Adventures in Parental Anxiety Part 2 of Infinity

Some memoirs from the early days and some recent adventures.

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I learned a lot about newborns during my stay in the hospital.  One thing I falsely believed was that newborns were like regular humans, just itty bitty.  This is not true.  They are weird, freaky little creatures who will terrify you with the scary stuff they do.  Here are some newborn fun facts I learned from the very kind nurses who never acted angry when I hit the call button every 9 seconds because I was convinced something was terribly wrong with my child.  They twitch, pant like dogs, take pauses in their breathing, sound gurgly and wheezy after they eat, their eyes loll into the back of their head, their skin is dry and they shed it like a snake, they go limp when they sleep deeply, their hands and feet are cold, they are lobster red when they cry and ghost pale when they sleep deeply.  These are all, I was told, normal things.  (Consult your personal physician.)

Oh, and who the heck has heard of ‘newborn rash’? I think this might have been the scariest parental moment to date.  So, there I am in the hospital, it’s the middle of the freaking night, I was up with baby and noticed a little blemish on his cheek.  Just a red circle with what looked like a white head in the center.  I hit the call button for the 400th time and the nurse says oh yes, looks like a touch of newborn rash– no big deal, completely harmless, is actually just nothing more than clogged pores, 50% of newborns get it.  (If it was that common why hadn’t I heard of this?!).  She says he’s lucky, most babies get it all over their body.

It couldn’t have been more than an hour later and I take off Frogson’s little shirt to change his diaper, and HOLY JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH FLAMING PINEAPPLES LORD ALMIGHTY.  RASH.  TERRIBLE RASH.  EBOLA MEASLES MUMPS RUBELLA POLIO NOROVIRUS BIRD FLU WEST NILE H1N1 RASH.  CALL BUTTON CALL BUTTON CALL BUTTON CALL BUTTON

Oh yes, she says, it’s just that same harmless newborn rash, and now he has it all over the place just like I said was normal, remember?  She tells me the official name is Erythema Toxicum, which the pediatrician would later describe as “the scariest name there is for a harmless condition” and I agree.  (If you want to have an idea what I was beholding, here is the google image.  Warning: graphic and nasty.  But tell me you wouldn’t flip out too.) I was like lady I really hope you’re right, but you roll this baby right out of here, take him to whatever baby experts are at my disposal in this facility, and confirm that that’s all it is. Cause I’m pretty sure it’s Ebola.

Yes, he was officially diagnosed with harmless newborn rash and what do you know, it never bothered him and was gone in a few weeks.  Onward to new stuff to worry about.

Last night, Frogson had by far his longest unobstructed stretch of sleep in history.  (AN EASTER MIRACLE!) Let me make some disclaimers quick.  I recently whined on Twitter about other moms (with babies younger than the Frog) who took to social media to rejoice in babies sleeping through the night, jeans fitting, etc.  I cooled down a bit because I realized, you know, if they’re making these statements about sleeping through the night with ten exclamation points, they’re probably really excited cause they’d had a tough time up till that point and I should cut them some slack.  And obviously the jeans thing I have no right to be bitter over, cause they’re probably making exercise a priority whereas I’m on the couch with a glass of wine during the 2 hours I have to myself after he goes to sleep at night.  And why people would select exercise over that, I will never know.  This is why they deserve to fit into their jeans.  And why I will remain in my elastic pants clutching a bowl of cake batter ice cream.

So, I do think chicks should go ahead and do a public happy dance when they have a sleep-through-the-nighter, but make a statement of solidarity for the rest of us, you know? Because it stings to read your bright-eyed and bushy-tailed little status message when I’ve been up every 90 minutes the night before.  But watch this: “ZOMG [baby] slept through the night!!1!!!1!!! Stay strong sisters, like Jiminy Cricket says, dreams do come true!!!” Now you have your celebratory remark with a hopeful note for the rest of us.  And you’ve dropped a Jiminy Cricket quote like a boss.  It’s not every day you have the opportunity to do that.  It’s a win-win-WIN.

ANYWAY, baby and I both slept well last night.  It wasn’t always like that, so don’t hate me, I’ve earned my stripes! But for about the last month, he’d been doing really well with sleep.  He’d go to sleep easily (knock on wood), wake up for two nighttime feedings at predictable intervals (knock on a lumber yard), and then go back to sleep easily again (KNOCK ON THE REDWOOD FOREST).  So we were nowhere near a full night of sleep, but that’s cool cause he’s not biologically ready for that and I would never rush him, (martyr mommies unite), but we were faring well.

Last night he blew past his first wakeup time by 2 hours! You don’t understand how crazy that was.  He wakes up at 2:00 and 5:00 like clockwork.  It’s eerie how clockworky it is.  Like if he wakes up at 1:50 then he will wake up again at 4:50.  Last night I woke up at 4:00 and was all say whaaaaat WTF is this!? And my boobs were all, you better find us a baby to feed NOW cause this place about to blow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow.  And of course why be happy when you can panic, and in my sleepy haze I was convinced that something terrible must be afoot in the nursery.  So I shoved Jeff awake and made him go check on the baby.  Which made him immediately wake up, but that was fine, because up until yesterday I was convinced I’d be up at 2:00am every night until he was, like, 4.

What do you know, (again), Frogson was fine and just decided to be an awesome sleeper last night.  I woke up in a great mood but then had 99 more left pinky problems today (ugh I won’t even get into it except to say I have several orthopedists perplexed with my stupid screwball finger.)   Sorry this conclusion is awkward.  Later gators.

Love

I Wish I Loved Anything

As much as Roberta loves Chex:

Whiney Blog Post

Ehrmagerd it was an annoying week.  One thing that happened was this:

Which of these fingers is not like the other? Yea, I dislocated my stupid pinky on Tuesday.  I’d done this a few times during my gymnastics career so the thing is now kind of prone to it.  Then Sunday I awoke in a terrific mood… Frogson had slept well, I brought him into bed and was enjoying some snuggles and streaming Caspar Babypants on Jeff’s phone,  (you need to go straight to YouTube and type that in NOW), I was going to go to Palm Sunday Mass (my favorite of the year)… and then I managed to jam my pinky and OUT IT WENT again.  So instead I showed up to the urgent care place just as it was opening and did you know people apparently form lines to get into these places as they are opening on Sunday morning? So I’m in line outside the door with a fleet of tissue-clutching kiddies, a guy with a surgical mask on, a few other pajama-clad chicks with maladies unknown, and me with a cockeyed pinky finger.  And they open the doors and our line trudges in and it was all kind of depressing and Orwellian.  Whine.  And this re-injury (bringing the lifetime total to 4) seems to have really done in the poor thing because it took like 5 tries for them to get it in, and that was sucky, and I swear it’s like hanging on by a thread in there.  Sorry that was nasty.  But the xray is baller isn’t it!?

Frogson too had an annoying week.  Monday he had his two month visit with the family doctor where he was seen by two nurse practitioners and little man had A HECKUVA time.  My poor spouse, parents, and a couple friends have already been subjected to this tale in excruciating detail so I apologize for those who are hearing this again.  But they are going about the usual baby physical and suddenly Frogson started crying.  OK, whatever, it happens, I scooped him up and bounced him, offered him up a boob snack, shh-ed in his ear, all the usual tricks that he is very responsive to.  Nothing worked and the crying was getting worse and worse and worse and soon he was screaming so hard that all the veins in his head were sticking out and he was producing actual tears which I had never seen before.  In fact this was by far the worst crying I had seen ever, much much worse than even the worst newborn moments I could recall.  And every single mom instinct is firing in my brain and all I can think is something’s wrong, this isn’t normal, he’s in pain, something hurts.  Which I said as much to the nurses, and they are retracing their steps and saying it started when the one was examining his ears, and I’m saying OK, well then what could have happened that he would hurt like this? And I didn’t mean it like “OMG you broke his ears with your poor skillz, I’m lawyering up!” I just meant I’m sure it was a perfectly fine exam but it triggered pain for him somehow.  But I think they thought I was making the former claim, because they got CRAZY defensive and tried to convince me he was just hungry, or tired, or gassy, or worked up because he sensed my anxiety.  And I’m insisting no no NO, it’s NOTHING like that, he’s never ever done this and something is wrong.  Like, I was sweating, shaking, near tears myself, and thinking if it didn’t get better he needed to, like, go to the hospital!  And they are saying “Well babies are always changing and your happy baby might not always be like that” and I’m like OKAY FINE but he was happy and giggling before you yahoos starting poking at him, so I don’t think his entire personality has done a 180 in the last ten minutes.  In total he wailed for probably 15 or 20 minutes and he didn’t so much settle as he just kind of passed out from the crying, and proceeded to nap for SIX HOURS which was the longest he’s ever slept, even overnight.

He is back to his happy self of course, but I was REALLY rubbed the wrong way by what happened.  I really don’t think the practitioners handled him incorrectly or anything, I could just tell they were 100% concerned with covering their butts and 0% concerned about finding out if there was maybe a medical reason why a normal physical would have put my kiddlet into such a tizzy.

I made my four month appointment for him but then went home and called around until I found a new practice to take him.  I made his four month appointment with them but then the more I thought about it, the more I wanted him re-seen after what happened this week.  I had a few other concerns about him which I had been bringing up to his first office repeatedly, and kept repeatedly getting told everything was normal and fine and would resolve itself.  But now I was really starting to question their judgment and didn’t want to wait two months for a second opinion.

GAH I am SO GLAD I listened to my instincts and had him reexamined.  Because the new office immediately got him in to see a pediatrician and she had very different opinions.  Frogson’s head? Which I had been asking about since the start since he has a really strong preference for one side? And I kept getting blown off and told it looked fine just keep up the tummy time? YEA NO IT’S FLAT.  She’s referring him to a neurosurgeon.  Ehrmagerd.  And an oddity on his neck that I was also assured was harmless is a “branchial cleft cyst” and he needs to see an ENT.  Ehrmagerrrrd.

I know everything’s OK and we’ll treat it however we need to, but it just… irks me.  It’s tough for me to draw the line between maternal anxiety and maternal instincts and that’s why medical professionals get paid the big bucks to help you navigate this kind of crap.  This was a good lesson though in remembering that ultimately I am Frogson’s advocate and I don’t care how crazy I look, I need to triple check stuff if it seems off.

Sigh.  OK.  Talk to you later.

Spotifail

Note the extreme inconsistency between the selected track and the “artist radio based on”…

 

Adventures in Parental Anxiety Part 1 of Infinity

Did everyone catch the “How to Have an Awesome Pregnancy” post on Jezebel the other week? I don’t have the energy to link it.  Google it if you are interested, it was a riot and EXACTLY why I (and all of us) are crazy.  What it fails to mention is that it only gets much worse when you’re dealing with the actual child, in that every single parental choice seems to involve controversy and conflicting evidence and you CANNOT WIN.  Here is just a brief glimpse at a couple things currently stressing me out.

Healthy Sleep Habits Healthy Child says baby needs to be doing 100% of his sleep in his crib or he will grow into a sleep deprived child who will learn poorly and have behavioral issues.  But excess time spent on a firm surface in the supine position gives babies flat heads.  Wearing the baby in a sling promotes a whole ton of positive things, but slings are suffocation risks and mess up their hips.  Pacifiers decrease the risk of SIDS but wreck teeth and cause speech impediments.  Swaddling is good for sleep, but is also a suffocation risk and causes respiratory infections if done too tightly.

(All of these claims should be qualified with “apparently” or “some say” or “I read this one article”.  Again, no energy to actually make links and I’ve long lost track of where on the internet I’ve heard all this crap.  I hate you internet.)

Or then I’m happy because I seem to have finally found an affordable, natural baby wash and the first Amazon comment is someone saying, ‘Read the ingredients! How can they call it organic when it has this this and this in it, which are KNOWN CARCINOGENS!’ and then I want to sob.  Because just when I’m certain I’m doing something that is totally agreed upon as safe and good, NOPE sorry I’m maiming my baby.

I just wish the clouds would part and out of the sky a hand would appear, proffering a silver platter with all the right answers on it.  If someone could just tell me the exact right thing to do I WOULD DO IT.

Coincidentally, the one piece of consistent advice that I keep hearing is just to ignore this crap and follow my instincts.  On a basic, instinctive level I think he must be fine.  He is happy, if he cries he’s easily consolable, he smiles and coos up a storm, he’s growing growing growing.  He is always clean and wearing clean, adorable clothes.  (Which is much much MUCH more than I can say for myself.  Everyone always remarks how good he smells which blows my mind, cause he spends half the day attached to me and olfactorily, I AIN’T NO PRIZE).

OK I need to shut up for tonight.  Just wanted to get all that off my chest.  Becker out!

Wait For :49

I already tweeted this; sorry if this is a dupe for you. It cracks me up… I can’t help myself!

Hi and Stuff

Some days I feel like I suck at the blog because all I can think to yak on about is mom stuff.  Fear not, I have much more mom stuff in the queue, but I’m sure you agree the internet needs a break from my incessant commentary.  Mommentary? BAHAHA did you see what I did there?  My jokes also get exponentially worse with each passing day.  Here at the Becker homestead we affectionately call the pacifier the “Fi”, and I cannot go a day without singing “Everybody in the club/all fis on us/all fis on us” and I crack up and Jeff tells me this is another one of those situations where it’s possible it’s funnier in my mind than everyone else’s.  LIES.  Because today in the car I heard a radio commercial for spicy brown mustard that actually made a bratwurst/”bratbest” joke.  YES THAT HAPPENED.  That means that someone was paid money to come up with that.  Mustard execs, call me!

So I say to myself, what the heck? How did so much hilarious stuff used to happen to me? Days used to begin uneventfully and then 13 hours later I’d return home with hilarious blog fodder like splashing shrimp juice all over the place or strangers accosting me on the metro or crazies or crazies in ridiculous headphones.  And I realize, oh yea, I used to live and ride public transportation in a large urban area.  And one upside to starting your days on a crowded train smashed crotch-to-butt and face-to-ponytail against smelly strangers is that you got a lot of funny stories out of it.  And my lack of funny stories is probably due to the fact that I now spend my days dispensing breast milk and monitoring my child’s bowel movements.  I am living the dream.  (And believe it or not, I do mean that in all seriousness.)

But– EXCITING NEWS Y’ALL– today we made it out of the house and ran three (3) errands.  One of which was picking up a book from the library which even in boring Pennsylvania never fails to disappoint.  One day back a few months ago I was working from the library and some yahoo approached me and asked if he could borrow my laptop.  WHATTA? No? IT’S THE LIBRARY.  Home of The People’s Computer.  GO AWAY.  Except I said it in a polite way, I promise.

So I huff into the library, car seat in tow.  By the way, I hate that stinking car seat.  But less than I hate the stroller, so I usually end up carrying it.  The car seat is light.  The baby is light.  How is that combining the two makes it weigh 65 pounds? I’m working on getting more fluent with his wrap.  Anyway, in we go and there is a couple in some kind of lover’s quarrel right in front of the circulation desk.  The chick is obviously really angry and the guy keeps pleading, “Please just let me walk you home! Please just let me walk you home!”.  I took my sweet old time retrieving my book from the hold shelf so I could watch this unfurl, because, like I said, this is probably the most exciting thing that will happen to me all month and I was BUSTING OUT MY POPCORN.  Then she asked the librarian to use their phone, and I sort of lost the story from here, but I caught her saying something about a letter this guy had gotten.  I have seen enough reality TV to know that anything involving letters usually indicates a critically high level of craziness.

I further lost the story when I had to go up to the help desk cause I was having issues with the self checkout machine thing.  As the kind librarian pointed out to me, I had been scanning the wrong bar code.  I was scanning the actual bar code on the book itself instead of the library bar code sticker.  I was SO EMBARRASSED.  So much cluelessness. SO MUCH.

Then that night I went home and I placed a call on my cell phone, except I was holding the baby monitor in my other hand, and I brought the baby monitor up to my ear instead of the phone.  Then this morning I came perilously close to pouring coffee onto my lidded cup before I caught myself at the last minute and removed the lid.  I think I’ll stick with blaming hormones for my stoopidity.

Uhh, OK, that’s all I have for now.  Sorry it sucks so much.

Another Fan of the Legless Nightgowns…

Easy beagle access to delectable baby butt scents!

 

Frogson’s Birth Story: Where Are They Now?

Every story needs an epilogue.  Don’t you hate that about books and stuff? Don’t you live for the Dr. Drew reunion show with the Teen Mom people? Was the Amber Behind Bars special the highlight of your 2012? What do you know, me too!

OK, so obviously I can’t let my placenta ride off into the sunset/get carted off in a basin without one last mention here on the internet.  Seriously why must I torment you all with placental over share?! I don’t know! I’m sorry that it fascinates me to no end.  My body fails to do lots of things correctly, but it done went and made an entire organ that sustained Frogson and fed him lots of yummy burritos and milkshakes for 9 months.  COOL.

(I must issue one last warning for men/those not interested in graphic female problems.  Go now.)

But if I learned one thing from my birth experience it’s that things prefer not leave the hospitable confines of my womb.  I’m flattered, really.  It must be like The Westin in there.  Cause my placenta was all COME AT ME BRO, hell no we won’t go.  I’m picturing it prostrated in front of a wrecking ball.  My one wish to all of the women of the world is that you never hear a healthcare provider utter the words “I’m going in” with regards to your placenta.  Because I did.  And it happened.  And I’ll stop there even though I’ve already crossed the line by like 48 meters.

Sweet Frogson, thank all deities, was fine even with the meconium incident.  His immediate Apgar was an 8 and a 9 after 5 minutes, losing that point only because his little hands and feet were still a little chilly (and remained as such for his first few days), which thank God I learned in the hospital birth class powerpoint was very common/normal.

He nursed like a champ, as I thought he might, since he was sucking each time I saw him on ultrasound.  Technically the first time I ever laid eyes on him was when he was a wee 16 weeks old, looking head on at the transponder and sucking away.  It was tremendously cool.  He’s sitting next to me sucking in his sleep as I type this right now.  At the hospital they made you keep a log of the baby’s eating and pee-ing and poo-ing, and I think it was on day 1 or 2 of his life where the nurse came in and checked it and was like “WHAT?! He nursed for 2 hours and 45 minutes?!” I was like “Uhh, yea? He cried every time I tried to take him off so… yea?” and she was all “Oh girl, no no NO… he needs a pacifier” and of course I am protesting and saying but! But! Nipple confusion! Solidly established breastfeeding relationship! THE BOOKS WARNED AGAINST THIS! But, yea, I’m a believer now.  Homeboy loooooves them.  Especially the ones that take up half his face.

Let’s see.  What else.

I really only remember fragments from his first week of life.  Very strange.  That’s why I’m glad I’m trying to write down what I do remember.  I obviously immediately loved him a huge, scary, overwhelming amount– but I think most people find that kind of love to be a joyful experience, whereas I felt more of a consuming dread/terror that something would happen to him.  I wish I could go back and pat my January self on the back and tell myself it would get better, because I was a mess.  I’m so much better now, just a few weeks later.  Maybe not 100% just yet, but I no longer make Google queries such as “Can I give my baby brain damage from pulling a onesie over his head” (That is a true story.  I have the internet search history to prove how crazy I was.)

So, yea, I think my hazy memory has something to do with that.  Because what I remember from the first few days at the hospital was that I was really hungry and had a Subway jingle stuck in my head the whole time.  (I got it made/I got it made/I got it made fresh at Subway/Breakfast made the way I say).  Now it’s in your head too.  And if it’s not, surely this will do the trick: Five! Five dollar! Five dollar foot lonnng! (Febru any any).

Sorrs.  There is a lot of TV around here.

Dude I ate nonstop.  It was awesome.  It must have been the milk coming in I guess.  My mom brought me a big Tupperware thing of homemade chocolate chip cookies and I went through most of them.  Jeff brought me a venti hot chocolate and I saw the face of God.  I found the hospital food to be delectable, such that one day my black bean burger was half frozen and had a hair on it and I wolfed it down without a second thought, enjoying every bite.  I’m sorry, that’s really disgusting, I’m embarrassed admitting I did that.

Frogson did end up with a touch of jaundice (stupid vacuum) and of course I was a mess over it.  Even though I’m aware it is THE most common and treatable newborn problem EVER (the hospital said more babies get it than don’t get it).  And just when there was talk of supplementation to try and process it out of his system and get his weight back up, the dairy farm sprang into action (go go gadget huge milk boobs) and he has been growing great since.

I miss being pregnant.  I’m not sure how to say this without it sounding really weird or like I am unhappy with him on the outside, cause that is obviously– OBVIOUSLY– not the case– not the case! But I loved being pregnant.  Another really strange thing, I’m wondering if other people ever had this feeling, but it’s so surreal those first few days of baby living in the outside world.  It’s such a big jump– one day he was this spirit-like, ethereal creature inside me, and the next day HI MOM I’m a real baby with a name and fingernails and a social security number, can I have some more milk please? And sometimes– again, I know this is strange– but I’ll flip through a picture on the phone or something and see my formerly large pregnant self, and have this fleeting moment where I think to myself that I miss “that” baby.  Weird, I know!

Taking him home was even surreal-er.  I remember plopping his car seat down as we got into the house, looking down at this new little fellow in my living room and thinking, “Oh hello! Excuse me but do you live here?”.  And now it’s crazy to think we’ve been here this whole time without him.  Did his room really sit there dormant all those months, empty and waiting for him? His room which is now full of coos and tummy time and piles of his laundry and if I’m not careful to close the door, Chooch pulling diapers out of the pail to lick the poop off of?

OK.  I could probably go on and on but I am officially cutting off the word vomit and ending this chapter.  And no longer blabbing about female stuff.  Fear not, more programming to come I’m sure!