all hail, dr. google.

when google tells you that you're not crazy, that you were right all along, sometimes you just want to sing. 

friday confessions.

once upon a sometime, i saw a list of really interesting friday confessions on one of my pal's blogs.  and i filed it away in my brain as something to do when i didn't have anything else to write.  but really, today, i just have one.

maybe two.

#1. i just posted a question on one of those baby sites to ask if what baby girl has is a cold or the end of a growth spurt. i have no freaking idea. she woke up with some mucus (clear, in case you wanted the details) clogging one of her nostrils. i cleared it out with one of those miraculous blue bulb thingys and she literally smiled at me.  (next time i tried? not so much with the smiles.) i took her temperature (note to self: she's much more amenable to this at 4am when she's sleepy; nevertheless, she was supergood) and it was 99.2, which in adult world = low grade temperature.  she's super sleepy.  so i called the doctor, and the nurse called back and said maybe it's a cold and told me some stuff to do because, really, there's nothing you can do but batten down the hatches and elevate the baby's head and hope for the best.

so, i was all ready for that.  but, see, when she's awake she's very much herself--she's not superfussy, she's not annoying, she's not howling, she doesn't even really seem that uncomfortable (except when she's hiccuping, which is a whole other post in which i talk about how i have FREAKED OUT about spit up and hiccups and possible reflux issues for like four days and i'm just EXHAUSTED but i know my baby and i know when stuff ain't right, but i just don't know if it's the developmental type of not right (i.e. newborn gastro systems suck, the end, they'll grow out of it, buy more spit rags or do more laundry) or the "we need some medical intervention here" kind of not right. i'm leaning toward the first, but i was leaning toward the second in the midst of the perfect storm of regurgitation that was my life for several days).

so now i'm wondering if this is the growth spurt, and her particular brand of it involves mucus.

she has that, but it's not too terrible. i guess a few days will tell us--we should know more tomorrow, probably.  but she just ate 7 ounces in 4 hours.  that's pretty impressive right there.  and she's kept it down (i just knocked on our wooden coffee table).  and she WANTED it.

so i have no idea.

so i posted a question on one of those boards, is the point of this whole rambling thing. 

in a related confession...

2. i have spent a LOT of time on dr. google over the past few days.  it's ridiculous. if i'd have used the time to grade, i'd be done by now. instead, i have to push it and get it done tonight in fits and starts, inbetween baby tending and my husband doing his school work.

i wish i'd have graded. 

redefinition.

so i think that there's something people don't tell you before you have a baby.

in fact, i think there's too much they DO tell you and not enough they DON'T tell you but i don't think anyone could really tell you everything or, as my wise mama told me, you just don't hear half of what they say anyways so it's possible that people told me but that i just didn't hear them.

the biggest adjustment i'm having to motherhood and parenthood isn't loving the baby--that's totally done--or getting way less sleep--that sucks, but it is manageable--but it's this sense of neverending responsibility competing, sometimes violently, with your previous sense of independent freedom.

for the past week or so, i've been feeling like i want a "break." but when i'd get one, when musicboy would take the baby or when i would be able to go do something, it somehow wouldn't be what i was defining as a break.  so i would keep searching for it, occasionally feeling woebegone because oh how hard it is to have no break.

it wasn't until this early morning, feeling terribly guilty for just not wanting to deal with the daily life of newbornland and again feeling like i wanted that ever-elusive 'break' from the routine, that i realized what was going on.

even when i get a small break, i am never 'free' from the responsibility of being a parent.  i don't necessarily want to be free of that responsibility, but it's a new feeling.  i thought it was the daily routine, the bottles and formula and diapers and spit up and gas, that was the weight that i was feeling. i realized, laying in bed, that it's not.  i can do bottles and formula and diapers in my sleep.  it's the responsibility.  it's the feeling like i need to always be on the watch for what to do next, it's making sure that i am meeting everyone's needs above my own, and especially maggie's because she can't do it herself. it's trying to figure out how to make her have less spit up, less gas, less discomfort during these growing times. it's the constant dance of doing all of the things that i know need to happen in order for her to thrive.  it's weighty.

i don't think i expected that to feel almost physical, though, and to contrast so sharply with the easy freedom that comes with being an adult.  i thought i had weighty stuff in my life--job, marriage, family, faith--but, to a certain degree, i was always free to do what i wanted to do when i wanted to do it.  now there's something bigger than myself, more important than myself, that tugs at me constantly.

i don't resent it.  please don't get me wrong.  right now, after i had said prayer after prayer laying in my bed that Heavenly Father would change my nature to make me less selfish and more willing to serve without worrying about myself, my baby girl is sleeping on my chest.  she wasn't doing so well in her crib in these early morning hours, having spit up lots and having some bubbles.  so i picked her up and rocked her and she fell asleep on my chest.  so now we're downstairs, laying on the couch, watching family ties and getting some more rest.  it is precious to me.  all of this becomes very academic, in some ways, when we have these moments. these are the moments that i cherish.

someone told me that this is the new normal, and that the old normal will never be again.  i think that's what the conflict inside of me is about--the unrealistic expectation that i would feel the way i felt before, even in some small way.  i am still me, but i am a different me.  there's nothing wrong with that.  in fact, that's amazing. 

to a certain extent, i think i have been searching around, somewhat aimlessly, for signs that i was back to "normal" as a way of justifying that we are surviving. in some ways, i think that i was looking for those signs as a way of feeling like life has begun, once again, after this hiatus of delivering a baby.

i was completely missing the mark.

life began when maggie was born.  life began, for us, again.   the old one came in with us to the hospital and we left with a different one.  i'm not sure why it's so hard for me to realize that.  instead of spending time waiting for the old normal to return, and feeling frustrated when it doesn't happen, i should be spending my time building the new normal.

i've been thinking about ways that i can start to do that, but it's a hard adjustment.  it's the adjustment that i'm finding most challenging, but i suppose building a life, both literally (as we take care of baby girl) and figuratively (as we redefine how we work as a family) is pretty strenuous work. 

i'm not sure if any of this makes sense to anyone else, but it's what i've been thinking about.  realizing it is tantamount to a huge sigh.  i feel as if i've somehow been holding my breath, and now i can breathe again. 

i'm a worrier, and that's never going to change. but not worrying about being the way i was before, but just spending time trying to be the best i can in these new circumstances--that's an interesting idea.  it might even feel liberating to a certain degree. 

we're all still figuring it out, and though it feels like baby girl has always been here, she hasn't been here for that long.  i think it will take time to figure out how to make all of these things fit together well, and even then the seams between them might be quite prominent for a while. 

but if we're working on building, rather than searching, i think we'll be happier and more content.

expansion on facebook statuses, published and contemplated.

have you ever had moments that suddenly transport you to another time? there's nothing obvious about it--no song from middle school crush gone by, no memory that suddenly arrests you--but suddenly you feel like you felt on some bygone day?

as baby girl and i strolled down the road near our home today, the first victory in what i can only call the "take back our life from baby-imposed cabin fever" campaign, i had one of those moments. suddenly, i felt, at almost a cellular level, like i did in middle school. as i was walking, and i realized it, i tried to decide what it was that sent me there. was it the particular slant of the sun? was it the walking in the heat on sidewalks, something like i might have felt when i walked home? was it a subconscious feeling of self-consciousness? was it the distractedness of worrying about baby girl as i was walking, perhaps how i might have felt about a backpack or some stack of books i was carrying?

i couldn't figure it out.  but it was strange.

--

last night, baby girl slept for six hours straight, making eight hours between her feedings. 

i woke up at 4, not sure if she was sick or just hitting this particular milestone in her development. something told me that she was fine, but i decided to wake her up, feed her, and then take her temperature.  musicboy has been under the weather this week, so i wanted to make sure that it wasn't some sort of illness that made her less interested in food than normal. 

sweet girl that she is didn't even cry when that particular invasion happened--she just sort of looked around, astonished and bewildered.

(perhaps the best reaction to that certain act.)

98.7. perfectly normal.  and she smiled at me afterward, as if to say "mom, i'm good.  i'm fine. stop worrying. now you know.")

so, two firsts down: eight hours between feedings (and most assuredly the definition of "sleeping through the night") and first rectal temperature taken. 

that's parenthood for you.

--

the dean of rural cc called me the other day, asking about a student who had plagiarized two papers but who was allowed to rewrite the papers because i am kindness and benevolence personified.  she ended up with a passing grade in the class, which wasn't always guaranteed, but her mom was raising holy heck (yes, i said mom) with the administration about her grades, apparently.

i could say a lot of things about this student and her mom, but i won't.  i could say a lot of things about parents in general who choose to intervene to that degree in their children's lives, rather than helping them to learn invaluable life lessons about choices and consequences.   but i won't.

instead, i will just say that one of the things that makes me craziest about being a teacher is that we are constantly guilty until proven innocent.  it's as if everyone in the world thinks that we're idiots, out to be as unjust and unfair as possible at every moment.  there's a fundamental lack of understanding that we are human beings, prone to our own frailties and particular weaknesses.  instead, we get to be thought incompetent if we make a decision that someone disagrees with or that doesn't seem fair to someone else.

(on a somewhat related tangent: since when did the world begin to think life always had to be fair? the world i live in is FAR from fair. the sooner one realizes that, the sooner one can compensate and stop spending time and energy whining and shaking fists at the proverbial heavens.)

i will try to remember this when our little ones become bigger ones and go to school. please, let me remember that all teachers are doing their best, and that even if i disagree with him/her, they deserve respect and cordiality.  they deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt, and they deserve to be supported. 

i had an atrocious 4th grade teacher.  he didn't teach. he assigned chapters out of a math book and said "if you have questions, let me know." but the line during math time was wrapped around the classroom, so i never got my questions answered.  i went from being an a/b student to being a c/c- student. i didn't understand and, after a while, i just gave up. i also lost respect for my teacher.  i mouthed off to him one day, and my mom let me have it. 

i didn't learn until after i was long out of his class that my mom loathed him and thought he was a moron who should have retired the year before instead of sticking around and penalizing little children for his apathy. she worked VERY hard to bite her tongue and support him because she wanted to teach me the lesson of respect. you don't have to agree, but you have to be respectful.

i fear that has been lost. i hope i can instill it in my children.

--

i'm writing this down here.  i'm putting it out there. 

the idea of one of those "whoops, my baby is three months old and i'm pregnant again" is terrifying to me, but at the same time, i would be so like "YES! I AM FERTILE AS THE DAY IS LONG!"

only for moments, until the terrifying terrible terror of Terrortown hit me.

i mean, we would deal, but i'm also smart enough to know to be smart.

so smart we will be, but i think that's a strange sort of duality going on there in my brain. 

--

sometimes i think people don't understand how somewhat cold email/facebook messages can be.  after telling someone who had just told me about pumping 6 ounces something like a week after her baby was born and being seriously engorged, that i was unable to breastfeed successfully, she responded with essentially "wow. i guess if you have to do that, that's what you have to do.  good luck with that.  i was going to ask you if you needed breastfeeding tips...guess not."

you'll excuse me if i sort of took this wrong, while totally realizing that it was absolutely not intended that way.  i just think this person had NO idea how a) hard the whole thing was for me and b) how her comment came across.   i also think some people are better at emoting in writing than others. 

i also think that i have probably annoyed certain people with my whining.  sometimes it's fantastic to reach out, but sometimes maybe it's better to keep it to yourself. 

--

and that's all i have to say about that.

responsibility reigneth.

i want an iphone.

(read: want)

then i go to the grocery store and spend lots of money to feed our family.  i fill up the car, and it costs more than it used to, and reading the signs driving down the road that proclaim how much gas is pains me as well.  i use lots of water, doing laundry and washing bottles and running the dishwasher (but not showering, because i'm certainly conserving there!), and the air conditioner has to run more during the steamy nights because baby girl can't sleep without being swaddled.

(my new project is to make swaddling "blankets" out of old sheets to combat this problem, or else we'll be giving our entire summer paycheck to the electric company.)

suddenly, it just doesn't seem that important anymore, that iphone. 

i'll take what i have. 

tidbits.

so i think i am internally three years old.

because i'm having separation anxiety and a serious case of the "NO! MINE!"s.

let's begin with the separation anxiety.  since i've had the absolute luxury of having musicboy home so much over the past few weeks, i don't like it when he leaves. he has three days entirely off: tuesdays, thursdays, and sundays.  the other days, he has work, and even on the days he has "off" he still has school work to do (i LOVE online classes!) and occasional things like choir or church commitments.  so it's not like he isn't out and about--he is, far more than i am.

but some days, i dread the next day when i know that he will be gone again for a stretch.

sometimes the anxiety comes from having weathered a stormy few days with baby girl, like we just did. she had some gas and it was bumpy and we got through it and got stronger (and if you think gas is no big deal, hey man, let me show you a baby who won't sleep because it wakes her up during the day and then gets cranky because she hasn't slept and then screams through the actual gas bout (which was probably only 15 minutes but felt like an eternity) and then is so overtired that it's really tough to get her to go to sleep and then you can comment--and yes, i get that we have it easy, but everybody's hard is still hard) and then we had a peaceful respite day when we just tag teamed and it was good and i don't want those times to end.

because then i'm left to my own devices and there's a small part of me that sincerely worries that if he leaves, everything will go terribly again and it will be hard and i'll be on my own.

odds are, at some point, that's bound to happen, but it's strange to feel so much like i want to cling to musicboy's pants leg and beg him to stay with meeeee.

it takes my independent spirit and sort of tosses it out the window, you know?

in other news, and i''m going to be superdeliberately vague here, i have found myself reacting surprisingly like HULKSMASHRAGE momentarily when a person that i otherwise find utterly endearing and adorable using possessive pronouns about my baby girl. i know that it's because this person genuinely loves the baby, and i have no idea where it comes from, but i'll see these references (mainly on facebook) and i, for the moment, am really, really annoyed.

as in "not yours...MINE" annoyed.

it makes no sense. i know it makes no sense. it's momentary and then my better, saner nature kicks in.  when i told musicboy, he thought it was sort of funny.  at first he thought the person was referring to a particular nickname that baby girl had received, and explained it away. when i saw it again, and told him again about my reaction in a sort of anthropological "isn't this WEIRD?" sort of observation about my own maternal weirdness, i think he better saw my point. 

i told him i thought it was the one weird way my maternal instincts were manifesting themselves. he agreed.

three years old. i'm telling you.

--

i don't think we would really be as sane as we are if it weren't for streaming netflix and their seasons of television shows.

we have four on rotation at any given time, all sitcoms. sitcoms are the perfect snippets of time. without commercials, they're like 21 minutes long. that's long enough to feed a baby, or pump, or do any number of baby-related things that might otherwise feel longer. 

sitcoms also require no real investment whatsoever. you don't REALLY have to keep track of what's going on, and they can be fun.  we watched about six seasons of roseanne (before it got raunchy), the entirety of phineas and ferb, we're making our way through the cosby show, wings, cheers, and family ties. we bounce back and forth watching random things, and i'll admit, we watch a lot. 

i've always been a person who needs noise, but i never wanted to be one of those people who sat their kid in front of the tv.  when she's awake, i'm playing with her, but cosby might be on in the background.

it's baby steps, you know?

but i'm grateful for it.  i feel a lot better about my choices when i'm able to control them moment to moment. for some reason, it's a lot easier to stop watching something that's streaming than something that's on broadcast tv. i have no idea why that is, but there you go.

--

we gave baby girl a bath tonight. i find that i suck at this.  i always think of bath time as something you do at bedtime, and it's been hard to figure out the timing with her new schedule. we have to be ON IT and planning so that we do it before she gets a) really cranky or b) totally asleep.  we managed it last night and oh my gosh she's so big.

she just seemed so much longer.  and bigger. and less...tiny.

when musicboy came home from work today, he said "she's bigger!" i said he was crazy and he said "no really. did she take a nap today?" because they grow in their sleep, or so i read, and i said yes and then suggested that maybe he was right since i put a onesie on her in the morning that was one size, with no problem, and then when i had to change her because of a somewhat inevitable spit up incident several hours later, another onesie of the same size seemed small to me.

she's growing like crazy. i can hardly believe it.  i'm going to blink and she's going to be two.

and as we were putting her to sleep, i told musicboy that if she becomes one of those two year old diva girls who thinks she's the prettiest thing in the world (because she smiled every time i said pretty for a few minutes), i'm going to have to work very hard to convince her that pretty comes and goes but kind and generous is forever.

anyways.

my baby is growing--up and out and all around.  i can't wait until we get her real stats at the doctor's office. i have a feeling she's going to be an overachiever in height.  not sure in weight, but definitely in height. 

--

i'm going to sleep now. 

irony with a side of potential TMI.

don't think it's lost on me.

now that i've decided to stop pumping, it's like the girls decide that it's flowapalooza up in here.  of course, i'm only pumping every 8 or so hours, and only then to make it stop feeling like ouch, but seriously. if we could have gotten that sort of action going earlier, things might have been different.

it ain't lost on me. 

that said, making a decision and then dealing with it are two different things.  as we're stepping down production, and consumption on baby girl's end, i have felt sad.  i was a bit surprised.  but it was a good 24 hours of sad.  and then, earlier tonight, i started to come out of it.

it is what it is, to use a phrase my mom hates, and it's good because it's the right decision.  i know that much, so i know enough.

moving on now, or at least trying.