Paw Paw's Visit

Back Home.

Matthew and I are back home now staying with my mother for three weeks while Jeff flies off into the sunset. It's wonderful to be home, though I'm not looking forward to another three (!) flights back to Hawaii. Matthew was as close to an angel as possible on the two flights here, but a large part of that success is due to my father accompanying us. I'm going to be by myself on the return trip and I'm dreading the look on the face of the person next to us when Matthew kicks his feet into their lap and makes himself comfortable!

Here are a couple of shot from the winter photo shoot I did with Matthew the other day. My camera continues to frustrate me since it takes better pictures of the grass than of my child. I'm sure it's my fault, but who has time to read the camera manual? So, for the time being, you will continue to get blurry pictures of my baby and I would appreciate it if everyone would continue to tell me that he's cute - even though it's difficult to tell exactly what he looks like. Take it from me, he's a doll.

Roll Over.

Matthew is a very active boy. Very. He's kind of like a perpetual motion machine. Or like a wind-up toy that just keeps on going. Think Energizer Bunny. In fact, that's what I should have dressed him as for Halloween. As it was, I dressed him as a sleeping baby and prayed to the trick-or-treat gods that no one would knock on the door. If I were going to scare Matthew on Halloween, I could have dressed up as SLEEP because that's the thing he's most afraid of. It's all I can do to get him to take a nap - and I have to start working on getting him back to sleep about half an hour after he wakes up. I'm still trying to figure him out - and I WILL figure him out - but for the moment I'm just thankful that he is sleeping at all, even though that requires way more parental involvement than it should.

Back on the subject of Matthew's activity level, when he's not sleeping Matthew loves to have his tummy time. When I say "loves" I mean he doesn't spit, cough, and screech like he does when I try to get him to sleep. (See above.) Lately, he's been enjoying his surfboard tummy time mat, which I'm supposed to have filled with water, but I just filled with air instead. (The little fish don't "dance" quite like they're supposed to, but I'm just going to tell him that the fish died, if he ever asks.) While I like to put him on his proper "tummy time mat" (Matt's mat, if you will), Jeff likes to just plop him right on the bed. In one of their afternoon tummy time bonding sessions, Matthew gave Jeff the best gift: he rolled over!

No joke, our two month old rolled over. I didn't believe it either, but I reproduced the experiment scientifically, and I know concur with Jeff's assessment. (It doesn't take a genius to determine that a child placed on his stomach who is now lying on his back has, in fact, rolled over, but I just couldn't believe it.) So, in all the fretting that Matthew isn't breastfeeding well, sleeping through the night, or doing our taxes yet, there is a ray of beautiful, healthy hope. Roll on, little one, roll on!

Father Knows Best.

During the two weeks that I was back at work, I had the best daycare provider possible: my husband. Because Matthew was not old enough to start the community daycare we found for him, Jeff took two weeks off of work to take care of our little boy. He said that he wanted to see what it was like for me during those last few weeks of maternity leave. Bless his little ol' heart. During that time, here's what I saw when I woke up each morning...



Jeff is magic with Matthew. From the beginning, he could calm him better than I could. If I'm the feeder, he's definitely the soother. When Matthew is crying in the car, Jeff will start singing a silly, made-up song and Matthew will immediately pipe down to listen. It works so well that sometimes I try to sing like Jeff when Matthew's crying in the car with me, but it doesn't work as well and I end up feeling silly. By the time I was ready to leave for work each day, it was usually storytime. Matthew loves to listen to his dad...



Every morning and afternoon, Jeff and Matthew would go on a walk. Over the two weeks, Matthew became much more aware of his surroundings, spending time looking around, not just sleeping. In the time I have spent home with Matthew, I am embarrassed by the number of walks I have taken him on. In fact, Jeff did such a great job during his two weeks at home that I was a little jealous of his natural parenting ability. If I had my choice, I would continue working and Jeff could stay home with Matthew. Alas, we're stuck with the next best thing. Here's a picture of Jeff and Matthew ready for their walk...



Even now, Jeff gives Matthew a bath every night that he's not on duty. It's boy bonding time. I love to hear Jeff singing and talking to Matthew - and to hear Matthew cooing back at his loving and wonderful father. I'm usually running around like a crazy person trying to put the house back in order from a chaotic day, doing my best to act like I'm balancing the baby needs and housework without difficulty. Here the are all snuggly from the bath...



Two days ago, Jeff and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary. We left Matthew for an hour or so with friends and had a nice dinner together. I'm not sure how I got so lucky - to have found the best husband AND best father on the planet - but I'm sure I'll never be able to thank my lucky stars enough. I love you, babe.

Mom & Baby

Rats, Relactation, & Resignations.

We caught the rat. It was more like mouse, but who's counting. Jeff released it 45 miles from our house. Hopefully, we will have moved by the time that sucker finds his way back. The good news is that we have the best landlord on the island, and she has agreed to replace our stove and kitchen floor in December. I hope the wild kingdom that is residing in our kitchen is pleased with the upgrades.

Matthew has regained fuss-bucket status thanks to a return to exclusive breastfeeding and the fact that he has not pooped in a week. I'm still not convinced that he's eating enough, but all the lactation consultants assure me that there's enough milk. His generally disgruntled mood, that was sunny with the formula supplements he received for the two weeks I was back at work, belies their claims. We're waiting for conclusive weight-gain proof at Tuesday's doctor's visit.

I'm feeling much better now that I've gotten some more rest and am eating better. I'm proud to have successfully relactated myself, which required newborn-style round-the-clock nursing for a few days. Unfortunately, Matthew hasn't realized that the ramp up in milk production has been completed and he no longer needs to nurse every hour - or else he knows what I suspect which is that the ramp up was insufficient - but either way I'm feeling very much like a milk machine these days. I don't mind, though, if it means that my baby is getting what he needs. (In the middle of the night, at the 3rd or 4th wake up, I'm not always so chipper about the whole thing. It's a good thing that we're not on a reality tv show and that Jeff has been around the past few nights to support the sleep-deprived mom.)

In other news, I resigned from my job on Monday. That's right, in the blink of an eye, I became the thing I never thought I would become: a stay-at-home mom. I'd been struggling with the decision for weeks, but after exhaustion caused me to spend hours unable to care for my son's needs, the decision made itself. I'm surprisingly pleased with the arrangement, and Jeff has been very supportive. This isn't a permanent situation, but it works for us at the moment. The nice thing is that my employer told me that I am welcome back anytime. It was hard to give up the best job I've ever had, but I would much rather reapply a year from now with Matthew well on his way to a happy childhood than to struggle my way through a tough year, doing a poor job as wife, mother, and employee. I know that I am lucky to be in a situation where there is a decision to be made - and I hope I made the right one!



Matthew loves his Peter Rabbit toy! I couldn't resist posting this video so that you can all enjoy the smiles.

Bad to Worse.

After sneezing my way through yesterday morning's visit to the doctor, I came to the realization that I have a cold. Being sick with a cold only days after being sick with something like exhaustion is, while not surprising, very frustrating. Jeff has really had to kick it in to overdrive to keep me and Matthew together over the last couple of days. Then, last night, as I was whimpering myself to sleep over the thought that we are not in fact getting better at this after two months of parenthood, I felt something crunchy in my mouth. Turns out, part of a twenty-year old filling from one of my back teeth chose that moment to fall out. Excellent.

Luckily, I managed to fall asleep with a gaping mouth and surrounded by a sea of tissue. Then, about midnight, Jeff brought my beautiful baby to me for a snack and went to the kitchen to prepare the bottle that we have been giving Matthew after each feeding. A few minutes later, Jeff came back into the bedroom and announced, "We have a rat." At first I thought, "No, Jeff, we don't have a rat. I don't like rats at all, I'm sure I would not entertain the idea of hosting a rat in my home. Plus, they're dirty and they make me scream, so it would be a bad idea all around." The it hit me - WE HAVE A RAT!

WARNING: The rest of this post contains elements that may gross out animal rights activists or anyone who has ever eaten a dinner made in our kitchen.

For those of you who may have missed the last two mouse sagas in our lives, suffice it to say that Jeff and I have had our share of experience with mice. The highlights include a pregnant mommy mouse smooshed on our kitchen floor and a mouse hunt that Jeff waged with an oven mitt and kitchen tongs. Please believe me when I say that Jeff and I are very clean people. Really. I border on obsessive about cleanliness. I even have a chore chart. Seriously, a chore CHART. The whole thing is pathetic. The worst part is that it doesn't seem to have kept the mice and rats from thinking that we would like to share our house with them. So, on with the story...

Jeff insists that this rat, which arrived a week ago according to the poo trail, is the fastest thing on four legs and is about 6 inches long without the tail. Needless to say, I am terrified. The last time we had a mouse/rat problem, Jeff and I almost got a divorce. Seriously. The main problem was that I could not help but scream at the top of my lungs every time I saw the mouse. My screaming (again, uncontrollable) would scare Jeff more than the mouse did and prevented him from thinking clearly enough to catch the mouse. (I would like to state for the record that I am responsible for removing all three - Yes, THREE - mice from the house. Go, me.)

So, the plan is that Jeff will get rid of the rat this time. I am doing my best not to run into the rat because I might have a heart attack. This means that it is even harder for me to eat well and regain my strength since the kitchen is pretty much off limits. (It has occurred to me to just move into a hotel, but I haven't taken it that far yet.) Hopefully, the rat traps will work tonight, although I fully expect to wake up to traps devoid of bait, chewed on around the edges, and surrounded by rat poo, but lacking a rat. Everyone said that when Matthew turns three months that everything will get better. At the rate we're going, I don't know that we'll survive another month.

Exhaustion.

A few hours after posting last on this blog, I woke to feed Matthew one of his many nightly snacks. As I was feeding him, I got very dizzy, felt the room spinning, and began sweating profusely. I made it through the feeding, but I left him sleeping on the couch and crawled on to the floor to lie down and get a handle on what was happening. When things didn't get better in a few minutes, I knew that I would have to call for help since I was too dizzy to pick Matthew up and put him back in his crib. Jeff was on duty for the night, leaving at 2PM that day not to return until about 4PM the next day. Luckily, our good friend Nick actually answered the phone and his girlfriend Denice was kind enough to come over. I thought that I would be fine if I could just sleep on the floor with Matthew, so I asked her to make us a pallet on the floor. I felt like if I could get a little sleep, I would feel better.

Unfortunately, once she left, Matthew decided that he was worried about me, too, and fretted the whole night, refusing to sleep and wanting to nurse to calm his nerves. Not getting any sleep from midnight to 6AM did not make my condition any better and I knew things were getting bad when I couldn't lift my head from the pillow to check Matthew's diaper. Once again, I called Denice and this time she walked into a house full of the smell of baby poop. Matthew decided to pick that night to relieve his 3-day constipation and managed to poop all over his diaper, onesie, and the quilt on which we were lying. Denice was wonderful - she got over her fear of infants and whisked Matthew away for a bath and a change. That left me on the floor, moaning in pain, and unable to move or open my eyes. I was so scared for Matthew because I couldn't do what I should have been able to do as his mother. He needed me to give him a bath and I couldn't. I was so relieve when Denice came in and took care of him.

I managed to call another friend, Matthew's adopted grandmother, to come over to take me to the hospital. After she arrived, she decided that I was simply exhausted from working full-time, breastfeeding a voracious little one, sleep deprivation, and trying to keep my marriage strong. We decided that instead of going to the hospital, which might have used the last bit of my energy, I should go to sleep for the day and allow her to care for me and Matthew. Matthew's pediatrician, a mother of three, agreed with her and said that the exhaustion is likely the reason that I have not been able to produce enough milk for Matthew lately. (Of course, at the rate and volume this child eats, I don't know that a milk cow could keep up. My two cents.) So, I spent the day in bed, waking only to drink water and eat bites of the best curried chicken stew I've ever tasted. Matthew was an angel and I don't think he is worse for the wear - if anything, he enjoyed the attention only a grandmother can give.

Today, I'm feeling better, though not great. I did manage to get Matthew to school (our word for daycare) and I'm taking the day off to catch up some more on sleep. The most embarrassing part about this whole ordeal is that I did not see it coming. Sure, I usually only sleep 4-5 hours a night in 2 or 3 chunks. And doesn't every working mother deal with the stress of trying to fit breastfeeding into an already busy work schedule? And, yes, maybe I haven't been eating enough calories because of Matthew's diet restrictions. There are a myriad other reasons that parenting is tough for us right now, too - Jeff's demanding work schedule and his standing duty a couple of nights a week, the fact that three sets of friends have moved away in a couple of months and we have no family here who might want to help with baby, our lack of experience with babies and Matthew's very real digestive issues that made his first few weeks full of screams.

With all of the embarrassment of being incapacitated, I'm very proud of the way I handled things yesterday. I knew when to ask for help. More than anything, I'm so thankful for the friends who knew what to do to help our family and were more than willing to do it. This Thanksgiving is going to mean so much more than turkey. I'm thankful that my little boy is growing happily and full of life, that I was given a warning about the importance of my own health in this family, and that we have a safety net - however small - that caught us when we needed it most. Over the next few days, I'm sure Jeff and I will discuss what happened and what we need to change so that it doesn't happen again. In the meantime, I'm off to bed again to savory the sweet joy of dreaming.

Two Months Old.

When I found out I was pregnant, I promised myself that I would not allow my blog to become a baby-centric rant about all the cute things that my baby has accomplished that week. The fact is that this is my space, my chance to tell the world how I feel, my small mark on the vastness of cyerspace. What I didn't realize is that becoming a mother makes it really hard to distinguish between oneself and one's baby. Last night I struggled to find something non-baby related to talk to my husband about. Breastfeeding? No. Um, daycare? Nope. Burping? Forget it.

The good news is that Matthew is, in fact, the cutest. He has done quite well in his first couple of days at daycare, and I think we're entering a new era in Matthewness. After bracing the daycare staff for the worst, Matthew was nothing short of angelic: napping much of the day, eating well, and looking around at the other kids. Upon hearing that, I told the staff that he's like that for us (a lie) and chalked up his behavior to the fact that he figured out quickly that he's better off quiet than trying to cry for attention in a daycare full of more upset, louder children.

Overall, I'm happy with the daycare. It's close to the house and my office, and they don't mind that I spend my lunch hour there with Matthew. Still, I can't shake the feeling that my job might not be worth the separation anxiety (mine) and the frustration of changing from bottle to breastfeeding throughout the day (Matthew's). Plus, I'm spending most of my time at work - literally - setting up to pump, pumping, cleaning up, and consuming copious amounts of food and water so that there's milk to pump. I'm going to keep trying for another few weeks, at least, because I'm not sure that becoming a stay-at-home mom is really good for my fragile mommy-ego at this point.

Matthew has his two month check up tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get some good news about how we've been caring for him. Last time we went in, the pediatrician said he was "special". I agree, but I don't think we mean that in the same way...

Huckleberry Hound.

It just occurred to me today during a lunch-time photo shoot that my son has started looking an awful lot like Huckleberry Hound. Go ahead, admit it. He's got some serious jowls, doesn't he? The fact remains that he is melting my heart more each day with his sweetness - and breaking it still each night with his screams and regression to feeding every hour or so. As usual, I rise gracefully and full of joy at the thought of tending to my son's needs. Or maybe I bounce off the door frame as I drowsily waddle into the nursery cursing the evolutionary development of breastfeeding and the American Academy of Pediatrics.



We do have a success to recount, however: Last night, Matthew slept MOST of the night (well, most of his sleeping time, at least) in the crib. That's right, Jeff and I are genius parents and will go down in history as such. (Don't think I don't know that by publishing this post I have assured that Matthew will not allow himself anywhere near the crib tonight! It's worth it to sing our parenting praise since we've had so little good stuff to claim responsibility for in the last few weeks.)



I know that the pictures are a little fuzzy. In my new-parent haze, I have not had time to figure out how to take non-blurry photos of my son without using the flash. And all the books tell you not to use the flash on newborn eyes or something horrible will happen, so I have lots of shots of Matthew that make him look like he's covered with something resembling the skin of a peach. Another accomplishment for today: I found the setting on the camera to take ambient light photos so all the rest of the shots I ever post of him will be brilliant. Mark my words. In the meantime, I couldn't pass these three up because they are just adorable.