Sick Baby = Sad Mama

Little Miss Pants has had the flu this week, which makes Mama very sad. Luckily, there was no vomiting involved, but she had a high fever and has been congested and sad. We took her into the doctor when she peaked at 105.6, but the Doc said that she looked okay, and to keep giving her Tylenol and Motrin, and to watch. The fever broke yesterday and we've been running the humidifier almost non-stop. She's not sleeping the best and so she's cranky, but is otherwise starting to get back to herself again.

What has made this extra hard is that on Wednesday morning, as it became suddenly clear that she was sick, Shawn was on his way out the door for a trip to Anaheim with his band until Monday. He felt really guilty leaving, but her being sick wasn't an emergency and his trip had been planned for months. It's been stressful to not have him here to help, but his mom has been amazing, coming over during the day to help me with Violet so that I could get some work done from home and not have to go into the office.

She insisted on holding the medicine bottle. Thank goodness for child-proof caps. We had a Caillou marathon this week.

The upside was that I got some baby-cuddles at night, because the only way to get her to sleep long stretches was just to take her in bed with me, because she needed the comfort. So that was nice and snuggly.

What this has also meant is that my fitness plans have been derailed by a week. I didn't get to do any exercise for a week, and when I finally got into the gym yesterday afternoon and went for a run, I could feel the absence.

I haven't blogged much about it here, but I have been on a quest to return to my pre-baby weight before I hit my 30th birthday in March. Which means not taking a day off until then and losing somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 lbs a week. Honestly, not an unreasonable goal. But kicking oneself in the pants to get the snowball rolling on motivation and good habits can include the occasional misstep, and those become all the more frustrating when I can hear the clocking ticking away to March 11.

But I had one of my revelations this morning -- the number on the scale matters less than the ability to fit back into my old clothes again. So perhaps I should measure my success by what fits instead of that digital readout every morning. That thought was the bump I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and refocus on target training my trouble spots, toning up, getting in shape.

I want to be a fit, happy, healthy mama, sexy and confident and excited about life, because Violet will learn my attitudes, and the last thing I want is my own personal struggle with body image, occasional bouts of semi-depression, and just that adult disenchantment with life to negatively affect her world view.

I'm sure she'll develop her own neuroses in time, she doesn't need any of mine. :)

Home Again

Baby Violet has been spending the last several days with my mom at my grandfather's house. Since Mom won't be here during our moving weekend, she's pitching in now by giving us baby-free time to pack up the house, as well as hogging some nana time for herself with the Little Missy.

As much as I love to get some free time to accomplish a few tasks, the second night of having her away from home found me just a little bit sad. I missed my little monkey while she was away. So tonight, even though Mom was going to keep her again, I every so subtly suggested taking her home for the night, so that she could get back on her sleep schedule in her comfortable environment and give my mom a chance to rest up as well. Of course, baby was cranky and and tired, and so she went to bed an hour early and I haven't had much time with her tonight, but just knowing that she's curled up with her blankie in the other room makes me feel better.

Bonjour, Bebe!, or, a review of Bringing Up Bebe

I've always pictured myself as a Briton at heart -- I love all things British; in fact, a recent discovery that the Safeway near my house has started stocking imported English goods like cookies and juice that I used to buy in London made me happy for days. However, after reading Bringing up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman, I have a sudden affinity for all things French.

I was trolling around on Amazon for some books on dealing with and raising babies. I've read all kinds of books about the nuts and bolts of physically caring for infants and small creatures of that sort, but as Miss Violet has now moved into the next phase of her life, I wanted something that would give me some insight on ways to help mold and shape my young flower into the delicate, graceful, and articulate blossom I wish her to become.

During said trek up the Amazon, I came across Bringing Up Bebe. I was immediately intrigued by the memoir-esque style vs. technical manual that some baby-rearing books can feel like, so I added it to my cart.

I was not disappointed.

Druckerman is an American who married a Brit and moved with him to Paris, where they then had a daughter and twin boys. She also used to be a journalist, so her approach to the differences she sees in how French parents raise their kids compared to what she's used to seeing from American and even British families is to delve into the issue and figure out the W's -- what, why, how, etc.

First, the book starts by giving us Druckerman's background, which threw me a bit at first, but I soon appreciated. Again, one of the selling points for me with this book was that it felt like a more personal tome, and learning about the author's background and how she came into being married and having kids in the first place helped me relate to her reactions to things like French babies "doing their nights," (that's STTN for us American moms), and the norm of French mothers getting their figures back three months after giving birth. And the personal anecdotes are what shape the book, Druckerman taking us through her daughter's first years and the issues she encountered as a mom, as well as her subsequent pregnancy with twins and the struggles those little bundles brought with them. Through all, and blended quite seamlessly with the personal stories, is the journalistic research -- interviews with French school teachers, nannies, parents, and pediatricians, as well as the articles and studies she quotes to back up her observations and theories.

I was especially drawn to the chapters on baby sleep and baby weight (on mom). Miss Violet still only "does her nights" about half the time, waking up once in the middle of the night for a bottle is still her norm at 14 months old. And when she was younger, I very much sturggled with getting her to sleep, and feeling like a failure each time she woke up. I just couldn't figure out why she wouldn't sleep longer, when I felt as though I was doing everything all the books said to do.

Passed. Out. With blankie.

In her book, Druckerman talks about the French technique of The Pause. As opposed to crying it out, which  is ignoring the baby's cries, The Pause suggests waiting a moment when baby starts to cry, listening, observing your child and then responding appropriately to what he or she needs. Is he really awake, or just stirring in his sleep? Babies need help learning to work through their natural sleep cycles, and by not immediately rushing into the baby when she cries, the French mother is giving her baby time to learn this skill.

Of course, when baby is crying, a moment feels like an hour. But after reading this chapter of the book, I waited the next time Violet woke up crying at 11:30pm. I gave her exactly 5 minutes -- almost exactly 5 minutes on the nose, she resettled herself and fell back asleep. When she woke up again the following night, and did not go back to sleep, it occurred to me after listening to her that she had been cranky from teething earlier in the day, and I gave her some baby tylenol before putting her down again. Different outcomes on each night, but it was the difference of pausing, observing (from the other side of the door, with my ears) her behavior and taking that moment to figure what it was she really needed from me, not just automatically sticking a bottle in her mouth.

The other chapter I found particularly interesting was the one that dealt with French women and their figures after childbirth. As Druckerman points out, the pregnancy culture in America seems to give gals a pass for eating whatever they want while their pregnant, making it seem like everything is fair game, because, well, you're pregnant, you're supposed to gain some weight, so eat pancakes now while you still can! And after you've had the baby, well, you're a new mother for heaven's sake, you're allowed to hang onto that weight for a while, you're tired and busy and stressed!

14-months post childbirth, starting to look saucy again!

Not so in France. French women don't see pregnancy as an excuse to let themselves go -- whatever for? Just because they're pregnant they should stop caring about how they look? Really, what hit home for me was the French feeling Druckerman points to that being a mother does not negate being sexy, or having a life as a woman outside of one's children, nor should one feel guilty for paying attention to ones own needs. I also love the term "paying attention" rather than "being on a diet" for eating well. It makes so much more sense, doesn't it? Being on a diet implies restriction, being bad vs. being good. Whereas paying attention simply means that you're paying attention, and if you forget to pay attention for a while and have a chocolate croissant for breakfast, you simply start paying attention again at lunch. No guilt. No shame. Just common sense.

Finally, Druckerman discusses the respect that French parents instill in their children -- saying bonjour and au revoir to both other children and adults alike is mandatory for all children old enough to speak, teaching them from an early age that other people have feelings that matter just as much as their own, and that they must be considerate of the people around them. I love that. I've been teaching Violet please and thank you, of course, and usually trying to get her to say bye-bye even though it's mostly because she looks so cute when she waves. But I love this idea of teaching respect so early on, so I'm going to starting trying to remember to coach her into hellos and goodbyes every time.

Bye-bye!

Milestones

All of a sudden, we've reached two pretty big milestones in the last week.

The first is that we've come to the end of our breastfeeding relationship. I had been thinking for a while that it was going to be time soon to taper off. We were already down to only 1-2 feedings a day, usually in the middle of the night and possibly right before bed. But that last few times, I found myself getting annoyed with it, and her, during the nursing, and basically not being into it any more. It had started to feel weird. And yet, it wasn't a conscious decision to stop nursing her; it occurred to me one day last week that I had not breastfed her for almost three days. And that was it. I was sad about it, for a while. I had a moment when I really wanted to nurse her one last time, to relieve the milk that had built up over the last few days. But then I realized that there was 3 days worth of coffee, a beer or two, and some wine, all mixed up in there, and I'd have to pump it out. So that idea was out. So even though I was ready to be done, and she seems to have been as well, I was still sort of sad about it for a while, more sad than I really wanted to talk about at the time. I've been denying the fact that she's not a "baby" any more, so phasing out this aspect of babyhood so suddenly and irreversibly was kind of a shock.

Secondly, last night, Little Miss went to bed at about 8:30pm, as usual, and slept without a single peep and narry a rustle until 6:45am. That, in case you were not aware, is in fact from bedtime to morning-time. The whole way. In fact, mommy's alarm woke her up before the baby did. That hasn't happened since March 2011 (yes, that would be before going on maternity leave). Of course, we'll see if she can manage a repeat performance tonight. But the fact is, she's been consistently giving me almost a full night for 2-3 weeks now, with just one wake up around 4am for a bottle and then immediately back to sleep again. And she no longer needs me to rock her until she's almost asleep, or stand there rubbing her back until she passes out. Now she has her bottle and can pretty much be laid down with her blankie to settle herself in and go to sleep. Of course, I still do rock her and rub her back and stuff, because it's our routine and I like doing it. But now it's more for the routine and less because it's the only way she will go to sleep.

Now, if I could just take my butt to bed at a decent hour, I might be able to take advantage of this sleep.

And you know what's funny? As happy as I am that she's reached these milestones, and as glad as I am to have my bed back, I just want her to stay a little baby forever. And if that meant being woken up every night  for nursing I would totally take it.

Speaking of sleep, please enjoy some photos in my ongoing "Sleeping Baby" series.

Superhero baby

with blankie

Now, if you followed me on Instagram, you'd have seen pics like this already.

I mean, seriously. Right?

Something Different

So...I was reading back through last month's workout magazine, in which there was an interview with mommy and all around super lady Rebecca Romijn. Here's a woman who carried and birthed and is subsequently raising twins (who are adorable, btw), and looks like a slice of fantastic in a swimsuit. The article was nice, too, pointing out that she has to workout lots and watch what she eats in order to get that shape back after kids, and maintain it now. She also mentioned the mommy's guilt at leaving house and home to actually get those workouts in, which is definitely relatable. But the one thing that really stuck out for me was when she talked about how, after having her kids, the diet and the forms of exercise that she used to swear by were no longer working for her, that she had to change everything up and do things she'd never tried before in order to get those 60 lbs of baby weight to go away and stay away.

Since bringing Miss Violet into the world, I have been telling myself that losing this weight should be a snap. After all, I've lost a bunch of weight before, I know what things to do and so forth to lose it again. In practice, however, those old habits weren't working for me this time around, and every time I tried to tell myself to just go back there, I would get frustrated and down on myself because it wasn't working. Why couldn't I "just" do what I used to do, why wasn't I strong enough (metaphorically) to just slip right back into that old routine, etc.?

Reading the lovely Rebecca's interview, it dawned on me -- um, nothing is the same as it was before having a baby. So what makes me think that my old tricks and routines would work the same, either? You know how I lost weight after college? After work, I went straight to the gym for anywhere from 60-90 minutes, 4-5 days a week. I didn't even have a cat at this point, it was just me. I bought bags of ceaser salad and ate them for dinner, because I was only feeding myself. I was also getting more and better rest each night, since I could sleep without interruption from the time I laid down until the time my alarm clock went off. I had more time, energy, and well, time, to dedicate to being in the gym and reading fitness mags and being in the zone.

Now, I'm lucky if I get 6 uninterrupted hours of sleep a night. I have to concern myself with making sure the Mister has something tasty and filling enough for his dinner. When I get off work, I know that both Shawn and the baby are waiting for me at home to take over child care duties, give dinner, bath, books and bed; on top of working on my writing, keeping up with housework, reading if I have a chance, etc. So the time to dedicate to working out and exercising must be carefully carved out of each day, looked for and stolen whenever it presents itself. Which means I have to think about it more than I used to -- most days, I can't just head to the gym on autopilot after work, I have to think about my schedule the night before, plan out how and when I'm going to fit in a workout the next day so that I can pack the appropriate bag to take with me, or know that I'm going to do a dvd when I get home so there's no need to bring anything to work.

And while there's good in that, it also makes it more difficult to get the momentum of a routine going -- if everyday is different, it's easier to find a sudden excuse not to workout that day, or not to eat healthfully. And in the beginning stages of a weight loss effort, it's especially easy to be derailed. And what was keeping me the most stuck was the constant inner questioning of why I just couldn't knuckle under and get back to my old routines. As I hope we're all aware, berating ourselves is no way to build positive mojo.

So, recognizing that things are of course different now has relieved that pressure from me, and has reminded me that, as long as I'm doing something just about every day, I'm moving closer to my goals. I made a little mini goal for the next two weeks to use a piece of fitness equipment every day. So if I'm too tired or busy to hit the gym on a given day, I can pick up the hand weights I have at home and do some bicep curls in the evenings.

It's not about going back to the person I used to be, it's about moving forward into the person I will become, a new me, moving into my (jesus) thirties soon, not the twenty-something I was when I first lost weight, but now a busy, strong, determined woman with a fiance and a baby and a lot of stuff on my plate, who will find new ways of being the hot and fabulous chick on the outside that I have always been on the inside.

Blankies and other things

How it gets to be after 10pm on a Sunday night is beyond me. I swear it was just Friday afternoon. Really, work again tomorrow? Sigh...all right, but pass the merlot, will you?

Mommy's been on a wine kick of late. I don't know what started it. When I was in my earlier twenties, I shunned wine, I thought it was pretentious and stupid and I hated hanging out with girls who were all, ooh, wine, let's drink wine, la! Somewhere in the last year, however, I've turned into that girl. So, score one for karma, 2 points for the-jokes-on-me. Maybe giving birth had the added side effect of maturing my palette, I don't know. I'm still not sophisticated enough to consider myself a wine snob, I mean, when I swirl and sniff I just smell wine, not any notes of oak or delightful zephyrs of blackberry or anything. But I do love a good glass of red at the end of the day, either while finally getting to sit down with my book for a few uninterrupted moments, or while checking back in with my writing for a page or two. It used to be I drank wine for the classy, let's play dress-up, appeal of it, since I didn't actually like it. These days, I'm enjoying the beverage for its own sake.

Score another point for karma that I finally got around to throwing out the two wine racks I'd kept in the house for years just before this new found love arrived.

***

Little Miss V was sick this weekend. It took me most of Saturday to notice it. I'm still not sure if I gave her something, since I'm convinced my sniffles were purely allergy-based. But Saturday morning she had a drippy nose, and I didn't trust my instinct at first when I knew she felt warmer than usual. We went over to my friend's mother's place to socialize and so forth, and by the time we were ready to leave, she had heated up to the point that it was plain she needed some baby meds and an early bedtime. So I took the poor little fussypants home, had Mr. S go to the store for baby Tylenol, and fixed her a bottle. She fell asleep before pops got home with the medicine, slept for about two hours, and when she woke up again, we gave her a bath to calm her down. She loves her bath. Still, she was having trouble sleeping because of the congestion, so when she woke up for the second time she and I snuggled on the couch together for SNL. I fell asleep before the musical guest, but Shawn said she laid there awake for the whole show and then fell asleep. We slept on the couch all night.

She was doing better today, got another couple of doses of medicine, and by bedtime tonight she was still a little snotty, but better, mostly her normal temp, though still pretty exhausted.

She has started showing an affinity for different blankets of hers, mostly the soft chenille-y ones. There are two, a pink and a purple, and it makes me infinitely glad to see her dragging oen around behind her on her toddles around the house, or gripping it in her little fist while I'm putting her to sleep and sucking on it, hehe. She never took to a pacifier, but I wanted her to have a blankie or a lovey so bad, everyone ought to have one, I think. I tried to get her to like the pretty blankie my mom made for her, but alas, it's the store-bought ones that she prefers. I will feel less responsible for any neuroses later on her life for the fact that I did not, in fact, force this attachment on her, only that I really wanted her to form one and I shall do nothing to dissuade her from it. She made this choice on her own, I'm just going to encourage it. :)

Learning from Newborns

My nephew Ian was born this morning. He's a doll. It's only been 9.5 months, but I'd already forgotten just what it was like to hold a newborn. *love*

His mom is doing great, exhausted of course. They seem to be doing well with breastfeeding so far, which makes me happy. It makes me reflect on how hard it seemed for me to start breastfeeding in the beginning, and I realized that the difference between myself and my friend is that she was remarkably calm. I was not. For some reason, I felt this crazy pressure to breastfeed right from the beginning, compounded by the lactation ladies being bewildered by the difficulties I was having, and the delivery room nurse giving me a nipple shield right off the bat because "my nipples were too flat." On top of my usual need to be perfect and thus be really hard on myself, the nurses didn't really set me up for success.

And tonight, going into the recovery room and holding that little boy, swaying with him and patting his back and soothing him when he started to cry, I realized how much I've grown since that first day. I have confidence now. I may not always know what I'm doing when it comes to getting her to sleep through the night or eat green vegetables, but being back with a newborn again reminded me just how much more I do know now, and it gave me hope. If I can just maintain that confidence, and steal some of my friend's calm, there's not much I won't be able to do.

A Moment of Un-Hotness, or What Facebook Taught Me

Girls, I don't feel very hot right now. It happens. We all have our moments. Our un-hot moments. I'm confident that the hotness will come back sometime soon, probably around about the time I'm halfway through tomorrow morning's tall nonfat pumpkin spice latte (yum!), but right now, not so much. And you should know that I've just completed a 30 minute cardio toning workout dvd.

That workout was hard. Way harder than I expected it to be. This is a dvd that I've done dozens of times before, and for some reason tonight I was just dragging myself through it, and getting frustrated because my balance sucked and my muscles were shaking. Yes, there are no doubt several contributing factors -- lack of sleep, lack of water, etc. But they still all added up to me feeling completely off my game and, since this revolved around exercise, like a giant, lard-ass, I can't hack it through a dvd that used to be easy, un-hot mama.

Poo.

I took a shower and decided I would turn in early tonight so that I would have more energy tomorrow. And while in the shower, something a good friend of mine said came back to me. To paraphrase -- keep pursuing your dreams, even when you don't want to.

Actually, she posted it on Facebook. And it came to my rescue. Because it's one of the smartest things I've heard lately. Sometimes, even things we want really badly -- losing baby weight, publishing novels, getting out of debt, becoming wildly famous for whatever particular talent you're secretly harboring -- can start to seem like chores, like one more thing that needs a chunk of time carved out of our crazy busy days. So even though it sounds counter intuitive, sometimes you really do have to force yourself to keep on pursuing that one thing that you want, deep down, in the oubliette of your soul (Labyrinth reference? Yes.) To get up off the couch and get to dance class, or go for a run, or keep plugging away at that novel. Whatever it is. Don't let your goals get pushed aside.

So even when I feel like a hippo who will never fit into my size 10 super hot dark wash skinny jeans again, I will go to bed early to get up and do it all over again tomorrow, because Facebook told me too.

Me and said smarty-pants Facebooking friend at Disneyland, being our fabulous selves.

A Few Words on Babies

It seems like only yesterday that I was traipsing off to my first week of college, moving into my dorm, exercising all my new-found freedom by spending too much money and taking up smoking, eating too much. And waking up to the alarm on my clock radio one morning, thinking it must have been a joke, to hear the dj announce in somber terms that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center.

It doesn't seem like it's been ten years. I can't summon up much to say on the subject that won't sound cliched, and in truth I'm not sure an anniversary like this doesn't really deserve a moment of silence instead of more words.

I will say this -- of all the memorials and tv specials that have been on in the last several days, it has been my fate to only catch the ones which center around parents remembering children who died on that day. First responders, flight attendants, passengers, workers in the buildings.

Not to mention all the men and women of the military who have died since then, battling to make sure it never happened again.

All of them were somebody's baby.

I had promised myself I would start working on getting Baby Violet to put herself to sleep in her bassinet this weekend. I think I'll put it off until next week. I'd rather rock my baby to sleep in my arms, and smell her hair, and feel her chubby little legs and diaper booty, and sway with her in the darkness.