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In no particular order...
Humidifier Parts
Enjoy your visit and come again soon...
I'm reading Frederick Douglass' autobiographies in my quiet moments while nursing or watching over Paula as she sleeps. I bought it the day before being induced, and actually started reading it in the hospital. But slave narratives are maybe not the best reading at a time like that, and I put the book away for a few months.
The stories of slavery's atrocities range from horrific to heart-rending. He tells of an overseer who coldly shot and murdered a slave who resisted being whipped, because if one slave were to get away with it, the whole system would collapse. Douglass recounts events he witnessed or heard about from eye witnesses in chilling detail, and teases out from them the underlying realities of slavery. "The slaveholder, as well as the slave" he writes, "is the victim of the slave system. A man's character greatly takes its hue and shape from the form and color of things about him. Under the whole heavens there is no relation more unfavorable to the development of honorable character, than that sustained by the slaveholder to the slave."
Douglass relates numerous examples of the relationship-killing policies slaveholders imposed on their human chattel. These impress me more than the impetuous and cruel use of the whip, though that was among the most harsh characteristics of slavery and an institution within it. Douglass spent his early life with his dear grandmother because it was common practice to separate mothers from their babies as soon as the babies could safely be weaned. The babies were then raised by their elderly grandmothers and the mothers hired out to other farms. Reading about this practice I couldn't help but think about its echo in modern society, where it is not uncommon to meet working class African-American children being raised by their grandparents. A family on our block comprises a grandmother and more than twenty grandchildren living under one roof. I feel like it is taboo to imply that this could be a remnant - a symptom of the unhealed wounds of the slave system.
He tells about how slaves acquired the habit of saying only good things about their owners because if they were to tell the truth about their condition and it were to reach their master's ears, they could and would be unceremoniously carted away from their families and loved ones and sold. He also describes a highly religious slaveholder who forced one of his female slaves to, in Douglass' words, commit adultery, by making male slaves share a bed with her so as to "breed" her.
The stories move me. I feel my heart ache as I read about mothers forced to stash their nurslings in a corner of the field where they worked so that they could nurse them when given permission, or children fed like hogs from a trough with a meager amount of corn mush that was at most barely adequate to fuel their growing bodies and developing minds.
If I don't sleep when Paulita sleeps, I'll never sleep at all. But she's sleeping and this is what I'm looking at. Pretty, pretty pictures by Shokufeh.
I feel like I'm on a prison break. Okay, that's a huge exaggeration.
Cat burglar? Fugitive? None of them quite captures my situation.
Little Paula's asleep and I have a few precious moments to do something other than carry, nurse, change, comfort or otherwise fuss over her. How do I spend it? Writing about her, of course.
These stolen moments were brought to me by Motrin infant drops. I got up at 4 to give her some so she would be able to sleep for another few hours. I'm taking her to the doctor today to see if she has an ear infection.
Whatever she has, it's completely taken over my life. I'm back to caring for a newborn, it seems like, except this one sleeps less and then there's the high-pitched shrieking. Thankfully that stopped last night when I finally started giving her something for the pain. I should win an award for bad mothering.
These days all I want is a moment to myself, some time to be Not a Mom, Just a Person.
Any suggestions for me and dd?
She is now 5 months old and so irritable with teething that I'm losing my mind. She squawks very loudly, very high pitched and nothing seems to satisfy her. Sometimes she's hungry, sometimes bored, cold, about to pee, wet, etc, etc. As soon as one thing is taken care of, it's something else. My attempts to relieve her boredom are extremely ineffectual, though I can't figure out what I'm not getting.
Tonight has been a particular train wreck - she fell asleep in the car, woke up when we brought her in and has become increasingly unhappy. Joel got involved when he heard me banging a pot against the kitchen counter - I was holding her and starting to lose it, feeling super angry and resentful. It's been a really long day. She got to the screaming phase and Joel put her into the stroller and is walking her the length of the house and back, over and over. It seems to have calmed her for the moment. I think it's the 2nd time
we've put her in it - LBOL (the b is for bitterly). Or maybe now the Hyland's teething remedy is finally right for her symptoms. I threw all the homeopathics I could muster at it (Hylands and Ignatia - I know combining isn't the best, but WHO THE * CARES RIGHT NOW as long as something works).
Anyway, I'm getting to the end of my rope with this screeching. I spend so much time and energy trying to satisfy her ever-changing needs that feeding myself is becoming impossible. I'm back on a diet of watermelon, carrot sticks and almond butter. That doesn't help my mental sharpness, of course, and by the end of the day I'm just used up. I feel like I suck at parenting, I'm angry at my infant daughter, resentful, worn out. The fact that there is no relief in sight - except on the slim chance the Hylands is working - tempts me to break things. This is a low mommy moment.
*****
As I wrote this, Joel pushed Paula back and forth in the stroller and she did calm down and fall asleep. She's now asleep in the stroller in the kitchen. What will we do with her now? No clue. Neither of us wants to hazard moving her. I guess we'll wait a while and let her fall deeply asleep, then take our chances. As much as I feel I suck as a parent right now, letting my daughter sleep in the stroller all night would not brighten my mood.
You have decided to do away with diapers. You have decided to listen and watch for your baby's signals so you can help her eliminate in the traditional way. Your goal is greater harmony and communication with your baby, but you will also spend less on diapers and can kiss diaper rashes goodbye. Your baby will have more freedom of movement, and will not have to sit in her own waste. But the path you have chosen will be hard, grasshopper. These lessons will guide you on your way.
Remain in the present moment. Do not dwell on the past. Do not think, "She just pooped, so she can't be making those little grunting noises because of having to poop again." Just put her on the potty. You'll be glad you did when you see what a total blowout she's working on. That last one was just a warning shot.
Do not dwell on the future. Do not wonder how you're going to get the smell of pee out of your mattress since you tried going diaper-free at night without a nice big, waterproof mattress pad. Forget about that - it's mainly water anyway! Also, do not fantasize about your baby being totally potty trained by six to eight months like those babies you heard about in Africa or China who were trained this way from birth. Your baby, as wonderful as she is, will probably someday follow in the footsteps of Karen Finley. So enjoy her now.
Enlightenment comes through work. So quit sitting there staring at her, waiting for her to look at you cross-eyed so you can put her on the potty. Put her on your back in the sling and go do your gardening or laundry. You'll know when she fusses that she has to go. Or you'll know she had to go when you feel pee dripping down your butt.
Practice compassion. You and she are just getting to know each other, just learning how to communicate, and more than likely you are trying this pottying thing for the first time. So don't count the times you miss her signals and she pees on you and your pretty new nightgown. Erase from your mind what you think you're supposed to be doing, or the idea that your mistakes will turn her into, well, Karen Finley. Take a deep breath, wipe up the messes, and look at your beautiful baby. She has already forgiven you. Forgive yourself.
I'm lying here with my little baby asleep next to my breast. She cries in her sleep sometimes and needs to nurse. It makes me a little sad, but at least I have something to give her to make her feel better.
Lately during these extended nursing and napping sessions, I read. At the mo, I'm reading "Lanterns" by Marian Wright Edelman, which my mother gave me for Ayyam-i-ha. I'm at the part now where she recalls being in college and wondering how she will direct her life so that it reflects her ideals. I dig.
I wonder the same about myself a lot. Will I make some significant contribution to the world aside from being a parent? Will my writing ever evolve into something more than recreation or employment?
I fear that I am too lazy to accomplish anything serious in life. I like to fall into something, be swept into it and do it so it consumes me. Right now that's being Paula's mom. I really don't see anything else fitting for the next few months, at least. Maybe longer.
But I have loan payments to make in September, and the nagging feeling that I am narrowing the scope of my life, that that's bad. I worry I'm letting my father down.
Now that it's warmer I'm trying to let Lil P go naked or nearly so and use the potty more. We have two little plastic bowls we use for it. One is one of those semi-disposable plasticware things and the other is actually a cool-looking little bowl from Target. It even has a lid that is still in my possession, but it will never hold food again. I wrote "POTTY" on it in red permanent marker after my mother-in-law, in a fit of helpfulness, collected it with the other dishes on the coffee table and washed them all together.
No, I'm not grossed out, but you might be. I acknowledge that.
My house is once again an unholy disaster, but I refuse to have anyone come and help me with it. The only person I remotely want to have over for that purpose is my friend Marylu's niece, Jazmin, who loves loves loves babies and is just a nice, helpful kid. My idea is we could pay her a few bucks to come over and help hang out with Lil P while I do some housework. This works for me because she is an 8th-grader and unlikely to offer me VOLUMES of unsolicited and unwelcome advice, and also would not go nuts on my house, cleaning things I rate unimportant and ignoring things I rate filthy.
The problem with this brilliant plan is that Jazmin is also one of Joel's students, at least for the next couple of weeks. He feels it would be a violation of the separation of church and state - no, home and work - to have her here at all, much less working for us.
I gotta run. I started making my lunch a half hour or so ago, got sidetracked by my wonderful, teething, possibly hungry, definitely needy, not-easily-satisfied baby, and haven't gotten back to it. Later.
This past weekend I staged a full-force rebellion against my self-imposed food restrictions. On Sunday I ate rice-stuffed grape leaves and mousaka at Andie's on Montrose, and at the grocery store Monday I bought the ultimate indulgence: guacamole Doritos (TM). Okay, maybe chocolate would be the ultimate indulgence, but since my Chinese doc did not *specifically* warn me away from Doritos, that's what I reached for.
So I had some on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday. After Tuesday I swore I wouldn't have any more - I know they're total crap, nutritionally speaking, and I've avoided foods with MSG since I'm nursing. Then Wednesday I got one of those funny, faux clever ideas that represent themselves as just right. I thought, "I'll make a salad and crumble some guacamole Doritos on top! It'll be crunchy and Not Too Bad."
Um...
Well, I sat down to nurse Paula for her midday meal and nap, and began eating my salad over her. I dripped dressing on her a couple of times, but she just nursed away into dreamland not appearing to notice.
I guess I was watching TV or enjoying my pseudo-nutritious salad and thinking about how the mixed greens, carrots and tomatoes would somehow negate the effect of the chips when I felt something funny from below my field of vision. Little Paula was asleep and still sucking occasionally on my breast, but when I looked down I saw that her whole body was shaking. She seemed to be seizing.
I couldn't process what I was seeing. Her eyes were closed, her mouth still suctioned onto my breast, and her arms, legs, torso and head were convulsing rapidly as though an electric current ran through them.
I took her off my breast and she continued to shake for a few seconds more. I said her name, but she became totally still and unresponsive. I touched her face, said her name again and her eyes half opened. She looked around, then at me. She still looked groggy, not as interactive as usual, and I immediately called my doctor's office.
She told me to bring Paula to the emergency room as soon as possible. She said I should pick up Joel so he could drive and I could watch for another seizure. If it happened again, we were to go to the nearest ER, not necessarily UIC. We made it to UIC and were taken directly to the pediatric ER.
What followed were numerous retellings of the incident, exams of Paula's general physical health and neurological status. She had a CT scan right away, and a very unpleasant blood draw. Residents and doctors who examined her noted repeatedly how alert, responsive and physically developed she is. "She so strong!" One of them said. Another doctor found me wearing Paula in the sling and commented, "She's very advanced for a baby who is carried all the time." I don't imagine she gets to see many babies who are carried all the time. Anyway, Paula now weighs 14 pounds and is in the 50th percentile for weight, length and head circumference.
The CT scan was normal, and her blood showed low hemoglobin (I also have low hemoglobin because of my beta thalassemia - I'm not worried about that for her right now). Apparently her blood also showed high potassium, which could have had some bearing on something, but when the technician came to draw her blood the next morning, I asked her to double check the order and she left, never to return. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The neurology attending recommended that we stay the night in order to have an EEG. Apparently it's very difficult to get an EEG as an outpatient, so admitting Paula (and I, her food source) was the way to go.
Without going into laborious detail, she had the EEG yesterday and it was an ordeal for both of us. She cried, I cried. The test itself is not painful, but getting her to sleep while she was wrapped tightly in a sheet to prevent her from reaching for the electrodes that covered her head was very hard. Just seeing her hooked up to all those electrodes broke my heart.
We waited all afternoon to get the EEG results. If they were normal, we would go home. If they were not, she would need an MRI. If she needed an MRI, she would need to get an IV, then sleep soundly through the whole 45-minute test, or, if she woke up we would have to stay overnight and get the test today with sedation.
Joel and Joyce Olinga were with me and Paula when we finally found out we could go home. The EEG result was normal.
They sent us home with no explanation for why she had had an apparent seizure. But Joel and I both wondered if it might have been the wonderful, delicious, MSG-filled Doritos.
I did some searching online this morning and found a number of anecdotal accounts of MSG inducing seizures, a medical recommendation that people taking medication for epilepsy avoid MSG, and a few different sites claiming that MSG is particularly unsafe for infants. I will discuss this with our doctor, but he's a pretty mainstream fellow who I don't expect will give any credence to our theory. Still it's worth a shot.
Coming home from the hospital yesterday I felt a wave of fatigue in my body and mind. The fear for my daughter's health, the horror of seeing her hooked up to monitors and testing machines, the stress of dealing with medical personnel, the dismal knowledge of other sick children in the rooms around us, some of them without parents or family to comfort them - it was awful. But Paula smiled out the window and babbled happily in the car before falling peacefully asleep clutching my finger.
I couldn't help but think of my mother, and how she must have suffered when I had polio at 6 or 7 months old. For most of my life I've thought about that and felt sorry for my infant self - how scared and in pain I probably was. But now I know that babies, while capable of extreme suffering, also are blessed with the ability to leave it easily behind them. Adults remember, rehash and wonder why.
I couldn't get anything important done today. I napped with Paula, checked email, read The New Yorker. In a burst of pseudo-productivity I spent an hour or so online, entering sweepstakes. After that and another of Paula's many naps, I tried putting together the spring-loaded vertical shower caddy we bought yesterday, only to find myself in dire need of Joel's help when he walked in from school. This evening, after getting Paula soundly to sleep, I got up, did a little bit of laundry-related work and organized the linen closet.
I don't know if I should be proud or ashamed to say that nothing I did today needed to be done today. It all could have waited indefinitely. I could have never entered those sweepstakes and gotten exactly the same amount out of that time as if I had been asleep or watching TV. But hey, if I win that big house in Nashville decorated in honor of country music superstars, I'll be laughing last.
And yes, in case you're wondering, I'm intentionally not linking to it. I don't want to decrease my odds of winning.
When I was a kid, my mom always entered sweepstakes - remember the Publisher's Clearinghouse? "You may already be a winner," and all that? I felt it was a waste of time, and probably said as much in my snotty pubescent way. But she was a stay-at-home mom in a family with little money, and she wanted to see if she could make things a little easier somehow. Now I understand that.
I laid beside Paula tonight as I do every evening, snuggled up with her as she made her way from waking and sleeping. I read my copy of The New Yorker until the light coming through the closed blinds got too dim. I looked down at my infant daughter. She cried briefly in her sleep from time to time, then opened her mouth with little grunting noises, trusting that I would put her onto my breast without her having to wake up. She stirs such a tender feeling inside me. I think about all the time I have spent nursing her, sleeping next to her, holding her while she slept, playing with her, being at once her playmate, soloflex, bed and board.
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