside, i broke him, but i fixed him, right?

the astounding thing is how little pressure it took both to cause the nursemaids and to fix it. i mean, most ER nursemaids i get are 3yo's who decide right then and there to either take off into traffic or unweight their bodies at target while mom or dad has them by the hand. you know, a significant force. oy. it was so easy to cause it makes me wonder why there aren't more 6mos olds with nursemaids. or maybe their mothers have more common sense than i have.

mmmm...ducky...


hey! who turned out the lights on the baby??


so we survived The Colic. mamas of colicky infants, don't despair...it ends. we started seeing the light about 3mos and by about 4mos it was mostly dissipated. i'm happy to report at 5mos, ez is a mostly happy, fairly mellow baby. most days. and NO he doesn't sleep through the night. so, there's still improvement to go.

as a total aside rant: i *hate* when cashiers comment on my purchases. nothing makes you feel more like a tool than hearing 'WOW, those are EXPENSIVE batteries!' while sliding your ener.gizer li.thium 4pack across the scanner. so, cashier lady, not that you give a crap but i MEANT to pick these up far cheaper at ta.rget at least 3 different times over the past few weeks, but i keep forgetting, so it's down to get them here, now, or don't get them at all. so i made the painful decision to buy the overpriced batteries at your expensive little tienda here, can we let it go at that? i don't mention that however much you've spent on toothpaste, it wasn't enough.

emerging from the morass

so, don't let anyone tell you different. the newborn period is very very tough. ez is a beautiful lovely baby, but he is NOT portable. he tends to be a bit screamy, especially in the evenings. so, cl and i don't go out in the evenings unless, maybe, the house is on fire.

we've also recently learned how important his regular daytime naps are...consequently we don't go out during the day much either. compounding this is the fact that ez's favorite nap spot is *on us.* sweet, yes, but incapacitating as well.

it is getting better though. now, at 8w, we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

long lost greeting

please excuse my absence of the last 4 months. i've been busy! i know, who cares right?

well, please allow me to introduce EZRA, born 10/27 @ 41w, weighing 7lbs even. he is a delightful baby, despite his propensity to sleep all day and cry all night. i feel like a complete zombie. and the short, cold days DO NOT HELP.

anyway...yay! ezra!

yes, she did

my mother actually said to me today 'you look like the goodyear blimp.' and when i took offense she said: 'fine. you don't. you look svelte.'

*headdesk*

i know she loves me and means well, but damn!

supposedly fun things (i'll never do again)

APW with LJwas a blast. even the contract-o-rama that occured for about 2 hrs before the onset of the radi.ohead only diminished the pleasure slightly...and in retrospect was to be expected, given the lengthy history i have regarding drama of some sort or another involving radi.ohead shows. so: two thumbs up.

the trip to la.svegas with my long-suffering spouse immediately following apw as sort of a 'pre-babymoon' was a little less enjoyable. the spouse was lovely and the accomodations were nice. but, as no doubt smarter people than me have put together. la.svegas is in a desert. in august, day temps are about 108F on average and at night it 'cools down' to about 85. sometimes there is a breeze, which more or less feels like one is trapped in a convection oven. so, suffice it to say i didn't leave the hotel much. at least the olym.pics were on, and gym.nastics, which is my favoritist :). we also saw a few great shows including la mystere.

i have a dr's appt tomorrow to check on ms. contract-y. OH, and i am now taking the nif.edipine prophylactically just like i should. i'd say it works 85% of the time but when things really get going, it doesn't seem to me like it makes much of a difference at all. but who knows...maybe it would be even worse if i weren't tossing them back 4x/day.

not how i planned it, part dos

tonight i started regularly contracting again, which led to stomach pain. previously its been the other way around. things did quiet down with as much fluid as i could possibly ingest (ugh, heartburn) and ni.fedipine.

i know ni.fedipine is supposed to be taken prophylactically...that is, you take it 4x/day to prevent contractions. i've been taking it in the evening once i feel contractions. taking it the right way makes me feel like a$$ though...headache-y and nauseous. it sort of seems to work if i take it the wrong way, just sometimes like tonight i've gotta get through rhythmic ctx first.

oy.

it would be *really* nice if i could just get to 36 wks. i'm only 5 wks away.

late and hoping to stay that way

so, i know i'm about 4 yrs behind trends but right now 'new sl.ang' by the sh.ins is rocking my face off. (it is also in a sorta delicious scene from sc.rubs, which only adds to the allure).

so, i'm late and my poor, long-suffering spouse is early. last monday the bean tried to take after it's father when the omnipotent and ever-irritable ute started contracting, appropos of nothing. well, not exactly nothing. i had spent the day shuttling around airports and squashed in the middle seats of airplanes. and when i say 'squashed' i mean my seat mate to the immediate left needed to raise their armrest to fully accomodate their expansive girth. somehow during this debacle, i failed to intake a sufficient amount of fluid. le sigh.

so, fast forward 6 hrs and 600 miles, i got off the airplane and had a stomach cramp that nearly brought me to my knees. following quickly on it's heels, another. what commenced was a trip to the army hospital, an 8 hr stay in L&D triage, me contracting while slowly and not so slowly losing my mind, an IV, 3 bags lactated ringers, one shot of terbut.aline, a cervical check and gbs swab that felt something akin to a cross between getting friendly with the business end of a spade and and being manhandled by a three fingered sesame street puppet. while the endless search for the posterior cervix was commenced, my mom, there at the hospital with me, passed the time by offering helpful suggestions to the medical staff. some of the highlights: suggestion to place a "stitch" to bring my posterior cervix to a more anterior position in order to facilitate finding it with greater ease; endless incredulous queries as to whether i go through this every single time i have a gyn exam, and what the function of the several swabs were and when results from said swabs would be available. this, while i laid on my back, fists under my heinie, and tried to breathe normally and, you know,RELAX as the attending dug around my insides with excavating tools and the resident looked over his shoulder at the girl with the crazy anatomy. i kept saying: mom, shhh...mom, shhhh...mom....SHHHHHH!

anyway, the bean looked fine, hr reactive, cervix long and closed, fet.al fib.ronectin negative and somewhere between the second cervix check two hours after the first, the bags of fluid and the terbu.taline shot i stopped contracting. that night. only for the old ute to start up the next night with no loss of enthusiasm. i went back to the clinic yesterday to impress upon them that my fragile mental state would simply not tolerate contracting for the next 12 wks. i must have impressed them with a particularly wild-eyed gaze because i left with not only ni.fedipine, but also some macro.bid and a few ambien. :). hell, why not, eh?

for the record: duly noted

dear brand-spanking-new-resident who has been an MD all of 5 days:

it is not my fault that you do not know how things work in an ER. your failure to put in cosigned orders before 5 minutes to shiftchange does NOT, i emphasize: **NOT** equal my emergency 5 minutes before i am supposed to leave work for the day. don't even THINK about asking me when x-and-so is going to get done if you didn't even bother to put the order in before 7pm. and no, we don't have a 'float nurse.' surely you are familiar with the complexities of health care in the modern era. nurses with no assigned patients who merely flit around ER's waiting for some a$$hole to put in last minute orders simply do not exist anywhere outside of your internal fantasy-land. i suggest the next time you feel you need something done absolutely immediately without fail you ALSO take the time to get your orders cosigned and posted in a timely fashion. d&ck.

it has come to my attention that i might be somewhat moody. this is true. i can admit to some moodiness on my part. however, i would like to note that i would be less moody if less provoked.

nur.sing wars--how tedious (rant)

can i just say...UGH. or maybe UUUUUUGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

one of the message boards i regularly post to had an all out war for the last week on bf vs ff. i agree, and will not argue, that bm is the optimum nutrition for infants. there isn't really a debate, the science is more or less unanimous. what i will argue to the end of the earth though, is that ff is 'dangerous.' i think to say or allude that is at best misinformed and at worst treacherous. example: infants *can* and *do* grow and develop normally on a diet that consists of ff in whole or in part. this is not so where the main nutritive input is, say, diet soda. or even regular soda. formula DOES supply the caloric and nutritive support needed for infant growth and development, soda does not. whatever. either way, maybe ff is perhaps dangerous if you mix it incorrectly or use tainted water in the preparation, but to call it dangerous under normal circumstances in this country is absurd.

taking it a step further, in my experience, the infants that i've seen on a partial or full ff diet do not, as a whole, differ in any substantive way from their entirely bf peers. i also think that if you took a randomized sample of high achieving amer.ican adults, you could make no estimation of their infant feeding patterns with any reliability. you would be far more successful if you tried to guess the SES, race, gender or educational achievement of such individuals. i would argue that a distressed mother and an underfed bf baby is at far greater risk of poor outcome than a relaxed mother and a well-fed ff baby. after all, the underlying point is FEED THE BABY. babies need adequate food, end of story.

one could read the above and maybe think that i am pro-ff or anti-bf. i am neither. i am just not prepared to denigrate mothers who feed their babies in a way that works for them and the baby, however they accomplish it. some are aghast that mothers could elect to ff knowing that bf is better and label these mothers as misinformed or lazy. i whole heartedly disagree. people are NOT scientific models who are always able to perfectly enact ideal situations. in the real world, people are complex and their lives are complex. their choices are complex and exist in a realm of competing motivations that don't exist in scientific models. people make all kinds of suboptimal health choices for various reasons. they don't get 8 hrs sleep/night, they smoke, they overindulge in alcohol, they get sun exposure between 10a-3p, they eat fatty foods and not enough veg, they don't exercise at moderate intensity for 30min/day 5 days/wk, they watch more than 5hrs TV/wk etc. should we stigmatize all individuals not living at goal? should we assume that their failure is due to lack of adequate information or inherent slothiness? are *we* stone throwers living lives beyond scientific reproach? i believe that mothers who have found a way to rear their infants in a way that works for their family deserve our praise and support, not our scorn.

in a larger question, why can't women and mothers support each other? as long as the baby is being fed in a way that supports growth, why must mothers judge other mothers? what difference does it make to anyone outside of the mother/child dyad how that baby is fed? motherhood is so hard and such a long haul. surely we can support each other along this path, whether their babies are bf or ff.

update

sorry for the long absence! every now and again (actually, just recently for the first time) i have a crisis of conciousness regarding my blog. it started out as a loss/IF blog, and then after the sucessful IVF cycle it sort of morphed into one of the few places i could unload my utterly all-consuming 'when-will-i-miscarry' dread.

i'm right now between 22 and 23wks, and it has started to occur to me that this could possibly happen. i'm jubilant about making it this far, but don't really want to post much in that vein because a) i'm concerned that the fertility god is so ornerny that giving voice to my internal celebration might be met with 'HOW DARE YOU' type old-testament retribution for my haughtiness. also b) what about our sisters still fighting the IF fight? i don't want to be disrespectful. finally c) there are things here and there i'd like to complain about (frikking WICKED A$$ heartburn, for one, and sciatica as a legacy of continued PIO shots for another) but does that take away from my greatfulness? i get caught up in loops and find it hard to post.

regarding my earlier post, i had not thought of the "birth" until recently. and then when i did think about it, my head was populated with images of poorly-trained, sleep-deprived, hero-complexed residents at the military hospital slicing open my perineum with rusty scissor blades and yanking on poor Bean's little head with whatever instrumentation happened to be handy: forceps, vacuum, shoe horn, etc. i eventually found a midwife practice in the area that took my insurance and who i believed would not unnecessarily instrumentate (a word?) my poor hoo-ha or Bean's skull. and now i think i may be moving in about a month to six weeks to accomodate a job. so, brand-new city, and starting all over again with trying to locate providers. le sigh. i wish i could magic the baby out when that time comes.