It take a willage

Sorry for the title. Been listening to David Sedaris lately.

Anonyhubby and I and a friend went to a local botanical garden to take some classes last night. Friend and I had the pollination class and got to giggle in the back while the cute and enthusiastic teacher talked about plant sex. It was fun.

But we left anonybabe with a babysitter last night. We've had people watch her before, but this was kind of a first extended leave-her-at-someone-else's-house-while-we're-gone-for-four-hours kind of thing. We left her with my birth doula, who has met her twice, briefly. Once - you know - as she made her entrance into the world and then once a couple of months ago, before anonybabe seemed to recognize even me.

If I was going to leave her with anybody I knew I would feel comfortable leaving her with this woman, but I worried. Particularly when a.b. fell asleep right before we dropped her off with the sitter. I worried that she would wake up and think "where the bloody hell am I and who are these motherfucking people and mom and dad have abandoned me!!! WAAAAA". So I worried through the cute little plant sex jokes. I worried through the chit chat with the teacher afterwards. I worried through the drive back to babysitters.

And then we walked in to the smiliest most contented baby girl I think I've seen in her short life. She gave us a full on grin when we walked in the door but didn't make a move to be taken out of doula's arms. And then we watched video that doula had taken of her kids playing with baby. And I saw an even smilier even more contented baby girl than I'd seen before. She was babbling with them and her eyes were alight and she just looked so freaking comfortable. We found that when she woke up in her carseat in a strange house she just checked everybody out, and the doula, being a respectful person, let her do that for five minutes or so until she made a move like she wanted out of the seat and then she got to play like she's never played before.

So of course I'm delighted that she was so comfortable and of course my heart is breaking that she was so comfortable without us. I don't want her to need us to be around to be happy, but it sure is heady stuff to feel needed. *Sigh*

Since before she was born I was determined that she would get to be around lots of different people. Nice people, mean people, ditzy people, razor-sharp ones, thoughtful people, selfish people, on and on. I want her to know the smorgasboard of personalities out there so that if she lives in a bubble it'll be one of her choosing, not one that she lives in out of default because it's the one her father and I have chosen for ourselves. If she ends up with a vastly different personality than her father and I, I don't want her to feel alone. I want her to be able to find a mentor, somebody she can talk to about who she thinks she is and who she is becoming. Whether she likes unicorns and promise rings and Focus on the Family (please god, no) or sex, drugs, and rock n' roll (slightly less no) or political activism or macrame, my dream is that she'll always be tripping lightly down the road of self-discovery. And if not tripping lightly that she'll at least have a hand to hold while she drags herself along the way. And I realize that my hand is likely not the hand she'll hold. Sometimes, maybe. If I'm lucky we'll be compatible enough that I'll get that pleasure a fair amount. Her father and I are kind of putting all of our eggs in one basket with this only child thing. Just because we share the same gene pool doesn't mean that we'll inhabit remotely similar head spaces. I know that we could easily be strangers for the most part...and if that's the case then I don't want her to be denied of somebody who gets her just because we don't.

All this to say I want her to enjoy other people's company. I want to be happy for her when she enjoys other people's company. I just am shocked and awed that it's happening already. Even just a tiny bit.

We're All Saints

Okay, here's an email I intended to send to a friend but thought better of it. We used to be roommates and close buddies before husbands and kids came along. We both came from religious backgrounds and she has gotten progressively more churchy while I have gotten progressively less so. We spend very little time together now and it always feels like we're trying to talk around what we think so as not to offend the sensibilities of the other. I try not to be too crass and agnostic; she tries not to wear her religious beliefs on her sleeve. It's uncomfortable.

Anyway, I dearly miss getting to fire off emails with thoughts like those that follow. She's about the only friend I could ever do serious navel gazing with without getting eye rolls or uncomfortable giggles. But I'm hurt that she hasn't made an effort to continue our friendship and I keep vowing to distance myself, so blabbing on about personal growth during pregnancy doesn't seem the way to do that.

Anyhow, esta aqui:

"The All Saints/All Souls celebration sounds wonderful. Embracing death as a part of life. I was so scared of pregnancy and birth before it happened that I feel like that was on my mind a lot in the past year. It's weird; I was drawn to watch some pretty violent movies and had some incredibly violent dreams while I was pregnant. Somehow that felt right...I went to see a movie while I was pregnant...I forget its name now but it was about a very imaginative little girl who lives in a very violent world - she's in south America under a socialist regime in a time of revolution if I remember correctly, her father has died and her loving mother remarries a very unloving captain in the army. He is cruel, life is cruel and lonely, and so she makes up lavish stories in her head in which she is the heroine. I heard an interview with the director that made me want to see it (Pan's Labyrinth! That's the movie); the little girl was very like him, and he thought the make believe was a positive way of writing yourself into life's narrative, and processing all of the scary and adult things that are going on around you. Anyway, it seemed like an important part of the pregnancy, accepting fear and blood and guts and then making...um....fear and blood and guts lemonade? Oh, I guess we could call that a human. :-)"

Just add water

I gave my daughter a name that by most accounts means "beautiful". I managed to overcome my disgust towards that particular interpretation when I found one account that said it is a name that means "instigator". She was born an Aires, why not embrace her inner ram?

Now, I myself have a stubborn streak, but I am for the most part a passive and retiring person. And I know it is the stuff of tragedies to wish your child could be the person you've always wanted to be. But wouldn't it be great if the kid were more than a little sassy? Sure of herself, not one to be pushed around? I could teach the child to be kind; help her walk a mile in another's shoes. But I don't know that I could teach grit. Ballsiness. I'd rather she were the bosser than the bossee.

So I have extremely mixed feelings about my daughter's newfound shyness. Maybe it isn't shyness; it's more like a studied reticence. She won't crack a smile until she's sized you up. If you really work to make her smile she may push her cheek to her shoulder and give you a demure little head cock. But she won't loosen up until she knows she's got your number. She stares. A lot. My dad was a little flustered when he met her the other day. She wouldn't smile at him or cry or anything; she would just sit stony-faced on his knee while he tried to win her over. She's not like this with everybody...moreso with men.

My interpretation: she's an observer. Not necessarily a follower, but she's a watcher. I guess I was hoping she would be a damn-the-torpedos-full-speed-ahead kind of girl. Of course that would make her absolutely different from her father and me, but it could've happened. Three of her four grandparents are that way. Anonydad and I would have had to scratch our heads at her antics, but...I don't know...I just imagine her life would be somewhat easier than ours was, isolated as we made ourselves for most of our young lives.

So, although I may be jumping the gun just an eensy bit in laying out my 7 month old daughter's personality hurdles, pipe dream number one may never come to be. It doesn't look like she'll be the insensitive, hard-shelled little snit I never could manage to be. *Sigh* At least I have a lot of good advice for how to overcome sit-on-the-sideline-itis.

Staph

I'm paranoid that my daughter and I have staph crawling all over our bodies, just waiting for an innocent fingernail scratch or whitehead popping to set up shop on the inside.

I spent a couple of days being mad at the medical community for giving away so many antibiotics so that this supermonster had a chance to breed. No fair! I thought. Now those of us living after the age of antibiotic overuse are worse off that those who perpetuated this in the first place. We're worse off than before antibiotics!

But then I realized that we're not. We're just right back where we started. Right back where we always were, only I forget it: subject to fate and nature.

coocoo for babynonmous puffs

Why does being a mother seem to be making me certifiable at every turn?

Bear with me; I'm going to try to avoid making the details of my neuroses too tedious, even though by nature that is what they are.

As I was washing the dishes tonight I found my self feverishly wondering whether I could safely offer my daughter yogurt tomorrow. A normal thing for a mother to wonder, right? As Andre 3000 so ably put it: wa-wa-well...yes and no.

First I should mention that I read this book called Super Baby Food in which you make all of your own food for your baby. The control freak and chemicalphobe in me loves this plan. So right there we're already stoking some fires that probably need not be stoked. Now this book is a handy source book - a very handy source book - if you want to make your own babyfood. The woman who wrote it is absolutely insane though. She explains everything in minute minute detail, like how to boil water six different ways in case one doesn't work for you. It's like she assumes everyone is an absolute moron...except I don't think that's where she's coming from. I think she just likes to leave nothing to chance and assumes you're with her on this lock, stock and barrel. I hate skimming books but I had to skim a lot of this one so as not to gouge my eyes out in frustration trying to get through the section on combinations of grains you can use to make porridge.

Anyhoo, although I have my qualms about Super Baby lady's method of communication, I like her diet plan. It's simple and sound. And it is based on giving your child one meal a day centered around a grain porridge and one meal centered around yogurt. (I'm making this tedious already, aren't I?)

Yogurt is a suggested first food but for various reasons I haven't been able to give it to my daughter yet on a regular basis. The first time I gave her a couple of tiny bites she heaved her shoulders in tiny little retches and spit what she ate up immediately. So I waited a couple of weeks and tried again. She ate yogurt and pears with relish but the next day had a flaming red diaper rash and then five days and counting of congestion. Add to this the fact that my husband accidentally gave her buttermilk when she was 2 months old and his family has a history of lactose intolerance and we may have a baby who just can't handle the yogurt, or at least not yet.

But do I find myself wanting to take it easy on her wee tummy? No! I find myself coming up with every possible excuse to give her yogurt, knowing it hasn't gone well thusfar, and knowing that she still primarily breastfeeds and it ain't no big thing if she doesn't get it.

But goddam it, this means she isn't on the plan. The Super Baby plan. And rather than envisioning her big blue eyes filled with tears of pain when I think of yogurt, all I can think of are charts and the jar of homemade yogurt I have in the refrigerator that will go to waste. What you want me to eat it? No thanks; I'd much rather foist it on my daughter.

Take a chill pill

See, babynonymous went to sleep at 11:30pm last night, but my feathers weren't ruffled. I was having a good time.

Can someone please give me a prescription so I can chill the fuck out always?

Slept, slept

So anonybaby only got a couple of hours last night before her dad and I woke her up trying to suction snot out of her nose. She could barely nurse because she was so stuffed up. I think it's from a cold I gave her. Or some yogurt I gave her. At any rate something that lets me self-indulge in some guilt.

She was pretty happy to be awake and got a big kick out of watching her dad take a shower (we hoped being in a steamy bathroom would help the green stuff flow). Can I just say I love anonydad? He was spitting water at her and making his hair into a mohawk and basically keeping us both entertained through our snot and sleep deprivation. Then I slept with her on the lazyboy so she could be somewhat vertical. Horizontal she was sputtering and coughing out her pacifier with all of the phlegm running down her throat.

She was unhappy, but I was unhappier and a little...shall we say...invasive?...with my comfort techniques.

I wonder if she would have slept better without them.

Dear god, parenthood is a bitch of a mirror in which to see yourself.

Anyway, score on getting to sleep with miss thang in my arms all night.

Sleep, sleep

Fuck.

My daughter just went to sleep at around 10:30. I was ready for her to go to bed earlier, of course, but that never means jack shit. But, given her usual sleep patterns I thought she'd be going down around 9pm.

*SIGH*

It doesn't help my mindset that I'm conflicted about how to get her to sleep. There's a part of me that thinks, let her sleep when she's sleepy. That doesn't work when we're out and about because there's no way she's going to sleep when there are things to do, people to see. But when we're at home that seems like a sound strategy, right? The whole teaching her how to get herself to sleep thing sounds good on paper, but it just doesn't feel right at this point to let her cry herself to sleep.

Only when I'm tired or really need some time to myself I get pissed off at her when she's not ready to go to sleep until this late. Really I should be going to bed now so I can get up and be off to work on time. But I just spent 3 1/2 hours walking around with my baby in my arms. I got home at my typical hour: seven. I fed her, anonydad walked out the door.

Have I *SIGH*ed already? Because it bears repeating.

This is getting harder, not easier. I mean, in some ways it's getting easier. We can put her down more and more, she can entertain herself, she has somewhat predictable patterns of eating and sleeping and pooping and whatnot. But now it's like I have time to wake up and look around and realize that I'm not happy. I need to see my husband more. I need to "work" less.

That's another thing. There is practically nothing going on at work. I'm being paid good money to sit around and do next to nothing. I could be at home hanging out with my daughter when we're both actually awake and alert enough to enjoy it. But then we'd be broke. B-R-O-K-E. Would that really be such a bad thing?

Last night she screamed bloody murder when we tried getting her to bed. She had a bright red diaper rash and I thought it was bothering her after I'd changed her diaper. I used this lotion potion on her butt and I thought maybe it was stinging and I felt awful. She really couldn't be consoled, so I told anonydad to run a bath so we could cool her butt. She loves baths. As soon as she heard the water running she calmed down. Smiled even. When we plopped her in her bath (her second one that night) she grinned and splashed happily. And I burst into tears. I don't know how to read her. I want to sooth her when she's hurting, but am I always going to get tugged around like this? I have horrible visions of the future where she knows exactly how to play me, and has me shelling out my money and my dignity while still thinking she's the bee's knees.

So there's that. Then with the sleep thing, I really don't know what's right for her. Teach her that bedtime is bedtime and she can fuss all she wants but she's got to go to sleep? Isn't she a little young for that? I foresee being tougher with her when she's a toddler. Telling her she can read all she wants, but she cannot get out of bed. She doesn't have to go to sleep but she has to go to bed. But am I deluding myself into thinking I'll be able to handle her sleep patterns later? I hate structure. But am I doing a bad thing by depriving her of it?

Here's the rub: nobody knows the answers to these questions. Only she and her dad and I can really figure this out. I just hope we don't figure out what we should have done with her when she's sixteen.

It works!

So my husband and I got about four hours alone yesterday. A friend watched our daughter while we took a short walk at the Morton Arboretum and then went to see the new Wes Anderson flick. Our time together wasn't particularly lovey. In fact, it wasn't very lovey at all. There was a little perfunctory hand holding during the walk and the movie, and we both got to talk about why we didn't like the movie, but it didn't feel like any old "gee I remember why I like you so much" sparks were kindling.

But I'll be damned if we weren't all chatty today when he called me at work to tell me what she'd been up to that morning. We got through a whole conversation without talking about what we'd heard on NPR that day. Score.

Hello, cruel world

So I just got finished reading the entirity of Mr. Nice Guy's excellent blog about becoming a daddy. I laughed, I cried. Really laughed and really cried. At work. (how embarrassing!) Not only did it give me some much needed hey-I'm-not-the-only-one-who-loves-my-new-daughter-madly-while-simultaneously-wanting-to-just-shake-her-sometimes goodness, it gave me the bright idea of starting an anonymous blog about stuff...mostly about trying how to figure out how the hell to become a mother. Because I was not born a mother. I was never that interested in becoming a mother. But then one day biology hunted me down and sat on my chest and shook me by the shoulders and said "listen, I'm going to make everything you hold dear suddenly implode unless you get pregnant NOW". So I did.

And now I have a daughter. The cutest six month old that ever existed. I love her voraciously and fear her and what she's doing to my life. It was a pretty...how shall I say...so-so life to begin with. But it had its moments. I'd stumbled into a marriage (also something I never planned for myself) that was sometimes rough but mostly the best thing that had ever happened to my happiness levels. I had a boring but serviceable job that let me do things like read blogs all day on a frighteningly regular basis. I had gone through some recent therapy and self-helpy art groups that had helped me throw some long-time monkeys off of my back. I lived in a city that I pretty much dug. Life was better than ever.

And now it's better than better than ever. But it also feels more precarious. More like I'm always on the verge of something big and/or life changing and/or euphoria inducing and/or tragic. And it's fucking unsettling.

Hence this blog. I don't really expect anybody to read this. I just need a place to be a bad speller, bad writer, bad parent. If you like other people's navel gazing (I know I do), then welcome. Let's talk babies or being a working parent or being married or books or movies or growing up in a psycho religious household. Whatevs.

But at the very least let me vent some psychoses here. Where else can a girl let her dirty laundry air out?

P.S. Anonydads are welcome, too. "Anonymom" was already taken, so I had to go with "moms" which makes it sound like peni are excluded...they ain't. I fully expect to find my husband on here some day ranting about how his wife is so anally fixated on what kind of bananas go into her daughter's virgin mouth but yet she can't be bothered to clean the kitchen floor before letting her daughter lay down and tongue it...stuff like that.