In addition to watching umpteen episodes of Buffy, I've been reading to Z this week. Since I don't want him to lose those neural connections that perceive non-English phonemes, I've been reading to him in French, German, and Spanish, along with English. He doesn't have any clue what I'm reading, but in the case of the German and Spanish, sometimes neither do I. Here's a sample of what we've been reading:

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T. S. Eliot (illustrations by Edward Gorey, no less!)

The Space Child's Mother Goose - nerdy nursery rhymes, including such gems as

Possible-Probable, my black hen
Lays her eggs in the relative when.
She doesn't lay eggs in the positive now,
Because she's unable to postulate how.

Frida - a picture book in Spanish about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. This is great not only bc of the language, but bc the illustrations are done in a style evocative of her artwork--and she did some pretty disturbing artwork. This may be creepier than the Edward Gorey illustrations.

Die Drei Kobolde - a German picture book about, as far as I can tell, three orphaned goblins who can control the weather. The level of German is much higher than the level of Spanish required by the Frida book.

Best of all, N'heures souris rames - Mother Goose rhymes rewritten in French--sort of. The French words are real, but translate to utter nonsense, bc they've been combined to sound like the original English words. Best of all, there are footnotes deconstructing the French "verses" as if they are from a historical manuscript, with commentary on the politics and events of the 16th century.

Ok, maybe this is only funny if you speak French. It cracks me up. And Z seems to like it

Newsflash:

( Cute Baby Still Cute )

I had my six week post partum visit yesterday, and I am now cleared to resume working out and performing my marital duties. ;) I also discussed with the midwife a plan for slowly ramping down my milk production, and slowly weaning Z onto formula without upsetting his digestion. I hope to be done with the pumping by the end of the month. Freedom!

We weighed Z yesterday, and he's up to 9 lbs, 11 oz! This was with his clothes and diaper on, so that's probably not entirely accurate, but wow, he's getting big. The teeny shirts we took home from the hospital don't fit him any more.

The midwife said she thought his eyes might stay blue, rather than darken to brown. I thought all Caucasian newborns' eyes were blue, but she said usually they're a darker, muddier color than Z's bright, clear blue eyes. Aaron and I are now both wondering who in our family trees might have had blue eyes...

You thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?

Click to bask in the cuteness!

Well, either the Zoloft is kicking in, or else I'm just getting used to things around here. Aaron and I have settled into a pattern where he takes the night shift, starting at midnight when I go to bed. He either stays up and working between feedings, or else plays the "sleep when the baby sleeps" game, and I take the day shift, starting somewhere between 6 and 8 am. That's right, I am now a morning person. And, due to some strange congruence of drugs and a decent night's sleep, I'm actually kind of cheerful about it.

Unfortunately, "sleep when the baby sleeps" doesn't work too well for me. By the time I feed and change Z, pump, clean the pump parts, and get something to eat, I'm down to an hour left to sleep, which is just barely enough time to fall asleep before Z is hungry again. It's so frustrating to have to wake up again that I have stopped bothering. But since I'm getting a good solid chunk of sleep while Aaron's on duty, I find I can get along pretty well. Today we had a special challenge, since Aaron had to be at work for an 8:30 meeting. I hope he's ok.

(Yes, I'm still pumping; I won't change that until I talk to my doctor on Wed about a strategy to slowly ease up the milk supply. But to get Z used to formula on a regular basis, we've started doing one day and one night feeding with it. This also lets me stockpile a bit of breastmilk.)

So instead of sleeping while the baby sleeps, I eat or pay bills or do laundry or read while the baby sleeps. It's kind of nice, getting things done and all. The other day, I even had a real, cooked breakfast. Yes, I had time to make myself an omelette. Luxury!

Speaking of eating, special thanks goes out to our friends who have come to visit and brought us food. I'm mainly grazing during the day, but I try to get one solid meal in every day, and the visits have been helpful for that. Also thank you to skellington, who lent me seasons 1 and 2 of Buffy to watch while I'm pumping. I'm about halfway through season 2--got any more for me? :)

Happy Mothers' Day to all the moms out there on my friends list. (It's weird to think that this now applies to *me*.)

(And special thanks to everyone who's kept me company by commenting on my interminable breastfeeding posts.)

Surely these need captions:

( Z in his new crib. Tara's onesie says it all. )

( Breastfeeding TMI )

Z in the Infantino sling:

Today was a good day, for the most part. The doula came over in the morning, and she helped me try nursing Z again. I think we did better this time, getting a good latch. There was some brief confusion as Z clearly remembered what a breast was, but had to be reminded what to do with it. It did start to hurt after a few minutes, so I took him off and repositioned him a couple times. Later, after Trish left, I tried again on the other breast, and it went pretty well too. I am cautiously optimistic--I'm still afraid repeated experiments might result in more pain, so for now I will just try the direct nursing once a day on each breast, but still keep pumping so we can bottle feed him the rest of the time. In a few days, if I'm not hurting, I'll ramp it up a bit, but I want to take things slow for now.

At Middlebury College

Be sure and click the Youtube link at the bottom of the article. I love how they've adapted the rules, especially the Golden Snitch.

Look, a post that's not about babies or breastmilk!

Unfortunately, it's about lawsuits. :P I think we're going to have to sue these people. Anyone know anything about filing small claims? Do we file in Dekalb Co (where we and the property are), or in the county where the company is?

Today Z is one month old. His clueless parents have managed to keep him alive for an entire month! Of course, we had a lot of help--in fact, it's probably more to do with his grandparents than with us, that he has managed to reach his current ripe old age.

In fact, today was our first entire day alone with Z. Last night, Aaron took the 2:30 am feeding, put Z down in the co-sleeper next to me, and slept through my shift at 6. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time between 3 and 6 with one hand on Z, jiggling him back to sleep when he started to stir. But I managed to get up without waking Aaron, feed and change Z, get him to sleep in the bassinet in the dining room, pump, then transfer him back to the co-sleeper, without waking him up. Aaron took the next shift, at 9, but then my plans to take over went awry--even though I got up at noon, I was so tired that I ate, pumped, and promptly went back to bed. Aaron, bless him, let me get away with this, but I worry about not taking my fair share of the baby care.

I'm still feeling tired all the time, though I stopped taking the Reglan--I figured one drowsy-making drug in my system was plenty. My milk production has fallen off, but it's still so much more than what I was making before the Reglan, that I am trying not to obsess about it. Anna has suggested fenugreek, so I'm going to give that a try, after clearing it with my doctor.

This business of pumping every three hours is no way to live, though. We intend to travel with Z, and there's simply no way to do that and maintain this pumping schedule. I don't want to give up on breastmilk entirely, but eventually I want a life again, and frankly, I'd like to spend some time with my baby, rather than my breast pump. I want to try nursing again, with the doula's help. If that's still too painful, I may drop back to pumping once or twice a day, so Z still gets some breastmilk, but go mainly to formula.

You know, back when I was reading all those oh-so-helpful books, I wondered why more women didn't breastfeed. Now I get it. The books all manage to imply that problems are rare and easily solved. Ha, and ha again, I say. :P One of the arguments in favor of it is that it's cheaper--you don't have to spend money on formula, right? Have I said, "ha" yet? Let's see...lactation consultant, doctor co-pay, breast pump I rented, breast pump I bought, collection kit for the rental pump, nipple shells, breast shells, breast pads, nursing bras, hands-free pumping bra...cheaper, eh? :P

Ben and Bonnie left this afternoon, leaving Aaron and me alone in the house with Z. The door closed behind them, and I looked at Aaron. "What do we do??"

Z smiled yesterday! Yes, I know it's really too early for true social smiles, but this really looked like the real thing. And he repeated it, several times. So I say, it's a smile. So there.

The doctor put me on 50 mg of Zoloft. It takes about 2 weeks to take effect.

In other news, Z has definitely grown; friends who haven't seen him in a couple weeks have commented on it. He grips things with his fingers now--usually his pacifier or our fingers--and tracks and focuses on people's faces and bright lights. He's also working on his neck muscles--not that he can hold his head up, quite, but he can move it around some, and occasionally whacks one of us with it when we're trying to burp him. :) He also has figured out what the bottle means, and that it will soon follow on getting a little cloth tucked under his chin, which means, if he's been fussing, he will often calm down as soon as the bib comes out.

Today was a better day. It might have been due to the fact that Aaron's parents took care of Z over night, so I got a solid 6 hours sleep, rather than 3, the night before. It's hard to tell what's actual depression and what's merely sleep deprivation. Not to mention that a side effect of the drug I'm on to increase milk supply is--wait for it--drowsiness. Great. The problem with having the opportunity to sleep so long is that I do--and that drug works well, so I wake up with aching boobs from missing a pumping session.

(Incidentally, I am amused by the juxtaposition of my breastfeeding woes and the so-called "open source boob project," since my boobs have been pretty open-source lately. No, I won't justify it with capital letters, nor link to it--it's gotten far too much attention already. If you simply must know, and don't already, Google is there for you.)

I called the doctor's office, left a message, then was out for a walk when they called back. Can't complain, though--one of the things that made today better was a good long walk. The weather has cooled down again, so it was a perfect day for it. Z likes walks in the stroller, he dozes off and snoozes peacefully. I have so far tried walking him in a Maya wrap and something called a rebozo that the doula lent me, but both of them left me with a lot of lower back pain. Yet another aspect of attachment parenting that's not all it's cracked up to be. Z is too little yet for the Bjorn carrier, and though I've heard good things about the Ergo--well, I can't keep spending money on different carriers, hoping one will work out. This is getting silly.