Ellis Juliette, Age 2

Our sweet Ellis turned two last month. There was nothing sad or even bittersweet about it to me, surprisingly. She has just gotten more fun with age, and every milestone is really exciting right now.

We had so many celebrations! That Saturday we had her birthday party at Queens County Farm Museum. It's just five minutes from us, and somewhere she loves to go. She was absolutely overjoyed. She had her friends there, got to feed animals, go on a hay ride (she was obsessed with the tractor, wouldn't take her eyes off it to look out to the farm!), and just run wild in the wide open spaces. She had a Daniel Tiger cake and was a pro at blowing out candles. She has seen enough other birthdays by now (especially at day care) that she gets that it's a celebration of her, that we sing a song, that she gets to blow out candles and eat cake, and that she gets presents. She doesn't understand WHY we do all this, but she doesn't care - she just knows it's her turn! She was in heaven all day, so I was too.

Monday, her actual birthday, I took the day off work and we went to an indoor playspace together (it was raining). I had visions of baking a little cake together in the morning, and even measured out ingredients in advance to save myself from ruining the memories with frustration. But she just wasn't interested! She liked pouring in the eggs I had pre-cracked into individual cups, but nothing else. She dumped over a cup of sugar and then asked to go watch Daniel Tiger. I used the batter to make a small cake for that night, and a dozen cupcakes to send to day care the next day. We had my wife's family over for dinner and ordered in Thai; there is a chicken and broccoli dish that Ellis just loves. Then the next day she got to celebrate with her friends at day care.

Our little two year old. She is such a spitfire, and I am on an absolute high every day with her. I find that being at work actually increases my patience with her, because I have such a "break" away. I have a different type of appreciation for our time together now, and it's just so wonderful. She is so smart and funny and affectionate.

I need to note all the quirky things, because they change and/or disappear so fast. I need to freeze this moment, which is what journaling is for!

For a while she would say "more" to ANYTHING, even if she already had it! It's like she just couldn't get enough. Like she would point out the moon - "look, mama! moon! see?" and then ask, "more moon? more?" Like...it's right there!

She has been experimenting with emotions. It started months ago with saying her trains (which have faces) were crying. She would ask me to kiss them, and then say "all better!" She would do this over and over again. Now she does it with me. She hits me lightly and says, "You sad, mama?" I'll say yes and pretend to cry, and she'll hug and kiss me and say, "all better now, mama? happy now?" And then do it again. She recently added "mad" into the mix. It's so fascinating to watch her rehearse these with me!

Her interaction with us is incredible to watch. "Wha' doing, mama? Where going? Wha' that?" Always wanting to know, and being able to ask.

She knows who is Mama and who is Mommy, and is quick to correct other people.

She can repeat anything we say to her, but some morph into a version that's easier to pronounce. For the longest time, she said "peepaste" and "peebrush" for toothpaste and toothbrush. In the past week, it has evolved to "fuffpaste" and "fuffbrush." (She still says "peepop" for lollipop!) Our favorite was "oofwun." It translates directly as "other one," and she would use it to indicate that one or this one as well. See also "oofway": other way/this way/that way. We started saying it that way too, in an effort to keep it around just a little bit longer, but we did eventually lose it a week ago. Every newly correct pronunciation requires a mourning period for us! Unlike other gains which all feel exciting, maturing language is just surprisingly heartbreaking.

Ellis has branched into more independent play, but not for long if I'm not in the room. It's still hard for me to get much done with her around unless she's watching TV, which I don't want to overuse. But in the morning she can watch Daniel Tiger while I shower, and that has been a HUGELY helpful change. I don't have to close her in the bathroom with me anymore. (Our shower is upstairs, so running/crawling freely wasn't really an option.)

Ellis has outgrown the hitting/pushing/kicking phase, thankfully. This makes public outings SO much easier! She's gotten a little less territorial, and is more likely to use her words, at least at first, giving me time to intervene if needed before it escalates. She has also had a dramatic reduction in tantrums. Tantrums peaked from about 15 to 18 months, when she started having so many feelings and needs that she struggled to express. Now she has enough words to get across what she needs, and can usually accept an explanation if it's not something she can do or have. She might protest, cry for 20 seconds, but rarely throws herself to the ground and never for more than a few seconds. She gets it even if she doesn't like it, and I think I'm fair enough about permitting what I can when I can that she's okay with the limits I have to set sometimes. I know this is very likely to change in the next year or two as she becomes more willful and is trying to assert her independence, but for now language has made things sooo much easier in this department.

Nicole and I have slightly differing views on things like discipline, but not enough to confuse her. As just one example, Ellis knows Mommy does time-outs (never isolating her, though) and that Mama sits with her for a "break" and explains what's going on. We've stopped battling on this because we see that she responds to both styles just fine, and she doesn't get confused; she knows what to expect with whom, and that the message is the same - "this is not acceptable behavior." We're finding our groove as parents with different personalities, one more rigid and one more flexible. Where it takes work is when we're together, making sure we are respecting one another's methods and not undermining each other in front of Ellis. We've gotten much better with that, and it shows when we are working with her together. I'm grateful that just one of us isn't the disciplinarian while the other one gets to be "fun," so I'll accept this happily!

Ellis is, and has been for a long time, very nurturing with her dolls and stuffies. She has Daniel Tiger figurines that she pats to sleep at LEAST once a day, and she'll pat dolls against her chest and say "shhh, relax, relax." She loves pushing them in the stroller, and having them take turns. She recreates much of what she sees happen with the couple of infants at day care, and it just melts me to see her being Mama.

I am so excited for this summer!

Healing

There is an experience from my childbirth that I don't talk about much because I feel like it seems minor or even silly to anyone on the outside, but it was deeply scarring for me. I can go months without thinking about it, but when I do, I cry. Every time. Or I distract myself from thinking about it so that I don't cry.

Ellis was born with a periurethral cyst that no one seemed to be able to figure out while we were in the hospital When we saw the pediatrician at four days old, it was already gone, and he stated it's common due to the hormone fluctuations from the birthing parent. But while she was in the hospital, she had all kinds of residents and doctors waking her up from her sleep to undiaper her and check it out. The attending urologist said there could possibly be a urethral blockage, or if it was hurting her she wouldn't pee, and that would be a concern. So they ordered an ultrasound to check her bladder and kidneys. All of this we later learned was completely unnecessary, and they were overreacting to something they shouldn't have been alarmed by.

To transport her to the ultrasound room, she was put in an incubator. She was brand new and terrified and cried the whole way there. Trapped in this incubator that muffled her screams. Alone and helpless with no one holding her, comforting her, reassuring her. It felt like the longest walk of my life getting to the ultrasound room, down all kinds of hallways and up elevators (it wasn't in the maternity ward). I cried with her. I hated that the incubator was protecting everyone from her screams, so they could all ignore that this was happening. She was in a box for so long, confused and scared and not being responded to.

Neither parent is permitted to carry newborns in the hallway, even in the maternity ward. They have to be in the bassinet, so that they aren't accidentally dropped. I accepted this even as I thought it was absurd and even as every instinct screamed out that I needed to grab and comfort my baby, that she needed to be on my chest, against my skin, in my arms. My womb and my arms and my heart were empty and grieving as I dragged my newly postpartum self down those endless halls. My baby needed me, and I wasn't there.

I recently processed this with my wife and told her that I can't stop thinking how I should have been a pain in the ass to get what I needed for Ellis. That I should have refused the sonogram if I couldn't carry her myself. Roll me in a wheelchair if you need to. She assured me that that wouldn't have been possible, and they would have fought me back equally and just not permitted it because the fear of liability is that real.

But at least I would have known that I had tried everything I could.

As soon as we got to the room, I grabbed her right out and nursed her while they set up the machine. I remember the person saying, "Okay, you can hold her until the tech gets here," and myself thinking, "Oh thanks for your permission. Try to stop me."

I can't say why this was so deeply traumatic for me, except that it was such an early experience of already feeling I wasn't protecting my child from preventable anguish. After doing nothing but protecting her and having her near me, IN me, she was now ripped away from me and wailing and I felt like I let it happen. Or at least I didn't fight enough against it.

Yesterday began the healing for me, for the first time.

We took her to the dermatologist to check out this little spot on her chin that has been there for about six months without improvement. It looks like a tiny scab with a red bump underneath. Ellis hates going to the doctor, cries and wiggles away when they're looking in her ears, using the stethoscope on her back, etc. It's not just the shots that upset her, it's everything! I was so nervous about this appointment. I didn't tell her in advance we were going to the doctor's because I didn't think she could handle it that far ahead of time, and didn't want her to have a hard time getting into the car if she thought she was getting shots. I waited until we were in the waiting room, and while my wife was filling out the paperwork, I explained that a doctor was going to look at her chin and make sure it's okay. She knows there's a bump there, she's touched it before and we've commented on it. So she touched her chin and said, "Doctor. Chin." She did this off and on throughout our half hour wait, and I would reinforce it. "Yes, baby, the doctor is going to look at your chin."

We could see her getting nervous when we went into the exam room. It looked like her regular doctor's office, so she was starting to make connections in her brain. We tried to distract her and act regular and it seemed to ease her anxiety a little, but the long wait for the doctor wasn't helpful. However, when he came in, she immediately remembered what he was there for. She sat on my lap and let him tilt her face up and examine the spot. It took him some time, and he had to leave to get a light and come back to look at it more closely. She stayed still the whole time. I had her snuggled with her back against my chest and kept telling her what a good job she was doing letting the doctor look at her chin. We praised her generously afterward, and the whole way to the car she would point at passersby and ask, "Doctor?"

This one incident felt like such a triumph that it truly started some healing for me. In social work, we talk about trauma re-enactment: putting yourself in the same situation hoping for a different outcome. Generally this doesn't go well and refers more to people who, say, are sexually promiscuous after sexual assault in an unconscious effort to feel more in charge of the situation and to feel more empowered but then often don't, so they keep repeating it. Or people who were physically abused unconsciously choosing partners who end up being abusive, thinking this time they can avoid the violence by behaving differently or helping the person change. In this case, I wasn't creating the situation, it was brought to me. But I was truly able to do something different to feel more in control, more supportive, more helpful to Ellis, and I was able to see her feel calm and confident as a result. It was tremendously healing, and I can see now why people with deeper traumas sometimes spend their whole life trying to achieve that.

Maybe I can finally let go of that early experience, or at least have less emotional intensity when I think of it.

(Epilogue: The spot is a spitz nevus, benign, which the dermatologist recommends having removed because there is a new birth mark in it, which makes it more likely to become melanoma later in her life.)

My Spirited Child

My daughter is what is considered "high needs" or "spirited," which is one of three general baby temperaments, and only 10-12% of babies are in this category. I didn't learn this til she was maybe six months old, but it put everything into perspective. I read an article about it, and she exhibited every single characteristic but one, out of maybe eleven. It was remarkable. And suddenly I was able to see her as a certain temperament and personality type rather than just a fussy baby getting on my last nerve.

She craves security, and that plays out in so many ways. She doesn't let anyone steamroll her, expresses her needs loudly and clearly. She knows what she wants and she'll make sure you do too - but she can also be reasoned with if she can't have it. Her emotions run hot and strong, but this includes her affection. Two of my friends with very mellow babies envy us that. I told them once that I envied how chill their babies are, how they can just sit in a high chair or stroller without a fuss, don't lose their temper at the slightest frustration, can be totally at peace sleeping on their own or at least transitioned to it without too much difficulty. And both of them said to me, "but I don't get the all consuming hugs and cuddles that you do. I envy all the snuggly moments you have." I joked (but I also mean it) that this must be nature's way of ensuring these babies' survival. They have to work extra hard to stay in your good graces because you can get frustrated and overwhelmed with them so quickly. You can't stay in that place when she is literally bowling you over with hugs, and petting your skin, and nuzzling your chest.

This temperament may make her difficult to parent, but she has serious potential to be one hell of a go-getter as an adult. She's going to be passionate and confident and a leader. She's going to be a trailblazer. I was an easygoing baby, and I'm a pushover adult, haha - so I love the idea that this feistiness may mean a strong personality as an adult in a good way.

My job is not to extinguish her fire. My job is to help her channel it appropriately so it doesn't burn everything around her and take her down with it, but instead fuels her in a positive way. It's going to be quite a challenge, because it's not in my nature to be as firm as I'll have to be to help her do this. But at the same time, my soft, warm, compassionate nature helps me help her adjust to a world that can seem a bit much for her, whereas a more domineering personality would butt heads with her a lot. Nicole is more of a type A personality, and it can be so easy to engage in power struggles in her effort to guide Ellis down the right path. If we can balance each other out as parents, we could do a smash up job of parenting this amazing little person. It's going to be quite the undertaking, but I'm up for it! I have to be.

Ellis at 19 Months

Ellis's little quirks that I never want to forget, because they're all so fleeting:

• She loves this book of sounds with farm animals. The farmer is looking for one of his piglets, and everywhere he goes to look for it, he just sees other animals, and you can press the buttons to hear their sounds. Ellis loves it because she knows the names of the animals and the sounds they make, so it makes her feel like she's mastered something. She knows what to expect. She responds in exactly the same way with every reading, which I find so endearing. One page ends with, "Uh oh! One of the pigs is missing!" and she repeats "missing." Just that word out of the whole page, and every time. Then when the farmer checks the barn, there's a barn owl at the top of the page. She squeals and points and says, "Owl!!! Hoo, hoo!" every time, as if she didn't know she'd find it there, despite having just read the book three times. She just gets so excited by owls and elephants, recognizing them everywhere and pointing them out in the smallest of places. Then when the farmer finds the pig, the book says, "There she is! She's resting in the shade of the apple tree," and Ellis says, "yeah!" I die.

• At day care, the staff pat the babies on the backs to help them fall asleep. They say Ellis is one of the ones who needs that, but they start with the youngest/neediest and half the time she's asleep by the time they get to her. Anyway, Ellis has started doing this with dolls and even with us. She pats her stuffed animal on the back and then just walks away when she decides he's asleep. My wife, Nicole, sleeps on the couch many nights because bedsharing makes her very anxious but Ellis goes hysterical at being put in her own space, so she has a setup of sheets and a blanket down there. One of Ellis's games now is to pull the blanket over Nicole, pat her and say "shhhh" with a finger to her lips, and then wake Nicole up. She will push Nicole's face down if Nicole is supposed to be pretending to be asleep but isn't, and she wakes her up pretty roughly when it's time! It's the sweetest thing to see her do these little rituals. She also offers food to her toys and sometimes even lets them nurse with her!

• Ellis's language is astonishing. She's learning multiple new words every day, and has started to pair them together to get a point across: "elephant sticker off," "shoe on," "mama, up." One time she wanted to go outside and had to string together a whole series of words. She started by saying, "Mama, hand," and walking me to the back door. Then, "coat on? shoe on? Door. Door!" This morning she wanted to play with her little Daniel Tiger figurine but couldn't find him. She knew where he was, but I didn't, because I had been working the night before when she played with him with Nicole. She said, "Dannel. Trolley. Dannel trolley. Attairs (upstairs)." She then took the trolley and went to the bottom of the stairs and waited for me. We went up, and sure enough he was next to the bed. Communication does much to ease everyone's frustrations. It's an incredible thing to watch develop! For AGES, she's been saying "na na" to indicate she needs or wants something - food, a toy, help doing something, etc. It was so constant that it was often annoying, and now we can go a whole day without hearing it sometimes. She just has so many words now that she doesn't often need this generic word to get our attention.

• Some of her baby words are evolving, and it's actually a pretty sad loss! For apple, she used to say "bapple," then it became "appool," and now it's just "apple." She says "nan?" for "again" and I dread the day we lose that. It's been with us for so long, and was so refreshing when she was able to say it because it's something she needs to communicate frequently - when she wants a playful move repeated (like playing airplane), hear a song again in the car, read a book again. She says "epplane" for airplane and "effant" for elephant.

• When Ellis asks for a song to be repeated in the car and I say, "Okay," she says back to me, "Okay, baby." It's absolutely hilarious because it's like holding a mirror up to myself. Like oh, I must really say that a lot to her!

• The other day, Nicole was going to get a snack of Lucky Charms, thinking she was being sneaky but she wasn't, not nearly enough. Ellis caught sight of it and went nuts, so Nicole sat on the kitchen floor with her and traded off spoonfuls. Ellis sat right across from her, cross legged and with straight posture, like she was waiting for an organized activity to take place, and just waited patiently for her turn for a spoonful. Then she looked at me and said, "Mama, sit," and patted the floor next to her. I sat down, and she pointed at the cereal, waiting for me to take a spoonful too. I never want to forget that moment, the three of us sitting in a circle cross legged on the kitchen floor, taking turns eating Lucky Charms.

I've waited my whole life for this stage, and now that I'm in a place to better appreciate it, I'm just savoring every morsel. These little games, the interactions, the squeals and giggles, the full body tackle hugs. Her repeating the names of her friends over and over to herself in the stroller, singing to her music, clapping her doll's hands to a song or putting it to bed, saying "mama" and my whole heart just collapses into a puddle as I scoop her up and say "yes, baby?" and feel grateful that it doesn't yet bother her for me to do that.

Happy Birthday!

Ellis turned one this past Sunday - I can't believe it, but at the same time, her newborn days feel like they could be years ago. Who was that tiny squalling baby? Who were WE?

Ellis is teaching me so much. She is such an extravert, and that experience is foreign to me. I babysit a 20-month-old who is an introvert, and the differences between them are incredible to watch. He's king of his house, but is slow to warm up when we go out. He explores cautiously, or keeps close to me and stays very still when there are other people. Ellis lunges head first into everything she can, and she waves maniacally to get strangers' attention. We take a music class together on Tuesdays, and she crawls right to the middle of the room while my charge curls up in my lap. She just has to check in at home base once in a while. She'll come crawling quickly back to me, screeching and her hands slap slapping against the floor, and hold onto my leg while she watches back to the action. Or she'll want to nurse for a bit and then go back out. She is energized by outings and socialization.

My parents came to visit for her birthday, and my dad was so surprised when I suggested he take her in the stroller on his errand to the drugstore across the street. He had expected her to get fussy or need to be distracted. But she's completely fine going off with someone. She gets really excited to see me again when she returns, but she has a blast while she's gone.

Her physical changes have been awesome to watch, too. The words she has are: hi, baby, car, papa (her grandfather), dog, ball. She  recognizes a ton more words, which we actively try to teach her, such as trees, flowers, cat, banana. She understands some phrases like "brush teeth." She can follow instructions when I say, "kiss the baby." She understands "no" and even just tone of voice when I warn, "Ellis" as she goes close to the cat food.

She used to wave with her whole arm, her hand flopping limply, and now she waves more with her hand too. She signs for milk and water and "all done." She has a pooping spot - the landing of our stairs - and then crawls into my lap wanting a diaper change. She loves food and gets SO MAD and impatient waiting for it. As soon as she sees it, she starts grunting and gets red in the face and tenses her body, and she only gets louder until we give it to her. Sometimes we just can't cut something up fast enough as she eats what we just put down! She gives open-mouth kisses, but can be stingy with them so they're so meaningful when you get them! She'll kiss a favorite toy three times in a row because she's so happy to come upon it, but turn her head the other way when you ask for one. So when she spontaneously kisses, or kisses my breast before nursing, or kisses my leg before pulling up to me, I just melt.

She's started to closely observe routines and tasks we perform, and will try to copy them. She takes silverware out of the dishwasher and then puts them back in. She wipes the table with a napkin while we're wiping it down. She picks up food off her dish and puts them into a spoon and then brings the spoon to her mouth - the spoon might be upside down and might miss her mouth, but she knows what it's meant for!

She is joy. She delights in the smallest things. Balloons, flapping flags, birds, watching my charge chase his dog in a circle. She pants open-mouthed with her hands tense with excitement, her eyes wide blinking furiously.

It has been such a privilege to raise her this year. I wish I could reflect more on this first anniversary of her birth, but our girl is still not a good sleeper (up every couple hours) and I'm fading quickly. It was such an effort to even bring out the laptop so I could make any sort of update in acknowledgement of her birthday!

Re-Entering the Work Force

In December, my wife and I started talking very seriously about how much longer we could afford for me to stay home. We both value not having Ellis in day care as an infant when she requires such constant one-on-one attention (and likewise we both value it FOR her once she's more mobile, independent, and interactive with other children). I personally wanted to be home and present for all the milestones that happen in the first year, especially since she may be our only child and her babyhood is like water through our fingers. And I also wanted to be able to breastfeed her without stressing about pumping and getting her to take a bottle. 

It is such a luxury that we could make this dream come true and that I could cherish all of the above privileges, but we had to revisit it a few times to make sure it was still doable as different things about our situation changed. In December, as we were stressing about this and discussing how we could get til May, my friend who lives in the neighborhood called to ask if I would consider babysitting her 18-month-old until the end of June. Her babysitter was moving to France, and he would now be on his third. She planned to sign him up for day care in September, but needed to get him through the end of this school year (she's a teacher). Her sister would be coming on Mondays to help out, so it would be Tuesday through Friday from 6:45 to 3:30 with a winter and spring break.

I was so anxious about how I would watch two babies - how I would get her to nap in a different environment when we were just now transitioning her to the crib instead of nursing to sleep on me, how my fussy high needs baby would tolerate being alone in a playpen for about ten minutes while I do the toddler's nap routine, how I would keep from going crazy without the ability to get out of the house all day. (No more driving randomly to the grocery store, going on play dates, etc.) I'm also not an experienced babysitter and was nervous about caring for a toddler. But my friend had faith in me. I was open about all these concerns, and she said she would do whatever she could to make it easier on me and that it would be an adjustment but we would be okay. She knew he would be safe and loved with me, and everything else would be on the job training. 

It was worse than I thought in the beginning, but got better more quickly than I had anticipated. We have our routine now, and I didn't realize how much I needed that. I've been working since I was 15, and having open-ended, unstructured days was driving me out of my mind. I would try to make schedules for the week so that I didn't get that Sunday night pit in my stomach of what we would do all week. I have a very fussy baby if she isn't being entertained. She is active and social, and staying home leads to crankiness, but you can only make so many trips to the grocery store, and I didn't have money to be going to classes every day. Now we had somewhere to go every morning, a friend for her to play with, busy activity for me (coordinating their naps and his snacks and meals takes up most of my day; the busy work is good for me), just enough time afterward to do something together before dinner and bed, and Mondays off for everything else. 

The Mondays off have been key to my sanity. I have one extra day before my work week starts to ease back into it after a full weekend. I can do some chores, have play dates with my mom friends whom I've missed since starting this gig, and spend some quality time with just Ellis. Working the rest of the week makes me so appreciate that day off together, and makes the time with her so high quality.

And I'm guaranteed to be home with her until after her first birthday in late May. I'll be looking for work starting in June, and hope to be back by late summer/early fall. I'm so excited! I'm going to miss her like crazy, and I can't imagine not being together all day. We are so attached. Because she's refused bottles and because I hate the pump enough not to push the issue even now that she's gotten more flexible, I really haven't been without her for more than an hour at a time. The idea of that separation is really hard for me, the same as I imagine it would be when she starts school. But I look so forward to having routine and structure to my days and weeks in the adult world, in the field about which I'm so passionate and have worked so hard to enter. I miss the office environment. I miss weekends and holidays and vacations feeling so special because they were so different from the norm. 

I'm also really excited for Ellis to have the day care experience. I hope to use a small family day care rather than a large day care center, and the one I was looking into last year seems so wonderful. They provide a schedule of snacks and lunches online for parents to look at each week. They have a lot of outdoor time and free play as well as some structured activities. And she just so loves other children! The busy nature of day care as well as the social aspect are going to be so great for her. I actually prefer day care to a private babysitter for this reason. I don't just want someone watching her at home like I would do. I want her to have a different sort of experience, and then be able to come home as her home base. (If I was looking for childcare for her as an infant, I would prefer a babysitter where she gets the constant individual attention she needs. But her needs are changing as she nears toddlerhood.)

I don't feel guilty for going back to work, because I think it will be great for both of us. But I feel guilty for WANTING to go back. I feel like I'm supposed to say I'm just doing it because I have to, but that's not true. I do wish I had a job from 9 to 12 every day and got to spend more time with her in each day. But if I can't have it all, I would rather work outside the home than not. Fathers are never made to feel guilty for providing for their families and not being hands on at home all day, yet as mothers we are expected to feel or do differently. That bothers me, and yet even as I criticize it, I'm a victim of it. That's going to take some work. 

Our Breastfeeding Journey

By the time I went into labor, I was both very anxious and very prepared and informed about breastfeeding. It seemed like everyone I knew had had difficulty. You don't hear often about successful breastfeeding experiences, at least in my observation. I kept hearing stories about problems with latching, problems with supply, problems with pain. People would ask me if I planned to breastfeed, and when I said yes, I got unintentional discouragement instead of support, in the form of comments like, "Well make sure you get bottles and formula samples just in case it doesn't work out for you." I took a breastfeeding class and read The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding which is put out by La Leche League, and I found a local support group on social media where I knew I could ask questions or express concerns postpartum and get support.

It all paid off, plus I had a bit of luck. I was able to have skin-to-skin for a glorious four hours after a vaginal delivery, which gave me a great head start. Ellis lay across my chest and her fist closed reflexively around one nipple as she lay in the flat area between my breasts. When she seemed to be wiggling and searching, I moved her over to help her find my nipple with her mouth, and she latched immediately. This was less than an hour after birth, and my heart soared. I knew we would be okay.

During my hospital stay, however, I encountered some discouraging setbacks. Several times she would be crying and trying to latch but couldn't. I knew she was capable of latching so I didn't understand why she wasn't. She would gum and tongue at my nipple but not latch, and her head would shake violently from side to side as she got more frustrated and then she would scream and cry. I was a wreck trying to figure out what was wrong. 

With the help of a lactation consultant and our own observations, we figured out that she couldn't focus enough to latch if anything else was bothering her. She would be hungry and would want to but just couldn't. Sometimes that was as easy as checking her diaper (she had NO tolerance for wet diapers the first few weeks when that was such a new feeling to her), but other times it was gas bothering her, which would take us a while to figure out and which we couldn't always help her with. 

As I'd learned should be done, I offered it to her anytime she was awake, and she was at my breast round the clock. With all that suckling my milk came in at two days out of the two to five day timeframe I'd been warned of. I was so grateful, because no matter what I was told, I couldn't imagine drops of colostrum being enough to satisfy her for five whole days! 

The first night I was home from the hospital, I noticed a difference during a 2AM feeding. It seemed like she was swallowing more or differently, and after she unlatched, I touched the drop that leaked from my breast and noticed it was white. Milk!! It was the best feeling to know she was getting that. I couldn't help but wonder what that change was like for her, having only experienced the little bits of colostrum and now suddenly having milk flowing. I woke up the next morning engorged. I resisted the urge to pump (in hindsight, I could have pumped just a little for relief - but to be honest I was intimidated by the pump and afraid to try it for the first couple of weeks) and just kept offering it to her. It was so painful, and strange to see my typically small, flaccid breasts so big and full and hard.

The nipple pain started about a day into nursing and I kept receiving conflicting information. I would read or hear that it's normal until your nipples "toughen up," and then I would read or hear that it should never hurt and that means the latch isn't right. I didn't know what to believe, but I felt like she was latched well so I just tried to power through. I used cooling gel pads and nipple butter to ease the sting. Sometimes my nipples even cracked and scabbed, and then the scab would come off when she next nursed and be even more raw and sore. So painful! Just when I thought maybe I should call a lactation consultant, the pain eased up, about a week in. So now I think that was truly my nipples getting used to so much action. Now I barely feel it, it's such a gentle tugging that I can even sleep through it after pulling her into bed late at night.

Initially the lamp went on as I fumbled with her diaper and then went to the rocker to set up my nursing pillow and feed her. I would struggle to stay awake for the 30-40 minutes, often snapping my head up after realizing I was falling asleep over her. Within a few weeks, I got more comfortable and was able to change her diaper by nightlight without having to light up the whole room, and then would nurse her sidelying in bed. I would fall asleep and then put her back in the bassinet at whatever point I woke up.

My first real moment of pride came when I had to nurse her in public unexpectedly. We were at the pediatrician's office when she was just four days old. Then and to this day, she loves being out and seeing new places and people, so she was overall very alert and content. But she started to fuss and I knew she must be hungry. I had a moment of panic because I didn't have my home setup and my nursing pillow. But I sat down and held her up to me and fed her while the doctor spoke. It was such a rush and so good for my self-confidence as a new nursing mother to know I had it down enough to be able to meet that need spontaneously. It was an empowering realization that I could keep my baby alive and nourish her no matter what the environment. I'll never forget that feeling!

I knew I would love breastfeeding, but I had no idea how I would LOVE breastfeeding! It's one of my absolute favorite parts of being a new mother. That oxytocin is powerful stuff, and I feel so in love with Ellis every time. I don't want her to ever stop! In the beginning, when she wasn't quite connecting that her food source and her mother were the same entity, she would catch me gazing at her and pause, narrowing her eyebrows in an epic glower at me, and then resume sucking fiercely. Like, "Hey, I know you're warmth and safety but am still not REALLY sure who or what you are, and I'm not sure if I trust you hanging over me while I'm eating and seeking comfort." Then this evolved into her catching my gaze and grinning so hard that she unlatches and then coos softly at me. Melt my HEART! She also now pets my skin with one hand back and forth while she nurses to sleep. Or while awake and alert, she just flails it around, sometimes grabbing my face, while her top leg kicks and flails around. And when we're nursing in bed sidelying, I feel her leg kicking up and down against my leg and I just die. It's like the biggest rush, like absolutely falling in love every time.

 figuring it out in the hospital - she was a natural!

 my first time sidelying in bed - lifechanging!

 at Target - one of the biggest surprises for me was how little I care about public breastfeeding

 one of six images from a $15 breastfeeding photo session by a local photographer - something I will never regret having!

 learning how to nurse while babywearing was a game changer

 the most comfortable and natural position for both of us - just laying back with her against me

that skeptical look from the early days

First Three Months

I'm writing about a quarter of a year at once. So not my pre-baby writing frequency! Argh. My laptop hardly ever comes out anymore.

The first few days at home were so peaceful compared to what we'd dealt with at the hospital all weekend. My mother stayed with us for two weeks and my wife was off of work those same two weeks. We were a great team. My wife cooked dinners when we didn't have any from kind friends and family. She went out to the stores to get anything we needed. My mother helped with laundry and dishes and watched the baby so I could get in a nap, just calling me if she woke and needed to eat. Ellis slept most of the time, and in those first few days would sleep wherever I put her. So I did a lot of what I used to do. I went on my computer, I called friends at work because I missed my old normal, and even checked some work emails. But having time for all that was very short-lived.

I had a really hard time with my "normal" being totally upended. It just seemed to happen so fast. I had just been sitting around in my usual environment, calm and even bored that first week of my maternity leave that started on my due date, and now baby stuff was everywhere and I felt emotionally and mentally and physically exhausted and I could never clock out of this job and everyone at my OLD job was going on without me and I couldn't leave the house and my nipples hurt and I was "on call" all night long, falling asleep in the rocker while hanging over my nursing baby. I vividly recall how strange I felt, how everything around me felt strange. It was like this wasn't my home anymore, and this wasn't my life, and I was in some strange reality that I couldn't get out of. I would freak out and melt down and cry, telling my mom and wife about these feelings and texting with my sister and my best friend. I was very open with what I was going through because I was even more afraid of being isolated in these feelings. Dealing with very little sleep made my emotions particularly raw and made it much more difficult to cope.

That started to pass after about a week, and I got into our routine. But our routine was rough. Ellis had seemed so laidback in the hospital. She only fussed when something was wrong, and we seemed to be able to figure that out pretty quickly and then she was okay. Now she seemed to be fussing more often than not, and we couldn't figure out why or how to help her. When she fell asleep, I lived in fear of her waking back up. We had nursing down pat, but if that didn't help her, I was at a loss as to what else to do. Nothing else seemed to come naturally.

Nights were the hardest. Every evening we spent hours and hours trying to get her to bed, walking her up and down the block as she screamed and wailed because being outside soothed her a bit, but then she'd become agitated again once she came in. We followed what we'd read about helping babies distinguish night from day. We gave her a routine and kept our room dark and quiet at night. When she'd be awake from, say, 2:30-4:00AM, I wouldn't play with her, but would just hold her and be with her so she would learn nighttime wasn't play time. I've also read that breastmilk helps them make this adjustment more quickly because your milk at night is different and the same hormones that help you sleep helps the baby sleep. She figured out night from day pretty quickly, but was awake at least every hour or so. She was very sensitive to wet diapers and would scream the second she felt it. She was hungry all the time. She had gas and couldn't figure out how to pass it.

It's all such a blur now, I know we felt closer than ever the first two weeks when my wife was home. We'd be up in the middle of the night together trying to soothe Ellis and get her back to sleep, and we felt like such a team after any success. I know our relationship suffered for a while after my wife went back to work so soon; I was home alone ready to pull my hair out or jump out a window, while she started dreading coming home because she missed any of Ellis's good time during the day and just got there in time to experience the evening hell. It took a toll on us, and we started developing different ideas of how we should respond to her. We couldn't agree on it, and ultimately my preferences trumped hers because I was the one home dealing with her all day, and I couldn't do that 24/7 in a way that didn't feel right to me. So my wife got on board reluctantly because she didn't want us to send Ellis mixed messages, and we found ways to compromise where possible.

Ellis wanted to be held all the time, and I loved this most of the time until it made other things more difficult. I loved spending my day with her sleeping on my chest; it helped re-solidify our bond after hours of my nerves being utterly frayed. But when I wanted to shower or throw in a load of laundry, it was very difficult. She would scream the second I put her down and I felt guilty that I was home all day but unable to get much done, and that my wife would have to come home from a long day at work to a screaming baby, a crying wife, a messy house, and no dinner.

All of this passed, and more quickly than I'd dared hope. We turned a corner around five weeks, and it's only gotten better since. We developed a bedtime routine that worked for us; it still took us hours to get her to sleep (now it takes just about one hour), but suddenly we weren't having to take her outside pacing up and down the block anymore. Suddenly she was fussing and slapping at my chest as she nursed to sleep, but not screaming bloody murder throughout the house.

Looking back on those early weeks, I learned this:

Our struggle with Ellis was not unique; nothing was wrong with her or us. Newborns are fussy. Newborns need to be held. Newborns are gassy and they don't know how to pass it or what that scary feeling is. They aren't familiar with the feeling of a wet diaper and it upsets them. They can't see six inches in front of their face so they panic if they're set somewhere and can't see you. They've only known the warmth and close comfort of your womb, and can't be expected to be able to sleep on their own without the comfort and safety of your smell and your skin and your voice. A parent's job is to accommodate these needs to the extent that you can until they begin to adjust to the world.

It helped to hear from other new parents that the nightly crying ("witching hour") is normal among all babies, that all babies have a tough time adjusting to the world outside the womb and there's nothing wrong with your baby; you just had no idea how much they cry and how difficult it is for you to cope with that when you're exhausted and drained. You just can't anticipate it, no matter how much people might warn you (and they generally don't!).

It helps now for me to know this really doesn't last forever, and that babies go through their stages of growth and development without you pushing it. Ellis needed to be in bed with us the first month because she freaked out if she couldn't see and smell us. She felt utterly unsafe and alone in the bassinet. But soon she started to see and recognize her surroundings, and now she actually sleeps better in the bassinet. I bring her into bed to nurse so that I can get sleep, but I often end up putting her back in the bassinet at the next wake-up because she wants to stretch out flat on her back with her limbs akimbo more than she can do when squeezed in next to us. Bedsharing is for my convenience with breastfeeding, not because she needs it anymore. She used to only be able to nap on me, and would almost always wake up if I tried to transfer her elsewhere. The past three days, she's had at least one nap a day where she can't get comfortable on me and squirms and fusses til I set her down, at which point she is able to be soothed to sleep if I stay nearby keeping eye contact and making shushing sounds. I follow her lead and try to facilitate her growth as it's happening rather than trying to force her into a stage she's not ready for or keep her in one I'm not ready for her to grow out of. Trying to make her sleep on her own before she was ready would do nothing but keep us in an exhausting battle that distressed both us and her, and I'm glad I insisted on bedsharing while it worked for us.

I knew a lot of this theoretically, and would remind myself and defend it to others who I didn't feel were supporting my choices. But my confidence was not as strong as I attempted to project, because really I didn't know how any of my choices would turn out. Now I can see that she has developed a secure attachment to us, and because of it, is becoming independent more quickly than I'm even ready for! She knows we will do our best to meet her needs, that we won't just leave her to scream and cry when she's unhappy or lonely or scared, so she feels capable of being more adventurous. She spends more time doing things on her own (being set down in a bouncer or playing under her activity gym) because she knows we'll respond when she tells us she's done or needs something else. My choices have been exactly right for us, and I regret anytime I veered from it out of pressure from others or self-doubt. It's the only reason I would wish it upon myself to go through that rough first period all over again, so that I could do it with more confidence!

"If I knew then what I know now..." Isn't that what parenting is for everyone?

Saturday Bliss

My childhood weekends were amazing. Many Friday nights, we would go with Dad to Blockbuster and pick out dumb kiddie movies for the weekend while he chose something for him and Mom or a family movie for all of us. We would have the weekend to watch and re-watch our selection.

In nice weather (and most of the memories I've held onto are from nice-weather days), I would wake up lazily on a Saturday to hear a lawn mower somewhere in the neighborhood, maybe feel a cool breeze. (Am I making that memory up? Were our windows ever open at night?) We would watch Saturday morning cartoons or Nickelodeon while Dad made pancakes or French toast or waffles. This was the only day we had a breakfast like this, so it was really special. Sometimes I would help him beat an egg in a little glass Garfield mug we had gotten during a promotion at McDonald's.

Weekends also meant yardwork or home improvement for Dad, and often this required a trip to Lowe's or Wal-Mart. He would practically beg one or more of us to accompany him. Poor Dad just wanted to spend some weekend time with his kids, and we often had to be dragged! Lowe's utterly bored me; I was more interested in the Wal-Mart trips because I could bring my saved up allowance and very carefully select a new Barbie.

My brother and sister and I would sometimes play Nintendo and other times play outside, riding our bikes or playing in the fields and the woods, occasionally with neighbor kids. Sometimes there would be a neighborhood yard sale, and we would walk up and down every street to eye the goods, often spending our allowance on other people's old crap, like a toddler stroller that we would use for our dolls. One woman made homemade lollipops to sell, and that was always a treat!

Sometimes there were baseball games, dance recitals, bowling league. There was usually church on Sundays, often followed by fast food as a special treat. But when I think about my childhood weekends, the feeling I come away with is relaxation. We had our whole family together, we had open stretches of time to just play and be together, we had total separation from the rest of the week.

Being pregnant makes me think about the kind of family life I want to create for my child. There is so much pressure up here for kids to be involved in ALL THE ACTIVITIES. And my wife has a large local extended family, which I'm so grateful to have because that's something I never had as a kid, but it also means every other weekend seems to be booked with baptisms, first communions, birthdays, bridal showers, weddings, baby showers. I'm excited for my child to be involved with family, and I look forward to spending our two precious full days together as a family doing fun things and going on outings together, but I hope I also remember the simple value of just being around each other, finding ways to entertain ourselves in our cozy nest and really stepping out of the weekday rush to refocus as a family unit, to just live, and interact, and be.