Sudden memories

As I was walking home from dropping off Leigh at daycare yesterday, with Ira babbling as he rode on my back, my thoughts wandered back to his birth. About a half block from home, I suddenly realized that it was May 25th, the induction date that was my unwavering focus for about a month last spring. Ira's birthday is tomorrow, Thursday. Actually, technically it's only 15 minutes away from Friday.

By this point, almost a year out, I've constructed a pretty whitewashed story of the birth. The story is compressed in time, and all the hard stuff pales in comparison to the feelings I had right after he was born, of giving and being surrounded by amazing love, and that feeling that if I could do this, I could do absolutely anything.

But a stomach bug worked it's way through our family about a week and a half ago. While I spent an absolutely miserable night laid flat by this thing, other memories came back. I remembered how awful I felt the first trimester and beyond, and viscerally remembered the experience of transition, that I'd apparently been all set to completely forget in the story I've retold myself about the birth. It was like my whole body remembered. My right hip, that was extremely painful during labor, began to throb. I couldn't figure out why my hip would hurt, since I actually had a stomach bug. That hip pain, combined with nausea, and suddenly there was almost a "click," and I felt like I was suddenly back in the worst part of labor. Honestly, I think I would have been fine not ever remembering that.

This isn't meant to be some sort of birth horror story. I stand by my story that Ira's birth was absolutely amazing, against all odds. All the hard stuff, all the good stuff, it was his birth and it still astounds me. But it was disconcerting to suddenly and deeply remember the awful parts. I still have this fantasy that someday maybe I'll get that home birth, that the parts that were hard about Ira's birth might magically disappear if I got another chance. But in bed that night, for the first time since he was born, I actually thought I might not be willing to do it again (well, less my insistence I was never going to do it again right after he was born, but doesn't everyone say that?). (Also, all the caveats apply here. These are much more thoughts about birth than about actual reality of extending our family, which obviously entails way more than just birth.)

It's like one of the ways I concocted to forget the hard parts was to pretend they wouldn't happen again if I got another chance. By leaving that door open, I got to skip those memories. Actually having those memories though, I got a little more to the place where I know his birth was just his birth. Fantasies (or even realities) of "another try" don't actually change the reality of his birth at all. I'm not sure exactly where that leaves me. But this hip is still hurting a couple weeks later. I'm a scientist in my "real life," but I'll freely admit to a bit of a mystical bent. This lingering ache, starting so near Ira's first birthday, feels like it means something more. I haven't quite figured out what it is yet.

Sleep Update

We're way overdue for a sleep update here, and I'm pleased to report (you have no idea just how pleased...wait, some of you probably do) that we are in a much better place (at least for now). We finally found an approach that worked for all of us (in our case it was Sleep Lady Shuffle with Gail doing the heavy lifting, feel free to contact us for details if you want them, but we'll spare you the blow by blow). We're not home free. We're up awfully early and naps are still a struggle. But we are all getting more consolidated sleep at night and the world is a much better place. Sometimes Gail and I are even in a good mood at the same time, which is a sure sign of progress.

Thanks all of you for the kind words of encouragement. It really does help.

It's all my fault: sleep and guilt

I don't do sleep deprivation.

Or rather, when circumstances demand it, the result isn't pretty.

Lack of sleep brings out all the worst aspects of my personality. I think this is true for everyone, but I learned long ago that life is so much better, both for me and for those around me, if I get rest. In the best of circumstances, I have a self-critical nature, but I can usually keep it somewhat in check and use that criticism to improve how I do things, especially with Gail, an optimist who nonetheless sees the value in my pessimism, by my side. Without sleep I become viciously critical and judgmental, mostly of myself, but since any parenting actions and decisions around here are made with Gail, she also bears that burden. When I'm rested, I'm a reasonably patient and steady parent. Without rest, I'm impatient, grumpy, and easily knocked off course by the inevitable curve balls. When I'm rested, I'm usually smart enough to make good daily progress on my (non-family) work. When I'm chronically exhausted, work progress is minimal and slow. My mind feels about as nimble as cold oatmeal. Then that vicious judgmental woman who has come to inhabit my body jumps in and makes everything worse.

Coming home from a less than stellar work day yesterday, as I thought about my smiley, laid back, crawling, adorable baby, knowing that I was already exhausted and was going to be up with him at least four times overnight, feeling no hope that anything will get better anytime soon, I was in tears. I was that woman crying on the subway. I'm at the end of my rope, and I've been here for a while.

Lack of sleep doesn't bring out the best in Gail either. When things are hard, she tends to prefer a head down, ignore-the-problem-until-it-goes-away sort of approach. This doesn't sit will with my the-end-is-nigh-and-it's-all-my-fault approach. This plagued us back when we were TTC. We know it's a pattern. As soon as one of us sees it we can usually start being nicer (me) and actually listening (Gail). But it still stinks. When we're in good form, we work seamlessly as a team. It's harder when we have to try, especially when there's so little energy available for trying.

Ira will be 8 months old tomorrow. He's still up many many times a night. Many of you saw our semi-desperate sleep post a couple months ago. But this isn't supposed to be yet another post about how bad things are, or what we've tried, where you then tell me what worked for your kid, or say sleep sucked for you too and that you didn't get any rest until your kid was five (and, wow, people, that is not a very encouraging thing to say. If that's what you're thinking, either keep it to yourself, or lie). And since it's not that kind of post, I'm not even going to tell you what we've tried, or what we're planning to try.

In one of the many difficult conversations we've had about this, Gail said something along the lines of "It's like you think this is all our fault, that we're messing up our kid, and that if we could just do it right, he would magically sleep."

She's right. That is what I'm thinking, at least at times like when I was crying on the train. Except, actually, I think that I'm ruining him and this is all my fault. If only I was capable of co-sleeping and/or sleeping while nursing this wouldn't even be a problem. If only I was capable of being up every night with him (instead of every other night since Gail is on duty for half of the nights) so that the response when he cries could be perfectly consistent, and so he'd always get milk with the right magical hormones at the right time. If only my milk supply hadn't tanked just when he was getting the hang of doing a nice long nighttime stretch. And, just for fun, I'll beat myself up some more for even whining about this at all when there are women out there who have to do this every single night, and when Gail is just as exhausted as I am (though she fakes it with more skill). Sometimes I throw in that I couldn't sleep at all during the pregnancy (due to intense morning sickness, then itching due to liver problems) and that must have caused me to grow a sleepless baby, so that's my fault too, and I should have tried harder.

It is this kind of pressure and guilt that made Gail resist sharing nighttime parenting. It's this pressure that Ayelet Waldman wrote about in her eponymous essay in Bad Mother -- while we decree that fathers are good fathers if they are sincerely trying, we believe that mothers are good mothers only when we achieve perfection. I sincerely wish that I could accept myself as a parent of a child who is not a good sleeper (and I'm begging the universe to let me edit this later to add "...until the night before his 8-month birthday"). But that's not going to happen, at least not until I get some more sleep.

It's a good thing big sister can't read

Early on in Ira's pregnancy, my older sister, who at the time had two and four year old boys (and now has added a third kid) gave us some good advice: "Be really careful of the books for older siblings. They are almost all extremely negative."

It turns out she was right. Leigh is so excited about being a big sister (and generally doing a fabulous job of it!) that she picks out any book from the library that has an older sibling (especially a sister) and a baby in it. Fortunately, she still hasn't figured out our propensity to change the words, so we can get away with liberal editing.

She picked out such a book last week, and when we sat down to read it, every single page was filled with how awful the big sister thought her new baby brother was and how mad she was at her parents (and now I've completely forgotten the title, and the book went back to the library, so I'll spare the author my wrath). Sure, there was a bit of a turn at the end where the sister decided maybe the baby was sort of OK, but 99.99% of the content was about how her brother's arrival ruined her life.

But as we're sitting there, and I'm trying to make up this or that nonsense story (it was truly unreadable), Leigh fortunately took over much of the reading. The book had absolutely beautiful pictures and she was exclaiming "Oh! Look how cute the baby is! He's yawning! That's a big sister just like me! She's going to take good care of the baby. She'll help put him for a nap and play with him and make him laugh..." She went on and on and every single word out of her mouth was about how great it is to be a big sister and how wonderful babies are. Now, you might say she was just buttering me up, but she could barely contain her excitement and was practically bubbling over with everything that's great about having a brother. I'm so glad that with my sister's warning, we mostly managed to avoid giving her a script ahead of time about how awful the baby was going to be.

There are a few other indications that she's pretty fond of our new family structure. The other day at dinner she said, out of nowhere, "It is really great to have a baby. Don't you like having a baby, Ima?" A few weeks ago, she was "reading" to me from a "letter" she "wrote" to me at daycare which said, "Dear Mama, I don't know if you are going to have another baby (author's note: unlikely), but if you do, Thank you."

I know we might be in the sweet spot right now. Ira isn't very mobile yet (he's a little mobile, but not fast!) so he can't take any of her things, but he's smiley and interactive, and clearly thinks she's the bee's knees. I know when he's a toddler it will be a whole new ballgame, but for now, we're grateful that Leigh has taken to big-sisterhood like a duck to water, at least for the first 6 1/2 months.

[PS: If you are looking for a good book for older siblings, we have two recommendations. Of course, neither of them is 100% perfect for queer families, but you can't have everything. The first is I'm a Big Sister by Joanna Cole. It's a simple book about having a new baby and is very positive. It also shows both mom and dad caring for children, which is a plus in my book. (The same author has written I'm a Big Brother which is likely similar.) The second book is Not Yet, Rose by Susanna Leonard Hill with illustrations by Nicole Rutten. This is a sweet story about a girl, Rose, anticipating the birth of a younger sibling. She eagerly anticipates the new baby, wondering whether she will have a brother or sister. She has a couple of fears, but they are introduced gently and Rose talks herself out of them. The end of the book when the baby comes is one of the sweeter moments I've seen in picture books about siblings. My only complaint is that the division of labor is overly gendered in this book, but otherwise it's a joy to read.]

Just me and baby

My Dad's mom passed away last week. It wasn't necessarily unexpected and she lived a long and good life, but it was somewhat sudden. Gail and I decided it was a good idea for me to fly out all the way to the other coast with Ira to be with my dad during this time, but that it wasn't possible for our whole family to make a sudden cross-country trip. So here I am, spending about 5 days with my parents and with extended family, some of whom I haven't seen in years. It has been a sad but also in some ways a happy time, sharing memories and reconnecting, and there's something beautiful about having a baby here when we are marking life's passing.

But that's not really what I came here to write about. We decided Ira would come with me primarily due to feeding since I'm his primary (but not his only) milk supplier, and so that Gail would have some hope of both working and successfully holding down the home front without going completely batty. So, here I am, spending one week as Ira's primary parent.

At home, neither of us is a "primary" parent to our kids. Or rather, maybe it's more accurate to say that we are both primary parents, and we endeavor to structure our priorities, life and time to make this a reality. There have been times when this has set us apart from our parenting peers (in both good and sometimes uncomfortable ways), far more often than being a two-mom family.

So this week, for pretty much the first time in the over three years that I've been a mom, I'm living a little bit like "everyone else." I'm making all parenting decisions regarding Ira's feeding/sleeping/bathing/etc. I'm changing pretty much every diaper and all feedings are coming directly from my body. I'm up every night for every waking and feeding. This is not to say I don't have help. There is plenty of family around, and my parents love nothing more than spending time with Ira. They've both spent plenty of time both playing with him and soothing him, but it is just that, it is only "help."

I'm actually really enjoying parts of this experience. Ira is proving to be adaptable and good natured in pretty extreme circumstances. He seemed to think that our nearly 12 hour stint in various airports and airplanes to get here was just one big chance for him to make new friends. As I whisked through the subway and airports, successfully managing gear and baby, I enjoyed feeling kind of like super-mom. I'm enjoying the simplicity of feeding him without ever needing to pump. I love that all the complements about what a beautiful and delightful baby he is are coming straight to me (who wouldn't love that?). I'm somewhat surprised to find that I'm understanding a little about why other moms might not want to really share parenting. At least when parenting one good-natured 4 1/2 month old, who also happens to be my second child so I'm not a giant bundle of nerves, it's kind of nice to be the only "Mommy."

But as much as I'm loving parts of this experience, mostly I'm missing home. I'm missing Leigh with a physical ache, and am worried that this trip will lead to a rocky transition home. I'm missing Gail, which feels a little like missing the other half of my brain. I'm really really missing that sleep I get every other night at home (which is probably dropping my brainpower by another half). I also know that soon, babies become toddlers, and that I (in particular) need a true teammate for that. I also know what it's like to be away from your baby, since I took a conference trip when Leigh was this age, and so I'm sad for Gail, knowing she is missing him deeply while I'm having this time with him.

When I called home earlier today and got the machine that said "You've reached Gail, Lyn, Leigh and Ira" it almost made me cry. I love my family so much. I love our whole complete four-member family and am so glad that soon I'll be home, and we'll be all together again, even if that means Gail gets to take some credit for how fabulous Ira is, and that sometimes I have to pump.

Babies and Strangers

When out and about now, I often carry Ira facing out (in a ring sling). I never really did that with Leigh. She was quite easily overstimulated, and really seemed to need the protection of being able to tuck her head up against us, so I almost always carried her tummy-to-tummy. In contrast, Ira is quite happy facing out or in, and since we're trying to gently push him into something like a nap schedule, carrying him facing out can be a good way to keep him happily awake when needed.

Over the last week or so, I've noticed that this means many more people talk to me about the baby, or make googley eyes at him, or smile in that way that only a baby can make you smile. At 3 1/2 months he often will give them a good smile back. At a coffeeshop I go to sometimes, dads in particular have started several conversations. One guy opened up about his 8-year-old who lives in another state. Another dad and I compared notes about pacifiers. Sometimes someone will even touch the baby (gasp!). Sometimes people give me advice I don't really want (often about how hot/cold he is or whether or not he's really OK in that carrier).

Over the years I've been privy several conversations among parents bemoaning the slew of unsolicited advice that comes your way once you're out and about with a baby, or the horrors of old ladies coming up and pinching your baby's cheeks, or annoyance at the rubberneckers always trying to get a peek in the stroller. While I sort of understand the annoyance, I actually love (most*) such interactions. I see them as the last shred of our instinct to communally care for our young. When strangers interact with Ira, I see a piece of what it means to be human. I feel a little less like I'm on a tiny island containing only my small family, and more like our baby is part of the whole world.

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* I do have my limits, however. The random drunk guy yelling at me that my 6 week old was hungry as he cried while I tried to get set up to nurse in a crowded subway station really ticked me off.

Nursing Update: hitting my stride

It was recently brought to our attention that everyone gets to hear all about my nursing, but Lyn is a nursing parent, too, and some of you might want to know what is going on with her. She promises a thoughtful post soon, but until then, I'll just give you a few more gory details about re-lactating (see here or here for some back story).

About a week ago I got so frustrated on a day home using the supplemental nurser that I was just ready to give the whole thing up. So, I'm not using the supplemental nurser any more, and without that frustration, nursing has settled into more of a rhythm.

Every other night, I am on Ira duty. I don't do any pumping or nursing after 3pm so that I'll have enough milk for the night. After Lyn does a dream-feed at around 10pm, I do the rest of the night. Ira is usually getting up at around midnight or 1am, then again around 3 or 4, and then at around 5-6am, after which we are both laying around in some kind of groggy state slipping in and out of sleep for an hour or two. That's actually one of the nicest parts of the day. I have enough milk for him that I don't have to break out a bottle, although I know he gets less milk during a night with me than he does on a night with Lyn. He seems to adjust fine.

In the morning, sometimes Lyn will feed him and sometimes he's not interested in more food before his nap. If it's a day that I'm home alone with him (like today), I'll then give him his next two feedings out of a bottle. Today I nursed him for the third feeding and then topped him off just a little with a bottle. The supplemental nurser was just creating too much frustration for me to handle, and this new system is working out fine.

On nights like tonight that Lyn is going to be nursing him, I'll do the dream feed at around 10pm. I haven't nursed him since maybe 2pm, so I should have enough milk.

On days that I'm not alone with him, we try to work in one or two feedings for me and I might pump 1-2 times. I've gotten really tired of pumping, so I'm very lazy about it these days. I still take domperidone and fenugreek four times a day but I've cut out other herbs.

My supply probably supports about three real feedings a day and I am lucky to be able to do many of those feedings with an actual baby versus putting milk in bottles. As I write this, I haven't pumped in about 36 hours. I will pump several times tomorrow since it is a work day for me. I worry that my supply is going down right now, but so far I can still do those night feedings and that's worth it. I also have been enjoying giving Ira bottles. That wasn't an experience I got to have with Leigh, and it is very nice, in a different way from nursing. Oddly enough, I think I pay a little closer attention to him when I'm giving him a bottle. He seems to prefer to be held a little ways out from my body when taking the bottle, and that gives me a chance to look at his face while he eats and catch some sweet milky smiles. I had to stop looking at him earlier today, in fact, because I was distracting him from the feeding!

Flying Solo

Lyn and I are both back at work part time this month and as a result I recently began spending significant amounts of daytime alone with Ira and a smaller amount of time alone with both kids. Even though I have been spending lots of time with Ira, the time alone still felt like a shift.

It's different to parent without a safety net. I realized how much I rely on Lyn to have the backup baby cure-all: nursing breasts that are always full. If I'm trying to nurse him but he's fussy, or I give him a bottle and he's fussy, or he's just fussy for an unknown reason, Lyn has previously always been there to take over and fix everything. But last week I had to do everything on my own with no "real mom" to take over if I stumbled. That was less challenging than I feared and more rewarding than I hoped.

For those of you who are curious, on a day alone with Ira I feed him about every two to three hours, usually right after he wakes up from a nap. I try to feed him with the supplemental nurser if we are at home. I can now put the supplementer on pretty fast and it keeps Ira from getting frustrated when I don't have enough milk to satisfy him. If we go out, I will usually give him a bottle or occasionally I will nurse him without using the supplementer. That usually doesn't work out as well as I might hope -- if I want to be able to feed him well without using the supplementer I generally need to have gone at least 4-6 hours without pumping or nursing and that's not usually possible on a day home alone.

Last Friday I went out with Ira to finally pick up his birth certificate from city hall and to run a few other errands. It was interesting to be out alone with him -- I found myself frustrated that I didn't look radical at all. I realized that being out with him alone I looked like any other mother, but I wanted to stand out. I really wanted people to be able to see that I was doing something outside of the norm, parenting with another woman, parenting a baby I had not given birth to. I didn't want everyone to assume that my experience as a mother was ordinary. But I guess, when I think about it, no one has an ordinary experience of motherhood (or fatherhood) -- it feels extraordinary to all of us.

On having a son

Before Leigh was born, we were so convinced we were having a boy, that I was sure I got it wrong when I told Gail that Leigh was a "she" at the birth. I had to ask for another peek.

I think the main reason we were so "sure" was that we were trying to get ourselves used to the idea that we might be parenting a boy. Neither Gail nor I have any brothers. Gail is an only child. I'm the middle of three girls. For goodness sake we're lesbians. We were understandably intimidated at the prospect of a son.

While we would have been thrilled with a baby boy, it is also true that Leigh being born a girl felt a bit like a reprieve.

We knew that Ira was going to be a boy before he arrived. When we found out, my mind raced to all sorts of things. I immediately thought about real-estate since our two-bedroom condo now can't last us forever (though room sharing will work fine for quite a while). I cringed at the thought of organizing a bris 8 days after birth. I wondered how many of Leigh's clothes I'd really be willing to put on a boy, despite my ostensibly progressive ways.

A few weeks ago, Gail and I got some precious time just with Leigh (thanks Grandma!), and walked to a nearby square. A young man with a guitar, and coloring like Ira's, was there playing sweet songs. We sat for a long time on a nearby bench and listened. Leigh snuggled with both of us, asked lots of questions, danced, and delivered our tip to the jar. I found myself tearing up to think that someday our baby could be a young man like this young man. Maybe he'll play guitar for tips in the square. Or maybe he'll be like the tough-looking teenager on the train, who looked far too cool to care about a little kid, but then proceeded to play a game with Leigh, were he moved his baseball cap from his knee, to his foot, to his head and back to his knee. He had her in fits of giggles.

It's not that we haven't seen plenty of young male musicians on the streets around here before now. And it's not that I don't have plenty of positive interactions with men day-to-day (I work in a male dominated field, and my colleagues are great). It's that now when I see these young men, I realize that someday the world of young men will have something to do with me. Until Ira was born, that was pretty much never going to be the case.

For now at least, instead of feeling intimidating, this feels like Ira is opening a door to a new world for us.

The Payoff

We've written a lot about Gail's adventures in re-lactating for Ira, and at our last check-in, it still wasn't clear we were going to get a big payoff from all of that work (piles of herbs and pills, way too much quality time with that pump). At this point, it's still not clear we'll get a huge benefit, but we are starting to see some real perks for both of us.

The most obvious payoff is that (starting a week ago) we are now able to trade complete nights of caring for Ira, who nurses 2-4 times per night. As you'll recall, better sharing of nighttime care was one of Gail's primary motivations, and was something we struggled with when Leigh was a baby. While it would have been possible to trade whole nights by pumping ahead and/or supplementing a bit with formula (and we'd recommend doing so to families that contain more than one parent once supply is established), it does make things nicer that Gail can simply nurse Ira instead of fussing with bottles. Of the three nights that she has done so far, on two of them she had enough milk on her own to keep him happy. On one night, she did need to use a few extra ounces to supplement, and it was kind of a pain, but they did fine. On that night, I heard Ira getting fussy from my perch on the living room futon, reminded myself that Gail had plenty of milk in there (she had set up the supplemental nurser with some extra milk in a cooler at the beginning of the night for just such an eventuality), and relished my chance to just go back to sleep. On the two other nights, I didn't hear a peep.

Logistically, on my "off" nights, (i.e. the nights I sleep!), it seems to work well for me to pump before I go to bed and once in the early morning. That generates enough milk to cover his feedings (I'm still trying not to lose supply even though Ira didn't actually need my milk for those feedings), keep me comfortable, and not interrupt my sleep too much. I set up the pump right by the futon and pump with the lights out in order to stay sleepy. It is way faster and easier than doing a whole feeding for a baby this age, and I don't have to do that whole wondering "does that grunt mean he's hungry?" routine that totally kills my sleep even if Ira is sleeping fine. The pump doesn't really grunt at all.

One of the most wonderful things about this set up is that we can both look forward to both kinds of nights. It is very sweet and cuddly to do night feedings for a young baby. Ira is generally pretty calm and feeds well at night (his daytime feedings are often a bit fussier). He is super cute and snuggly, and I love staring at him in the half light of early morning. I get to love it even more since I know that even though I'm tired after being up every couple hours, I'll get a solid 8-9 hours the next night. After three full nights of sleep (alternating with baby nights of half-sleep), I feel like I'm already starting to pay off some of that sleep debt. I'm nicer. I'm a better parent to Leigh. I might even start to regrow some brain cells. I also love it that Gail is getting those same sleepy snuggles, as well as the rest that she needs.

I craved more of those nighttime snuggles with Leigh, and they were hard for Gail to share for a variety of reasons. Now that I'm on this side, I feel similar pressures. When Gail suggested that it might be time to trade whole nights with Ira instead of having her do one feeding, I balked. My stated reason was that it seemed too hard and like the pumping would be too demanding. But there was also a piece of me that didn't want to give up control. It was only a momentary hesitation before I agreed, but it was definitely there. But now that we're making trading nights work, it feels fabulous. Yes, we could have done it with bottles, but I'm not sure we would have. I think it would have been harder for me to get over my initial hesitation, and Gail wouldn't have had quite as much power to lobby to take on more than just one night feeding.

So, Gail, thanks for all your hard work, thanks for the sleep, and thanks for taking such great care of our son.

Choosing to parent

Last week, Lyn and I had a crisis of sorts. Really, it was just a late-night breakdown in which we grappled with the difficulties facing us as we deal with having a new baby. My big revelation came when we were talking about the long list of things I have on my plate and Lyn told me that she wanted me to put baby Ira at the top of the list. I realized that instead of being at the top, he was probably fourth, after taking care of Leigh, taking care of Lyn, and taking care of the house. Not good.

So I decided to put Ira first instead of fourth. But I also realized why and how he had dropped so far down on the list. Back when Leigh was a newborn and I was the gestational parent, I didn't have a choice. When Leigh was little, I got enough time during nursing (which Leigh wanted to do 24 hours a day) to solidify my bond with her. I never had to choose to spend time with her. In fact, it was best for our family if I left much of the non-nursing time available for Lyn to wear her and snuggle with her so that she could develop a bond.

As an non-gestational parent, I'm required to do exactly the opposite. I must choose to spend time with Ira in order to bond with him. This isn't actually something I'm good with. Time with a baby is too unproductive for my tastes. I'd rather be making some sort of progress around the house or feel useful to the family in some other way. Time with a baby is just time sitting around being useless. I felt this same way when Leigh was a little baby, but I didn't have a choice then. I had to be with her, and thus I came to love being with her. I am having trouble choosing to spend time with Ira.

This week has been much better. I've decided to put him first and it's making a difference. When he fusses, I go to him instead of assuming that Lyn will take care of him.  Once he's happy, I take time just to hold him, or sometimes feed him.  I'm hanging out with him more and falling in love with him more. As a result, I'm less available for our daughter Leigh, but Lyn is more available, which is helping their relationship, which did take a bit of a hit during late pregnancy and the first weeks of Ira's life.  A lot of the pressures that we anticipated dividing our family are very real. Being an NGP is harder than I expected, even with all of my advanced preparation. But this week I feel like I'm starting to hit my stride.

Sharing Lactation, Part II

After Ira's birth, I was in rough shape. While Gail and I were admiring our brand new son, our doctor was assessing the damage. After several minutes, she said to me very gently that she was going to need to stitch me up in the operating room, under spinal anesthesia, "It will be about 20 minutes," she said "You enjoy your baby right now." It was actually a total of about 45 minutes before they rolled me out. I snuggled him close, we sang him a song, I was in awe that this whole baby had grown in my body and actually made it out, but he wasn't really interested in nursing.

When Gail picked Ira up before they took me out of the room, I said to her "Hold him. You nurse him if he wants to."

I know separations like that after birth can be really hard for lots of women. As I was laying there in the OR, I remember noticing that I really felt OK. I was so relieved that Ira was with his mom. I knew Gail was snuggling him, and it turned out that as she held him, he perked up, and started to nurse.

Since that first session, I've been nursing Ira. Even though Gail has milk since she has induced lactation, we wanted to make sure that my supply was well established before introducing a new variable, sort of like how you wait a few weeks to introduce a bottle. Now, at 3 1/2 weeks, that time has come, and today or tomorrow, Gail will nurse Ira, starting with one feeding a day.

Those first few days, when nursing was really hard (it went OK, but it was painful, and Ira was sluggish about learning to latch) and I was so exhausted, I sometimes wanted to just hand him over and say "You do it. You already know how." But we knew I needed to stick with it, and now Ira and I have worked things out. We've had some minor problems with over-supply but those are balancing out, too. He's growing wonderfully. I feel so proud that my body made this beautiful baby, and that now I am sustaining him.

On the eve of Gail's nursing debut, I find myself a bit reluctant to share.

There are lots of reasons that I will share anyway, not least of which is that I'm the one who nagged Gail until she agreed to induce lactation, and my reasons for wanting her to do so still stand. I also know that even though I find it satisfying to be Ira's sole source of nutrition, at some point, not too long from now, it will also be a burden. Even though I'm sticking with our plan, and am mostly happy to do so, my slight reluctance is interesting, and I want to know where it is coming from.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with another mom back when Leigh was a baby. She was saying how her husband was taking to parenthood more slowly than she had hoped, that he didn't seem interested in the baby. I asked if he got any time with the baby, maybe even time alone, and she said that no, that it was too hard for her to leave the baby with anyone else (even the father), and that she cried if anyone else ever fed the baby. I confess that though I said supportive things, what I thought was that she needed to suck it up and hand over the kid, at least every now and then, if she had any real desire for her husband to parent their child. Three years later, it appears I'm experiencing some version of that same reluctance. Oh, I'm more than happy for Gail to trot off to the park alone with Ira after he's fed and show him off to the neighbors. I have zero qualms about her providing lots of his care once we're back at work. I don't think I'd be feeling this way if we were planning standard bottle feeding of my milk (like we did for Leigh). But nursing? It stings a bit. Now, I don't think I'll cry when she feeds him, but I'm not at all sure, so I guess I need to apologize to the universe now for some of the mean things I thought about that other mom.

There's also some piece of my reluctance that has to do with how much darn attention Gail gets for inducing lactation. When people find out that we're doing this, conversation always gets sucked into a giant lactation vortex, from which no other conversation topic can escape. Yes, it is super-interesting, but I sometimes think snarky things like "But wait! I grew the kid! And she only makes 10 ounces a day! I make like 3 million!"

Along similar lines, I find I'm having some non-bio-mom insecurity. She's getting all of these kudos for being the most deluxe NGP ever, and I find myself craving more credit for the work I did the last time. It's like I was some sort of first run model of a non-bio-mom, that still needed some bugs worked out, and all that work I did to connect with Leigh and parent her without the benefit of a nursing relationship, still comes up short. I already grappled with feeling like I came up short next to Gail when we just had Leigh, but now I'm wondering if I come up short as a non-bio-mom, too.

But at the same time I'm feeling these not-so-nice things, I'm also feeling thrilled that Gail is now voicing a real desire to nurse Ira. Back when I was pestering her to seriously consider it, her reasons for doing so were primarily logistical, and also probably to get me to shut up about it. She was reluctant to nurse again, partially because of the complications she had while nursing Leigh, and also because we both understand that nursing does not make a mother. But now that our son is here, she really wants to nurse him for him, not for some ideal of sharing care or doing nights "better" than we did last time. I love that. It makes me truly happy that she's excited about this.

I also have been thinking back to those moments right after Ira was born, when I got to know that he was close and secure with his other mom, and I didn't have to panic that we were separated or that he hadn't nursed during the 45 minutes I was with him before being rolled away to the OR. That was such a gift. Just like right after he was born, I won't always be able to be with Ira. I feel better knowing that when I'm not there, his other mom is providing for him.

(See also Sharing Lactation, Part I)

Sleeping like a Log with a Baby?

Many parents report that the birth of their first child represents the end of sleep. There's the difficult newborn stage to get through which requires you to be up every few hours, but it's more than that. Parents report that a kind of hypervigilance sets in that keeps them from falling or staying deeply asleep.

I'm a little different. As a child, I struggled with insomnia. As a childless adult, I was easily awakened by noises at night (much more so than Lyn). As a parent, I sleep like a rock.

It seems strange to me that while so many other parents seem to become more sensitive to their childrens' needs, waking at the drop of a hat, I have learned to sleep like the dead. It happened while Leigh was a baby. For a while she was sleeping in the bed with us and she was a restless bed companion. I think she would have nursed all night if I had let her. So I would wake up, feed her, coax her back to sleep, and then roll over and ignore her hard. I learned to fall asleep quickly with a noisy, wriggling baby right beside me, wanting to nurse. I aslo learned to stay asleep through Leigh's noises until she was really, insistantly hungry.

Parenthood turned me into a much better sleeper, so you might ask what happened to Lyn. Back when we were first married, Lyn could sleep through anything. After Leigh was born, Lyn often had to sleep in the other room if she wanted to get any sleep at all. She woke up every time Leigh rustled or whined in her sleep and had a hard time returning to sleep after wake-ups.

With Ira's birth, I'm still a champion sleeper. I can sleep like a brick with him on my chest or snuggled in my arms. Because I had become such a good sleeper as a nursing mom, Lyn wondered if (hoped that) once she started to nurse Ira, she would become a champion sleeper, able to pass out after popping a boob in or to sleep soundly through Ira's rustling. No such luck. She finds that she is still hypervigilant. For a couple of nights last week, she slept in the other room and I brought Ira out to her, just so she could have a chance to get some really restful sleep. She reports that things are a bit better this week and she's able to get good rest with the baby in bed, provided that the baby isn't snuggled right up next to her.

So that's the sleep report from here. Ira is doing three-hour stretches and Lyn gets to sleep in most mornings, so we are all doing OK. But I am curious. Anyone else out there sleep better with a baby than before, or am I just a freak of nature?

As close as you'll get to a birth story

Instead of telling the birth story, I will do what I love most: give unsolicited advice. You already know we didn't want to be at the hospital for Ira's birth, but it turned out being at the hospital really did go OK. I still wouldn't have chosen it, but we managed not only to avoid the C-section I was so afraid of, but also to have a really good birth. In retrospect, there were several decisions that helped to make that happen, so I want to pass them on.

1) We prioritized sleep. Our process from first hospital admission to baby took over three full days (Sun night 5/24 through Wed night 5/27). I wasn't in labor that whole time, but it was a long haul. There were two decision points where we went against doctor recommendations and prioritized rest over continuing to push an induction that wasn't happening. The first was on Monday afternoon. I had cervadil placed on Sunday night, and had a really good response to it. It popped me into decent early labor and looked like I might not need pitocin. I labored into early afternoon, but then contractions fizzled and it was clear we'd need to soup things up. But at that point, it was getting late, and I really didn't want to start a pitocin drip in the evening, only to be up all night in "real" labor. At our doula's suggestion, we asked our doctor to release us so that we could go home, eat and sleep. She reluctantly agreed, scheduled us for continued induction (with a different doctor) the next morning, and then helped us carry our bags to the car (what doctor does that?!). The next morning we showed up fed, rested and ready to get the show on the road.

The second point that we prioritized sleep was early Wed morning. I'd labored all day Tuesday on pitocin, and eventually reached really high doses that got me close to active labor but not quite. I really wasn't making meaningful progress and the doctor suggested rupturing membranes. I was reluctant to do so and the doctor hesitantly offered a second option of shutting off pit, sleeping for a few hours, and seeing if it might work better in the morning, since sometimes that happens. I asked if I could eat while the pitocin was off and the answer was yes. That, and our doula's comment that Gail needed rest, too, sealed the deal. They shut it off. I stuffed my face with food before sleeping, and in the morning upon waking, and Gail and I grabbed a precious 4 hours of sleep. I never would have made it through "real" labor, once it finally actually started, without those periods of rest (and food)

2) We filtered information on progress through Gail. The strangest request on our "birth preferences" was for me not to be told information about progress at internal checks, especially information about how many "centimeters" I was. Instead, the doctor would check, and then talk to Gail in the hall where I couldn't hear, and she would share some information with me, but not all of it, and she could control the timing. This way, I was protected from that inevitable frustration of feeling like I'd been laboring forever not getting anywhere, and was better able to keep going. This ended up being absolutely critical, especially near the end of labor. At my second to last check, the one we now refer to as "the bad check," the doctor (we were now back to our favorite doctor, the one who was with us on Monday, and who I saw for prenatal appts) determined not only that I'd been "stalled" at about six centimeters for several hours of extremely strong and painful contractions, but that our boy was acynclitic. His head was tipped in the exact same way that Leigh's was during birth, and was pressing on my cervix in a lopsided way, making it hard for me to completely open. If I had gotten this information directly, it would have absolutely crushed me. Instead, Gail got the information. It did crush her (it was, in fact, the low point that she wrote about, where she wonders if she should have encouraged me to have an epidural right then and there). As the information filtered through the room, I felt energy seep away and frustration and fear seep in. But there was enough of a buffer that I was able to move on to the next step. Folks moved me straight away to the tub to change things up. Our midwife and doula dropped hints about the baby's position, and suggested things to try and that I ask our baby to move. I hung in there, but I figured out that Ira was positioned just like Leigh. I was able to do as they asked, but this was by far the hardest part of labor. I was feeling the urge to push far too early (which is what had prompted the "bad check" in the first place), and resisting that urge was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. An hour later, it was clear that I was only marginally holding off on the pushing and we needed to do another check. I stated very clearly that if I had made no progress it was time for an epidural. I knew that was how Leigh had come. I knew it would be OK. But the next check turned out to be the one I actually wanted to hear. The doctor broke into a huge grin, "You are complete! You can push this baby out! He's at zero station!" The room practically broke out into a party. And wow, did I ever push. Our boy arrived less than a half hour later. If the info from "the bad check" had come to me directly, I wouldn't have been able to stick it out for that last little bit. It would have been fine. Believe me, I would have thoroughly enjoyed an epidural. But now that it is said and done, I'm so glad to have gotten the chance to push him out myself.

3) We had lots of (professional) support. We headed into this labor with an embarrassment of riches on the labor support front. Our midwife for our previously planned home birth was there in a doula role, and we went ahead and kept the doula we'd lined up for home already. We certainly felt a little silly heading in with two doulas, but figured it couldn't hurt. Turns out we needed both of their energy. With the process stretching on and on, they were able to trade off taking time with us, and were each able to get (some) rest and bring in new energy at different times. Our doula knew the hospital procedures well, and was essential in helping us navigate them and advocate for what we needed (see point 1 above re: sleep). They were both absolutely critical in keeping Gail going. After "the bad check" they were able to provide me with support that Gail simply could not have. Our midwife was an absolute lifeline for me through the most difficult parts of labor. Most importantly though, they both helped us understand what was going on and make the best decisions we could. That, more than anything, would have made everything OK, even if we had ended up needing surgery in order to keep Ira safe. No matter how things had turned out, we made good decisions the whole time, and we needed that supportive experienced presence to make those decisions. Now, do you really need two doulas? Probably not. One, and more reliance on the nursing staff would probably work fine (we really were boring for many of our nurses), but should you end up with two by a fluke of planning, go with it.

I guess that ended up covering a lot of the birth story anyway. It isn't the whole story. I left out good parts, like how my mom was there despite my insistence that I'd never want her at a birth, and it was wonderful to have her. I left out how it turns out that in the throes of labor, I'm still bossy, kind of funny, pessimistic, polite and worried about if everyone else has had enough to eat, which means that I'm still pretty much myself. I also left out some bad parts, like about the evil "Dragon Nurse." In any case, it was a wild ride. We're so happy to have Ira here safe.