Day Twenty-Six

Those eyebrows!!

Alone with Milo

Today Mom left for Texas. It’s also Chase’s first day back at work. I’ll admit, I was a bit nervous about being home alone with Milo for the first time. I was also a bit sad to see Mom go. It wasn’t the best planning, but so it goes.

Milo and I did fine today. She mostly slept, and mostly slept on or near me. This is the challenge with a newborn, I guess. Mom warns me against holding her too much because then she’ll want to be held all the time; but the baby books I’ve read say that you can’t spoil a baby under 3 months. I’m not sure what’s right. When she wasn’t sleeping, she was a bit of a handful - lots of fussing and restlessness. But, we made it through the day.

I should also mention that San Francisco is having a heat wave right now. It’s not hot by Texas standards, but for SF it’s broiling. It’s getting into the 80s every day, which means it feels like 90s. This would be fine except that we live on the top floor in a very sunny apartment with no air conditioning. Lots of sweating these days. Milo’s a good sport. She sleeps on me and and we both sweat, and she seems just fine with it. Babies.

Day Twenty-Five

Walking

We went to Land’s End today and had a brief walk with Milo strapped to Chase’s chest. She seems to like being carried around that way, except when we stop moving. Then she gets fussed. So, if we happen to be stalled somewhere, Chase starts bouncing and Milo seems content.

The weather has been HOT here lately, so it was actually not terribly cold at Land’s End today. We went at around 11am and found that it was actually pretty warm (except in the shade). Milo needed to be fed as soon as we got there, but that didn’t take too long, and then she was good until we got home after just a bit.

We also got a new rocking chair today. It’s probably too big for our apartment, but it’s super comfortable! It even reclines, so I can see myself falling asleep there with my little nugget after feeding her or rocking her. It’s going to be so nice! Milo seems to like it well enough.

Day Twenty-Four

Mothers

Mothers are pretty great. Mom is here, and she has made it possible for Chase and me to get some extra sleep in the mornings. Milo still likes to stay awake when she rises at around 6am, so Mom has been taking her to the other room after Milo has had her fill of breast milk. That allows me and Chase to get around one extra hour of sleep before our little guzzler wants more milk. It’s been glorious.

Tomorrow is Mom’s last day here, which seems too soon. I wish we lived closer.

Day Twenty-Three

Day Twenty-Two

Lazy Days

Chase goes back to work on Tuesday of next week. Until then, we’re having lots of lazy days. We’ve been watching Twin Peaks every day, which we’re both really enjoying. There’s nothing quite like watching a pseudo-soap opera with your someone late into the night. And by late, I mean until 9 or 10pm ‘cause that’s as late as we dare stay up now that Milo dictates our sleep schedule.

Mom arrived last night, and she’s joined our lazy day rituals. This includes lots of sitting around and eating. Now that she’s here, it also includes football. Alabama is playing tomorrow, so I imagine we’ll watch that. Though it won’t feel the same, I’m sure, without the BBQ or Kenneth screaming in the background. We’re planning to order pizza, so maybe that will suffice.

As for Ms. Milo, I think she might turn out to be a colicky baby after all. They say it begins at around 3 weeks, and she’s definitely more fussed lately. She’s not pleased with anything, really, during the day. If she’s awake, she gets fussed quickly. If she’s tired, she fights sleep. So there’s been lots of crying and not a ton of sleeping during the day. Her nights are still ok, though - she wakes about every 2 hours to eat, and usually it’s not too difficult to get her back to sleep. She likes to stay awake for the morning beginning at about 6 or 6:30am, which is difficult to get used to. I’ve never been a morning person. But they say that in order to change a habit you only have to do it for 21 days in a row. So maybe I’ll soon be a morning person? Who knows.

Look ma, no hands

We have a body wrap that allows us to wear Milo on our chests, and though we’ve tried it before, it has always been a little intimidating. It’s a very wide, long, stretchy piece of fabric that is hard to get started (step one is crossing the ends behind your back while keeping the fabric flat), and once we had it tied we weren’t sure how tight it should be, or how exactly Milo’s legs should be positioned.

Michelle to the rescue, as usual. She demonstrated a trick for doing the behind-the-back fabric cross that is both easy and debonair. She also had some tips for keeping Milo’s head more secure, the result of which is that I can now go anywhere and do anything I want without having to worry about Milo.

We immediately took advantage of this by going out for lunch at at 4505 Burgers & BBQ — our first restaurant meal with Milo! She slept beautifully for the whole walk there, and stayed calm when I took her out of the wrap and passed her across the table for a feeding. She nursed under the cover while Misty nibbled. It was easy! It was delicious! It worked!

Back in the wrap after lunch, Milo fell asleep again while we browsed in a shop and picked up dessert. She even tolerated me dumping and washing the compost bin when we got home! It was so nice having her close to me while we went about our normal lives; it helps me believe that there’s a way for us to be parents and still be ourselves.

Day Twenty-One

Waiting

I’ve never been good at waiting. I’m an instant gratification kind of girl, as so many of us are these days. So things like a reward system for finishing school work never did it for me - I’d always give myself the reward first and then delay the work.

I think this is what’s so hard about parenting right now. I keep thinking about how great it’s going to be when Milo is older and we can do more things. I keep thinking about how fun it’ll be when she’s old enough to play at playgrounds or go on hikes with Chase and me. How amazing it’ll be when she loves books and going to bookstores, when we can take her on rides at amusement parks.

Right now, all Ms. Milo does is sleep, fuss, eat, and poop. Not in that particular order, but sometimes in that order. I remind myself daily that I need to not get caught up in thinking about how great it’s going to be when she’s older because someday, when she can do all of those great things, I’m going to be thinking about now - how amazing she was when she was just a tiny little thing that I could hold in my arms and stare at for hours. I’m going to miss these days, when her dark gray eyes were exploring the world around her for the first time, when every yawn was amazing, when every poop made me smile, when getting her to sleep felt like such an accomplishment.

So I’ve been doing a lot of looking at my girl. Her amazing features are more and more defined every day. When she’s swaddled, sometimes she falls asleep so fast it’s like a tiny miracle. When she cries, we hold her hands and shush in her ear, and she quiets right down. When I hold her, she looks at me from time to time, getting to know my face. Those eyebrows that I can’t get enough of. How voraciously she eats and sometimes burps with my nipple still in her mouth (that’s amazing and always makes me laugh).

All of those other amazing big-girl things can wait. I’m doing my best to enjoy Milo’s babyhood every day.

“Bonding” leave

This is my last week of what is sometimes called “bonding” leave. It’s bittersweet because it’s coming to an end, but also because as a father there’s a limited amount of bonding I can do with a newborn. I don’t have milk, so although I have plenty of warmth and humming and bouncing to share, I’m basically as good as the floor when Milo is hungry — which is pretty much constantly for that last day or so. Michelle told us that this would happen when Milo hits growth spurts, so it’s nothing to be concerned about, but it does make me feel like the idea of bonding is, for a father, a bit of a farce at this point. All I can do is disappoint or, at best, in Milo’s brief windows of satedness, provide abstract stimulation (the “After Birth” episode of Radiolab provides some excellent context on how new humans perceive the world).

All the more reason why it’s important to have patience, not just within the span of minutes and hours that I spend calming Milo, but across the weeks and months it will take for her to develop the perceptual acuity and mental focus to appreciate me being a goofball.

(I might take some real bonding leave at that point.)

Day Twenty

Restless

Last night, we had our first truly difficult night with Milo. All day yesterday she wanted to be awake, and not fun-awake, either. She was fussy and difficult to please except by feeding her. She seemed to be hungry every waking moment of the day, so I fed her a lot because we’re doing on-demand feeding right now. So, because she was so restless during the day, she was pretty restless at night, too. She slept for maybe 60-minutes, then we’d feed, swaddle, and rock and shush her back to some tenuous form of sleep. Somewhere around 60 minutes later we’d repeat the process. All night. This morning, we managed to get her to sleep at around 9:30am, and she slept until about noon. Today we’re going to try our best to get her to sleep much of the day so that she can have a more restful night. I’m crossing my fingers.

Burrowing

When Milo gets hungry and she’s facing some surface — a chest, an arm, even a carpet will do — she opens her mouth and burrows violently for a nipple. It doesn’t seem like a particularly efficient way of finding food, but I do admire her determination and grit (and in some cases, her tolerance for grit).

Day Nineteen

Motherhood

I still find it strange, sometimes, that I’m a mom. I mean, it’s not strange to take care of Milo or feed her or love her. It’s strange that I grew this girl and birthed her and now she’s here. It’s strange when I hear someone say the word “mom” when referencing me. You know, like “Go to mama” or “Mom’s right here.” It makes me want to do one of those “Who, me?” double-takes. I’m someone’s mom? Really? And every day Milo reminds me that yes, I’m a mom. She does this when she calms down after I pick her up, or when she sleeps so well on my chest, or when she feeds so well at my breast. It’s not often that we can say our identity has been altered in some major way. But mine has recently. I’m someone’s mom. I’m Milo’s mom. I’m going to do my best not to let this new part of my identity take over me, as some mom’s tend to do. I’m still Misty, but now I’m Milo’s mom, too.

Things that have changed since I became a mother:

• I can’t watch any tv shows or movies that involve something bad or scary happening to a child. Even shows in which something bad or scary happens to an adult makes me think, “Geez, her poor mother.” Even if it’s fiction.

• I can’t handle hearing Milo wail. Her little cries are ok, but the screams really hit me. I want to pick her up and make her feel better immediately. Thankfully, Chase is better with the screaming.

• I constantly need reassurance that she’s ok. For instance, I wake up at all hours of the night to make sure she’s breathing. If I can’t tell, I wake up Chase, “Can you see her chest moving?” To which he responds, “Yes. God, you’re such a mom.” I’m told that I might need this reassurance for years to come.

• I don’t want to leave the apartment. Milo hasn’t been vaccinated yet, and there was a case of measles reported in Berkeley recently. I might never leave the apartment again. Also, lots of hit-and-runs in the city recently. These are the things I think about now.

Patience and rigor

Today I tried something from The No-Cry Sleep Solution: I tried to train Milo to sleep in her bassinet by soothing her to near-sleep, laying her down, picking her up again when she fussed, soothing her again, and laying her down again. The book suggested I might have to repeat this cycle five or more times before it stuck, but on the third try this morning, she stayed asleep for hours.

I haven’t taught her anything permanent yet, but with enough time and patience, it’s now clear that I could — now clear that like any animal, our very young infant is able to form associations that shape her behavior. It’s still not easy to wrap her, walk and bounce with her, and shoosh her until my lips go dry, but it’s really encouraging and rewarding to know that rigor and patience pay off. It’s almost as if I’m going to be able to handle being a parent!

Day Eighteen

Our visit to the Cal. Academy of Sciences, as we sit watching the fishes.

More tummy time!!

The Academy

We decided to go to the California Academy of Sciences today. Chase strapped Milo to his chest and we set out, walked about one mile to get there and then looked at a few exhibits before Milo got fussed. So we sat in the aquarium and watched the fish swim around while I fed her, and it was good. All together we were probably out of the house for about 3 hours, and Milo didn’t get really fussed until we were just a few blocks from home. She was hungry again, so we didn’t hold it against her. Oh, and we remembered to put clothes on her before leaving the house today. Win.

Sitting, looking at the fish, Chase and I couldn’t help but think about how great it’s going to be when Milo can also look at them and recognize their beauty. One day, probably sooner than we realize, Milo will gaze in wonder at the aquarium, point to the fish she likes, and maybe ask a thousand questions that we’re all too eager to answer. I can’t wait.

Notes:

• Milo’s fingernails are becoming a cause for concern. Maybe I’ll try to file them down soon.
• We started using g diapers recently. It’s going well, but the liners get dirty EVERY TIME she poops. No one ever said being eco friendly was easy, I guess.
• Milo is perfecting her quizzical brow, and I love it.

Riding in cars with Milo

We had our third and longest-yet car ride with Milo today, and as before, she loved it. Actually, she was crying when it started, but after the gentle electric motor had zoomed us a couple blocks down the street and Milo had soothed herself with a bit of sucking, she passed right out.

Since we don’t own a car, we don’t plan to spend a ton of time in the car with Milo, but occasionally it’s necessary: we’re going to drive up to Oregon with her for Thanksgiving, and when she’s a bit older we might take some other road trips. So it’s a relief to have some early evidence that she’s not going to be the kind of baby that just freaks out for hours on end.

Actually, every time the three of us are in a car now, I get a bit giddy because it reminds me of all the road trips I took as a kid. I remember weekend hikes with dad in the Cleveland National Forest, and weekend getaways to Las Vegas with mom and grandma, and the strangely compelling novelty of a lumpy hotel bed and fuzzy hotel TV. And I remember that those were my family vacations, and this — this amazing woman I love, and this radiant new girl we created — this is my family now, the family with whom I get to explore again and dust off my child’s-sense-of-wonder hat.

Of course, Milo can’t even lift her head yet, so perhaps I’m jumping ahead a bit. But still. I’m excited.

Day Seventeen

We got a swing today. Milo isn’t sure if she likes it.

Glorious Sleep

I’ve been reading a book called The Happiest Baby On The Block about how to tend to fussy babies (I think Noelle bought it for me. Thanks, Noelle!). Milo isn’t too fussy yet, but we want to be prepared. The author describes babies that are “intense” or “passionate”, and I definitely think Milo falls under one of those categories. She’s not fussy most of the time, but she hasn’t yet learned how to calm herself down when she gets freaked out. This means that she goes from a fuss to a scream really quickly. So, I think it’s probably fair to say that she might be sort of fussy or difficult to calm in the very near future (according to the book, colic often sets in sometime after about 2 weeks and lasts until about 3-4 months).

In the book, the author describes the 5 Ss to calm a newborn: swaddling, side or stomach position, shhh-sound, swinging or swaying, and sucking. We’ve been trying some of these out, and holy crap do they work when you do them right! Chase swaddles her tightly, then one of us turns her on her side (face out) and bounces or gently swings her in our arms while making the shhh sound pretty loudly. She passes right out! It’s like magic! I haven’t finished the book, so I haven’t gotten to the chapter on sucking (I’m eager to find out when to introduce the pacifier), but so far it’s been an invaluable tool in helping our little lady calm down and get some rest. And it’s also helped Chase and me get some rest, too, which has been pretty great. Middle-of-the-day naps are just heaven.

We also recently bought a baby swing. It was $5 on craigslist, so we figured we’d try it out. Milo is still undecided about it. She’ll tolerate it for a bit, but then she gets in this weird mood where she can’t decide whether she wants to go to sleep or cry. She has yet to really do either while swinging, though. So, win?

Day Sixteen