Skipping Town

Yesterday, on our flight from Atlanta to Pittsburgh, Flight 985 on AirTran, a woman and her two-year-old son were removed from the plane when the child would not sit still in his seat. We were on the tarmac, ready for take-off, when the pilot announced that there was "an issue in the cabin" and that we'd be returning to the gate. At the gate, a customer service person came on and informed the woman that she'd have to get off the plane--even though, by that time, she'd calmed her son and he was falling asleep. Some passengers (including me) called out in her defense, but AirTran would not be swayed. Andrew and I had talked to this mom and her son when we'd boarded--they were sitting directly in front of us. The little boy was very blond and cute; he talked to us over the seat back. When the plane began to move, he fell asleep in his mother's lap. But then a flight attendant (male, completely cold, frowning) approached and asked how old he was. The mother sa...

Cozy morning.

Yesterday when Lucia woke up, I gasped—it looked like she’d been in a bar fight. For a day or two now her eye had been a bit watery, with some mucus-y matter in the corner, and yesterday the entire underside of her eye was a pinkish purple, like someone had punched her. Punched my baby! I took her to the pediatrician in the afternoon, and he deemed it an infection. We’re now taking Our First Antibiotic. Do they have a Hallmark card for that? She looks almost entirely back to normal today, so I didn’t have a chance to take a picture of Lucia with her Don’t Mess With Me look. Ah well. I’m just glad we got it taken care of now, since we leave for the East Coast tomorrow. We are looking at the flight as an adventure…and, really, we’re so excited for the trip that even if Fusskins makes an appearance, I think we’ll be able to take it in stride. Tonight I have to select her traveling outfit…and her backup traveling outfits…and my backup traveling outfit. Milk and other bodily fluids are as m...

Last night, I did something I haven’t done in months: I put on cute tights, knee-high boots, a skirt, and a non-milk-stained sweater and went to a party, leaving a little Fusskins with Andrew for a couple of hours while I celebrated the grand opening of my prenatal yoga teacher’s new studio. And I talked—talked!—to a variety of other moms, and even made plans to get together with a few of them in the new year. In other words, I was a regular human being again, at least for a little while. I was happy to hear from every other girl I talked to that they, too, spent days—weeks—crying once they brought their babies home. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the impressions and preconceptions about motherhood that I had before giving birth. I’d heard that having a baby was hard—no one ever, ever said to me it was a piece of cake. But for some unknown reason, in the back of my mind, I thought it’d be different for me—that I’d be different, or do something differently, or have a different kind o...

This year, Andrew and I have decided to do something different for Christmas—we’re giving our friends and Andrew’s co-workers homemade Christmas presents. Because undertaking a logistically complex and incredibly time-consuming baking project is exactly what one should do when one has an infant! Nonetheless, this weekend we braved the relentless cold and rain (I thought we lived in California!) and set out to make our preparations. First stop: one of Roseville’s countless big box stores, an employee-owned grocery store chain with dirt-cheap prices and a fabulous bulk food section. The prices are akin to Pechin’s, for those of you from southwestern PA. The new Pechin’s, not the old (no dirt floors here, though there were buckets out to catch leaks from the ceiling). It’s a mammoth store, always chaotic, but we put Lucia in the sling and she slept peacefully the entire time. What I love about the sling, besides having two free hands, is that no one can actually see the baby. They can see...

I’m knocking on wood as I type this, but…Lucia has stopped screaming before breast-feeding. She is now eagerly latching on and nursing peacefully. By Friday of last week, Andrew and I were both exhausted and frustrated, and we were eagerly anticipating our appointment with our pediatrician. He didn’t have any solutions—I was hoping he’d say immediately it was reflux and give us some medicine in a dropper—and suggested a week of formula to gauge her reaction to that. I wasn’t about to do that, however (we’ve come so far with breast-feeding, and I feel strongly it’s the right thing for us), and I continued to explain what was happening. I told him I’d started trying to feed her every hour and a half to stave off any hunger-related hysteria. “Don’t do that,” he said immediately. “Just watch her. Let her eat only when she wants to.” He told me to stop waking her up to eat. It seemed like such obvious advice… …and yet the magic words worked. Friday, I started watching the baby, not the cloc...

Little Lucy, You’re eight weeks old today—two months! And wow, have you been giving your mama a run for her money. Last week was probably the most difficult I’ve had since you were born. I really felt like I couldn’t keep it together, and all the difficulty we’ve been having with feeding you made me feel distraught. This week has been better. You’re still screaming before feedings, but I’m handling it with more grace, and I’ve found some tricks for calming you down and getting you to eat peacefully. We have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, which may or may not be helpful. I suspect he may just tell us this is a phase we need to get through. I’m not about to stop breastfeeding, so you and I are going to have to work it out together. In the past few weeks you’ve started smiling, which is adorable. Sometimes you give us tentative little smiles, but sometimes your whole face lights up, eyes crinkling, as though you’re laughing at a private baby joke. You’ve been cooing, too, and sometimes ...

I had two goals for Sunday: 1. Go to Target; 2. Get through the whole day without crying. I’m proud to say it was Mission Accomplished. It’s now 7pm on Monday, and today has been tear-free as well. I’m on a roll. I’ve always considered myself a pretty capable person—even adventurous, or at least willing to take (calculated) risks when it came to going new places and trying new things. I’ve never been one to give up on things, or to assume I couldn’t do something just because I’d never done it before. And yet I’m now humbled to say that motherhood has thrown me for a loop, to put it mildly. How is it possible that Lucia, a tiny being smaller than most housepets, has pushed me to—and past—my limits time and again over the past few days? We had a rough week last week. It was a culmination of factors, namely extreme fussiness and a hesitation—nay, a violent aversion—to breast-feeding. Each time I put her into feeding position, she began screaming shrilly, a kind of scream I’ve never heard ...

I’m tired. It’s strange to feel more tired now than I have been, since Lucia’s sleeping has been getting so much better. But I’m tired. With all our visitors gone now and Andrew back to work, I find that my days alone with Lucia pass quickly—but leave me exhausted. Most days we do just fine. But here and there we have A Day, like we did on Monday, when I’ve apparently eaten something horrendous that leaves Lucia in inconsolable discomfort. Even an hour or two of her painful crying wipes me out and has me counting the minutes until I hear Andrew’s car in the driveway. And now that I’m trying to pick up a little work again, I find my stress level has skyrocketed—I don’t know how I’m going to find time in the day to do what I need to do. Part of my problem is that if Lucia so much as glances at me from her bassinet or bouncy chair, I’m overwhelmed with guilt for not holding her. I didn’t expect to feel this way, and I can’t get over it—she looks at me so innocently and plaintively, as tho...

Lucia’s sleep has improved dramatically over the past week or so—she can generally go for about four hours now before waking up for a feeding. Now and then she’ll even surprise us with a five- or even six-hour stretch. Our strategy is to give her a bottle (of breastmilk) as her last feeding before bedtime—she seems to eat more this way, and it’s that first stretch of sleep that has improved so drastically. She’ll then wake up once more, around 6:00am or so, before we get up for the day. Unfortunately, Lucia’s idea of a good time to get up for the day and our idea of a good time is about two hours off. When Lucia wakes up at 6:00 to eat, she’s usually wide awake, ready to play. She is not ready to go back in her bassinet. We, however, are determined to get at least another hour of sleep—and so the extra-hour challenge begins. Andrew usually takes the lead on singing, dancing, and playing, sometimes lying with her on the floor for half an hour or so while she kicks and coos. When, after ...