TTFN

I know I'm just back to work and all, but I'm already going on vacation. I have the time saved up, and my bosses are OK with it, so as of quittin' time this evening, I'm off for another week. Technically I work remotely on Fridays, and tomorrow's no exception, but we'll be getting ourselves ready and on the road to start our camping trip on the coast of Maine like we do every year with the entirety of my dad's side of the family. We're currently on to the fourth generation of this collective holiday (it started with my grandparents when my dad was a baby) and if you ask any one of us, it's our most favorite place, and the one thing we all look forward to for the whole year. For the past few years we've been going for two weeks, and most of my family is already there this week, but considering my leave just ended and the little monkey is just an infant, a week is just about all we can handle this year. It'll be interesting to say the least navigating the conditions with a three-month-old - the hot sunny beach (probably won't get there much, at least not from 12-3), the mosquitos, the having-to-think-of-a-person-who-isn't-me aspect. But my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins have all survived the wild with a newborn in tow, so I'm not too worried about it. There will be no shortage of people who want to take the dude off our hands at any given time,  for one thing. And it certainly changes how I'll be packing up - my husband and I will really have to get by on the bare minimum to allow room for all the stuff we need to cram into the car for HR. The littler the baby, the more things they require, it seems. Luckily camping is one of those vacations where you're expected to re-wear clothing, the dirtier the better.

Tonight's agenda: packing - certainly less relaxing than last night's (eating cake and watching So You Think You Can Dance in bed), but I get so excited about the trip it's never much of a chore for me. I'll report back soon and let you know how it went.

Roth-erizing

The upside of having a car so old that my music options are reduced to what's on the radio or whatever cassette tapes have survived the millennium is that I'm still able to be transported by the element of surprise. This morning, after kissing my men-cubs goodbye and jumping into the car, I scanned a few stations and struck gold on 93.7 - "Hot For Teacher." I didn't know that was the song I needed to hear right then, but it was. It's not like I don't own a lot of Van Halen's music - I do, in at least three formats, and I could listen to this song any time I want, but the point is, I wouldn't have thought of it. The magic of the dying medium known as radio is that sometimes it knows what I need when I don't. I came in just at the beginning drum part, and just cranked it up. And for four whole minutes of my commute I wasn't obsessing about having enough milk.

Having enough milk for the baby is my main preoccupation. When I'm right there with him it's not a problem - I just attach him to the boob on demand. But when we're apart I worry about it constantly. What if he's extra hungry? What if some of it spills? What if he wakes up when normally he'd be sleeping? It's pretty much all I ever think about when we're apart, and it's really hard to concentrate on other things, or even relax and have fun. I've been back to work for almost two weeks, and it was clear by the first day of week one that I just wasn't going to have enough milk to get him through the day, not right away anyway. I'm not an abundant milk producer. I have enough, but I don't have extra. Pumping only works when I'm skipping feedings--he still eats so frequently that if I try to pump in between, I'm taking away milk for his next feeding and everything gets out of whack. It might not always be like this as his feedings get space farther apart (if they ever do -- will they ever?), but for now, it only works to pump when I'm away from him and maybe once a few hours after he goes to bed. The long, emotional day before I started back to work I knew I'd have to introduce formula on a supplemental basis. That was probably the most agonizing realization I've made since he's come along, and I shed a few tears of sadness and regret. But this is the deal: I have to go back to work, and he needs to eat. And beating myself up over it is probably more harmful to us than the 4 ounces he's ingested so far.

I don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong with formula feeding - not at all, it's just that I chose to breastfeed and luckily my body was able to make it happen and I intended to stick to the nothing-but-mama's-milk-until-six-months plan. What's that you say, having kids means your precious plans are a joke? Well, yes. I've learned this lesson over and over again since day one. Faced with the latest wrench in the works, I examined what my real issue was with changing up the feeding plan. Supplementing isn't bad for the baby, especially since he doesn't even get formula every day. So in the end, was my goal just to be able to say "nothing passed the sacred threshold of my little one's lips for six months save for my own breastmilk"? As long as he's fed and healthy and we're doing our best, that's the real goal. I don't have time to be sanctimonious. And I don't room for guilt or defensiveness because I need all of that energy for the time I get to spend with my baby. So yeah, HR drinks formula sometimes when I don't pump enough. So far I haven't died of being a bad mother and he's thriving and it's what works for our family. I love nursing and plan to continue to do it until he's a year old. But even if that plan gets diverted, I think we'll make it just fine. Especially if we round it out with the occasional selection from 1984.

Coming Attractions

I lack the time to get into a real meaty post today, but here are some topics I'll be writing about in the near future:

-Going back to work and how I think it will ultimately make me a better mother
-My job, in general, and how amazing it's been upon my return
-My husband: Superdad!
-Supplementing with formula does not mean I'm a failure

...and many, many more. 

I'm quite used to sleep deprivation at this point, many a night I have lost a couple of hours nodding off with the baby on my breast, or found myself staring slack-jawed into space while someone spoke to me, but I know it's really gotten to me when it's taken me three months to notice that one of the covers I put on the baby's Boppy (the pillow I use to support him while nursing) has an egregious spelling error. The fabric is covered with pictures of various adorable jungle animals with little captions like, "giggly giraffes" and "happy hippos." Fine, fine, though I can't say that those are strictly applicable adjectives - do hippos have the capacity be happy? Probably, whatever. But then there's "mischievious monkees," which never looked right to me, but I gave it a pass because I thought they were being cute by changing the spelling of "monkey" to look like that of the fake band of the 1960s, who certainly were mischievous. Ah, but there it is: "mischievIous" - come on! I can't decide if I'm more annoyed at  the actual error, or my inability to pick up on it until about two days ago. Most likely the latter. Still, even as I excuse the designer's liberties with an animal's name if it makes me think of "Pleasant Valley Sunday," I can't overlook downright spelling laziness. It had been my favorite Boppy cover, but now I can't look at it without being totally bothered.

A note to textile designers: just because babies can't read doesn't mean that you can skip out on spell-check. I may have been a bit slower on the uptake than usual but I am watching you.

Happy three months today to my petite gentleman, HR: just when I thought I couldn't love him more, he slept a 6-hour stretch last night.

The Floodgates

I HAVE SO MUCH TO TELL YOU.

For nearly a decade I've been writing in a locked, private online diary (it's in the vault for good now). I updated that thing just about every day, and it changed my life in so many ways, from reinvigorating my love of writing to allowing me to become part of an amazing community. Then I had a baby.

He will be three months old tomorrow and he is a dream, clearly the best decision my husband and I have ever made together. But as you may know, caring for even the most brilliant and handsome newborns leaves little time to jump on a keyboard. Naturally, this is when all the major, reportable stuff of life happens. So after the initial blur of adding "mama" to my resume, I began to really, really miss writing. My maternity leave's over now (more on this later - it's still sort of new and bittersweet), and one huge advantage of working outside the home is that I'm able to take a lunch break. Oh the luxury of two hands, a computer and a whole free hour!

I consider writing necessary to my very being, and while I have several fiction projects going on (and on and on...) I've gotten mighty used to an open forum on which to blabber about my every-day-ness. So that's what this is all about. I get my writing fix, and the thought that someone may read it helps keep me sort of accountable when I otherwise wouldn't be writing. I'm not saying I won't use this as a platform for bragging about my kid, but it won't be just that.

As first entries go it's a weak introduction, but if I thought about it too long I'd probably never get started.

Oh, and hello there.